SUSAN of NARNIA

Chapter 9: The Dark Night

"I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not." -Song of Solomon 3:2

Azaroth did not appear to Susan again that night, and upon returning home Susan slept better for the first time in several years. The next morning Susan gathered the last of her things and went to her new home in the country.
Over the next few days Susan unpacked her things and straitened up the rooms that she would be staying in.
Then there came a very dark night, in which thunder shook the house and lightning lit up the dark rooms as if it had been day.
Once more, Susan had not been able to sleep anyway. She knew that she could no longer convince herself that she did not believe in and long for Aslan anymore. She now sensed the undeniable void deep within the core of her heart, which she knew could only be filled if she could only be with Aslan once again.
Susan arose and slinging her bag over her shoulder and taking with her a lamp to guide her, she ascended the stairs, to the upper room.
As she went along, Susan thought about how small the house had become to her now. She was no longer the same girl that she had once been, she was now a woman.
Strange that her thinking had been so quickly changed, and then changed back again over such a short span of time. Could it be that, as she had read in the fifth part of Professor Kirke's Chronicle, Aslan might be calling to her now, even as he had called Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole out of their own world to save Prince Rilian? Susan quickened her pace with that hope as she came to the top of the stairs.
When she came to the upper room Susan found that a lock had been installed which had not been there before, but, having the key, she unlocked it and raised her lamp as she opened the door.
The sight that met her eyes was somewhat different from what she had expected. The wardrobe was in fact still there, but there were now some other things in the room. On a table Susan first found a folded dress that she concluded must have been Jill Poles, and beside it was a gold-hilted sword which Eustace had brought from the giant's castle of Harfang and must have saved when he buried his clothes.
Susan then turned to the wardrobe, and opening the door, she looked in half-hoping to see the trees and the light from the lamp post of Lantern Waste. Instead she only saw the back of the wardrobe.
Professor Kirke's word's came back to her, "You won't get into Narnia again by that route. ... don't go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don't try to get there at all. It'll happen when you're not looking for it." She closed the wardrobe door and turned back to the table before her. She reached into her bag and brought out the antique leather bag, and set it on the table beside Eustace's sword.
Inside the leather bag were only the green rings now, and they couldn't do any harm in this world.
Looking up from the table, Susan's eye caught sight of a picture on the opposite wall, and coming over to it she found that it was indeed the picture of the Dawn Treader of which she had read in the fourth part of Professor Kirke's Chronicle. Susan guessed that the Professor had probably bought the picture from the Scrubbs when he heard the adventure of the voyage to the Lone Islands.
Setting the lamp carefully on the table Susan knelt down on the floor, "Aslan", she said, "I'm sorry for not believing and choosing to forget you. I remember now, and I believe. I cannot bear to live here in this world all alone. Will you not take me away to Your country?" Just then thunder ripped the sky above her shaking the whole house while lightning seamed to strike all around, startling her. Could it be that Aslan was angry for asking such a thing, she wondered.
Susan arose from her knees and left the room locking the door carefully behind her. She returned to her room and lay down on the bed.

The next thing that Susan knew was that Betty, (one of the three household servants), had awakened her by bursting into her room and made her get up and hurry out of the house, for to her despair she saw that the lightning had in fact struck the roof of the house and now much of it was now almost completely engulfed in flames.
Susan might have feared that the whole house would burn, had not it begun to rain, like it had on the first day that Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy had stayed at the Old Professor's house. As the night went on the clouds continued to empty their torrents upon the fire until it was completely out.
Come morning it was discovered that the damage had been limited to the roof and to the upper room alone. Apparently the locked door had been just enough to keep the fire from spreading into the rest of the upstairs. Upon investigation it was found sadly that the wardrobe, the picture of the Dawn Treader, Pole's Narnian dress and the antique bag containing the green rings had all been completely consumed. Only Eustace's gold-hilted sword remained, though the case had been burnt up and the blade was now tinted like a rainbow. Susan now only had the bag containing the written accounts of her family.

After the shock of the fire, Ivy, the eldest household servant, decided that she badly needed a bit of a vacation and asked Susan if she might like to come and stay with her in Bristol with her cousin until the upper room and the roof were repaired, to which Susan agreed.