Chapter 3:

Susan sat quietly in the constable's office, the only noise from within the room her heel tapping against the tiles. She could see a few officers moving back and forth frantically through the windowed walls of the room.

Alone with her thoughts, the only thing on her mind was her son.

It had been three days since Christopher went missing.

Finally, as a man soaked from the rain stepped inside, Susan stood up. Constable Parkstone entered his office with a sigh, and stared at Susan for a moment before speaking.

"Mrs. Williams, I've told you to rest-"

"It's Ms. Pevensie now, Thomas. Remember?"

"Of course, Ma'am, my mistake. But like I said, sitting around here isn't going to bring him home faster. I got half my men, and half the town, out looking now."

"You should all be searching."

"I know Ms. Pevensie, I know. I'll head back out myself," he said, putting his still damp jacket back on before walking out with Susan.

Though escorted to her car, Susan did not drive away until she saw that the constable was doing the same.

Returning empty-handed to the cottage for the third night was almost too much to bear. She walked softly up the stairs, her jacket tossed on the steps without care. Entering her room was like stepping in front of a podium with stage fright. Her mouth went dry and her heart was in her throat.

One could scarcely imagine an emptier bedroom. It was not too long ago that her bed felt crowded most nights. With her husband on one side, her on the other, and often little Christopher tucked between them.

If it had been the first or second night, Susan would have laid down to cry before forcing herself up and outside to search again.

But tonight was different. And she didn't know why.

For reasons that escaped her, Susan walked to her dresser, not her bed. Tucked behind a neatly folded stack of clothes in the second drawer was a small shoebox. So small in fact that it could never hold the shoes of a grown woman, so must have belonged to a child. She opened the box and pulled out a single photo amongst a few dozen others. It was of her and her siblings in front of an old manor home in the country.

The four of them had been inseparable once upon a time. As children, for many years during and after the war, they were all each other had.

But after they became adults, the other three were all somehow able to stay connected. Something held them together. And kept them happy.

Whatever it was, Susan had forgotten. They continued to speak to her for years, but after so many missed calls and canceled engagements, her brothers stopped trying. Only her younger sister kept speaking to her, but eventually even that had stopped.

When she had heard what happened to them…when news broke about a terrible train crash…something inside Susan felt like she was there. Like she had experienced every single moment with them.

But she hadn't. When they had all three spoken to her one last time after years of silence, desperate for her to come with her "back where it all began", she told them no. In fact, she said far worse things than no. Looking at the photo of them, four young faces smiling, she regretted deeply how she turned her back on them.

But regret would not bring them back. No feeling her heart could muster, no matter how strong, could bring her to them. Return her to that young girl who would never abandon a loved one…

Remembering what she had lost, Susan feared that Christopher…her son was-

Suddenly, as though interrupting that thought, came the sound of a faint horn outside the window.

But was it a horn? It couldn't be. It must have been a bird or a car.

The horn blew a second time.

There was no mistaking it. It wasn't just the sound of a horn. It was the sound of her horn.

She put the photo safely in her pocket, and faster than the raindrops could fall, Susan threw her jacket on, grabbed her purse and ran into the woods. Just as the rain was flooding the narrow streets, her mind was flooding with memory. And disbelief.

"Please, no. Please, no. Not my son." She whispered to herself over and over as she ran deeper into the woods.

After only a few minutes, Susan passed several men, soaked to the bone with electric torches barely shining any light past the rain.

"Susan, what are you doing out here? I told you to get some rest." Was all that constable Parkstone could say before Susan was already running past him without so much as a flinch.

The men tried to follow her, both excited at the prospect that she knew where the missing boy was, and worried for her safety in the forest alone.

But these men did not have fifteen years of experience as a hunter and warrior. None of the men could keep up with her, and none of them would have been able to see the wind and rainswept tracks of a young boy.

The former Mrs. Williams had missed these. But Susan Pevensie didn't.

It was like yesterday she was blind, and woke up with new eyes. The woods told her everything she needed to know.

Susan followed the tracks deeper and deeper into the forest. Far deeper than she believed Christopher had ever gone before. If he had come out here, then he was further from civilization than he had ever been.

And when the tracks ended and she heard the horn again, only now much less faint, she knew how true that was.

"It can't be…" she said, as she fell to her knees in disbelief. Her exposed legs scraped against a pile of broken arrows where once there had been only dirt. Susan knew that if she turned around, the woods she had run through would not be there. She didn't need to look up to know the skies would be clear. There was no denying the chirps of the birds in this forest were conversations between neighbors.

Susan grabbed one of the arrows and held it tight in her fist as she stared at the familiar woods through tears.

"Christopher…why are you in Narnia?" she said before snapping the arrow in two.