I'm Back

3

There, up ahead was the door to the armory. Susan approached quickly. Leaning down she studied the lock, it would be easy to pick. In a matter of seconds she was at the bottom of the stairs looking around in the gloom. A statue for every true ruler of Narnia stood in a long line that stretched down the hall way in both directions. She turned left, heading toward the earlier royalty. THERE! Lucy's face immortalized in stone stood next to Edmund's who stood next to hers. At the statue's feet was a large chest, hands shaking she undid the latches and opened the lid without a sound. Inside she could just make out the shimmer of golden fabric and jewels. Susan couldn't believe how obsessed she use to be with clothing.

 Silk finer than any she'd ever touched before slid over her fingers as she dug for her quiver. At the bottom lay her great grandmother's ring, it had been passed down to the eldest girl of every generation for century's. It had fallen off her finger into the quiver last time she'd been in Narnia.

 Her finger's touched the cool sharp edges of arrows, the cold ivory of the quiver, but they didn't touch gold. Pulling out the quiver and searching franticly now, Susan turned over the quiver spilling arrows on the floor. The ring wasn't there. The ring Aslan had demanded her to fetch, the ring that belonged in her world, not this one, was gone.

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 Far on the other side of the palace, up flights of stairs and behind a locked door, Lucy fingered the ring she'd seen her grandmother, her mother and her sister wear. It must have slipped off Susan's finger last time she'd fired her bow. Years ago when Lucy had felt Susan's goneness most acutely she'd visited her statue in the armory, ran her hand along the bow and found the golden ring, set with pearls and sapphires at the bottom of the trunk.

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 Susan fought back the panic rising in her throat. Aslan had been very very clear. Get The Ring, Then Leave. She stumbled around the trunk, searching for the ring, finding nothing. "Oh Aslan, where is it?!?!?!" That was when she heard foot steps coming her way.

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 "Oh, Come on Ed. Why would your dagger be down here?" Caspian's logic was annoying sometimes.

 "I don't know. Maybe because the last time I had it I was down here." Edmund was in major trouble in Peter found out he had lost his favorite dagger.

 "Ok, why were you down here? Other than the out of date clothes there is NO reason to come down here."

 "Yes there is, to see family."

  "She's been gone forever Ed, and she's not coming..." he was cut off by a slam that echoed down the hall in the direction they were going.

 Neither man said a word, they both turned and ran down the hall. Edmund stopped in front of Susan's statue. The chest at it's feet was usually covered in dust but now it was smudged with the print of a hand much smaller than his, just a bout the same size as Lucy's, but Lucy was up stairs, in her room. And he could see the print of a wedding ring in the smudge. 

 "Caspian, some one's been looking through Susan's stuff. A married woman, looks like." Edmund whispered to Caspian.

 "Let me see," he hissed back. "Your right, and whoever it is has to be farther down the hall. Come on."

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 Susan's breathing was heavy. Why on earth were they down here? The dust on the floor made it clean no one came down here. THE DUST! Susan looked at her feet, a trail through the dust led straight to them. "Crap."