Daughter of Eve, Niece of Thomas
By JalendaviLady
Timeline: A few days post-The Last Battle and beyond.
Disclaimer: The upcoming movie belongs to Walden Media and the books belong to the current holders of the C. S. Lewis's estate.
Author's Note: Chapter 9 is done, but I'm still working on Chapter 8.
Chapter 7: Podium
Susan delicately sat down in the back seat of Mr. Chase's automobile.
Mogie closed the door behind her and got into the passenger seat.
"Thank you again for this, Mr. Chase."
"Glenn," he insisted.
Mogie chuckled and leaned around his seat as they entered the road. "Very few other worlds seem to use last names the way modern England does. A fair number of us only use them when we have to."
"And that explains you living under a nickname?"
He gave her a weak smile. "I have reasons for that." He sat properly in the seat again.
"Still planning on going to the Nephew gathering after the organized meeting is over?" Glenn asked him.
"I wouldn't miss it. Bertram doesn't come to the main gathering, after all."
"I'd have thought he would come if he knew there would be someone new telling her story."
Mogie shook his head. "It's been a bad past few months. The last thing he needs right now is to deal with everyone. Apparently they lost a few of the people where he works in the accident." He glanced back at Susan and she gave him a small nod to tell him she was okay. "And that on top of everything else." He seemed to ponder something for a moment. "He probably should talk to Susan, even if only for a few minutes. Just to meet the newcomer."
Glenn turned them onto a long straight road. "And you Nephews would actually accept one of the rest of us in your gathering for even that long?"
"We only split off because of how we were treated." Mogie was staring out the window into the passing trees. "Susan, whichever of your siblings caused it, what was your relationship like afterwards?"
"Closer than ever." She felt tears starting again. "We drifted a bit once I started trying to forget, but we were still close even then."
He nodded. "Then no one should have a problem with your presence."
They rode in silence for a while.
"How long ago did the second gathering start splitting off?"
"No one actually knows." Glenn turned off the road. "It has gotten worse over time, though."
It had been years since Susan had addressed a group this size, and never in this world.
There was a podium at one end of the small hall they were all in, and Mogie was gently nudging her towards it.
She felt underdressed, even though she was more formal than most of the other women and most of the men were in everyday suits. Mogie was still in the gray tweed he was always wearing whenever he was at the shop.
She made it up there with what decorum she could manage – it really was quite different to look composed in front of a group rather than wandering the shops with a few friends.
Besides, speaking with the imperative and crown of a queen was about as far as one could rhetorically get from being a barely-adult recently-orphaned newcomer into a social world that was older than she wanted to know.
Susan didn't want to lean on the podium, but she couldn't help it.
"My name is Susan Pevensie, and my brothers, sister, and I stumbled through the wardrobe in Professor Kirke's spare room after we were evacuated there during the war. We ended up in the world he had visited himself as a boy."
Mogie found a seat in a far corner of the room. Glenn nodded.
"In that world he is a lion named Aslan, as I don't doubt the Professor told you all when he made his introduction. I did not cause it, but I saw him die, and rise again."
Her voice choked off, even after all the times she had practiced those two sentences in preparation.
"I doubted he was back at first, as others have before me. We helped him clear an evil from that world, and entrusted us with that country's care until the day we stumbled back through. We all returned again a year later, and after that Aslan told me I would not be returning. My younger siblings returned one more time, my cousin with them, and he too made one more visit with a friend."
She felt the tears start and knew she was lucky to only have a bit more she had to say.
"Every human but me I know of who traveled to that world and returned died in the train crash a few weeks ago, along with my parents."
The world went blurry.
A moment later, someone had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and was guiding her away. "There, there, dearie, let's get you to a chair."
Once she had been seated and wiped away some of her tears, the elderly woman who had helped her over asked, "Better now?"
Susan nodded.
Small conversations were breaking out all around the room now. She couldn't make sense of most of them.
Some people were headed for one of the doors now.
There was suddenly a hand on her shoulder. "If you wanted to meet Bertram, now's the time."
"Now, why would she want to meet trash, Jaime?"
Susan blinked at the words, flustered inside.
"You know as well as I do, Elizabeth, that trash is thrown out. Not purchased." Mogie's voice was gruff. It sounded like he was trying not to growl. "And not even scrap sells at that kind of price."
"Hmph."
Susan stood up. "I promised I would go meet him."
She got the sense as she walked away with Mogie that the woman's entire view of her had shifted, simply because she was willingly associating with the Nephews, even temporarily.