Suddenly there came a most frightful jerk and a noise | When that awful jerk came I thought it was the beginning of a railway accident | I remember thinking it was taking the bend far too fast | There was a frightful roar and something hit me with a bang | There was a real railway accident | All of you are dead
Edmund sits quietly for a moment on the bed, staring at the painting, wishing for it not to be the end. He glances down to see Lucy give a wavering smile, trying to put on a brave face, and all he can do is shrug a little in return. Eustace smiles a small smile at them, much lighter than before making Edmund square his shoulders before he stands, Lucy rising alongside him as Eustace leads the way out of the room. For a moment it’s only him and Lu left, but while she starts to follow their cousin, he can’t help but take a glance back at the painting, hoping for something.
There is no something though, just a still painting of a ship at sea.
“I guess that’s that, Lu," Edmund says in solemn voice as he finally takes a step through the doorway, heart aching and eyes dry.
“I guess so,” is all she says as she closes the door behind them with a solemn air.
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Edmund’s quiet in the days after their return. He’s always been the quiet one but now his silences are as heavy as his heart. It isn’t long until Peter shows up on the Scrubb’s doorstep waiting for Lucy and Edmund to join him on the way to the train station to pick up their parents and Susan. Lucy races through the station flitting between people like a bird, leaving Edmund and Peter watching with fondness clear in their eyes. Edmund goes to follow but Peter stops him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Lucy wrote to me about what happened, Ed,” There’s no accusation or question in Peter’s voice about why Edmund hadn’t done so but it doesn’t stop him from feeling the sharp sting of guilt anyway.
“What of it?" he asks in a low voice. He doesn’t want to have this conversation. Not here, maybe not ever but Peter doesn’t heed the silent plea in his voice. Peter doesn’t put the conversation off until later, until never. Peter makes the decision, and Edmund follows.
His brother takes a step in front of Edmund so he has no choice but to look at him. “I know it’s hard but you’ll be okay, Ed. You might not be able to go back, but that doesn’t mean you lost everything about Narnia." He says with a raised head and a soft sad smile, no doubt remembering his own final moment in Narnia. Edmund opens his mouth to speak, wanting to convey to his older brother, his High King, just how terribly and deeply he aches but before he can he catches a glimpse over Peter’s shoulder, of Lucy greeting Susan and their parents.
He sees the way Lucy dives straight into Susan’s arms.
He sees the way their parents avert their eyes to hide the minuscule hurt and summon almost believable smiles when Lucy finally turns to them, her hands gesturing widely and shirt untucked.
He takes a deep breath and swallows thickly, vowing to himself right then and there that he’s never the reason that such an expression crosses their faces again.
“I know, Pete,” he says with a smile and before Peter can question him further, before Peter can see how fake his smile really is, he steps around him and walks to where the rest of his family waits.
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Edmund sits quietly, reading at the garden table. A warm breeze sweeps through and he can hear the low soothing humming of his mother drift outwards, to where he sits, from the open window of their house. Lucy’s somehow wound up in the tree again, on one of the highest branches she could, swinging her legs back and forth to a rhythm only she knows while Peter tries to coax her down. Without much success, Edmund notes, because he keeps stopping to laugh at the youngest child’s antics in between the threats to ‘climb up the damn tree' himself to get her. Susan steps out from out the house, wearing a much to big hat for ‘blocking out the sun, Edmund’ despite the fact that ‘the sun went down about an hour ago, Su.' She's dressed in a lovely purple dress her father had bought her months ago.
"Edmund, come on!” Lucy shouts loudly from her a top her new throne, having taken to outright ignoring Peter’s attempts. “Eustace is coming soon and he wants to hear more about our adventures in Narnia!”
For a moment, Edmund is tempted. Tempted to share his stories with the still uncertain young Eustace, who struggles with reconciling who he has become with who he used to be. Tempted to reminiscence about Mr. Tumnus, and the Beavers, and Mr. Fox. He wants to speak about the young Tarkheena, later the Calormen Queen of Archenland, he’d met who was as hard headed as a certain young Pevensie sister. About Philip, his stead, his friend, who would always offer an ear for Edmund and his worries. He wants to describe the beauty of the Cair, their home, their heart. How he’d traversed vast lands and seas even more daring and adventurous than the last.
For a moment, Edmund is tempted.
But the humming has abruptly cut off. His mother's voice has fallen silent and if he strains his ears hard, he can hear her quiet shuddering breaths as she tries to collect herself once more, and in that moment he can’t help but think ‘Oh Lucy, you absolute fool.'
For Lucy, Susan, Peter, and Edmund, their time in Narnia was grand and adventurous. But for their mother who knows nothing about that other world, that beautiful world, all she can think of is her children, her babies, leaving and not knowing if she’ll see them again. How she sent them away —for their own safety— but sent away all the same. All she can think is how her children, children who have aged much more than they should have by anything in an old man’s old home, came back to her, different and strange and very much not children anymore.
The association of 'Narnia’, has become synonymous with the fear of never seeing her children again. It means having these much too old souls in these child-like bodies, that look like hers but they’ve grown and barely recognize her anymore, return.
Edmund watches Susan join Peter under the tree and he lets out a sigh as he stands, stretching his arms out. They await his answer eagerly, even Susan and Peter, no doubt excited to tell their adventures to this new audience, even if it is an audience of one.
“How about you tell them for me, Lu?” He asks instead setting his book down as he starts to trek back inside. “You’re a much better storyteller than I am.” He can hear his siblings squabbling over which adventure to tell and when he glances back for a second, regretful, Susan’s eyes meet his and she nods a small nod knowing where he’s going. He smiles, a soft saddened smile before turning back to where his mother, who's stifled sobs grow louder with each step closer, sits, heartbreak heavy in the air.
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"Have you made your decision, Mr. Pevensie?” the advisor asks him, sitting with interlocked hands resting on the desk before him. Edmund sits quietly on the other, his feet planted solidly on the ground as he gazes around at the very brown coloured small room. He thinks about his future and his family and finds his heart set and mind made.
“Yes,” he says almost without conscious thought. “Law. I want to study law.”
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Edmund’s always been the studious type. And he finds himself quickly falling into a pattern each night, prepping as he must for his exams and future studies.
“Ed, you still have so much time until you actually start!" Peter cries one morning. He’s gotten back from studying with Professor Kirke and he’s bored sitting at home all day while Susan and Lucy have gone out with their mother. “Come on! Let’s go out to town for an hour! Or better yet, Eustace keeps telling us about how he and his new friend, Jill, have had quite the adventure in Narnia! You haven’t heard but...” and here is where Edmund forces himself to stop listening as he falls deeper in the thrall of the intricacies of the legal system. He doesn’t talk much of Narnia aloud anymore, has found himself on the alert to see where his mother and father are every time ‘Narnia’ is mentioned.
Lucy cares about her parents, how can she not when it comes to family, but she’s already grown and lived and Peter and Susan have been the ones to raise her, not mother, not father. She’s the youngest, and the freest, and does not pick up on the falseness of their parents smiles whenever ‘Narnia’ is mentioned. 'A hummingbird, indeed,’ Edmund muses privately to himself as he watches Lucy flit away at something new that has captured her attention, unknowing of the harsh blows she has dealt to her parents, left behind with false smiles slipping into pained frowns and tear-filled eyes. Their mother turns away, fingers raised to her lips as if to smother away the heartbreak that threatens to release, silent in her grief. Their father's hands are clenched into tight fists as he watches Lucy laugh and turn and run, eyes drenched in the colour of sorrow.
Susan’s much more knowledgeable and understanding of her parents and does her best to not bring it up whenever they are home, but mistakes are made as it is bound to happen with an almost taboo word and parents. She slips and finds herself declaring aloud to Edmund one afternoon of how ‘that’s not how we did it in Narnia, Edmund,’ over some mundane thing, oblivious to her parents who have returned, earlier than expected, for the evening. Edmund sees and the smile he had, his Susan-smile freezes abruptly. Susan notices, the darkening of his eyes, the clenching of teeth, because of course she does, a mother to a brother too young. She turns slightly as if shifting her weight but with that small expert movement her hair falls on her side shielding her eyes, as she catches a glimpse of her heartbroken parents behind her. She turns back to Edmund, quiet and sorry, eyes wide and heart broken as their parents take the stairs back to their room, silent.
Peter notices the changes in his middle siblings but he’s been off with Professor Kirke learning the ways of medicine and barely has time around the house anymore. He doesn’t think much of it when he comes home because Lucy is as loud and present as ever. Susan, stubborn and likely to glare daggers at him at the slightest mishap. Edmund has grown taller but that solemn quiet air is still ever present. He doesn’t notice, his mind whirling with new procedures and chemicals and technologies, how ‘Narnia’ is barely mentioned at home. Lucy still brings it up as much as she had before he’d gone. What he doesn’t notice is how Edmund ushers his parents away when he sees that look in Lucy’s eyes, head drooping while as if he shoulders a weight unseen, before she can open her small mouth and tear her parents apart once more. How Susan is quick to use every bit of diplomacy and conversational tactic she’s learned during their reign to get the conversation back to something mundane, something un-Narnian. He doesn’t notice because Susan still talks about Narnia with him when it’s just the four of them or they’re out of the house, away from their parents keen ears and fragile hearts. He doesn’t notice because Edmund still listens when they meet and speak of Narnia. He doesn’t notice how Edmund barely contributes to these talks anymore, how he’s always citing ‘homework’ as an excuse to leave as fast as he can. He doesn’t notice.
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Susan stands in the doorway of his room, one foot in and one foot out.
“Edmund,” her gentle voice flows through the slightly too warm room, soothing an itch in his skin he didn’t notice. He turns from his seat at his desk where he’d been buried in more and more books than usual. “Are you quite sure you don’t want to join us?” He can hear Peter’s voice drifting through the open doorway, loud and exasperated as he tries and gets Lucy to wait for him and Susan. He can hear Lucy’s quick steps as she goes for the door chanting "Let’s go let’s go let’s go-”
Edmund looks at her in confusion at first, mind still whirling with the new information he’s spent hours learning. It takes him a moment, a moment where Susan looks at him cautiously hopeful, a moment where Peter and Lucy’s voices grow smaller as they step out of the house, but he remembers all the same. Remembers about the regular meet up with the Professor Kirke, because he would always be Professor, and the others. Remembers how Ms. Polly Plummer would be the one to greet them at the door and how she’d usher them in with kind hands and an even kinder smile. Remembers how Eustace had taken to being accompanied by Jill after their own adventure together, how they’d barge in rushing past the Pevensie siblings, Jill leading. For a moment he wants, wants to say yes, wants to be there in step with Peter, Susan, and Lucy, wants to see the Professor’s twinkling eyes with still so many adventures to share, wants to stifle his laughter as he hears Jill and Eustace being scolded for their running in the house by Ms. Polly in the other room.
But then reality hits, as it often does, with a sharp smack on an unsuspecting face.
He remembers his assignments and readings and deadlines. He remembers how he’d promised his mates he’d be there for the next town trip seeing as he’d missed out on the last two, for his studies. He remembers his Professors expectations and imagines their frowns if he fails.
“I’m sure, Su. Maybe next time.” he says with a soft forlorn smile turning back to his studies once more without another glance. He hears her dejected sigh but is already slipping back the books of statistics and origins of different laws that he can’t bring himself to give her another glance.
(He’ll wish he had later.)
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There is a knocking on the house door that won’t stop. A sense of unease seeps through him as he realizes that there is no other voice in the house. No steps rushing to the door to see who’s there. No noise except for his all too loud breathing in a much too silent home.
He goes to answer, finding it strange how his parents haven’t returned from their visit at Aunt Alberta’s. ‘Strange,’ he repeats to himself wondering about his siblings absence because it is already much later than they usually stay out during the Narnia roundups.
He reaches the door and finds himself pausing without a clue why. His heart skips a beat and fear creeps its way in. He swallows in the heavy silence, calling himself a fool for thinking for even a second that something’s wrong.
‘They’ll be home soon,’ he tries to assure himself. He gathers his courage and grips the doorknob hard and pulls it open in one quick movement, knowing without knowing why, that if he doesn’t at that moment, he’ll never open it.
On the doorstep stands an officer
...and Edmund’s heart breaks.
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The funerals took place over an hour ago.
He’s at his Aunt and Uncle’s, but finds himself hiding out in the upstairs room to get away from all the condolences and pity. He’d wanted to get away for just a moment, just one, and had bolted the first chance he’d gotten, his mates offering a distraction from anyone who’d notice.
He’d taken the stairs two at a time and walked quickly as fast as he could and opened the first door he could think of when he’d finally slowed to a stop and couldn’t go up anymore. He shuts the door with a shuddering sob before realization crashes through him as he turns around.
Lucy’s room.
He’s in Lucy’s old room.
Lucy’s room from when they’d stayed with their Aunt and Uncle in what feels like a lifetime ago. Where he’d hide out from Eustace every chance he could before they’d gone on an adventure together. Where he and Lu would read Susan letters, always together. Where they’d talk about the adventures that Peter was in for after when he would finally finish his studies with the Professor. Where parcels from his parents would remain unopened until Lucy was finally awake. Where Lucy smuggled cakes and candies and everything sugary stealthily before their Aunt could see.
Lucy’s room with the floral bedspread and almost white walls.
Lucy’s room with a photograph of Susan and Peter, smiling, before boarding a train to their schools forever ago, on the bedside table.
Lucy’s room with a painting of a ship at sea.