AN: All I can say is that coffee truly is a writer's best friend, LOL.

"Don't run until I give you leave to do so," Lord Asriel ordered as the storage room shed slowly but surely was further and further behind their backs, the wide whiteness of open-air Svalbard looming more and more oppressively in front of them.

"If you're going to be in charge of the weapons usage, then I can at least tell everyone when to run, thank you very much." Peter let out a frustrated snort.

"I think not, Pevensie," said Lord Asriel, glancing down at Peter's hands. "You've put the safety back on that pistol again, I see."

"Hang it all!"

Without even taking another breath or flinching, Lord Asriel took the weapon back, took off the safety, and thrust it at him-again.

"Is there any way you could hand it back without jabbing me in the stomach?" grumped Peter, with understandable irritation.

"Where's the fun in that?" Lord Asriel chuckled. Stelmaria laughed along with him, but her laughter sounded very similar to her growl and was equally unnerving.

"What if I hold him and you punch?" Edmund whispered to his brother-in-law, only half-joking.

"Maybe once we get out of Svalbard," said Peter. He knew he wasn't actually going to hit Lord Asriel, probably, but the notion of doing so made his sore abdomen feel a little better.

"Be quiet, Pevensie," Lord Asriel spat-hissed out of the corner of his mouth. "They're going to see us any second now. We have to be ready."

A flaming arrow came flying at them-seemingly out of no where at all-and almost hit Edmund in the shoulder. Lord Asriel reached out and shoved him to the ground in the nick of time; Stelmaria pounced on Ella, pinning the owl down until it was safe for her human to stand up again, his pistol in hand, uncertain of what he was supposed to shoot at.

Lord Asriel was already shooting off a few warning shots with his rifle and, judging by the fact that Peter suddenly grabbed onto his arm and started pulling him as fast as possible, Edmund gathered that the nobleman had given the order to run.

The next few moments were a blur. A few more fire-arrows were shot at them; Edmund saw where they were coming from this time. It was from the top of a look-out tower; ironically, possibly the same one they had seen the stairs leading to earlier, before they'd hidden in the library.

It was mostly the human guards that were after them.

It seemed, Edmund realized in-between the blurred moments, when his mind was reasonably clear for a second, as though most of the bears were not present in court, absent for whatever reason. Which gave them more of a chance.

Still, he was a little confused. All his life, Edmund had been told that it was impossible to trick-or escape from-an armoured bear. If it was impossible to trick an ice bear, then how on earth were they doing this? How on earth were they running away with the possibility of getting out of Svalbard? His mother had told him many, many lies in his life, but somehow he felt pretty sure that what she'd said about bears was true; Mrs. Coulter hadn't had any reason to lie about ice bears to her son.

A flaming-arrow nearly got him again and Peter said something that sounded like, "Ed, look out!", raising his pistol and shooting in the general direction of the arrows, and he and Ella were pinned to the ground once more.

Lord Asriel was saying something, too, firing off another shot. Later, when the story was being retold, Edmund refused to repeat what Asriel was saying just then because Susan and Lucy were in the room listening to their stories and he didn't think it appropriate.

"Is anyone else sick of being shot at?" Trumpkin screamed, not angrily, but to be heard over the noise of semi-battle.

"I am," cried Peter, shouting loudly for the same reason. "I have had more than enough of…Oh, hold that thought!" He stopped talking and fired his pistol at someone who was approaching them shooting arrows, no longer content to shoot from the look-out post. The shot only grazed the person-thankfully-both since Peter was nervous and since he wasn't aiming to kill at any rate. "What was I saying?"

Then, before anyone's breath could be caught, one of the great Panserbjørne, was standing before them, growling so ferociously that Stelmaria, even at her most vicious, seemed like a nobleman's harmless pet cat in comparison. It was true that, as Peter had noticed before, the armour wasn't soul-like the way Iorek's was, only decorative, but that didn't make the beast's teeth less sharp or its powerful size less massive.

The ice bear stood on his hind legs and swatted at Peter with a paw. Peter ducked, not realizing that Edmund, standing almost directly behind him, would get knocked down by the sheer wind of the missed blow.

Edmund fell onto his side, landing, unfortunately, not on a soft patch of snow but, rather, a hard half-and-half bank that contained some light snow concealing hard ice under it. To everyone's relief, his jaw didn't break upon contact with the ground, but it did bruise vividly and a line of blood appeared on his lower lip from an inevitable gash.

A few brave bullets from Lord Asriel's rifle hit the bear. These proved quite useless, though, because they only bounced off the creature's shimmering armour. Instead of being hurt or even glancing at Lord Asriel, the bear roared, about to come down on Edmund. Peter raised his pistol, even though he was fairly certain it would do no good. Then he realized he was out of bullets and threw it at the bear's head as a last resort.

His hands were shaking and he missed the bear's head so completely that Lord Asriel, furious at the loss of a reasonably valuable pistol, screamed out that Peter was a blithering idiot. Oops.

This was where one of the three arrows Trumpkin had on his person yet had not been given leave to use because they were too far to hit anything properly came in handy. Making it seem like he was shaking from fear, Trumpkin lifted up the bow and gingerly put one of the precious arrows to the string. Taking a deep breath, he aimed, at fairly close range, for one of the kinks in the armour.

The bear, by some miracle Edmund could not wrap his mind around, did not see this trick coming, and the arrow, hitting him between the armour-plates, struck him down. He was not instantly killed (possibly he was not killed at all, if he ever made it back to court and was able to have his wounds cared for); he was simply hurt badly enough that they all got away from him and were able to get a head-start and dive into a cave-like opening behind a boulder just as another bear came close to them. They couldn't out-run an armoured bear, so hiding was the only sensible option, and the boulder-cave was the only non-open place available.

Edmund made a mental note to ask Iorek Byrnison why bears were suddenly so gullible, such a shame to their great and regal race, if he ever saw his panserbjørne friend again.

At his sides, Peter was panting; Trumpkin was muttering something nearly inaudible under his breath that sounded like, "Bears and blastations"; and Lord Asriel was busily rummaging around the inside of his coat trying to pull a sleek silver-coloured object from his pocket.

"Ah, here we are." Lord Asriel finally managed to produce the flask, and-after taking several sips himself-he handed it over to Peter. "Here, Pevensie, it's complete insanity to be in this kind of climate without this."

No longer a young boy of only fourteen, a fully-grown man now, Peter was able to take a few swallows without coughing or sputtering. It was still stronger than he was used to, though, and he had to gulp several times to rid himself of the light burning sensation in his throat. The reward for all that swallowing and the not-exactly-pleasant taste was instant; his whole body started feeling warmer.

"Here, Ed, take a bit," Peter said, handing the flask over.

"Thanks," said Edmund gratefully, tossing his head back and taking a quick swig of the stuff. It was ghastly stuff, and while he didn't cough half so much as Peter had his first time trying it, he couldn't quite make the claim that he didn't sputter at all.

"Better?" Lord Asriel asked as Trumpkin quietly and without any trouble had some before handing the flask back over to the nobleman.

They all nodded and sighed deeply.

"Are we going to sleep in here?" Ella wondered aloud.

"Maybe we should," Peter began.

Lord Asriel stuck in his oar before he could finish. "We have to, there's no 'maybe' about it. We don't want the bears to see us come out of here. So, we spend the night huddled up, then we crawl out in the morning."

None of them argued with his logic, but they disliked being ordered about that way by someone they weren't particularly fond of in the first place. They grumbled under their breaths, nodding outwardly, balking inwardly.

Eventually, tired yet not able to fall asleep at will (the ground under them wasn't very comfortable), Peter asked, "Lord Asriel, where did you come up? When you into this world through the fountain, I mean."

"This cave, actually," Lord Asriel admited, in an almost conversational tone, looking sort of peaceful in an odd, nearly-resting kind of way. Stelmaria's eyes were half-closed and the tip of her snow-coloured tail flicked up and down steadily in time with her human's heartbeat. "That's how I knew, tricky as it was, we might have stood a chance walking out."

In his head, Edmund thought of the bears again with pure bafflement. You cannot trick a bear, they aren't like humans, not gullible, not so humbled and puffed on mere emotion. And yet, Trumpkin had tricked the bear that came after them, and they had evaded them all, escaping.

"You were already here," said Peter, a little surprised, "and you came back for us?"

Lord Asriel cracked a smile and a mild snort-laugh at that one; Stelmaria's eyes opened all the way for a moment, glowing with an amused expression. "I know you don't think highly of me, Pevensie, but I'm not a monster. I do what I have to, that's it."

"And you had to go back for us?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I had a reindeer spared for Lucy once," he said, "going back for you falls under the same category more or less."

"So you do care about your daughter."

"Oh, shut up, won't you?" The nobleman grunted and rolled over, using one of their stolen burlap sacks as a pillow. Stelmaria lowered her head down onto her paws and her eyes shut again, this time all the way. "I confess I'm as human as anybody. But this isn't going to turn into a sentimentality parade. It's impossible to sleep through soppiness and I need my rest."

He spoke gruffly, but less so, Peter thought, than would have been expected.

Lord Asriel might just be, he decided, one of those people you could never quite figure out. He was like a wild animal that could turn on a chap at any given moment if the need appeared, but he could also protect; and upon rare occasion, he apparently did.

Trumpkin began to snore and Peter joined him in the land of nod about twenty-five minutes later.

It was Edmund who laid awake the longest. He couldn't get comfortable, yet in the cramped space, he knew he daren't roll over too much, lest he bang into somebody and wake them, setting off a few unchecked tempers. And the bruise on his jaw and the bloodied cut on his lip stung a bit, assisting in keeping him up. Ella even visibly twitched ever so slightly from her human's pain once or twice every three minutes or so.

When sleep finally claimed him it did not do so gently. Sleep seemed to thrust its way into him like a tranquilizer, and he would later awake to find himself groggy, sore, and rather stiff all over.

A sharp, vivid dream engulfed him during the duration of his slumber.

There's a large church or cathedral somewhere, as far as he can tell, near Jordan College. Edmund knows he's seen it before, plenty of times, when he was younger.

Sitting on the steps is a little boy in rags, shivering. The boy blubbers loudly to himself, but no one seems to notice him. Edmund can't see his face or his dæmon hidden in the folds of his tattered, patched-up coat; she is clearly trying to help keep her human warm.

"Hello," says the warmest, sweetest voice imaginable.

For some reason, as lovely as the voice is, it makes Edmund's skin craw and his armpits prickle with fear. He is simply a pair of eyes, watching the boy, worrying for him. Then he gets a good look at the speaker.

A she. A woman. A beautiful lady. The lady's hair is blonde, golden. She is wearing a pretty yellow-and-red fox-fur coat, and a monkey-dæmon even more golden than her hair is standing at her side, his paw reached out towards the startled, frightened boy.

"Hello," says the woman again.

"Hullo," the little boy murmurs.

"You are cold?"

"Yeah," says the boy.

"Do you like hot chocolate?"

"Yeah!" He is more enthusiastic now, and he looks up, amazed by the great lady's beauty.

Edmund can't decide who the boy looks like to him. One second, he thinks the lad is similar to Lyra's late little friend, Roger, but the next he thinks he looks too dark for that, almost Gyptian. Then, upon blinking, the boy doesn't look Gyptian at all-he could be any street urchin, really. His face is very dirty.

"Come with me," The woman offers her hand to the shaking boy. "I happen to have more hot chocolate than I can drink myself. And I've got cake. You like cake, too, I trust?"

The boy nods, beaming at her. His dæmon comes out of his coat in the form of a little deer-mouse and sniffs at the golden monkey.

Edmund feels himself shuddering.

The benevolent lady doesn't share her name-she doesn't have to, the boy is won over without it-but Edmund knows exactly who she is. Some persons used to call her Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel called her 'Marissa'. Edmund himself, back when she was alive, had another name for her; Mother.

Yes, this is his mother, and this is how she got some of the children brought to Bolvangar to come with her so willingly. Some had to be kidnapped by rough men, but it was so much easier having the stunning Mrs. Coulter charm them, tricking them into coming quietly.

Now comes one of the scariest things for Edmund as the boy begins to follow Mrs. Coulter down the big stone steps. The boy no longer looks Gyptian or like Roger or like anybody else; the boy looks a great deal like Edmund when he was younger, ten or so. And his dæmon has shifted into something white. Is it an owl, like Ella? Edmund isn't sure. It could be. Probably. Maybe. But his view is obscured and it hurts his eyes to look at the dæmon directly, like staring into the sun for too long. His vision swims, so he sticks to looking at the boy (himself? Someone completely unrelated who happens to resemble him?) and Mrs. Coulter.

He wishes he could run and snatch the little boy away before it is too late, before the helpless, trusting child is taken away to Bolvangar. But he can do nothing. He is not legs for running, nor arms and hands for grabbing, he is only a pair of eyes still, watching.

The boy's fate seems sealed. Then, what's this? A little girl appears, standing in front of them with a mouse-dæmon riding on her shoulder. She is such a sweet, pretty little child.

I know her, Edmund thinks, his mind suddenly even more fuzzy. Her name isn't coming to him.

Mrs. Coulter's gone now. The boy looks around, bemused. Where has the lady disappeared to? Isn't she all right, then? What's going on? Then he looks to the little girl. She smiles at him and then looks away shyly.

Edmund finds he can hear the boy's thoughts: the boy is wishing he wasn't standing in front of the girl looking like such a ragamuffin. She isn't beautiful, not like the lady was, but she's so very likable in her own innocent, girlish way.

But the boy isn't dressed as he thinks he is. Now his nasty old clothes are gone and he's wearing something decent, a simple tunic and jerkin. These are not fresh, exactly, but they are neat enough and there are no patches-or holes that need patches-on them.

"Come with me," says the girl, she reaches for his hand. There is something less demanding in the way she does it than in the way the woman did.

Edmund hears another thought from the boy: he's scared, he doesn't want the girl to see his hand because the area just above his wrist is really messed up.

Why would his wrist be messed up? Edmund wonders, somewhere between appalled and intrigued. He is so caught up in all of this, he can't help himself. Who is this girl? Where did his mother go? What's happening? Isn't the boy going to Bolvangar? Is he saved? What? How?

"It's all right," the girl whispers. She must sense he's afraid.

The boy nods and stretches out his hand; there's a bruise with nasty red claw marks.

Mrs. Coulter did that to him.

Wait, thinks Edmund, she just met him a second ago and then disappeared, how could she…unless…unless that really is me after all...

The boy is sobbing now. Edmund is caught between feeling sorry for him and wanting to smack him for being such a big baby about his arm. For pity's sake, his mother once gave him a black eye; a darkened wrist isn't worth shedding silly tears over.

As soon as the girl touches his wrist, the bruise goes away. She comforts him until he's done crying and her mouse-dæmon rubs consoling against his hard-to-see white one.

Edmund has, up till this point, been feeling numb in his dream. Almost magically, he feels a tingle shoot through him. He's not watching the boy anymore. He is the boy.

He's in a small flat similar to the one he was staying in before the Ruling Powers came and took him away. And he's lying in bed.

Have I been ill? He wonders.

Edmund finds that he does not appear to be his right age; he is maybe thirteen or fourteen at oldest, judging by the reflection he can see in a nearby mirror.

Funny, he doesn't remember a looking-glass being there before…

The girl with the mouse-dæmon is at the bedside, holding his hand.

"Hullo," he croaks.

"You're awake."

"Yes."

"I know you, don't I?" Edmund asks.

She smiles. "Of course."

"I love you," he realizes.

The girl blushes.

"That's right, isn't it?" He's afraid he's gotten it wrong. "I've guessed right, haven't I?"

"I hope so," She says softy, her tone tender.

"Do you love me?"

She bites her lower lip then blushes again.

"I'm sorry." He sighs, feeling stupid.

He can't even think for the life of him what her name is, and yet he wants her to say she loves him.

She releases her lower lip and squeezes his hand. "Don't be; I love you."

He feels strangely relieved. "Oh, good."

She grins, then her face is serious for a moment. "You come back safe to me, all right?"

"From where?"

"Svalbard…and where-ever else you go, I guess."

"Oh, I see," he says; even though he doesn't.

"Promise me, Edmund."

"I…"

"Promise me, please."

"I promise…" -a name comes to him at last- "…Lucy."

There is something under his pillow, something hard, and he can't relax because of it. Edmund reaches behind himself and pulls it out. It is an alethiometer, it shows the truth.

Edmund awoke with a jolt, gasping. His eyes wide open, he grasped at the arms of the large upholstered chair he had sunk into before falling asleep. Ella, perched on the left arm of the chair, let out a caw of alarm, startled from the sudden awakening and from her human's sharp, unexpected movements.

Outside, judging by what he could see from the window, it was still dark. It must have been early in the morning, sometime well after midnight, perhaps three or four of the clock.

"Nightmares again?" an understanding voice asked.

Blinking, Edmund recognized Thorold, who stood before him holding a silver, gold-rimmed tray loaded with breakfast biscuits, bacon, butter, and hot tea.

Ella fluttered back down onto the chair and locked her gaze with Lord Asriel's manservant's pincher-dæmon, relaxing.

"No," muttered Edmund, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and taking a biscuit off of the tray as Thorold was setting it down on the credenza to his right. "They're not nightmares, not exactly. Just…sort of…intense dreams, I guess. And it's not new, it's the same one."

"The same one from when?" Thorold asked politely, sounding neither interested or disinterested.

"From when we were hiding in that cave from the ice bears," he explained, biting into the biscuit in his hand. "I had the dream there first. Then I didn't have it for a while, until we made it here several days later." He inhaled deeply and let it out. Sighing, "I still can't believe you actually waited all this time for Lord Asriel to come back."

"I'm his manservant, that's my job," he replied, shrugging. "Will there be anything else?"

"No, thank you. But, Thorold?"

"Yes?"

"What are you going to do now?"

"How do you mean?"

"I mean, Lord Asriel-and the rest of us-are probably leaving soon. We've been here too long already; and we can't risk the Ruling Powers coming here to look for us."

"Yes, I know."

"You're seriously going to wait again?" Edmund tried not to laugh in disbelief. "He might never come back here once we leave."

"I know," Thorold said, stroking the side of his pincher's neck. "I'll still wait, it's not too bad."

"Why don't you come with us?" he offered, not wanting to have the image of poor Thorold dusting this grand but desolate cabin every single morning until the end of the world, alone and forgotten, lingering in his mind. "I know you were waiting for Lord Asriel the last time Lucy and I were here, and that that's why you wouldn't come with us then. You could come now, though. Now that Asriel's with us, you could. He might need a servant to help reload his gun or something."

"I'll speak to my master about that," he promised. "Now, if there really isn't anything else I can do for you, the others will be wanting their breakfast as well."

"We shouldn't have stayed here so long," Ella whispered to her human as he craned his neck to watch Thorold disappear into Lord Asriel's study. The door was slightly ajar and he could see Peter sitting in one of the chairs on the far-end of the study, probably discussing travel plans with the nobleman. "Lord Asriel's taking a terrible risk."

"Hush, Ella." Edmund took a swig of tea. Swallowing, "Ah. I don't trust him, either, you know, but he can't control the weather. It was hardly his fault that a sudden blizzard started laying waste to more than half of the North. We were lucky that we made it to the cabin-and all the way out of Svalbard-before it hit."

"I'm feeling unsettled all the same, Ed," Ella confessed. "And that dream we keep having; about your mother and Lucy…"

"You worry too much," Edmund commented unconvincingly.

In the study, Thorold asked Lord Asriel if he might be needed on the upcoming expedition or if his services were still required at the cabin.

"Good God, man!" exclaimed Lord Asriel. "Of course I can use a valet; make sure we're both packed for the journey and that there's enough food prepared."

"Yes, my lord." He bowed quickly, preparing to leave the room.

"Oh, and you needn't bother with looking after that darned alethiometrist as diligently as you do. If he wants breakfast handed to him on a platter at three in the morning he can bloody well go to an inn and pay for it."

"It's really no trouble, my lord," said Thorold; "but if you'd prefer I didn't, I don't have to."

As soon as the manservant was out of ear-shot, his pincher trotting away at his heels, Peter gave Lord Asriel something of a rough, suspicious look. "You really don't like Edmund, do you?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Just because." Peter's forehead crinkled, wondering why Lord Asriel was so bitter. "I mean, you seem to really hate him."

"Yes, what's the problem?" Lord Asriel muttered gruffly, examining a map on the desk in front of him.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

Peter felt the urge to hit Lord Asriel...very hard. "Why do you hate him?"

Lord Asriel didn't answer.

Peter glanced through the ajar doorway at Edmund talking with Ella and nibbling on a biscuit; he sure had gotten a lot older-looking since the last time they'd met up.

Then it struck him. "Oh. My. God."

"What?" Lord Asriel glowered up from the map, annoyed by Peter's interruption.

"He looks like his father, doesn't he?" Peter had never met Edmund Coulter the first, but Susan always said that her younger brother and her father looked a lot alike. "That's why you don't like him, isn't it?"

"Wipe that smug look off your face, Pevensie," growled Lord Asriel, his dæmon's fur bristled up on her back.

Peter was about to defend Edmund and say a million other things to this moody mystery of a nobleman, but then he remembered what it felt like to have Stelmaria's teeth meeting at his neck and, cringing at the memory, didn't doubt she would lunge at him again if properly provoked and to heck with the bloody taboo.

Back in the other room, Edmund got up and walked over to the window-seat where Trumpkin was sitting smoking a pipe filled with tobacco leaves Thorold had brought to him by the bucket-load.

"Worried about your Lucy?" Trumpkin guessed, putting his pipe back into his mouth after speaking. It twisted his whole red-bearded face out of shape, but he seemed contented nevertheless.

Edmund nodded. "I want to get back to her." Then, looking out the window and seeing something blaze brightly across the early morning, storm-torn sky, breathed, "Did you see that?"

"See what?" Trumpkin's eyes darted to where Edmund was pointing.

"That." Edmund pointed again. "Look, it's over there now."

"A star," said Trumpkin.

"A shooting star," came from Ella.

"It was awfully close to the window, don't you think?"

"Eh? Well, maybe. I don't know."

Are we sure all of the stars are on our side, Edmund wondered to himself, and that none of them are working for the Ruling Powers?

Probably there was a star or two that was not on the right side, but this star was not one of them. In fact, they knew this star personally; it was Serafina Pekkala Le Fay's niece, and she had indeed seen them in the window and was on her way to inform the Gyptians, Lyra, and Lucy that Edmund Belacqua had escaped from Svalbard.

AN: ***PlEaSe ReViEw***