Disclaimer: I own nothing but the sheer delight that Narnia brought to me growing up, and the way it taught me imagination, with all its temptations, can still be a thing of spirit-rising beauty.

Beta'd by trustingHim17, and I am very grateful for the work she puts in. Especially since the chapters keep getting longer and longer.

"She's the type of flower that can still grow after a forest fire."
~ Acrewss

"A child of about eleven, garbed in a very short, very tight, very ugly dress of yellowish-gray wincey. She wore a faded brown sailor hat and beneath the hat, extending down her back, were two braids of very thick, decidedly red hair. Her face was small, white and thin, also much freckled; her mouth was large and so were her eyes, which looked green in some lights and moods and gray in others.
So far, the ordinary observer; an extraordinary observer might have seen that the chin was very pointed and pronounced; that the big eyes were full of spirit and vivacity; that the mouth was sweet-lipped and expressive; that the forehead was broad and full; in short, our discerning extraordinary observer might have concluded that no commonplace soul inhabited the body of this stray woman-child of whom shy Matthew Cuthbert was so ludicrously afraid. [...]
What a starved, unloved life she had had—a life of drudgery and poverty and neglect."
~ Lucy Maud Montgomery

"Then we shall go find a door."

Susan blinked, looking around. "A graveyard doesn't have many doors. Unless we head to the church?"

"A good thought, but no. You are not yet ready to leave the dead for the living, much less leave them for Life Himself. No, He shall have to find you. I am rather looking for a different type of door. A small one, you know; I do not want one that moves us from here to there, but rather draws you in."

That does not make any type of sense. Susan looked at her companion, who was—in spite of his mad sounding words—seriously and acutely studying their surroundings. His glasses, too, looked strange—as if light were slowly filling the glass from the bottom upwards, but the light could only be seen from the inside; Susan wondered what he was seeing.

"Ah, here we are." He walked through her siblings' headstones, between Peter and Edmund, intent on something beyond. Since his back was turned, Susan let her fingers run over both stones, reaching out to touch Lucy's as well. She could not reach her parents'.

I love you. I will not say it, not with him standing there, but I do. I—

She did not want to even think goodbye; or I wish you were going with me. She knew her heart longed to ask Let me find them where I'm going, but—

She had been too old, once.

Now it was likely she was too broken.

She wiped her eyes with the handkerchief she still held in her hand, refolding it once more and hurrying after its owner. He had paused in front of a single grave, one with a headstone no bigger than her hand. Its tiny letters were etched too small to see. Susan's eyes were drawn next to it, where a bouquet of white flowers with delicate petals reached towards the sky, their cores freckled with tiny brown dots. The petals stretched outwards like a star, pure, beautiful, and fragrant.

"June lilies,*" the Doorkeeper said. Susan, standing behind his shoulder, could not see if his glasses were still filled with light. "Yes, I think they ought to do nicely. Come up here, then." Susan took another step, standing beside him, and he took her right hand in his left. His own right hand he reached forward, stopping a hand's length above the flower, and he began making a spiralling motion. The middle of the spiral, where his fingers began, filled with that bright yellow light, streaming after his fingers as they moved, filling the space in between the lines, till a circle shone in the air at the height of Susan's knee. "Now jump!"

"Jump?"

"Jump!" He grabbed her with his left hand and jumped forward, pulling Susan with him—and they both fell into white light.

I remember this, I remember falling into a light like this after being called from a train station, though there isn't a sharp pull this time—

A train station.

Could it be possible? Could they have been pul—

No.

I saw the bodies left behind. Gold hair with black soot and dark blood, and—

Dead.

Why do I ever let myself hope, when it cuts every time it fails?

They landed, not in a graveyard, but next to a train station, Susan's feet suddenly firmly on solid ground. Susan looked around. It did not look quite like England, but certainly not like Narnia; there were trees, and a dirt road—it looked a little bit like the rural stop in the country, near the Professor's house, only there were more trees.

It was a small platform, empty save for two people: the station master in the ticket office, and a small young girl in an ugly dress, sitting on a pile of shingles.

"Look at the young girl and tell me what you see," murmured the Doorkeeper's voice beside Susan's ear, and she jumped. He placed a hand on her shoulder and turned her back towards the station.

"It's rude to stare," Susan objected, glancing at the girl—she had bright red hair, and was staring longingly down the dirt road.

"Oh, nonsense, didn't I say we would only be drawn here, but not moved?" Susan blinked again. "It's only our spirits that came. Our bodies are back in the graveyard in England, in 1949. This is Canada, close to eighty years ago. They cannot see or hear us. That's safest, for the first trip. Now, look!"

Susan accordingly looked—looked at the white, freckled face with the big eyes.

"Well? What do you see?"

Susan had no idea what he wanted her to see. "She's young."

"Must you start with the basics? Look, Aslan's Queen, look."

Susan looked again, studying the face this time. The eyes were fixed on the road, the eyebrows slightly furrowed, the entire body bent tensely forward. Susan also noticed one small white hand gripped the carpetbag handle, even though the child was sitting and could let it go. She opened her mouth to say She's waiting for something when a bird song flitted through the air. The child's eyes immediately glanced towards the source of the sound, and the eyes opened wide in wonder, the lips deepened into a smile, and Susan saw, in the eyes, the face, the mouth—

The sheer joy that Lucy had known. That joy hurt so much, so much, on someone else's face, that Susan stepped back, away from it, and would have tripped; but the Doorkeeper's hand on her shoulder held her fast. Susan looked—hesitantly, for it hurt, but it drew her in, too—back at the little girl's face. It—it wasn't Lucy's joy, for that had been as solemn as it was joyful, for the deepest things. And firmly centred on the things Lucy saw and lived. This girl's face—Susan didn't think she saw the world anymore, with her abstract gaze and starry smile. No, she saw things as wonderful as Narnia, only they weren't real.

"Tell me what you see, Aslan's Queen." The Doorkeeper's voice was quiet, and Susan suddenly wondered what her own face showed—and she became aware of a tear running down her own face.

"Joy," she breathed back, eyes still on the girl, who came to herself with a start, and turned back towards the dirt road again. "The joy of a dreamer."

"Hmmmm. Yes. Quite. Only it's odd that this little child can dream."

Susan glanced at him; he, too, was watching the child now—the child so fully living in another, imaginary world again. "Why is that odd?"

"Her parents died before she could remember them. She has lived in three other places now. Tell me, Aslan's Queen, what did Lucy want most?"

What comes to mind first is her pain, that hurting face every time I denied the games—the past, rather, I know they weren't games now—the eager love with which she talked about them—

Oh, that hurts to remember.

It makes the answer obvious, of course. Lucy wanted Narnia.

Only, if I say that—I can hear his "Think, Aslan's Queen, think!" That would not be the full answer he wanted.

Pet—my older brother, saying "You do not know her at all, then." Perhaps I didn't. Only I did, I know I did. I loved her. Think, Susan. Narnia, yes, but Mum and Dad, the three of us—Lucy loved so much. But what did she want? Other than my return.

The Lion. Aslan. Of course. And—she wanted to love others, and to be loved. To fight for truth and for the weak; that was her way of loving them.

Lucy, I miss you. I'm sorry now. I truly am.

What I wouldn't give to hear you say you forgive me. One more time. I know I'll never hear it again, but I need to—

"Use the handkerchief," the Doorkeeper murmured again, briskly but not impatiently. Susan unclenched her fingers—she had not realised they were wrapped so tightly around the cloth—and wiped her face with it, then her nose. "Now, what your sister wanted—what all true followers of Life, Love, and Light** want—is love, for that is the greatest of all virtues. This child before us wanted love as well. Only she was not given it. Not at any of her homes. She poured herself out, caring for children, doing chores, and loving beauty with all the might and main of that little body. And she was given almost nothing in return. She made a home for herself wherever she went, and again and again that was ripped away from her. And now, at last, she has been adopted. She is here, waiting for her new family."

Susan looked back at the girl—tense body bent forward, her attitude that of expectation.

Not despair.

No, this girl was full of hope. How?

How, when that hope had been disappointed, over and over again?

Susan did not have time to ask—though she did wonder what the Doorkeeper's answer would have been, probably something along the lines of Figure it out for yourself, Aslan's Queen—for a buggy was coming up the drive, driven by a bent old man with long grey hair and a brown, bearded face. Susan swept her eyes over him before going back to the child—who was watching the old man intently—before realising that the Doorkeeper was gazing at the old man. So Susan turned to him once more and studied him.

The face was old and lined, but gentle, and overwhelmingly shy. The body was strong but bent, making him—reliable but not intimidating. Susan smiled to herself. I do not think he could be intimidating, unless he were really trying.

He went over to the stationmaster first, and their conversation was too low and far away for Susan to hear. She glanced back at the girl.

So many children would have been afraid, bodies hunched slightly, eyes wide, when they met their new guardian for the first time. But not this child. No, she had something of Lucy's fearlessness about her.

It is a fearlessness given by wholehearted love. This child still loves, still hopes, still dreams. She's been uprooted so much, and yet she still—

I wonder what her name is.

The old man shuffled over, and Susan noticed he looked much more afraid than the girl; the girl, who hopped up and instantly began talking, talking of sleeping in cherry trees if need be, imagining they were marble halls, and who called the old man Matthew Cuthbert.

Matthew did not say much; he did not have to. The child talked all the way from the pile of shingles to the buggy, fearlessly offering words about her past, her dreams, the world that existed and the world that she imagined. She only ceased once she was seated, where she once again regarded the world with wide and wondering eyes.

"Up we get," the Doorkeeper instructed, walking forward. Susan followed him, the two of them getting into the back seat of the buggy. Susan wished they were in the front, so she could see the child's face. But she watched her from the back, the way her head turned, her shoulders raised and fell in deep breaths of joy—and the way Matthew stayed hunched over, bent a little away from the girl in discomfort.

That is, until the girl started talking again. She talked and talked and talked, of a million different things, often two or three of them in the same sentence. Susan found herself close to smiling—something she had not done in two or so weeks. She could not quite manage it, but this girl brought joy so much closer than it had been, this little child of eleven who said things such as, "But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?"*** She guessed which house was her new home, and Matthew, Susan noted, had relaxed enough to share in the girl's joy, adding a delight of his own. He got out first and lifted the girl, who whispered that the trees were talking in their sleep—and Susan had to grip the side of the buggy, pain piercing her heart. She had—Lucy had—known Dryads. They had spoken to Dryads of the Trees' rare, compelling dreams. And here was this little girl, who had never been to Narnia, who whispered of their dreams.

She looked to the Doorkeeper, sitting behind her, waiting for her to get out. "Can we go home now?" she whispered.

He regarded her gravely. "We have not learned the lesson yet. You have not even seen it. Now come—we must be present as they go inside."

Susan looked towards the door—towards Matthew's slow, shuffling pace, as if he did not want to be home, and at the girl, who wandered more than she walked, eyes filled with her new home.

Only—it wasn't her new home. Susan followed the pair in and saw a grey, stiff old woman move towards Matthew and ask in shock why this joy-starred child wasn't a boy.

Susan could not help watching, watching the child's face—watching the misery flood it.

When the tears started—when the child crumpled to the floor—when the world came crashing down on this little dreamer, Susan turned away. She stood blinking fiercely. No longer watching, staring resolutely at the door, but still forced to listen as the drama went on. Listening as the older woman—Marilla—got the little girl called Anne-with-an-e (and not Cordelia) off the floor, and to the supper table. The Doorkeeper sat down on a bench near the door, and Susan sat with him. Together they watched the uncomfortable supper, Anne's misery, and, surprisingly, Matthew's wretchedness. He did not say much, but Susan, knowing grief so well, could see his sorrow clearly.

After the supper (where Anne did not eat much), Susan got up to follow Anne up to her room, pausing when the Doorkeeper caught hold of her wrist. "Let her get ready for bed first."

Susan obediently waited, turning to look back at Matthew. He sat staring at the door through which Marilla and Anne had disappeared; and then he slowly got up and lit his pipe. He sat there, smoking, eyes distant, till Marilla came back into the room. The Doorkeeper led the way out of the room as Marilla began the dishes.

They made their way to Anne's bedchamber, a dark chamber with sensible furniture and no sense of beauty; like something a young Susan had pictured Mrs. Macready living in. Susan looked around, not seeing Anne—and then looked at the bed. A curled lump shivered under the covers, and Susan, listening hard, could hear the child crying.

Susan knew those cries. She knew what it was to cry at night, to have all dreams and hope ripped away, and to have nothing but despair left. She went to the bed, reaching out to stroke where she thought Anne's head was—and her hand felt nothing. The bedcover didn't move.

"We are drawn in but not present; remember that, Queen. You are not here to help, but to watch. It was a good instinct, though."

Susan, her hand still helplessly hovering over the crying child's head, clenched her fist. "Is there a purpose to bringing me here, to making me watch this?" she asked in a low, angry voice. "What would it be? So I would be motivated to help those I can help later, even if I am tired? To make me cherish times when I am actually in other worlds? Other times?"

"You are here to learn," the Doorkeeper responded sharply. "And it would be ill done to give up halfway through the lesson."

So many questions—what can I learn, why does it have to take so long, do I really need to learn more about grief?—crowded onto her tongue, but—

Susan had never been that good at lessons. She learned best when P—either of her brothers took the time to explain things to her, and, often, to explain why a lesson was structured the way it was.

Sometimes, though, it was better to take the lesson as it came, and to trust. And whoever sent the Doorkeeper sent Tom first, three times, then Hester, before sending this impatient man. A hand on her elbow in the time she relived over and over; a gift when she needed to believe; an explanation when she was ready to listen. Last, compassion. He waited to send it till she understood she needed it.

Whoever sent these people, that Being seemed to know what he was doing.

So she would wait.

She patted the cover over the crying child. Even if Anne couldn't feel it, her siblings once had said that deeds done for love were never wasted.

The Doorkeeper had sat down on the floor, his back against the wall, and Susan seated herself beside him. She handed him back his handkerchief and laced her fingers together, listening. The quiet was hard—it made the sobs of the child so clear. She found the sound difficult to bear and searched her mind for questions to ask instead.

"Are there many Walkers?"

The Doorkeeper leaned his head back against the wall. "No, not that many. Most walk through worlds and time only for a bit; this job isn't made for healing, you know—or you will find that out, I suppose. But it does teach wisdom and patience, and after learning that, healing can begin. Healing, of course, is best done at home, and so the Walkers return after five or six trips. There were a few who walked for longer. A queen from a prison in France—she walked the worlds till her own spirit found peace, and returned to her death with faith. Then the Lady of Sorrows, but she's delicate. That can be a good thing, when a delicate touch is needed. Hester, whom of course you met. She does not walk much; only for the worst cases. But we have called on her throughout most of her life. She will probably be dead before her time is over; but there I go again, predicting things I have no business predicting. I am not a storyteller. Some of those made to be Walkers cannot walk for other reasons."

"Such as?" Anne's cries were growing more infrequent; Susan guessed the girl was crying herself to sleep, but Susan still did not want the conversation to die into silence.

The Doorkeeper gave a short laugh. "You came from a world where some of your subjects were half-goat, half man, and you ask why some cannot be Walkers?"

Susan thought of the Dryads, with their tall sweeping forms, and pictured one visiting a human unused to magic, the tall sweeping form and many fingers—it would be a night of terror for the grieving.

Susan's memories had not been ones of terror. She had danced with those beings, ducked under their shelter branches, and climbed into their strong arms.

Then I lost it all.

She did not want to think on that. The cries were quiet, and the Doorkeeper leaned back against the wall. "Sleep, Aslan's Queen. There will be more to learn in the morning."

Susan did not think she would sleep; she did not think she could, but it felt like moments later that she heard Anne getting out of bed and opened her eyes. Sunlight streamed through the window that Anne was bounding towards. Susan watched Anne wrestle with the stiff, creaking frame, till she got it up, and flower-scented air flooded the room.

Anne stayed on her knees near the window.

Susan got up—without any stiffness, she must truly not be here—and went to kneel beside Anne. She saw the beauty of the woods, the cherry blossoms, apple blossoms, purple flowers, and the glimpse of the sea. She looked at Anne, and saw something more beautiful: a face, a heart, that reflected beauty.

There were no traces of tears. No rejection, no resentment that beauty still existed after Anne's world crashed around her and lacerated her heart. There was nothing but wonder and joy.

Susan glanced around, noting with surprise that the Doorkeeper was not present. She wondered if she should be alarmed, but—she looked back at Anne. Being near this child fed the part of her heart that wanted to remember Lucy, remember beauty, joy, and wonder. It wasn't Lucy—it wasn't truly even close—but they shared a type of beauty.

So she stayed with Anne, sitting on the bed till Marilla came and woke Anne from her reverie by ordering her to dress and come down for breakfast. Anne obeyed, and even ate—telling of how she was still sad, but not despairing. Susan marvelled. Anne washed dishes, spoke to Marilla, was silent when ordered, and then was set free to run outdoors. Anne took a few steps, glowing with hope and love, Susan swiftly going by her side to be near her—and then Anne stopped.

She did not want to go out. When Marilla demanded to know why, Anne said, "There is no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is there?" ****

Susan flinched.

No, there's not—or at least, I would have said that. But only partly. I would not have wished to not love my siblings. But Narnia—

I did that to Narnia. I tried so hard to stop loving it, because it was torn from me.

That should not come from Anne's mouth. Anne, Anne—please have hope. I can't. I'm not strong enough. But you, you should have hope. Hope comes naturally to you. Please don't lose your hope. You'll lose your joy with it.

Though Anne could not hear Susan, she apparently still kept some hope—she named the nearest tree, spoke with Marilla, and then fell into a reverie. Not long after she did, a white spinning light appeared to Susan's left as she was sitting on the bench, and the Doorkeeper fell through it to land soundlessly on the bench beside her.

"It is time to go," he said quietly.

Susan bit her lip, keeping in the cry of no!

She had already started loving this imaginative child. And now—now she was going to lose her.

"Can't I stay to learn a bit more of her story?" she asked.

"No, you may not—time is keeping me once again, and I must be off soon. I already had to time your sleep to the opening of the door of the Cave of Wonders to let a rascal and his monkey in. And the shutting of it had to be so precisely timed! But I can tell you how her story goes on?" He nodded to the girl still gazing on the outside. "She'll find out tomorrow that Marilla and Matthew are keeping her. She'll grow up here, fall in love here, marry, and have a home filled with people she loves. She will know sorrow—she will lose children, her firstborn at birth, her son in a war, and she will experience the trials and sorrows of marriage and motherhood. But she will be loved. That starving heart will be fed. And her imagination and mind will blossom."

Susan looked at the child—at the dreamer, with eyes full of visions and a heart full of possibilities. At a hungry heart that still had hope.

"Did you learn the lesson, Aslan's Queen?"

Susan paused. She had not been good at lessons, true. She should think before she spoke of this one. "I am not sure."

"Look at that child. She does not have your story; a starving heart may be a different pain than a broken one, but it may kill a person just as thoroughly. You saw her cry at night. And now you see her this morning, and what does she have?"

"Hope."

"Remember that, Aslan's Queen. Remember that, even for the most sorrowing of hearts, there is hope. Life will grow again, even after it's been consumed."

*Inspired by chapter thirty of Anne of Green Gables, where Rachel Lynde says, "But somehow—I don't know how it is but when Anne and them are together, though she ain't half as handsome, she makes them look kind of common and overdone—something like them white June lilies she calls narcissus alongside of the big, red peonies, that's what."
**"In him was life, and the life was the light of men." John 1:4; "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'" John 14:6; "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love." I John 4:7,8
***Anne of Green Gables, chapter two.
****Anne, chapter four.

A/N: As Susan starts to travel to other worlds, I do intend to introduce those worlds (and refresh readers memories) by a relevant quote at the beginning of each chapter, in addition to the one that speaks of the theme. Is that helpful, or does it detract from the story?