This was far more drastic and horrid than anything that had ever happened to Lucy before -she felt certain- even in a bad dream; seeing her beloved Edmund Belacqua, the clever alethiometrist, unresponsive -nearly stupid, even. Reepicheep was unable to handle both seeing and sensing Ella as little more than a dumb, unmotivated pet; the mouse-dæmon kept scurrying uncomfortably around his human's legs as if he were mere moments from losing his mind and falling apart completely.
It didn't help in the least that Edmund appeared indifferent, not only to Lucy's insistence that they knew each other, but also to the tears that streamed down her face. (That is, those that didn't freeze, streamed down.)
Nothing could have been more unnatural. Ordinarily, he hated to see her saddened, never mind crying. Now, however, he merely blinked as if slightly taken aback and awkwardly patted her shoulder, telling her everything was all right.
"There, there," said the former alethiometrist, rather woodenly.
There was no warmth, no familiarity, in his attempted reassurance. It was so automatic, so ready and lacking in actual concern, and-worse-love, for her.
"What did they do to you?" whispered Lucy, aghast, speaking more to herself and her dæmon than to Edmund as she reached up and touched the side of his face.
He didn't seem repelled or angered by her touch, but, for the lack of change in his face, he might as well have been. She might just as well not have touched him at all; he took no note, remaining bland and apathetic.
"Why don't you come inside, Lucy?" he said finally, sounding as if he was holding back a yawn. Ella didn't look remotely tired, nor did she flap her wings for emphasis as Lucy was accustomed to her doing.
"Edmund Belacqua," said Lucy slowly, swallowing hard, sliding her hand down from his face to his arm, and reaching for his hand, attempting to intertwine her fingers with his, thinking that-indifferent or not-he wouldn't be likely to protest. She also hoped he heard how she'd stressed his true surname, willing him to remember, in spite of whatever it was they'd done to him here at Bolvangar, who he really was; no more of this 'Coulter' nonsense. "Come with me, I need to show you something."
"Out there?" He frowned at her. "You mean come out in the cold?" The frown became a distant grimace. "Ugh." Expressionlessly, he added, not in a superior manner, exactly, but sort of as if he thought-maybe in the back of his now almost entirely practical and unimaginative mind-that she was a little queer in the head. "No…I think not."
"Please." She squeezed his hand. "I have to show you something."
"Can't you show me in here?" asked Edmund, sighing tiresomely as if she were a very annoying little child he was trying to deal with using reason and patience. "It's warm and comfortable. Do come in…They want you to, you know."
"They?" Lucy glared at him rather sharply. Reep's ears pricked up.
"The others here." He shrugged his shoulders.
"Forget them," she whispered, unsure if anyone else was listening to their conversation. "I know you don't remember, but trust me; please."
He resisted her tugging for a bit, looking semi-anxiously over his shoulder and rolling his eyes at her by turn, but since he appeared not to have a strong will either way, he slowly began to place his feet over the threshold, giving in.
This was going much too slowly for Lucy's liking. She was afraid that at any given moment someone would come and stop her from taking him if he didn't get on and stop dragging himself.
"We have to go inside," mumbled Edmund, in a very grown-up but not particularly forceful tone.
Something was telling him he was supposed to do as he'd been ordered (bring the girl in) only he wasn't sure why; and paradoxly there was also a numb sense of urgency that he couldn't explain to himself or understand. He only felt this like a faint prickle whenever Lucy's hand was squeezing his; if only for a fleeting second, his mind told him he was meant to go with her, that he needed to see whatever it was she had to show him.
"They'll ask what it is that's taking him so long in a bit," Reepicheep said to his human urgently. "Make him hurry!"
"I'm trying!" Lucy hissed to him shortly, cross from increasing fear brought on by Edmund's reluctant attitude. "Come on, Ed, I know it's cold, but you've been colder; you were a prisoner in Svalbard!"
"No I wasn't," he retorted, laughing dryly. "I've never been-"
"Stop it!" Lucy let go of his hand and, despite the fact that doing so made her cry even harder than before, smacked him smartly across the face. "Come with me at once."
Angry in a cold, hard, unreachable way, he grabbed at her hair and it hurt dreadfully; she thought-her already broken heart apparently breaking all over again-he was going to pull her into Bolvangar by it; but then a change appeared to come over him.
He was breathing heavily, she could see his chest heaving and that his dull eyes, though too dense-looking to flash, did darken somewhat. It seemed as if watching her tremble and hearing her cry out as she had from both the pain and shock of the whole ordeal did hurt him, even if it wasn't supposed to, and he still couldn't wrap his thoughts around why.
Hardly daring to believe it, Lucy felt his fingers loosen their grip. Then he more or less shoved her roughly two feet away from the doors leading into Bolvangar.
"Go on," said Edmund, his voice unwavering but his legs wobbling in an unstable manner. "Get out of here!"
Lucy staggered to keep on her feet and not fall over. He was letting her go, protecting her in a sense even if he didn't realize it, but at the same time-for one so trapped into complete practicality-it was also very foolish. What was she going to do stranded in the snow alone with no one to help her after being shut out of Bolvangar? She didn't want to go in, of course, but without Edmund what else was she supposed to do? She couldn't just let him go back in, to be a dumb submissive servant to the Ruling Powers for the rest of his life.
Before Edmund was able to step back over the threshold and into Bolvangar, closing the doors behind him, Reepicheep noticed that the barn -from which Lucy and Peter had first gotten a sleigh and reindeer and escaped from this terrible place all those years ago- still stood. It appeared to be a touch run down with age, but -thankfully- it looked as if it was still in use. They might escape the same way, the two of them. If only Lucy could make Ed come with her.
Thinking quickly, Reepicheep scurried over to Edmund and rubbed against his leg, trying to gentle and cuddle him as Ella would have done if she were still attached to her master. True, Reep was not a cuddle-dæmon by nature, a bit too dignified a mouse for that, but the state of a man who had lost his dæmon even as she remained perched on his shoulder, made him long to comfort the former alethiometrist. In most cases the taboo would have stopped him, in spite of his deep, gut-wrenching pity, only he had broken the great taboo for Edmund before, and felt no guilt or disgust doing so now-now when he needed him more than ever.
Stretching upwards, Reep even nuzzled the slightly calloused ends of Edmund's fingertips with his nose.
His expression went from blank and indifferent to utterly lost. If the previous expressions had been painful to see in someone she cared so deeply about, Lucy now found that this new one was just as crushing, though in a different way. He wanted to know her, clear as day, and he couldn't make himself remember.
Listlessly, as if broken from the inside out, Edmund allowed Lucy to lead him by both hands, without any further protest, to the barn.
Ella let out a faint hooting sound, as any pet owl might have done, and did not seem to care where her master was going or what he was doing. She slouched a little on his shoulder, like a dim-witted bird in a cage who doesn't mind where she is carried off to so long as there is seed and water enough to sustain her when regular mealtimes come around.
The strong smell of animal urine and wet hay did not seem to affect Edmund, and Lucy was too shaken herself to take any real note of it, although her nose did crinkle as she entered the low, shabby building.
She hated to ask anything of Edmund when he looked the way he did, but she risked taking out her silver pocket watch, pressing the precious alethiometer into his hands, and gently inquiring, "How far back can you remember, Ed?"
Squinting hopelessly in the poor lighting at the object in his cold, trembling palms the girl with the mouse-dæmon was so eager for him to recognize, he mumbled, "I can remember the others here telling me my name was Edmund Coulter."
"Think," she urged him. "Before that."
"There's nothing before that."
"There is," she told him. "There has to be."
"I'm sorry." He shook his head, making a motion with his hands as if to give the silver alethiometer back into her keeping. In his confusion he thought it a toy of some kind; pretty and nicely made, but of no use to him.
Reepicheep rested against his leg and something flickered for a fleeting second in his dull eyes. "There is maybe one thing before that, only it wasn't real."
"What was it?"
"A nightmare," Edmund confessed, not as if it bothered him.
"What sort of nightmare?" Lucy pressed.
"I don't know…there was sort of fencing everywhere…and a bright bluish light." He wrinkled his nose. "Nonsense; I'm sorry, I must have gone batty for a moment." He smiled patronizingly. "That's a nice toy you've got, by the way; like a compass or something. Glad you showed it to me. There is nothing else?" So far gone was he by this point that even if the 'nightmare' was not so muddled and blurred in his memory, he wouldn't have been able to tell it in a traditional, proper manner; he could sew a wound or set an arm in a bandage, or carry objects and accomplish complicated laborious tasks, even organize lists and supplies and important documents, all the while having no real interest in any of those things for himself, but never could he tell a story or have anything a person who had not known him previous to this disaster would find interesting to say.
All of this was enough for Lucy to gather that he was a victim of intercision. As they had torn Jill and Isi apart, and had tried to do the same to Lucy and Reep, years before, so they had done to Edmund and his Eleanor Glimfeather.
Because she had not been warned by Coriakin as Farder Coram was (for they-Star Consul and old Gyptian both-had wanted nothing more than to protect her, from worry if not from anything deeper, never suspecting she would have to face such a ghastly horror this way, all on her own) Lucy didn't understand why Ed's having had his dæmon cut away hadn't killed him. But she realized clearly enough that if, per-chance, it wasn't the exact same operation, it had to have been something as like it as two peas.
"I'll kill them," mumble-sobbed Lucy in a dangerous, low voice, speaking either to Reepicheep or else to Edmund-or perhaps both, in a sense. "They can't do this. They shouldn't have done it to anyone at all, but especially not to you, Ed. And all because you knew things they were scared of! I'll find Dust-we will find it, Reep-and I'll use it to destroy them."
Up till then her plans had largely been to use the alethiometer and those who would support her to defeat the Ruling Powers in whatever way worked out-given, of course, that it was done right and justly, in a manner the Lion would have approved of-and then to see to doing something for the Gyptians, sick of the way people mistreated them; now that had changed. For one of the few times in her life, Lucy felt genuinely and uncharacteristically thirsty for vengeance. She wanted to smash them, not because what they had done was wrong so much as that it had hit her harder, deeper and more painfully in the core of her heart, this time. All of this struck far too close to home. Such suffering, watching her boyfriend gaze at her hollow-eyed, technically only a half person, was more than a young woman should be asked to bear.
"Lucy," Reepicheep said, creeping away from Edmund, attempting to comfort his mistress and bring her back to her senses. "It's not up to us, not alone. Remember Aslan. He'll set the lot at Bolvangar right for this; it'll only be through us if he wants it to be."
Reep was right, and Lucy knew it, but she still cursed all of Bolvangar and the Ruling Powers and everyone else who had cruelly led them to this point in her mind as she wiped at her dripping nose. The memory of Aslan's golden wonder returned to her, and with that came the reason Reepicheep was trying to bring her back to.
There was a longish moment's pause, during which Lucy was weighing her options.
Finally, she said, "Get him into a sleigh," and went over to the two nearest reindeer; both brown with scattered white markings.
Strangely enough, Edmund didn't protest at all as Lucy helped him into the back of a sleigh, urging him to lie flat down on his back, keep some blankets and furs over himself, not move, and to hold Ella as close to him as possible in the hopes that, despite the fact that they were no longer connected, a bit of whatever warmth and strength the owl remained with after being cut away and turned into some useless creature, barely recognizable as a true dæmon any longer, could still help him in some way.
Since Lucy had no intention of going more than a few feet away from her beloved's side, Reepicheep was able to rest under the former alethiometrist's arm as they prepared to leave.
It was sort of mad, perhaps, to leave with so few-rather stale-food supplies as they could find in little saddle bags and similar packs in the corners of the barn and no map, but Lucy knew she daren't go into Bolvangar in the hopes of getting more necessities. If Edmund had been himself, she would have gone with him inside, figuring on them getting enough to keep themselves alive in the snowy wilderness together. But she had no help now, and if she failed, leaving him alone here-no, she couldn't endure that.
Her only hope now was to drive the reindeer the best she could, little as she was sure how, and make her way back to Svalbard. Peter and Susan and Iorek would be there; they would help, if they could. She didn't let herself think-not yet-of their sure to be frightened reactions to Edmund's current state, because it discouraged her terribly and she felt almost that she would rather die than dwell on that continually as they struggled to press on. They weren't even out of Bolvangar's barn yet! No, she would keep her thoughts on watching over Edmund and on remembering Aslan the best she possibly could. It was all she could do.
That no one saw them leave Bolvangar or made chase after them-at least, not quickly enough that it was a real threat-was a great relief, as well as the only semi-uplifting one Lucy and Reep had had since Iorek beat Ragnar.
Things did not continue on so well afterwards. By the end of the first day on their own with the reindeer and sleigh, not only were they quite lost and less sure of the general direction even than they'd been previously, but Edmund had begun to cough. Soon the cough was accompanied by a wheezing so intense that made Lucy's chest hurt every time she heard it. He coughed more than he spoke, and given less than another full day, he didn't speak at all anymore, only opening his mouth for the latest coughing fit to pass through. And his hollow, blank eyes went glassy.
It didn't matter, either, how much Reepicheep cuddled him now, no recognition or glimmer of hope or life could be brought back to his eyes. Edmund looked much older than he really was, like an ancient being with no more words no more memory, nothing else to live for, ready to die at any given moment.
There came a nippy, gray, silver-cloud-dotted morning when she could coax neither food nor drink to his lips, and he would not open his eyes. The only signs that he was still alive at all were his unsteady chest going up and down, and the little puffs of breath she could see coming from his nose; and, certainly, the continued coughing which had not let up in the least though Edmund was becoming weaker and weaker.
There was fresh snow falling from the sky, landing everywhere. Looking behind her, Lucy could see that it covered up all of their tracks so that she could not be sure how far they'd traveled.
Sadly, she climbed back to the front of the sleigh, reached for the leather reins, then effortlessly dropped them.
"What are you doing?" asked Reepicheep, confused.
"I can't go any further," she replied, giving up and climbing back to where Edmund and Ella laid. "I can't drive the sleigh anymore today, Reep, please don't try to press me to go on. No encouragement, not now. Please, just let me stay with him."
After gently kissing his lips twice, getting-as she fully expected-no reaction from him, shivering violently, she rested her own tired body on top of that of the former alethiometrist and wrapped her arms around his middle, letting her head lean on his chest. Reepicheep curled up into a little furry ball next to Ella.
The snow was falling heavier, thicker and colder. Lucy closed her eyes and made no effort to brush the flakes off of herself or Edmund, or their dæmons. Reep's fur was speedily dotted with white, as was Lucy's hair; and Edmund's, too. (Ella was far enough under the blankets that most of the snow did not land on her; only, since her feathers were white, it probably wouldn't have been noticeable at any rate.)
Through trembling lips, gone blue from the cold climate, what might have been as little as a few minutes later or as much as an hour, possibly more, Lucy, her tears no longer falling since she could not will her eyelids to open to the bleakness all around her, whispered, "Aslan, if you ever loved us…if you ever truly wanted us to stop this, if you believed we could do this…" –here her small, pale-sounding trickle of a voice broke slightly, choked by a suppressed sob. Recovering a very little, she added, "We, we need your help now…please, if you love us at all, show us the way out of this."
Just as Lucy was about to fall asleep where she laid, Reepicheep cracked an eyelid and saw something extraordinary. "Lucy!"
Her eyes opened, motivated by her dæmon's amazement and powerful curiosity, and she saw golden Dust floating among the snowflakes. It was Dust, unmistakably, for it lit up brightly, making even the gleaming snow look darkish in comparison. It went from gold to silvery and gathered itself all together in the shape of albatross, its wings shinning whiter than the snow, only the very tips still shimmering of silver and gold.
"Oh, Reep!" Lucy said, believing with all her heart. "I'll get up now, and take the reins. We'll follow the albatross -the Dust, I mean."
She rode on and on, the Dust-albatross never out of sight. Twilight came; the sun setting turned white wilderness pink with pale purple shadows under the scattered fir trees.
Night followed evening. The sky was black and there was no moonlight, only starlight. And in the not-so-far-off distance, quivering like a long row of delicate ribbons, the dozens of rainbow colours in the northern lights came into sight.
"Lucy!" Reepicheep stood with his nose pointed towards the stars and the aurora. "Do you hear that?"
She heard a sound, beautiful and rich as a bugle, but she wasn't certain what it was; she almost fancied the northern lights themselves had sung. It wasn't impossible, she thought, there was something quite magical about them, so why shouldn't they have gotten a song of their own.
But it wasn't the lights after all, it was Aslan, coming towards Lucy and her mouse-dæmon.
Despite her joy and inability to really, honestly think of anything besides the Lion padding towards her -even Edmund forgotten for the time being- she sensed through Reepicheep that the Dust-albatross was gone and had been gone for a while now. It was when they'd been distracted by the northern lights that it had slipped away without notice. Only it didn't matter now, only Aslan did.
A smile so wide it made her partly chapped lips crack and drip a slim line of blood crossed Lucy's face as she beamed at the Lion. She was perfectly contented as it planted a lion's kiss on her forehead. Then he spoke, gravely, and her happiness burst.
"He is dying, Lucy," said the Lion, with tears in his beautiful tawny eyes so big and moist that they rivaled Lucy's own.
She hadn't the slightest idea what Aslan meant…until she saw he was looking down into the back of the sleigh; at Edmund.
AN: Please review.