Insubordination

Lucy woke suddenly. She lay on the branch of the oak, her face against the rough, cold bark. It was dark and the snow down below her looked like a pool of silver in the light of the moon. She was not sure why she had woken up, she just had a feeling. She sat up, a dull nervousness, flip-flopping her stomach.

"Peter?" she asked in a small voice.

"I'm here," came the reassuring reply, "Do you feel strange too?"

"Yes," Lucy asked, "What is it?"

"I don't-" Peter broke off, then his voice rose, "What on earth? Everyone, wake up!"

"What?" Came Susan's tired voice. "Oh, my goodness!"

Then Lucy saw it too, a horde of dark creatures just hovering above the ground. They were slim, black with hideous faces and they gave off an eerie red glow. The creatures surrounded them and closed in.

Lucy felt hands grab her clothes and she stared around into the glowing red eyes of one of the creatures. They were a little shorter then she was herself and it took four of them to lift her off her branch. She screamed.

She was blinded by their dark filmy wings, she couldn't see anything. She struck out at them. They felt cold, they smelled smoky. She heard Susan scream.

Suddenly the creatures dropped her and she landed back on her branch. Their wings lifted and she could see beyond them. There were more creatures coming. They were about the same size as the other ones, but they glowed many colors instead of just dull, throbbing red. Their faces were serious and their ears were pointed. They were beautiful things, the women had long hair and dresses, the men had neat little beards, and some of them even had gold earrings like little pirates.

Lucy squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the worst, but it never came. She opened her eyes again, just in time to see the last of the colored creatures fade from view. It wasn't serious anymore, it was grinning happily at her and it winked. Just as it vanished, she fell asleep.

~o*o~

Treve didn't really leave.

He only slunk into some dense bushing and lay there watching the centaurs and hawks discuss what they were going to do. He intended to go with them, of course they'd send him back if they saw him, but he was determined that they wouldn't…maybe he would even save their lives and be a hero! After all his parent's hadn't told him he couldn't go with the centaurs.

Treve was surprised to see the sky already getting light at the horizon; he hadn't realized that it had taken so long to get over the pass.

At the moment that the edge of the sun began to show Elah, Jafa and Ergo took off, circled and disappeared into the sky.

~o*o~

Lucy woke.

She felt warm, which was deliciously wonderful after a whole day of constant shivering and numb hands and feet. She stared around herself.

She was laying on a low bed made of some sort of soft springy stuff. Warm blankets were under her chin and the walls of the room seemed to be rounded out of earth. There was a distinctly musty smell hovering in the air. Golden light as from a fire flickered across the ceiling. There was a low murmur of voices behind her.

"Susan?" she called, "Peter? Edmund?"

"We're here," Susan leaned over her and smiled.

"Where are we?" Lucy asked, sitting up, "What's happened?"

"You must have been very tired," Susan said, "We carried you all the way here and you never woke."

"Where are we?" Lucy asked.

"We heard the bay of wolves and Mr. Beaver remembered an old friend of his living here. He found her and she covered our tracks all the way here. This is her house."

"Who is she?" Lucy asked.

Susan leaned close, "she's a skunk," she whispered.

Lucy sat up.

There was a deep, low fireplace to the left and long dark shadows were in front of it. Peter, Edmund, Shard, the beavers and another small sort of person, striped white and black.

"Hullo!" Lucy said brightly.

"Good morning," Peter said, smiling.

Lucy rolled out of the bed, then stopped.

"Who were those horrible people last night?"

"Fair folk," Shard said.

"It looked like both the Seelie and the Unseelie courts, to me," Mr. Beaver added.

"She must have sent out the Unseelie Court," Mrs. Beaver said, shuddering, "After the wolves failed."

"What's Seelie and Unseelie?"

"Holy and unholy," Shard said. "There are two divisions of the fair folk, Seelie and Unseelie. The Seelie are mostly kind and good to men, but the Unseelie mean only harm. The witch is the head over the Unseelie Court, which was partly why she was so efficient at taking over Narnia."

"Oh," Lucy said. "So if the Seelie hadn't come then I'd be with the witch by now?"

"Precisely," Shard said.

"Who's the head of the Seelie Court?" Lucy asked. "I thought they were very pretty, the others were just ugly."

"Oberon and Tatiana." Shard said. "These you saw were pixies, very different then most of the fair folk, some are tall and fair like dryads."

"I like the last one that left," Lucy said. "He winked at me,"

"That was probably Puck," Shard said.

"Do you think they'll come back?" Peter asked, "The Unseelie, I mean."

"Not likely," Mr. Beaver said, "If the Seelie Court is so bent on us getting to Archanland then they'll keep the Unseelie away."

"Well," Mrs. Beaver said, "Unseelie or no Unseelie, we should have breakfast."

Lucy saw that Mrs. Beaver had been stirring the contents of a pot of the fire and it was just now beginning to boil. A wonderful smell filled the air.

"Breakfast sounds like the best idea anyone has had yet." Edmund said.

Lucy came and sat in front of the fire, the skunk stepped aside to make room for her.

"I'm sorry," Mrs. Beaver said, "Miss Lucy, this is Mrs. Tweeny. Mrs. Tweeny, this is Lucy, soon to be Queen of Narnia."

"I am completely and absolutely and totally delighted to make your acquaintance!" Mrs. Tweeny exclaimed.

~o*o~

"We should probably be leaving as soon as possible," Peter said, downing his bowl of stew. "We haven't any time to waste. The longer we are here, the harder it will be for us to get out."

"I'm so tired," Lucy complained.

"At least you slept all night," Edmund said. "I agree with Peter."

"Of course," Susan said, "I just wish it wasn't so cold."

"It will warm up once we start walking," Peter said, smiling.

Lucy ate slowly, relishing the warmth. They would be out in the bitter cold soon. It was an awful thought. They had all gotten headaches yesterday, not so much from the brilliant snow, but from the horrible cold.

"What's that?" Lucy asked, looking up.

"What?" Peter asked, breaking off his conversation with Mr. Beaver.

"That scuffling noise."

"Scuffling noise?" Susan asked, half standing.

"Secret Police," Edmund said standing, "I hear it too."

Suddenly a blood-chilling howl echoed through the room.

"You'll have to go out the back door," Mrs. Tweeny said. "The Beavers know it. I'll go distract them."

"We can't leave you alone!" Peter exclaimed.

"Must," Mr. Beaver said, shouldering open a door, "She'll be all right. Wolves can't abide skunks."

"Thank you so much for your hospitality, Mrs. Tweeny," Susan said, bundling Lucy into her coat, but Mrs. Tweeny was already away. Peter shoved Susan out the door into the snow and threw Edmund and Lucy after her.

They ran. There wasn't much else to be done. They could help the footprints they left in the snow. Not five hundred yards from the den the wind shifted bringing the agonized howling of wolves and the overpowering smell of skunk.

~o*o~

It was rather uninteresting to walk over fields of white with hope only of more fields of white ahead of them. Behind and in front of them Narnia spread out, vast and beautiful. Each cascading hill dazzled them with the early morning sunlight flashing off their icy tops. The mountains between Archanland and Narnia looked distant and foreboding. Peter wondered whether he had done the right thing in leading the others this way, but whenever he tried to think of any other way, he knew that there was none, this was the only way. It was the only thing he was sure of in this uncertain world.

Susan was the last of the procession and she had the uncanny feeling of being followed. Whenever she looked behind her, huge elusive prints were there, next to theirs as far as she could see. She came to the conclusion that whatever was following them must be invisible. She wondered if she ought to tell the others about them again, then decided not to. They had enough to think about.

After about three hours of walking they went over a river, frozen solid, and continued on their way. There was a ridge of hills after the river and Mr. Beaver, who was familiar with the area, because, his second cousin's wife's grandmother lived there, found a pass through them.

After the hills, they went into a scattering of ice-covered trees that thickened into woods. They had been walking so long now that it almost seemed natural to swing the next leg forward, but they were desperately weary. Peter, Susan and occasionally Edmund, took turns carrying Lucy. They were thankful now that even though she was nine, she was so small, hardly bigger then a seven-year-old.

Mr. Beaver kindly reminded them that they had only walked nearly fifty miles since they left the beavers' house and they had twenty miles more to go before they reached the foothills before the mountains of Archanland.

"And of course you have to take into consideration the other fifteen miles from the boarder to Cair Anvard." He said, "And it hasn't even been hard walking, it's been ice sheets the whole way."

"Oh," Edmund said, "Well I feel as if I've been up and down more high hills and deep valleys then I'd care to name and the ice sheets are slippery. How big is Narnia anyway?"

"Narnia is a small land," Mr. Beaver said, "It's about two hundred miles along the sea coast from the boarder of Archanland to the boarder of Ettinsmoor. No one really knows how big Ettinsmoor is but it adds at least another hundred or two hundred miles to the length of Narnia. The other way, it's a hundred and fifty miles from Cair Paravel to the boarder of Telmar. Farther north or farther south, it's wider. We've started our journey from near the middle of the southern half of Narnia."

Trees were far more interesting then fields of snow. Here at least they could watch the fat little chickadees flutter through the branches. None of them seemed to be talking birds and Mr. Beaver explained that the talking kind were much bigger.

There was no wind, but the trees seemed to rustle and sigh on their own.

"They were awake once," Mr. Beaver said, gesturing to the trees, "all of them, except the ones that are on the witch's side, are asleep."

"The trees are alive?" Lucy gasped, "How wonderful."

They came out onto a field again, the sun came out and the snow was glittering with sunlight. Now a dead world seemed to be alive.

"Look!" Edmund said suddenly pointing at the burning blue sky, "a hawk, up there!"

"Hawks in Narnia?" Mr. Beaver looked puzzled, "are you sure they aren't vultures?"

"No," Edmund said, "they're hawks."

"But there aren't any hawks in Narnia!" Mr. Beaver exclaimed looking up at them, "you're right, they're hawks!"

A/N: A lot of people have commented on my extreme lack of spelling:) and for this I can only apologize and mayhap explain. I wrote nearly all of this story when I was thirteen. I wasn't much of a computer wiz and somehow (I still don't understand it) I managed to turn off the spell-check for the first half of The Wardrobe. So if you've noticed spelling and grammar mistakes galore, that's why! I've never been much of a speller and was only worse then! Unfortunately, when Rose started posting the story, I forgot that we needed to do something major about the spelling. Anyhow, we've gone back over it with a spell check (and your helpful suggestions!) and have attempted to make it a little more readable. It probably still has problems, but we're both pretty busy and what with riding, volunteering and schoolwork (and college), there's only so much we can do.:)

I certainly hope that the other stories that follow this one are a little more respectable. (they should be!)

anyway, thanks for your interest! I'm glad you all care enough about this thing to fix the spelling for me!

happy reading,

~Psyche