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bear it well, sons of adam / bear it well, daughters of eve

Historians often debated, years after grass began to grow among the stone thrones at Cair Paravel, the origin of the epithets given to the great kings and queens by their people. As the nymphs grew silent and animals forgot how words tasted in their mouths, the trail began to grow cold.

(Of course, it would be more accurate to say that historians of the type to devote themselves to this question were uniformly more curious about Susan the Gentle, about Lucy the Valiant. Edmund and Peter both passed into legend without question.)

There are some for whom gentleness comes easy. These are the people who remember birthdays, who can smile with understanding when a friend lashes out in hurt, who absorb other's tears into a warm hug. Lucy was one such person: bright and cheerful and kind more often than not. She spent nights nestled in the downy grass beneath the dryads' trees and days curled into the warm fur of the great dogs who were her guards. She forgave easily and loved quickly.

Yet her people did not name her gentle. Lucy was gentle but she did not use that gentleness as strength.

Susan was valiant. She led her army into battle as capably as Edmund and Peter, though more reluctantly; she rode in front of her troops and stared down death when it beckoned cruelly. She flirted with princes from around the world and laughingly dared them to be upset when she turned them down. She was not always brave—she had learned caution at an early age, watching her mother smile tightly in public, learning how the burden of responsibility settles into one's shoulders and never lifts—but she was courageous and determined all her days.

And yet she was called gentle.

What Susan learned that Lucy did not was how to wield gentleness as a weapon. She learned that when one's first instinct is to retreat (flee) from uncertainty or snap a clever (cutting) insult or to chide with motherly (condescending) concern, challenging that instinct into something gentle is akin to using fire to melt sand into glass. The grit remains, smoothed into a clear and cohesive front.

Let us make no mistake: she did not learn this quickly.

Ruling for Susan was, at first, like being an older sister to a great many new people, with the exception that they actually listened to her. She arranged matters in her chambers just as she liked; she grabbed at scraps of history and maths classes half-remembered and confidently melded them into a policy approach; she dictated that vegetables must be served at every meal; she chose a companion in a beautiful grey horse with brilliant eyes and drew pictures of her steed carefully labeled with curlicue letterings. The centaurs that bowed to her, the mermaids that giggled over her lush but tangled dark hair, the beavers that advised her on the structural stability of her growing castle were little more than real and complex make-believe, a version of the toys and stories she'd haughtily abandoned for her version of adolescent maturity.

Let us remember: Susan was merely twelve.

Within time, however, it would become apparent to her that she could not rely on pretend solutions to real problems. She learned that it was indeed like being an older sister to a great many people, and that she actually had to care for these people, and protect them from harm. Lucy, all of nine years old, was beloved by her subjects—but hardly expected to make any decisions.

(Susan and Peter had many discussions, late at night, when a giggling Lucy returned from a day at the beach, when Edmund took umbrage at a small slight. Being a king or queen of Narnia meant only that they had a great legacy to live into, not that they already knew how to live. These two older siblings worried and they planned and they secretly wished for their parents far more than Lucy or Edmund, who were perfectly used to deferring to their siblings when their parents were absent).

Susan went through a phase where she resented Lucy, the ease in which her little sister ran laughing through the world while Susan, concerned, trailed behind her righting her wrongs. Everyone loved Lucy, and Susan felt invisible, pressed into the margins of the songs sung of Queen Lucy’s enchanting giggle. (Lucy got to see Aslan first; she got to find Narnia and discover dancing trees and befriend a lovely faun. Susan was not allowed into war but she played no role in peace either. There was only room for one dazzling girl in this story and she was not her). Of course, it is hard to say whether Lucy required or needed Susan to watch over her with careful eyes, but Susan took up that mantle of responsibility nevertheless––as she always would.

It was Lucy, not Edmund, that bore the brunt of Susan's stress: accusations in the great dining hall that felt at times suffocating to both sisters, past deeds brandished triumphantly as weapons. Look at what I do for you. (Look what you cannot do for yourself). Edmund had quite enough of being a burden to his family; he was largely quiet and watchful, his primary vice a deep seated insecurity that manifested in a rivalry with Peter the older boy tried desperately not to encourage. It was Lucy, not Edmund, who bore this treatment with flashing eyes but a muzzled mouth. She was already gentle, remember. Lucy had not yet learned to be valiant, to stand up for her place in this world.

It was Peter who called Susan out on her slight cruelty, who took her riding and looked at her honestly and said what she secretly longed to hear: I cannot do this without you, but what you are doing does not help any of us. That was always Peter's strength: knowing how to use honesty and valor as weapons to bring others to his side; understanding how people wish to be seen and turning his clear and steadying gaze on them; making his companions feel both humbled and empowered.

Susan found as she grew that it became easier for her to do her duty and not feel resentful. She still mothered but she did so out of genuine care rather than obligation, and her advice and caution fell more smoothly on ears not blistered by admonition. She found she enjoyed casting her eyes over the reports of the day, searching for pockets of opportunity or scenting threats in the air like a hound. The strings of her bow stung her fingers but she found something like peace in the practice hall, pulling arrow after arrow out of her quiver until she could hit the center of the target every time. Here was something she could control; here she need not grab for artificial power, nor feel insecure. She at first avoided contests––uncertain in her own ability––and then cherished them––enjoyed the thrill of victory––before she learned there was no satisfaction to be gained in besting someone publicly.

Susan carried that grace and control with her as she began to age into her crown. She found trusted advisors in centaurs, mermaids, beavers, observing and leveraging the differences in each perspective. She learned to listen before she spoke—and to speak with confidence when she needed. She took Lucy with her on visits to faraway lands to satisfy her sister’s urge for adventure and left Edmund in control of her castle to give him a chance to lead away from Peter. She alone heard Peter's voice heavy with self-doubt and despair and learned to turn her sharp tongue in a new direction, soothing his heavy burdens. She found that she was listened to when she was calm and in control, that hysterics were as disruptive as a tremble in her fingers directing her arrow to the left of its target, that when she spoke she could make people feel strong and brave and noble, even her enemies.

Lucy watched her sister smile at a hostile king until the other man faltered, unsure of his own antagonism. She watched Susan lean forward in the pause, her eyes alight with the joy of the hunt, and thank the king for his concerns with a voice as clear and smooth as a river under moonlight. She watched as she asked after his grievances with the friendly, concerned voice she used to ask Lucy about the scrapes on her knees, and she watched as the king preened under the warm glow of understanding and attention.

What Lucy saw in these interactions was not gentleness. She did not know until many years later that Susan learned to be both genuine and strategic, to yield and be firm. What she saw in those moments was the way that the king flicked his eyes over Susan's lithe, delicate figure derisively but somehow came to the conclusion regardless that her big sister was someone to be trusted. She saw femininity and she longed for it in her own way.

Lucy tried it too: the forward lean, the sweet smile, the warm concern. She carefully curled her hair and patted soft rouge on her cheeks. Tell me what troubles you, she mouthed to herself.

Her efforts got her gentle pats on the head and an effusion of praise. Peter complimented her in the exact same tone he once used to enquire after her time in a wardrobe. Edmund eyed her lipstick and then tugged one of her carefully twisted curls. Susan preened a bit at the attention and walked with her shoulders thrown back. Nevermind that Lucy was approaching thirteen, that her face was losing the round edge to her cheeks, that her legs were gangly but strong, that she was the age that they had been when they stepped into their roles as leaders.

Lucy looked at the rosy glow in her sister's cheeks, the red of her lips, the gentle curve of her hair and then furiously wiped her face and looked instead to Edmund.

(Lucy and Edmund had always been similar: the sprites of the family, mischief baked into the laxity afforded to them as the younger siblings. They played at games longer than Susan or Peter, and felt, acutely in a way they could not explain, that as long as their family was going to treat them as infantile, they could continue to be so without fear).

Lucy had not minded when Susan took over her castle. Lucy had never wanted to rule; she had not the wild, desperate edge that Susan tried to conceal. Susan had realized at an early age that she would be denied power and struggled between excelling at the lines of authority left open to her and rebelling against their limitations. Lucy always had dominion over her life and her dreams and her feelings and therefore did not need to assert her control. She reveled in the ever-changing world, how the leaves changed colors, how the wind danced over her cheeks. She sought adventure eagerly, even in this magic world which in itself was a journey. She never let her siblings forget, when they questioned her drive to always explore: she had found Narnia first. She would not let them doubt her again.

But there was a new feeling welling up inside her, and Edmund felt it too.

They wanted respect.

Susan and Peter were given respect automatically; they settled into their roles as High King (and what should have been High Queen) with apparent ease. They struggled to make decisions but they accepted the ability to make decisions as their due.

Edmund—questioned and distrusted—and Lucy—coddled and protected—had to fight for that same respect.

Edmund became just because everyone expected the opposite. Some people grow on confounding expectations. (Some people call that being powered by spite). He enjoyed the pause when he would say something in a council and nobody could find a reason to discount it, the awkward beat when everyone looked at him and thought traitor before they thought king but nevertheless agreed with his ideas. He enjoyed it because the alternative was to feel weak and ashamed and avoid living the rest of his life. As time went on he found that pursuing logic and reason and fairness had its own rewards outside merely being right. He was the first to receive his name and he wore it proudly and without doubt.

Lucy wanted to confound expectations, too—but she did not want to leave behind the part of herself that was wild and fey and sweet and playful. (The lesson that she did not learn for many years was that this wanting for her true self was in itself valiant). In the meantime she tried to be good at war, but she did not enjoy it; she fell naturally into healing, but everyone seemed to think it a foregone conclusion that Lucy be skilled at care. She was the best at peace, but Narnia, luckily for its still-young rulers, was good at peace too.

But then she took agency over her crown and learned not everyone knew peace. Some of the dryads who taught her their dances were sick with fear of those who seek to defile purity. Some of the dogs who guarded her with their lives had brothers and sisters that were small and weak and considered to be without value in their part of the land.

It was easier for Lucy to be valiant for others, to rise to her diminutive height and demand justice. She was not always logical like Edmund nor persuasive like Susan, nor did her authority precede her like it did Peter.

(Peter felt often dragged by this authority as often as he did protected. He was the last to be named, and he felt somewhere inside as if they named him magnificent because they weren't quite sure what else he was but that he ought to have a title like the rest. Peter believed he was High King merely because he was the eldest, but what he failed to realize was this type of attitude was part of what made him magnificent, that the instinctive and automatic way that he assumed the position of leader and protector was what gave him his authority, that his subjects did not think less of him for disliking killing or seeking advice but rather thought more of him for his vulnerabilities. Poor Peter, lonely in his perch, his greatest censure his own sense of duty).

What Lucy could be was ferocious: to speak with passion, to argue her point vehemently, to force her opponent with a combination of emotional impact and blunt force to consider her words. When she clutched her dagger in her hand she did not feel as though she could kill but she felt as though she could wound, could draw a long and staggering line in skin and point to where the blood began to swell at the seams. Even Susan could not condescend to Lucy when she rode into the hall on the backs of centaurs and demanded they be given dominion over their own lands.

Theirs was a story of aging. That was what the legends failed to mention, what historians could not see. They remembered Peter the Magnificent in hushed, respectful whispers, impressed with the quiet majesty of this golden king without recalling specific details of his innumerable accomplishments, save the thrilling tales of his many battles. They learned only of Susan the Gentle through letters left by her suitors, through ballads of her many feasts, of memories of the twang of her bow and the clear call of her horn. They knew Edmund the Just from the decrees he left behind, his careful comments on laws and precedents, on the way his clear and level thinking carried far into the realm. They heard Lucy the Valiant heralded during dances, saw pictures of her golden hair and emerald dresses, visited libraries in towns she helped to build and heard of her compassion in stories passed down.

They see the siblings as they were when they left: bronzed and strong and athletic like old Roman gods, leaning into the hunt with the immortality of youth. Theirs were the golden years, and time passed differently for them, as though decades were packed into one human year. They grew from twelve to twenty and in many ways beyond, but let us not forget where they started.

And where they ended.

Those in Narnia viewed it as a partial triumph: the kings and queen of old returning to take their rightful place as rulers over a strange and magic land. Aslan roared and shook his blazing mane and Peter stood straight and proud and Edmund looked ahead with clear eyes and Lucy smiled a quiet but mischievous smile. They mourned Susan, their gentle queen, lost to the harsh realities of the other world. They did not mention her, lest they remind their golden monarchs of their loss, but she soon became a cautionary tale for girls reckless and wild. And though her siblings never forgot her, they too began to believe that it was somehow Susan's fault that she was not with them in the everlasting glow of their continuing reign at the end of the world. Red lipstick and nylons paled in comparison to water that sparkled like rare gems and creatures who breathed fire and wrote ballads and battles of clashing swords and ruby-red blood.

(As if being a woman meant only nylons and lipstick. As if they were not armour of their own, as if Susan did not fight her own battles. As if Susan was not a woman in a multitude of ways, as if makeup was not code for sex and clothes code for vanity. As if Susan was not their sister and they should not have believed the worst of her).

All of the Pevensie children struggled to return to their world, their majesty stripped and replaced by the confinement of their gangly adolescent limbs. Years passed quickly and they found themselves achieving a quarter of their growth in twice as much time. They tried, of course: taking riding and archery and fencing, stepping in between bullies and the tormented in schoolyard fights, studying history of their old-new world, bending their skills in diplomacy and economics and war and peace to fit the narrow constraints of what they were allowed to do as human children, not the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve that once afforded them four stone thrones and four golden crowns. They failed, of course. Their parents eyed them worriedly and their friends struggled to accept them into the fold and no Earth horse could run with the grace of a Narnia steed.

Susan struggled alongside the rest. Returning to Narnia felt like absolution and vindication, and her and Peter's banishment felt like punishment.

The difference between Susan and Peter was that gentleness did not come easy to Susan, but majesty came easily to Peter.

Peter mourned the loss of his authority without realizing that he still wore it emblazoned around his forearms and shoulders. His essays were clearly written and compelling, his peers feared and respected him, and people unconsciously moved out of the way when he moved with easy grace through a room. He could have commanded many things: a sports team, a company, a town, a country. When he returned to being only an older brother, he found his siblings no longer needed him to do so. In this new-old world he floundered, unable to carve a space for himself. Peter would always be able to rise to the occasion, but he must have a call to answer, a throne to fill.

Susan, meanwhile, was different. She had worked to be gentle; she had made the conscious effort to be kind. She had practiced smiles in the mirror and she had analyzed the efficacy of her tactics long after she had the chance to employ them. When she landed back in her preteen self, awkward and shapeless, she was not afraid to stand naked in front of the mirror, examining a body that felt alien.

She worked at this, too.

She found gentleness meant less when you were twelve and people had a preconceived notion of what being twelve meant. She found her smiles were considered to be bland and vacuous instead of mysterious and warm. Her empathy was considered her duty and her understanding was her burden.

And so she learned to be fierce again, to wear her clothes tucked jauntily, to tie up her hair so people had to confront the brightness of her eyes. She channeled her diplomacy into writing and pretended writing letters to the editor of the school newspaper was the same thing as sending weekly missives to her compatriots. While Peter walked around in a daze and Edmund and Lucy bent their heads together and whispered their plans for their inevitable return to the land of magic, Susan turned on her heel and walked away.

She befriended girls who were shockingly pretty and learned that boys in this life were no different than the princes who once fought tournaments for the honor of her company at a feast. She befriended girls who were much less pretty but nevertheless lovely and found that many girls cared less about each other's looks than she had been led to believe. She found she liked being friends with girls, that she became part of a community, that even an enemy would pass her a menstrual pad if she made the wide-eyed sign across the classroom. They were all, in many ways, bonded against the invisible enemy that loomed much greater and more insidious.

(Girls like Lucy who did not recognize the threat of this shapeless enemy were not inducted neatly into this sisterhood. Girls that knew the enemy existed but conquered it through their own ways were too often excluded. Susan felt a brief burn of satisfaction, sometimes, when bright fey Lucy played by herself after school. At other times she felt impossibly sad).

She liked being friends with boys, too. Many of them respected her sharp mind and her sharp tongue and her athleticism and her quick competitive spirit. Many too admired the neat pull of her shirt and the swish of her skirt and her shapely upper arms, toned from archery. She flirted with them and refused to feel guilty about it, and just like the kings of old, many of them bore her no grudge when she bored of them, finding it impossible to be angry with her easy smile.

(Some did, of course. Some of these she conquered with her old gentleness. Others, girls and boys alike, she stepped away from with some of her old caution, feeling the icy chill of their gaze on her back. Even queens of Narnia have enemies).

And so when the worst possible thing happened, Susan was able to fight for herself.

She'd had years of it by now. She had picked herself up after many setbacks, chosen herself in many decisions, fought to be a queen in a court that recognized few matriarchs. She had made her peace with the world she chose and even when war ripped a painful gash in the fabric of her every day she wiped away her tears, slid into her stockings, and began to carefully stitch up the edges of her life.

In this second—third, fourth—life Susan found gentleness much later. It took her many years after her siblings died to finally step into that old skin and feel it welcome her like an old friend. Now when she spoke with empathy people listened instead of dismissed. She once again learned to wield her emotions like a sword, to choose from her arsenal of tools and aim like an arrow, to be intentional with her grace and kindness. Peter and Edmund and Lucy were gone, but in a way they'd been gone for years. Part of them was always in Narnia, dreaming about those cold, stone thrones. Susan alone felt (guiltily) like there were parts of this world that she preferred to that one. She liked that here she could be sharp-tongued and glittering and hard at the same time that she could be gentle. She liked that she could reinvent herself without the weight of the entire world watching. She liked that she had to fight for what she was given, that she knew every ounce of respect was earned, that nobody had to bow when she entered a room. She enjoyed the cinema, and traveling, and reading novels, and kissing boys. She loved university and was feared (and admired) inside and outside the classroom.

And though she pretended, she never truly forgot Narnia. (Susan was not perfect; it hurt her deeply to be excluded and she refused to admit she remembered what she was being prevented from accessing). She did not forget how the land built steel into her spine and wove velvet into her tongue, did not forget the wonder of animals that could speak, did not forget the beauty of the wide brimming hills and the crash of the endless ocean. She remembered the joy of forging alliances, the way crumbly desserts tasted salty sweet on jewel encrusted plates, how the golden light of dusk blanketed the entire world in softness. She excelled at chess all her life, taught at fourteen with solid gold pieces in the courtyard of her castle. Most of all she held the all-consuming sadness when Aslan lay his weary head on the Stone Table to sacrifice himself for her little brother, the exultant joy when he returned, the absolution his deep eyes brought, the inner peace he commanded with every word.

But Susan also remembered the censorious look in Aslan's eye, the harsh tone in his growl when he informed her she had failed a test she had not known she was taking. (It is worth remembering that she did not want to follow the lamppost back to England, that she felt deep inside her that something was wrong, that she knew that they were not invincible). She remembered how she had to be queen before she was ready, how she was not invited into battle automatically until she had already proven herself several times over. She remembered the sigh of relief that her subjects gave when she was pronounced gentle, as if it washed away the memory of her earlier tantrums and cloying attempts at care. She remembered hearing ballads of her beauty and feeling rather as if she wanted to shear her head bald and dare those same kings to ask for her hand in marriage.

She never stopped searching for magic in her life but she stopped searching for Narnia. She felt as though she would return only if invited to; she did not want to fall accidentally into a world that did not want her. She opened no cupboard doors. She created her own magic, and her own delight, and made her own sacrifices.

And one day Susan opened her eyes and she saw her siblings and she felt something like sadness and something like peace and something like determination. She felt that she had lived twenty years in this world and died one hundred years old in another her siblings had never known. She had seen cars and aeroplanes and war both with swords and machine guns. She knew how to use the Internet. She led marches and protests and watched with dismay as the hills of her sweet England shuddered and sprouted steel buildings. She no longer wanted to be Susan the Gentle, gentle though she may be.

Susan did not know quite what she wanted to be yet, but she locked eyes with Aslan behind Peter's shoulder and what passed between them was something like a promise.

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