Chapter Six: The Wardrobe Again
~o*o~
When they finally all met in the upstairs den, Peter announced that he was going to explore the house.
Susan at first didn't like the idea, but the others overruled her.
They started by going down the hallway, because Susan said this was the most sensible way to start. At the end of the hallway was a door. They opened it and found themselves in a big green room all hung with pictures, at one end of the room was a suit of armor. Both Peter and Edmund were completely fascinated with this discovery.
"I say, do you think I could try putting it on?" Peter asked.
"We, none of us are going to put on," Susan said firmly.
Peter looked disappointed, but Edmund saw the gleam in his eye and knew that the suit of armor was not going to remain dormant for long.
"What would you want with a rusty bit of sheet metal, anyway?" Eustace muttered, dearly wishing he had thought of putting it on first.
They walked out of the door at the other end of the green room and found themselves in another hallway. They walked down it looking into various rooms, some empty, some bedrooms, some just dusty.
There was a place where there were two steps down and three up and they found themselves walking out on to the balcony overlooking the grand entrance way and the great red carpeted staircase.
Then there was another hallway, a long one, and a flight of stairs going up. At the top was a door. Peter opened it.
They all found themselves in a very odd sort of room. It was beautifully furnished, mostly from the Victorian era. Most odd of all, there were all sorts of scientific apparatus and chemical baubles and gadgets. There was a bubbling sound and steam was rising from a particularly long and convoluted glass tube.
Quite suddenly, the high-backed chair in front of the fire jerked back and an unusually tall and singularly skinny man stood and turned to look at them. He had very high, sharp cheekbones, shaggy eyebrows and hair so white it almost glowed. Lucy thought he looked very frightening.
"Oh, we're so sorry for disturbing you!" Susan exclaimed. "We didn't know."
"No, no, of course not, of course not," the man said, "You weren't to know, my nephew must have forgotten to tell you about me. Have you been here long? Did you arrive this morning?"
"We've been here for over two weeks already," Susan said. "Mr. Kirke did tell us about you, you must be Uncle Andrew."
"The same," Uncle Andrew replied with a slight bow.
"Are you a scientist?" Edmund asked with interest.
For the first time, Uncle Andrew's face glowed with genuine pleasure. "I'd like to think so."
"What is this for?" Peter asked, pointing at the especially lengthy, elaborate and torrid glass tube on the table.
"That…that well," Uncle Andrew rubbed his hands, "that's an invention of my own. It's supposed to turn lead into gold. It hasn't worked yet, but I'm still perfecting it."
"Oh," Susan said. "It looks very beautiful. It really does."
"And what's that for?" Lucy asked pointing at a singularly strange chair cobbled together from corrugated steel, bits of a wrought iron railing, some aluminum conduit, hundred year old flatirons, old porcelain doorknobs and various fire equipment; pokers, shovels and a bellows.
"That," Uncle Andrew looked at his invention proudly, "That is a travelling chair. If it will ever work, it will take me out of this world into other ones."
"I-I don't think there are other worlds," Susan said as gently as she could.
"Nonsense," Uncle Andrew replied, "I've been to other worlds myself."
They stared at him.
"It's been very nice talking to you," Susan said, glancing at Lucy, "But I really rather think we'd better go."
"You've really been to other worlds?" Lucy asked, breathless. Susan took her hand and dragged her out of the room, Edmund and Eustace followed. Peter turned to go, but a strong, boney hand caught his shoulder. He looked back.
"Watch that one," Uncle Andrew whispered, pointing to Eustace's form as it retreated down the stairwell. "He's not safe."
"All right," Peter said.
Uncle Andrew nodded and smiled, closing the door as Peter galloped down the stairs.
The hallway they found themselves in at the bottom took a sharp right turn and they opened the door at the end of it. Lucy realized with a gasp that they were in the hallway off of which the spare room was.
Lucy lagged behind and finally, when she thought the others out of sight she turned to the door of the spare room felt the knob and with a thrill of excitement she turned it and walked into the room. The wardrobe stood, calm and inviting, in the corner.
~o*o~
Lucy had thought that no one had seen her, but Eustace had. And Edmund, the last in line had seen Eustace creep after her. He stopped, while the voices of Peter and Susan turned the corner, and went back.
Queer, that tingling that went through him as he turned the knob. Very queer. The door swung open and he saw Eustace just stepping into the wardrobe.
"Hey little brat!" Eustace called softly, "Where's your secret world?"
Edmund strode across the room, just as Eustace closed the wardrobe door after himself.
"Little idiot," Edmund said, opening it again, "He could trap Lucy in there."
"Lucy?" Eustace's voice quivered near the back of the wardrobe. Edmund brushed away the coats, then stopped.
He found Eustace alone, standing at the brink of Narnia, too scared to go forward and too curious to go back.
Edmund was almost too stunned to speak. Lucy had been right then, there was a world in the wardrobe. Edmund glanced over his shoulder into the spare room and saw it, warm and solid.
Eustace looked up at the ice coated trees and the snow falling gently down, but Edmund could only see the lonely footsteps of Lucy disappearing into the woods.
"Come on, lets follow her," Edmund said, if what Lucy said was right about a witch on the loose, he hated the thought of Lucy out there, all alone.
"You're not getting me out there," Eustace said worriedly, "It might be dangerous!"
"But that's just why we have to find her, squirt!" Edmund cried, plunging knee deep into the snow.
Eustace could not and would not be called a squirt by someone who was younger than him, "You take that back, fiend!" he cried leaping on Edmund's back and driving his face in the snow. He knew very well that he was heavier and stronger.
~o*o~
Lucy knocked eagerly at Mr. Tumnus's door and the faun was not happy to see her.
"Lucy!" he dragged her in, "you should not be here!"
"I just wanted to see if you were all right," Lucy explained.
"Oh, I'm fine but you won't be if you keep coming here," Mr. Tumnus said. "It's very dangerous."
"It's too cold to go back just yet," Lucy dropped down on the mat in front of the fire, "will you tell me some stories about Narnia? I haven't been able to stop thinking about it."
~o*o~
Edmund, though two years younger, was two inches taller then Eustace and he was angrier, so he won the fight in the end. He had a healthy black eye and Eustace's nose was bleeding.
"Come on we have wasted enough time already!" Edmund said following Lucy's footprints in the snow.
"I'm not going anywhere with you!" Eustace howled after him.
"Stay there then!" Edmund called over his shoulder.
Eustace plumped back into the snow, feeling very sorry for himself. He thought he might go back into the wardrobe and go to bed, but then he decided that he ought to go explore more and get a ball of snow to stick on his poor nose.
He wandered through the woods until he reached the lamppost. He looked up at it for a moment and wondered, like Lucy, why there was a lamppost in the middle of a wood. It was so cold and he hugged himself, his teeth chattering. He thought dark thoughts about Edmund.
"I hate you!" he called through the still air after Edmund's running footprints.
He walked a little further and came to a flat place which he concluded was a road, the snow had been packed down and it was ready for a sleigh.
~o*o~
Edmund plunged wearily through the snow after Lucy's footprints. It was bitterly cold and he hoped that he'd find her soon. His eye smarted and he picked up a snowball to put on it.
It wasn't too long before Lucy's footsteps mingled with those of another and Edmund had trouble seeing which was which.
He followed them until they forked and he followed the left fork. After a little while he tripped and fell, when he looked up he saw, a few yards ahead of him, a white wolf, looking over its shoulder.
Edmund stayed very still and saw that he had been following its footsteps, not Lucy's. He lay there, breathing hard while the wolf's searing blue eyes examined him from head to toe.
"I'm not scared of you," Edmund murmured.
The wolf blinked, then loped away.
Edmund let his breath out with a gasp, got up and retraced his foot prints. Finally he reached the fork and followed Lucy's footsteps to a door in the side of a huge boulder. Cautiously he reached up and knocked.
A/N A little more exciting, eh?