"You truly mean to do it, then?"
Sunlight fell through the Tree's leaves, catching the muted silver of the apples and casting soft, dappled patterns on the faces of the two beneath the spreading branches.
The King laughed softly. "Yes, Rhonan, truly."
The bay sighed. "He has spoken of it so often in these past years… I wondered when you would call him for this last feat." She paused, and her voice became as soft as a Horse's can. "Indeed, I believe he has been waiting for your call since my mother's death."
A look of brief mourning passed over the King's aged face. "Perhaps I have waited too long to call my old friend to my side; yet I was not ready- not yet."
"And now, my King?"
"I have lived to see my son's children grow, to see my land blossom. I have lived with grief and without regret. I have lived to know the longing that comes to all mortals… yes, I am ready."
"As am I, old friend."
Rhonan started at the new voice, her black wings spreading and her forefeet rising off the ground in surprise; but the King merely smiled. With the patience given only to those of many years, he rose slowly from where he had been seated at the Tree's base to go to the great winged Horse who stood in the slanting sunlight.
Though the once-strawberry coat was now generously flecked with grey, the great wings of chestnut and copper where as strong and as graceful as the day they had been gifted, and the spark in the Horse's eyes had not faded.
The King stopped but a handbreadth from the Horse and raised one frail hand to stroke the greying flank. "A call grows in my mind, good Fledge, and with it the image of an everlasting garden." Fledge breathed in exaltation; the King smiled. "Will you bear me, old friend, as you once bore the little lord and lady?"
"My King, it is only for this that I have lived."
Fledge knelt and slowly, yet with a grace that belied his age, the King slipped onto the father of all winged Horses, settling himself before the flashing wings. Fledge rose and the King on his back straightened, seeming suddenly younger to Rhonan as she stood in the shade of the Tree.
"Away then, Greatheart!" the King cried, and his voice was like a trumpet. "The Lion calls us home!"
At that, a wind sprang up in the east and the great Horse, with a short run, surged into the air, the draft of his copper wings stirring the leaves of the Tree. They rose higher and higher, King and Legend, until they were no more than a speck of bronze against the blue sky.
Rhonan watched as her great father and the first King of Narnia were borne westward on the wind; watched until they could not be seen against the western sky; watched as they faded from Narnia, called by the Lion not to die but to go into the West, and to the great Garden that waited there until the very ending of the world.
---
"Is it true, Mama? Did Grandfather truly bear King Frank away into the west, to the garden at the end of the world?"
"Little one, of course it is. Did I not see these things with my own eyes?"
"And so King Frank did not die?"
"No, love; nor did your Grandfather. But their time here was done, and Aslan needed them elsewhere."
"But are they still there, Mama? Still there in the garden at the end of the world?"
"None save Aslan know that, love. Aslan tells us only our own story, after all, and when Grandfather and the King went into the West, they passed out of this story. But you will see them someday, and then they can tell you their tale for themselves. For now, though, it is late, and time for all good foals to be abed."