No one understood why a sullen, seemingly selfish boy like Edmund Philippe was concerned over a chill that Lucy Pevensie, a little lady a couple years younger than himself, had caught. No one, that is, except for Lucy Pevensie. She alone understood, knowing that he blamed himself-for pushing her into the brook-and that was why he came over every day to see if she was doing any better. Once, he gathered a small bunch of daises for her.
At seeing the daisies in Edmund's hand, Peter murmured, "I must be dreaming."
Helen was surprised, but being a well-bred lady, she kissed the Philippe boy's forehead and told him that he was a perfect darling, and that if he would like to come in and see Lucy for a while, he might.
He did come in; but he couldn't endure a long visit. He hated to listen to Lucy's hollow cough and see her-cheerful as ever through it all-with red eyes and sallow cheeks.
Thankfully, Edmund's worst fears (that she would get worse and perhaps become gravely ill and it would all be his fault) never did come true. Lucy was well enough to go out-of-doors again within two and a half weeks.
At first Peter always went out with her, guiding his still slightly weakened sister by the hand, but in time he began to let her go off on her own just as she used to do, under sworn oath that she would be more careful.
When Lucy was a free girl, allowed to make up her own mind as to what she would do during the day again, she and Edmund became inseparable.
Early each morning they took their breakfasts-sometimes Edmund just grabbed a roll on his way out the door at the crack of dawn-and they'd meet each other at the lamppost for which the village of Lantern Waste was named.
Often it was still dark out and whichever of them got there last was always delighted to find the other waiting for them under the warm yellow light. Weather didn't seem to matter much to them; if it snowed, they met; and if it rained, they met. When they returned to their homes, some days damp, others simply exhausted and panting for breath, they were scolded. Such scoldings never reached their hearts, for each morning they would simply be at it once more, playing from dawn to dusk.
When the hot summer months came along, it was Edmund who taught Lucy to swim so that if anyone else ever pushed her into the brook (though he swore he would help Peter beat the living daylights out of the fool who dared to try it) she would be able to rescue herself.
Lucy was a quick learner, but she still made mistakes; and for three whole blazing days the western woods rang with Edmund's bellows of, "For the love of the Lion, Lu, stop dog-paddling! Keep your head up! You can kick harder than that! No, no, no, not like that; you're splashing water into my face!" until she got the knack of it.
They never seemed to meet up with any other friends in those days, and perhaps that was only for the better, because none of Lucy's friends liked Edmund in spite of the fact that he was becoming rather a different boy than he'd used to be. Besides, the two of them could get into enough trouble on their own.
Things went on like that until a month or so after Edmund turned eleven. By then his stepmother was overwhelmed with grief and disappointment for her boy. Susan had been employed as a sort of governess for him; but she was more interested in new styles in clothing and in flirting with Sir Peter than she was in keeping her wild-spirited little brother in line. She herself, while very clever and mature in other things, was not wonderful at school-work, and after she-with strenuous effort-managed to teach Edmund the meaning of the word 'gastrovascular', she gave up trying to reel the boy in altogether.
Weeping, the stepmother said to her husband, "Darling, Eddie is turning into an uneducated thug running around all day, please, my love, do something!"
"I'm sure it's not half so bad as you make out, sweetheart." said Edmund's father with a click of his tongue. "We tried sending him away to school before-upon your advice, mind you-and that turned out lovely, didn't it?"
Sobbing harder, she cried, "I beg mercy, husband, for that folly, the blame is mine and I truly am sorry; but must he grow up...like...like this? I've seen wild dogs and stray cats with longer attention spans than our boy is developing. The only thing that can hold his interest for more than five seconds is that little Pevensie girl. She's a delightful child, you know I think the world of her, but for how much longer do you think her parents intend to let her romp around endlessly in the woods with our Edmund? She'll be older someday, then she'll be like Susan, thinking of young men and gowns and balls all the time, and our Edmund will still be-"
"Well, what do you suggest?" thundered Edmund's father grumpily, tired of his wife's nagging, folding his arms across his chest. "I shan't send him to Calormen again so that I'll have to hear one day that my son is a dead man."
"No, no," wailed the stepmother, "I'd never ask that again! To send him there? No, he's been through a trauma, that must be respected, but there are some very nice schools in Ettinsmoor..."
"I think he will run away before he goes off to a boarding school again," said his father, taking out his favourite pipe and filling it with tobacco leaves. He knew his son.
"What of sending him to the court of Archenland, then?" asked the stepmother. "If he goes there...I don't know...two, maybe three, years perhaps-learns from tutors and such what is expected of him as a proper gentleman-then comes back here...Sir Peter could then take him on as a squire...eleven is too young for that, I think, but not fourteen...have him come back and become a squire when he's fourteen and more mature. Then, we can see if we can't work our way up to a knighthood for him."
And, thinking it over, smoking his pipe very heavily, taking puff after puff, the words of his half-Calormene wife seemed good to him, and he agreed that Edmund should be sent to Archenland.
When Lucy heard the news from Susan, she was grieved and cried for the sheer thought of being without her best companion.
Peter patted her on the head and tried-to no avail-to console her. Helen said she was a poor thing and made hot chocolate for her daughter while Count Pevensie tried making funny-faces to cheer her up. At nearly nine years old, Lucy did not find this amusing, and only cried harder so that Peter glared at his father, who shrugged his shoulders in confusion. At any rate, he stopped making the faces. Dame Macready suddenly became kinder, too; she spoke in a softer voice and didn't scold or chide Lucy for nearly a week.
For a few days before Edmund's departure to Archenland, Lucy began to nurse some sort of fancy that she would be allowed to go with him; but of course the grown-ups would not agree to this.
"Why not?" Lucy had asked, pursing her lips in an obstinate way she couldn't often manage. And when she did manage it, it was not very pretty to see.
"Because you're too young to go away to a foreign court on your own, Lu." Her father answered with a hearty sigh. "You know that."
"But Edmund's going." she protested.
"Edmund is a little older than you are, sweetie." Helen put her oar in.
"Only by two years!"
"Lu," said Peter sternly, rubbing his temples "you can't go with him and that's that."
"What Edmund's parents do is none of our concern." Count Pevensie added, secretly thinking that sending Edmund away wasn't the best idea after what had happened in Calormen. Archenland was a nice country, but a boy who had gone through what Edmund had faced was likely not to see it that way.
Frustrated, Lucy ran outside to the lamppost; she knew Edmund would be there. Surely he was upset, too.
When they met up, he was blinking back tears, which he made go away because he didn't want her to see him cry. He didn't want to see her cry either, so he lied and said his parents had changed their minds and that even if they hadn't, he wouldn't have gone.
"They might have made you go," Lucy said quietly, looking down.
Laughing, Edmund lifted Lucy's chin up with the tips of his fingers. "Ha! Make me? No one can make me do anything!"
Seeing how earnest and sure of himself his brown eyes seemed when he said that, Lucy grinned from ear to ear and said he was the cleverest boy in the world-which, of course, he liked to hear (what eleven year old boy doesn't like to have his ego boosted by an adoring younger playmate who thinks he can do anything?).
The two played together as they had every day before that, but Lucy couldn't help noticing something amiss with Edmund who just shook his head whenever she asked him about it, and then forced a smile or a wink.
Evidently, his parents could-and did-make him go to Archenland, and as his carriage pulled away, Lucy wept and followed it as far as the end of the village when she knew she could go after it no longer. There was a small meadow there dotted with little yellow flowers and tall reeds; she sat in the muddy grass watching the carriage vanish from sight, taking her friend far away, and pulled her knees to her chest. A faint clink was heard a few feet away; Edmund had tossed something back to her out of the carriage window.
Lucy stood up, never minding her stained stockings and dirty dress, to find whatever it was he had tossed. At last she found a small gold chain with a pendant in the shape of a silver dagger with a faux-copper hilt hanging from it. She kissed the hilt and fastened the tiny gold clasp around her neck.
"Goodbye, Ed." she whispered.
For the whole duration of the time Edmund Philippe was away in Archenland, Lucy never took the dagger-necklace off. She wore it when she bathed, when she ate, when she roamed through the woods, when she-with some reluctance-played with the other village children, and even when she slept at night.
Speaking of night, she sometimes had strange dreams that he had come back and couldn't find his way. In her dreams Edmund could see only up to the lamppost and the village was black for him, so that he couldn't find neither his house nor her cottage. She took, as a result, to lighting a bright candle and putting it in the highest window each night-just in case. Then in the mornings, she would blow it out, at first somewhat disappointed, but soon as part of a mere routine.
It became a jest in the village that Lady Lucy's candle twinkled from the cottage window every night; younger girls of about five even made up a limerick about 'Lucy's little light' and jumped rope to it. Not that she cared; she was too busy trying not to miss him all the time.
Of course she still had some fun. When days after he'd left turned to weeks, she started to realize that she hadn't played with her old friend Marjorie in a long time, and though it wasn't quite the same, would meet up with her and play games. This friendship lasted steadily until Lucy over-heard Marjorie making fun of the candle. It was one thing to have sweet little ones playing a game to it; rather another to have a close friend mock it and call it a 'childish thing'. Taking it as offence, not only to herself but to Edmund as well, Lucy refused to play with her anymore after that.
"But, child," Helen tried to reason with her gently; "she is a dear friend of yours, surely some forgiveness-"
Lucy shook her head. "I cannot forget what she said."
"How did you come to hear it in the first place?" Peter asked her, trying to help Dame Macready light a fire in the parlor fireplace.
Turning red, Lucy admitted she had been eavesdropping.
"Marjorie loves you," said Peter in a disappointed tone of voice. "You know she's embarrassed around the other, older girls sometimes."
"Do you mean we might have been great friends all our lives if I hadn't heard that?" Lucy said, feeling a little sad just then.
Peter shrugged, sticking a finger in his mouth trying to suck out a wood splinter from the unlit firewood. "Maybe, who knows?"
"I suppose it was bad of me," said Lucy; but she still couldn't forgive Marjorie. She might have in time if only it hadn't been about Edmund. It was just that he was too sensitive and dear a subject with her, as were all things-like the candle-related to him.
Then, a good while after Lucy's twelfth birthday, on the third day of winter, when the air was cold and smelled like snow, Susan came running to the cottage holding out a message that stated Edmund would be coming home that day.
Peter was delighted; he had already promised the Philippe family he would take the lad on as his squire, and he was happier still at the thought of Lucy's joy. He laughed happily, embraced Susan, lifted her up, and spun her around; planting a kiss on her cheek for good measure that ended up making them both blush furiously.
"I've got to tell Lucy!" he exclaimed, pulling away from Susan.
"Where is she?" Susan asked, glancing around for the Pevensie girl and not finding her.
"Upstairs in the bedroom, I think." said Peter, taking the letter in hand. "May I borrow this, Su?"
"Yes, of course!" Susan laughed, giving him a slight nudge. "Go tell her at once-she'll be thrilled."
"Boy, I don't care if you are a knight, I wouldn't care if you were the bloody king of Narnia himself, what have I told you about running in this house like that?" Dame Macready snapped when she saw him dashing towards the stairs in a frightful hurry, tossing a dishtowel into the sink with an angry expression on her face.
"I've wonderful news!" exclaimed Peter, beaming, unwilling to let Dame Macready lessen the joy. "News that is going to make Lucy very happy!"
"Is that any excuse-" she started.
But he hadn't heard; he had already fled to spread joy.
"What's this news?" she called after him, though he couldn't hear her.
Upstairs, Lucy was turned with her back to the stairwell, her front facing the window as she held a small ginger cat she had adopted as a pet recently in her arms. She was watching the sky; it looked just ready for snow, which would have been such a treat, but it wasn't snowing yet-which, for someone like Lucy, was rather a tease.
"Lucy!" gasped Peter breathlessly, clamoring up behind her. "Edmund's coming back to the Lantern Waste!"
Had the years passed so slowly and yet so quickly at the same time? Lucy turned around slowly and faced him, still holding her cat. "Really?"
If a person hadn't seen Lucy in a couple of years, it might have taken them a few double-takes to recognize her; she looked a little different now. Her brown hair-once shorter-had grown long and fair, and while her face was still on the roundish side (she still had some baby-fat on her) it looked closer to pretty than to 'cute'. She was also a bit taller and her wide, innocent eyes held the bud of a new expression not yet graced upon her inside of them, ready to bloom in a few more years.
"Yes, I'm positive!" Peter assured her, grasping one of her hands and slipping Susan's letter into the other one.
Lucy read it once, then twice, almost with the same vigor of pleasure she showed when a letter from Edmund arrived, upon occasion, especially for her and not for other eyes.
Lucy couldn't stop smiling; then she couldn't stop crying.
"Lucy, don't cry." Peter laughed through tears that sprang up into his own eyes. "Aren't you glad?"
"He's coming back today," Lucy said to herself, trying to resister the information.
"Yes," said Peter slowly, taking her expression to be shock.
Lucy grinned, wept again, and quickly placed the yowling ginger cat into Peter's arms. "I know where he'll want to meet me."
With that she fled, rushing down the stairs and out of the cottage passed a fed-up Dame Macready and smiling Susan Philippe, almost forgetting to wave to them as she made a break for it.
Upstairs, Peter scratched the ginger cat between the ears. "I think she took that rather well, don't you?"
Lucy's long pale grayish-silver dress with embroidered crimson roses along the hem and sleeves flew out behind her, as did her wind-whipped hair, as she ran happily through the trees, panting under the tall iron lamppost. Legend said it had been there since the dawn of time, but Lucy didn't know if that was true, nor did she really care; all she knew was that it had been there since the dawn of her friendship with Edmund. He wasn't there yet; so she waited. The air still smelled of snow-much more sharply now-maybe it would come soon.
The sky dimmed and the gray light of the cloud-covered sun turned purple-pink, coloured by the twilit hour, and the yellow of the lamppost's light brightened. Lucy's hope almost began to sink, thinking he had maybe forgotten that this was where they always met. Yet, even as she turned around, gently placing one hand on the dagger-pedant, a snowflake fell on her nose, and just in front of her stood a dark-haired young man of fourteen.
"That's never Lucy Pevensie," he said, sounding both pleased and surprised as he slowly recognized her, mostly because of where she was standing-otherwise it might have been a little harder for him.
"Edmund!" cried Lucy, amazed to see that though the boy in her mind hadn't grown an inch, the real Edmund was still over a head taller than she was.
"Why it is Lucy!" he laughed, running over towards the lamppost and throwing his arms around her. "How are you?"
She clung to his brown Archenland-style tunic and rested in his arms for a few moments before murmuring, "I missed you."
Snow fell around them thickly now, though neither of then noticed until Lucy shivered.
"Oh, here, take this." Edmund rolled his eyes and pulled out a green wool cape, throwing it over her shoulders after brushing a thin layer of snow off of them.
He noticed, while he said nothing about it, that she was still wearing the necklace he had tossed to her on his last day. Most of his friends, apart from Lucy, had been in Archenland-which, thankfully, had been better than Calormen for him-and were young dukes and the two twin princes, Cor and Corin, so he hadn't bothered to speak to much of anyone in the western woods now that he'd returned except for his family, Peter, and-briefly-to Tumnus. Edmund had learned nothing of Lucy's waiting for him day in and day out, and he never fathomed about the candle, so the seeing the necklace was a nice surprise for him.
Somehow they hadn't expected it, but they found at once that they were too old for their games. Swimming would have been okay still, but not while it was so cold and wintertime, and snowing besides. They stood smiling at each other for a little while until, after a bit, they ended up sitting on the ground, cross-legged like Turks with their feet tucked under them, looking up at the lamppost.
"Is it true that it's never flickered?" Lucy wondered aloud.
"I've never seen it flicker; and it's supposedly nearly as old as Narnia itself." said Edmund, putting his arm around her shoulders in a friendly manner. "It's the strongest light in the world, they say."
"It's prettier than it used to be, I think." said Lucy, leaning a little on Edmund's side. "Prettier than it was yesterday, anyhow."
"Yeah," said Edmund, looking at Lucy instead of the lamppost. "Much prettier."
She didn't catch on. "Hmm?"
"It's getting late," said Edmund at last, standing up. "Come on, Lu, I'll walk you home."
She put her hand in his and he helped her up onto her feet. "All right."
It would be kind of nice, perhaps, to say that the story ends here. Right here with the two childhood sweethearts reunited, happy, a little older and wiser, walking the woods together, safe and sound under the light of the lamppost. But, then, that's not much of a story is it? At any rate, however, that's not the ending-not by a long shot. Pain waits quietly for its chance to strike...like a snake hiding in the bushes far off in another part of Narnia...a long, slithery green thing...ready to bite.
In the eastern part of Narnia, a woman's scream echoed, someone gasped, a cry of "Mother!" rang out. As unconnected as it would seem, one little snake-bite, miles and miles away, would change Lucy and Edmund's future for ever.
AN: Please review.