With Courage [King Caspian X OC]

Chapter 20

Amber blinked as the wave curved itself around her and felt, for a moment, adrift on its current, as if she would simply ride upon the ocean until it returned her to the grey arms of the Thames. The feeling lasted only a moment, for when her eyes opened, they were met not with the dazzle of sunlight against water she had left behind, but a blank white wall.

The world was immediately and painfully quiet, filled only by the ringing in her ears and the uneven breaths stuttering from her lungs. Gone was the pleasantly cool breeze lifting the hair from her neck. No more could she feel sand beneath her boots, soft and yielding. What remained was her gift from Caspian clutched tightly in her palm and the barest trace of his lips on hers, salted from the sea and the dire finality of their final moments.

Her neck turned reluctantly to either side of her. Small movements, stiff like a doll shedding the rust along its joints, and saw a line of bronze frames lined neatly on the wall. Behind her, a door slammed. She turned to find the source. Instead, she found Dulwich.

Once a place that had filled her with such immense comfort, the sight of it then settled heavy in her gut. Her knees wavered under the weight of her grief, and as she stumbled a step forward and heard the echo of it down the body of the gallery, her final hope that this was all a cruel mirage shattered.

Narnia was gone. Caspian, the Pevensies, Marco, the Dawn Treader. Panic gripped her. The air was too thin, too close. She hurried through the building to the foyer, sparing one final look back at where she began, where many months ago a new hallway had appeared and taken her home. Nothing remained.

In the foyer she found reason for pause again. The sensation of the world closing in around her stopped as she watched life outside: blue sky, lush green grass. Families lounged on the outdoor seating and the street beyond boasted a gentle stream of pedestrians. It had been snowing when she left, had it not?

She looked down to her winter coat and thick, heavy boots. A bead of sweat traced her spine as she considered what this could mean. How much time had passed? Lucy had told her once that time between their world and Narnia didn't exist linearly. Twenty years could pass in only a matter of minutes, a whole day in seconds. So why had two seasons gone by in her absence?

"Are you alright, Miss?" The receptionist was seated to her left, watching her with thinning politeness. Amber realised that she must've asked more than once, but she was too caught in her surmounting unease to hear her.

"Fine, thank you." She answered without conviction, offering up a wavering smile. The receptionist nodded and settled back in her seat, though nothing about her expression said she believed Amber. Why should she? A few hours ago, she had been on the brink of death on a ship sailing the seas of another world and now she was back in London dressed for winter while the world strolled by in skirts and sunhats.

Her gaze caught on the poster behind the receptionist and the slow prickle of dread against her neck grew into a vice around her throat.

Minutes, I've been back for minutes, she thought to herself. How was it that time had disintegrated for her so completely within the space of a few breaths and even fewer steps? Reality had become too malleable, a body of water she had crashed into, sending uncontested ripples through the very fabric of the universe. The world around her was not as it should be.

She may have spent the last months of her life with minotaurs and kings, battling sea serpents and slave traders, but she would like to think that those experiences didn't completely derail her memories of before, though she had hit her head more than once aboard the Dawn Treader. There were some things she couldn't forget, details that felt so cemented in her mind they never could have been fabricated, so unnecessarily small for her consciousness to create.