Chapter 4

Su looked as if she were about to say something, but before she could, a voice interrupted from the doorway, making them all jump. "Is now a bad time? Because I found out what went wrong." It was the GMB.

The moment the window opened, it immediately began to shrink.

"Bother!" the GMB fussed. "The other me is coming, it's in the notebook - we can't both be here at once -" Edmund was beginning to understand the problems with time travel: namely, mixing yourselves up "- tell him you stood by a grandfather's clock!" His voice cut off, the sound odd, like a radio had suddenly died without warning. As soon as it did, a new black square began to grow on the opposite wall. First to the size of a bookmark, then a book, then a bookshelf.

Susan stood, wiping her eyes. Edmund only had a moment to recognise his sense of disappointment before a younger version of the GMB walked through the bookshelf-shaped hole in the wall. The GMB looked around the room, nodded at the door to the hallway, scowled at the window, and then turned to address them. Edmund wondered where he kept what surely must be an enormous notebook detailing where he would be and when.

"I think the problem must have been at your end -" he began, but then Susan nodded, cutting him off.

"Indeed. The Doorkeeper -" So that's his name! Quite apt I suppose "- of my time said to inform you I stood by a grandfather clock?"

The GM-Doorkeeper, he corrected himself, groaned. "Oh, this turns worse and worse. Do sit down, for we must go over every second - every second, you understand, for time goes into doors just as much as space does, and if the grandfather's clock chimed the time - what do you remember, my dear?"

Susan frowned, almost inperceptably.

"No, you don't like that, do you? Dear isn't your chosen title. What is it, then? What do I call you?" Edmund re-evaluated his estimations of the man (man? Being? person?). He was at least considerate, if a little brusque.

"Queen," Edmund answered, curious to see how he would take it.

But he hadn't expected Susan's flinch. You are still a queen, dear sister, he told her silently, His decree is eternal, no matter which worlds you inhabit.

"Queen. Hmmm. Well, you're certainly that." Edmund raised his eyebrows, wondering what other possibilities the Doorkeeper had been considering. "Now, as I was saying, what do you remember?"

Susan's eyes turned pensive. "He had called the door - it had reached as high as my shoulders - and then the clock chimed."

The Doorkeeper scowled and began pacing. Edmund overheard him mutter to himself, "Elementary mistake…how I missed such a thing…a place with so many open doors, I would have…odd the clock should not have…" Abruptly, he straightened. "I say, Queen Walker, what hour did it chime?"

Edmund listened carefully, curious to know the function of the grandfather clock in this mess.

"Seven o'clock, but I didn't hear all the chimes. I think I heard…three. Only three."

"A clock out of time, and that cracked frame, and once the frame was cracked - and you're strong enough it would have aligned to your heart, not his head, the bother of being a Doorkeeper and not a Walker! Well, and he knows all this?"

Edmund smiled, oddly charmed by the man's eccentric demeanour and the way he jumped from subject to subject without pausing to explain what had connected them in the first place. Perhaps he was not such a bad friend to have after all. Especially if he took you on adventures through time and space.

"I believe so," Susan replied serenely, avoiding his eyes. (He knew because she had to look past him to look at the Doorkeeper). "We did not have time to hear more than his instructions to tell you about the clock."

"Well, if he pinpointed the problem, he would have set it back to its time. Now we just must get you back to yours. And you back to yours as well, of course." Edmund felt his heart sink into his shoes. "Is she likely to help?"

Susan tensed.

"You did not expect to stay longer, did you?" The Doorkeeper's tone was gentle. If Edmund wasn't already deep in anticipated sadness, he would be tempted to raise his estimations of him again. I had hoped she's stay longer…

"I had hoped," Susan admitted quietly, and Edmund moved closer. He was glad he hadn't been the only one.

"To have a person outside of their time, however well-intentioned, is not wise. You know that by now." Edmund winced, expecting their gazes to land on him, but they didn't. I suppose it's just generally good advice, with or without nosey younger brothers who are too good at guessing for their own good.

"It is unlikely my younger self will be of any help."

The Doorkeeper sighed. "Then I'll keep well away from her, till I'm sent." Sent? Sent by whom? "Till I'm sent, mind you. But in the meantime, we send you through by cracking a door here, too. Do you have a door you don't care for?" He asked Peter, and Edmund raised his eyebrows high. Cracking a door? They were going to have a lot of explaining to do when their parents got home.

Peter hesitated. "No," he said slowly, "I think our parents care for all of them." Yes, and they are sure to notice any significant damage. Edmund glanced as Susan. I suppose it's just what needs to happen.

"Then I shall have to make one. Come along, Queen." The Doorkeeper turned and walked right into the door to the hallway. Smacking against its surface with a dull thump, the GMB was forced to bounce a step back. He glared at the offending door, and Edmund had to stifle a giggle.

"It's one of the ones you have to open," Susan said, keeping a grave composure.

"Doesn't he have to open all of them?" Edmund asked in an undertone, still trying to keep from laughing outright.

"Not in the far future, far beyond where I live," Susan whispered back. Odd, is magic common there? Maybe when King Arthur returns Merlin will bring magic to this world? Or is it some kind of advanced technology? If we can make bombs that destroy entire cities, surely a door that opens by itself is childsplay. Or maybe there's something wrong with the doors in our time? But Susan said he had to open the doors where she lived too - so perhaps it's the far far future?

His musing was cut off when the Doorkeeper opened the door manually and Susan, Peter, and Lucy began to file after him. Edmund blinked and hurried after them.

By the time he got outside, the Doorkeeper seemed to be evaluating the trees in their backyard. Finally, he seemed to settle on the old oak tree, the only one currently growing in their yard that survived the Blitz. The rest had all grown or been planted in the time since.

The Doorkeeper reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a white cotton handkerchief.

Eyes darting between Susan, who was behaving as if this were all just normal behaviour, to the Doorkeeper, who was using the square of fabric to dust the tree. Through every crack in the bark facing them he ran the white fabric, and Edmund began to smile in delightful bewilderment. It was so strange! He could not wait to see what happened next.

He was distracted by the sounds of laboured breathing coming from Susan. Reluctantly he broke off his attention, turning to his sister. He slid his arm through hers, Peter doing the same on the other side, supporting her.

"Who is the gardener here?" the Doorkeeper asked, and Edmund returned his attention to the scene in front of him.

"I do most of the gardening now," Lucy answered, carrying herself with a grace equal to her title.

She was motioned forward by the GMB, who hadn't even turned around.

"Do tell your tree to cooperate with me, then, there's a -" the Doorkeeper stopped himself, voice turning sharp as he turned his full attention to his younger sister. "-no, you're not a dear either. You're a Queen as well?"

"Yes," Lucy reached past him to place her palm on the old oak. "Will it hear me? I did not think English trees had Dryads."

Edmund had not either, and was curious to hear his answer.

"Well, not hear you, not like a Dryad would, but English trees - look here, I must call you something, and she can be Queen Walker, or will be, but you - hmmm. Courage? No, not quite." Edmund chuckled. "Nevermind, I don't think we meet again. Not here, at any rate. Bother. Noting this place shall be quite difficult you know, but I suppose if I came to find the Queen Walker in later years I brought it on myself. Someone with a history as complicated as hers is - goodness gracious, how the doors must bend around her! - would definitely make things more interesting that I care to experience." Now there was a lot to process.

"But all the best people in the world - in any world - often have that quality, of making even the ordinary, daily things so important they are beautiful and true. And that is what you have done with gardening. Therefore the trees -" Edmund blinked, his mind doing a few gymnastics to figure out how they'd got back to trees "- even without Dryads, lean in and listen, from their roots to the veins in their leaves. So do tell it to stop being such stubborn wood and let me make a door in it; I'll be quite sure to close it again. It would not do to have an open door here, with those who have already been in more than one world."

Lucy leaned forward, whispering to the tree. The words carried on the wind to where the others were standing.
"Please let my sister go home," Lucy said, softly as rustling leaves. "We do not want her to leave, but it's where she belongs, and we must do all we can to help her."

Oh Lu, selfless from first to last. Surely you're the brightest of us all.

"There, that's done it," the satisfied voice of the Doorkeeper rang in his ears, but it was the last thing on his mind when Susan gripped his arm. There was fear running through every inch of her body, her eyes staring into nothing, and her breath - she had stopped breathing.

"Susan, breathe," he demanded, twisting around to face her. The way she was clutching him - like if she didn't a nightmare would begin again.

She took a breath, and Edmund let one out in relief.

Puzzle pieces swirled together in his mind, connecting and disconnecting, rearranging and arranging themselves again in myriad patterns. "I am all alone", her overwhelming all-consuming grief, "He almost wondered if she had recently received news of someone's death", the way she had begged their forgiveness, as if a deed undone, despite the changes which had clearly been long wrought in her, the questions he wasn't supposed to ask, the way she looked at them, as if they were - Edmund carefully, carefully, stopped pursuing his trail of thought. Though he'd glimpsed where it led.

The Doorkeeper gently moved him aside, and he belatedly realised that he himself had been staring into nothing. The much older man rested his large hand on the side of his sister's face. She opened her eyes.

"I think, Queen Walker, that you need my other self here," he rumbled, kindness in every word. He let go, and pulled something out of his pocket. It was a notebook. Ordinary. Red leather. Small. But as he opened it up, and opened - and opened - and kept opening until a paper as large as a world map had been unfolded from its pages. Edmund was sure his eyes were as large as saucers. Miniscule print covered it, back to front, and Edmund caught a glance of dates and times; this must be 'the notebook' that had been mentioned before. It was incredible!

9th Nov 1989 - Germany. Avoid wall. What wall? 1989? He couldn't imagine that far into the future. Before he could investigate further, the Doorkeeper folded the paper back into his notebook. Edmund belatedly realised he had been making a note as he tucked a pencil back into his jacket pocket.

"I shall make the door and leave," he told Susan succinctly. "You should say your goodbyes before my self returns." Edmund's grip tightened on Susan almost unconsciously; he was not ready to say goodbye. They all crowded closer.

The Doorkeeper returned to the tree, bringing out a small hammer and tapping a square gently into the bark. Then he replaced the hammer with a long, slender metal spike. He used it to tap the centre of his square three times. The spike didn't enter the wood, but the wood cracked nonetheless (Edmund was vaguely worried for the stubborn non-Dryad tree that could "lean in and listen"), splintering from the top of the square to the bottom of the tree. The crack opened and opened and opened to a darkness akin to a hundred thin layers of black gauze, fluttering and rippling in the non-existent wind. All in all, it reminded him of the door Aslan made in the tree to send them home from Narnia that second time. He wondered where it would take him, if he stepped through. The same place as Susan, or somewhere else? Like the descendants of the pirates had been sent elsewhere to the Pevensies.

"I shall see you in…when it is time, Queen Walker," the Doorkeeper said formally, breaking Edmund out of his stream of thought again. Then he walked around the back of the tree and vanished.

While he longed to go and investigate the place the GMB had disappeared, there were more important matters to attend to.

"Susan, sit," Peter ordered softly but firmly. All three helped her to the ground, even as Susan covered her face and knelt in the hard dirt.

Author's Note:

HAHA It's me! Again! I betcha didn't expect to see me again so soon! BWAHAHAHA I delight in doing the unexpected!

Anyway, I'm very determined to finish this, but it's almost midnight and so it can wait for tomorrow...or can it? ...no it definitely can. Sorry, too much delighting in the unexpected, clearly.

Also, is Edmund figuring out the secret? Is he gonna know they [spoiler alert for TLB] die way before he's supposed to? Or will he remain in confusion and think he still has a long life yet to live? (tbf he's got eternal life yet to live more fully than his first, but you all know what I mean) All will be revealed - NEXT TIME...

Blessings
Trix

Not beta'd because I'm trying to surprise BK and asking her to beta it would have ruined the surprise - also I'm impatient and I honestly there are way less problems with this chapter then there were with last chapter's draft. That said, any problems that are there now are very much on me XD