On the nineteenth anniversary of the disappearance of Narnia's beloved Kings and Queens, High Queen Hazel does not spare half a thought for her siblings. Instead, she finds herself screaming at advisors, healers, guards, and more. The lack of restraint in her anger and fear and grief is not something that has ever been seen of the High Queen in her entire thirty-four year rule.
The reason for her outbursts, or reasons rather, lay deathly still in the palace infirmary. Prince Consort Leopold, High Princess Elaine, Prince Alexander, Princess Beatrice, and Prince Henry are paler than any living person should be, limp in their beds.
Hazel left them for a day. One day . She ventured deep into the forest to attend the funeral of Mr. Beaver, to hold Mrs. Beaver close as she grieved her late husband. Leo had assured her that he and the children would be fine.
"What could possibly happen to us in the halls of Cair Paravel?"
"Poison could happen, you foolish man." Tears race down her face as she stands at the foot of her husband's bed.
Poisoned. Her entire family has been poisoned. While alive, they are practically dead to the world. Sleeping, never to wake but also somehow never to die. Hazel will spend the rest of her life watching them in their beds as she withers away, never to see the deep green eyes of her husband or the bright blue ones of her children ever again.
She needs someone to blame. Someone to kill . To rip to shreds with her bare hands.
Moving quickly, she marches from the room, leaving the healers to tend to her family. Tapestries, paintings, windows, and more race past her peripheral vision as she moves through the halls. Soon, she finds herself slamming a door behind her and releasing a long, hoarse scream.
It's several moments before she comes back to herself. Panting, she looks around. The room is bare and unfamiliar. Hazel thought that there was not a room in her home that she hadn't entered. Her gaze falls on the lone piece of furniture. The room is almost bare.
Her feet are moving once again, though this time she doesn't remember commanding them to do so. As if she is a woman possessed, no longer in control of herself, the High Queen walks to the tall wardrobe that stands on the wall opposite her.
While the room is not one she has been in before, the wardrobe seems eerily familiar to her. As if she had seen it in a dream once. Her hand lifts and clasps one of the handles before she is able to stop herself.
Suddenly, her mind is screaming at her. She must turn back. She must return to her husband, her children . She must leave this room and never return.
Her body doesn't listen.
Hazel suddenly does the oddest and most familiar thing. She steps inside the wardrobe .
As she enters fully, she is surrounded by fur. Robes? No, not robes. Coats. Impossibly, she moves further into the wardrobe.
Her skin begins to feel too tight for her bones as she moves, her clothes too large and then suddenly the perfect size.
Before she is able to force herself to turn back, she falls out of the wardrobe.
High Queen Hazel the Wise of Narnia, to the Incandescent Axis of Worlds, Empress of the Lone Islands, Lady of Cair Paravel, Queen of the Seasons, Voice of Song dies her death in a wardrobe that she wishes she would have burned before allowing herself to open. In the wake of her death, Hazel Pevensie is reborn.
-
From forty to six, Hazel loses thirty-four years of her life as she falls through the already open doors of the wardrobe. She huffs a breath as she makes impact with the dust covered wooden floor of the Professor's spare room.
Four pairs of shoes are in her immediate vision, inches from her face, a larger pair stands further off in the doorway of the room.
Four.
The Professor.
Spare Oom.
The wardrobe.
"Hazel!"
She ignores the call of her name, no matter how familiar the voice is. No matter that the sound of it tugs at her heartstrings. No matter that memories previously thought forgotten are bombarding her mind.
Hazel scrabbles to her feet and lunges for the wardrobe. That wretched hunk of wood that has just taken her away from her children.
She's back inside the piece of furniture before she can think, palms slapping against the back panel. Her nails scrape at it for a moment before she rushes back out. She closes the door, reopens it and enters once more. The process repeats a couple of times before hands grasp her shoulders, tugging her out of the wardrobe and into gangly arms.
"NO! No, let me go! LET ME GO!" Her nails scratch at the person as her legs kick out, tears racing out of her eyes and sobs tearing her throat as she screams. "I have to get back to them! Let me go!"
Her screams taper off into cries as the fight slowly leaves her. When she realizes that a hand strokes her hair as she's rocked back and forth, she momentarily believes she's waking in her husband's arms and this has all been a bad dream.
"Leo?" The hopeful expression on her face falls as soon as she pulls back to look at the person. As she recognizes the boy, her emotions are suddenly at war.
"Just Peter." Her eldest brother tries to offer her a smile but the worry in his eyes overtakes it. Hazel sobs harder as she wraps her too small arms around him tightly.
-
When they've all been corralled into the Professor's study, Hazel is tucked between Lucy and Susan on a sofa off to the side. She refuses to say a word.
It seems as if her siblings arrived back in Spare Oom only seconds before her. They all exited the wardrobe barely a moment after entering. She's unsure if two decades separate her from the other children now or if they had their own adventures in the twenty years she spent apart from them.
Professor Kirke tries to pull the story of the wardrobe out of them, but her brothers and sisters are almost as silent as she. He hints toward his knowledge of Narnia but the Pevensie siblings remain tightlipped for the moment.
Eventually, the Professor dismisses them with a weary look and the five children come to the silent decision to gather in Peter's (old?) room. Susan sits on the bed, Lucy the rug, and Edmund the desk. Peter paces in front of his closet as Hazel takes a seat on the bench in front of his window. She stares out at the grounds below her, leaves just beginning to turn reddish orange from their vibrant greens as summer fades to fall. It was barely spring in Narnia when she entered the wardrobe.
"You weren't with us." Lucy is the first of them to speak. "Hazel."
The once High Queen turns to her sister, not truly seeing her as her thoughts still fill with her children. Beatrice looks more like Lucy than Hazel ever thought. "Hm?"
"You didn't go on the hunt with us. How did you find the wardrobe again?"
So, there are now almost two decades between them.
Hazel is older than Peter now.
"It found me." She moves her gaze back to the window. "This has been the worst day of my life." The words are whispered, not meant to have ever left the confines of her mind.
Her siblings don't disagree, but do exchange a confused look with one another.
Hazel is now younger than her children.
"Who's Leo?"
"My husband." Peter's question does make Hazel look away from her view this time.
"Your what ?" Edmund squawks from his seat at Peter's desk.
Hazel releases a weary sigh as she turns in her seat, facing her siblings fully. "Prince Leopold of the Draven Isles, Earl of the Whispering Pines is my husband and has been for eighteen years."
The silence is smothering this time. Each of her siblings stare at her with wide eyes.
"How much time- How old are you, Zellie?" Lucy's voice trembles as she asks the question. The nickname that she hasn't heard in nearly twenty years almost causes Hazel to smile.
"I turned forty this past year." She admits with a sympathetic look.
"Forty?" Her eyes flick to Susan. Her eldest sister wears a heartbroken expression.
"In the spring of 1015, you four went on the hunt for the White Stag. The last I saw of you was you riding through the gates of Cair Paravel. You never came home." Hazel takes a breath before continuing. "The following year, my advisors insisted that I take up the title of High Queen. I only agreed on the condition that searches for you continued. That same year, shortly after my coronation, the Draven Isles asked for my hand as a means of peace between our nations."
"Why was peace needed? There wasn't any tension between us." Peter's question is more of a demand.
"In that first year you all were gone, Narnia was in shambles. All of our resources were used to search for our missing monarchs. I was at the front of all search parties. Some nations thought that the actions made us look weak. Shortly before the first anniversary of your disappearance, the Draven Isles tried to expand their territory by way of Narnia. A political marriage between Leo and I brought peace, a compromise I had to make."
"You married a stranger?" Susan sounds close to tears.
"I was betrothed to a stranger. I married the love of my life." Hazel's voice is firm, daring the four to say otherwise.
"He treats you well?" Ed's question has an edge, a threat of violence that he always has when his siblings are concerned.
"It is as if Aslan made us the perfect match for each other." The two stare at one another for a moment before Edmund nods, recognizing the truth in her words.
"What else happened?" Lucy looks at her intently, arms wrapped around her knees.
"We had children. Four." A bittersweet smile appears on Hazel's face at the mention of her children. Her babies. Her poisoned babies that she left alone. "High Princess Elaine Suzanne, Prince Alexander Peter, Princess Beatrice Lucille, and Prince Henry Edmund. They're seventeen, fourteen, ten, and eight. Or, they were." A lump forms in her throat once more but she pushes forward. "This morning, I returned to Cair Paravel from a trip to Mrs. Beavers. I had attended Mr. Beavers funeral yesterday and stayed the night with her for her comfort. Upon my return, I found that my family had been poisoned. My husband and my children were in a coma that there was no cure for. 'Never to wake but never to die.'" She repeats the words told to her by one of the healers, ignoring the gasps at the death of Mr. Beaver. She had already had to push her grief for her longtime friend aside in the wake of her family's tragedy. "Who knows how much time has passed now? Barely a minute between our returns through the wardrobe and I lived twenty years within it."
The room is silent once more as her siblings absorb her story.
"How did the wardrobe find you?" Lucy is the first to speak again. Hazel casts her gaze to her elder (younger?) sister.
"I ran through the castle, looking for an outlet for my rage and grief. I found myself in a room I had never seen before with a wardrobe that somehow looked familiar and foreign. I was compelled to enter it and was unable to stop myself."
"Aslan."
Hazel's head snaps to the side at her brother's words. Peter isn't looking at her, though, rather he is staring at the space above her right shoulder.
"What of Aslan?" There's a bite to her tone and an emotion that wells inside her, one she can't quite put a name to.
"He must have sent the wardrobe to you or you to it. Aslan must have meant for you to join us in Spare Oom."
It's almost as if a sword lances through her chest, the feeling of betrayal that overcomes her. Aslan would take her away from her children? The beautiful gifts he gave her, he would take away?
" Why? " Her eyes burn and she's sure that she's cried more today than she has in the twenty years since her siblings left.
"I won't speak for Aslan." The blond shakes his head, finally meeting Hazel's gaze. "I'm sorry, sister. I cannot imagine the loss you must feel. We lost our kingdom and home, but you lost your world."
His words shatter her already broken heart. Before the sob can even escape her lips, Susan has crossed the room to join her on the window bench, pulling her into her lap and wrapping her in a hug. The two High Queens hold tightly to each other, tears falling from each of their eyes.