As Lucy slept, she had a dream. In her dream, she saw Aslan there in the room with her.
"Lucy," he said.
"Is that really who I am?" she asked. "Am I really Lucy?"
"You know that it is. You have forgotten who you are. But deep down you know what your brother says to be true."
"Yes, Aslan,' she said. "Only, I wish that I remembered. I wish I at least knew who they are. I feel out of place here, Aslan. Right now I just want to go back to Aldeia. I want my old life back, but I know that I cannot have that even if I was not Lucy. Help me, Aslan. I do not know what to do."
"Remember," he said and he breathed on her. All at once she remembered everything, England, the wardrobe, the White Witch, their coronation. She remembered everything, her undercover mission and how it went wrong. She gasped as the memories flooded back into her mind.
She awoke suddenly and looked around. She remembered this room now. She laughed with joy. She had given up hope that she would ever remember. She knew that Peter would have gathered Susan and Edmund in the library, so she ran down to it. She flung open the doors to three shocked faces.
"Peter!" she cried. "I remember." She ran over and gave him a hug and then hugged Susan and Edmund as well. They were speechless from surprise.
"Lucy, can it really be you?" Susan asked as she clung tightly to her little sister.
"Yes, it is."
"What made you remember?" Peter asked.
"Aslan did," she said and smiled. "I had a dream and Aslan came to me in the dream and he told to remember, then breathed on me and I did remember. I cannot imagine what it was like, thinking that I had died. But, why did you think I was dead? You cannot have found a body."
"We did not, but we did find a hag who had recognized you and claimed to have killed you. When we searched for you, but never found you, we assumed that she had killed you and thrown your body into the river. We killed them all, so we knew that they could not have captured you and we figured that if you were alive, you would have returned. We did not count on you losing your memory," Peter said.
"I was attacked by a hag. She hit me over the head with her club in a very small cave."
"That must be why we did not find you. We did not see the cave. I can tell you that hearing that hag tell me that she killed you was the worst experience of my life, and I have had some bad ones," Edmund said.
"I am sorry that I caused you all such pain," Lucy said.
"You have no need to be sorry, Lucy. It was not your fault and there was nothing you could have done," Susan said.
"Maybe I should not have gone in the first place," Lucy said.
"You did what you had to in order to stop the attacks. No one knew that it would turn out so poorly. Ed and I both had a bad feeling that night after you went in," Peter said.
"I am glad to be back, but there is someone back in Aldeia that I must go to. Her name is Faylen. She was like a sister to me. Her parents took me in. She has just lost her parents and I promised that I would hurry back to her. She has nowhere to go. She is currently staying with some neighbors, but she cannot stay there forever."
"I will send for her at once. She can live here in the castle with us," Peter said.
"Would you let her?" Lucy said hopefully.
"Of course. She is obviously close to you and you would not be happy to have it any other way. That is enough reason for me," Peter said.
"Thank you Peter!" Lucy said. She gave him a big hug. "I have one more favor to ask."
"Name it," Peter said.
"May I be the one to go get her?" she asked. "I know that I have just returned and I want to stay here with all of you. I hate to leave so soon, but she will be afraid to have strangers show up to bring her somewhere else no matter who they say sent them."
Peter, Susan, and Edmund all looked at each other.
"We could come with you," Susan suggested. "That way we could be together and you could still go get Faylen."
"That would be nice, but someone has to watch the castle," Peter said.
"Can someone else not watch the castle for a few days?" Susan asked.
"It would be a week," Peter said. Susan looked at him with pleading eyes. "But I suppose this is a special occasion. I know that I would not be willing to be the one left behind, so I cannot ask it of either of you."
"Thank you Peter!" Susan said. She grinned. "I am going to go start packing."
Susan grabbed Lucy's arm and pulled her upstairs to pack.
xxxxx
The next day, early in the morning, they were all packed and smiling, ready for the trip with all of the troops that were coming with them.
"Lucy, tell us about what you have been doing for the last few years," Peter said as they rode down they rode leading out of Cair Paravel.
"I was found by a wonderfully kind woman named Miralen. Her husband's name is Gerald and they have a daughter named Faylen. Faylen is like a little sister to me. Miralen brought me back to her home and nursed me back to health. We tried for a while to regain my memory, but to no avail. She could not leave me on my own, so she took me in. I helped wherever and whenever I could. I helped her weed the garden, do the laundry, cook, clean, mend, anything. I will be forever in her debt. If she had not taken me in I do not know what would have happened to me. I might have died without her nursing me back to health."
"Then we are all in her debt," Peter said, smiling at Lucy.
"I only wish that she was still alive so that I could thank her again."
"I'm sure she knew."
"Yes, I hope so."
"We started hearing of attacks about a week ago. It was only a day or two before they attacked our house. It was terrible. Faylen and I were in the barn looking at the newborn kittens when we heard the men outside. We hid until they left. That is when I found them. They were inside the house that was on fire. I could not leave them in there, so I pulled them out. The doctor in our town was away when his house was attacked and robbed. When he returned, not long after I reached his house, he came back to our house to help us bury them."
"I am really sorry, Lucy," Susan said, looking at her sister sympathetically.
"Thank you, I think that it hasn't yet really set in. I am really confused. My memory coming back has made that worse. I am trying to differentiate between what really has happened and what has not."
"It will get better soon."
"I keep expecting them to be there when I get back. I get excited about introducing you to them. Then I realize that they will never get to meet you. They will never know that my memory came back. There is so much that I want to tell them, you know?
"Yeah, we do," Peter said. The siblings looked at each other. "We all went through that after we thought we had lost you. We were all waiting for your cheerful face to come bouncing down the stairs to eat breakfast with us or to see you dancing and laughing at the balls. There was so much that we wanted to tell you and I am sure that soon we will all find time to spend with you alone to tell you those things that we thought we never could."
"I guess you do know about that."