Narnia: The Last Battle | Susan Pevensie

Chapter 17

During one of her fancy parties in England, Susan heard about the train accident. She ran as soon as she heard about it. She walked through the crowd blocking the newsstands, which showed more information about the accident. When she heard the names of her family, everything became a blur. She walked to her house, feeling broken inside. She was officially alone.

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Days passed, Susan had done everything in her power to get the bodies of her loved ones, but these were unrecognizable. This made it a little harder for her to grief. Her friends called and went to visit her, but all she did was dismiss them. She spent those days looking at the pictures of her childhood with her family, mostly her brothers and her little sister. She remembered the games they used to play and how they would let their imagination flow. With that came the memory of all of them playing hide and seek at Prof. Digory's house, where Lucy had hidden in an old closet and gotten to Narnia.

"We had a big imagination to have created such a world in our heads," Susan scuffed with a small laugh and shaking her head because of how incredulous they were.

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These last few months — every day before she went to bed — she looked at the picture of them, remembering all the good times together. That night she was not going to do the same thing she did every night. She started with the powder, dabbing it on her skin. Applying makeup was how she sometimes bonded with Lucy. Even though Lucy did not like it as much as Susan did, makeup still helped them bond. She looked at the mirror, straightening her dress.

She went inside the party and felt different as she did not belong there. She could hear giggles and people talking. Well, everything that she used to like of these gatherings. She faked smiled, walked to her friends, and tried to forget everything. Forget that her family, her siblings and her parents, died just months ago.

Susan laughed while taking a sip of her champagne. She looked to the side and saw a figure of a lion. The last thing she needed... she was hallucinating. That was the first thing that came to her mind. How could there be a lion in a party like this? She looked back at her friends to see if they noticed the big lion in the room, but they were still talking about the son of some rich man being a perfect husband or something like that. She glanced back to where the lion was standing, but it was not there.

"Susan Pevensie, are you listening to us?" asked one of her friends.

Susan stared at her friend and nodded, acting as if she had not just seen a lion in the middle of the party. They continued talking about nylons, lipstick, and parties.

At the end of the night, she went home. She laid on the bed staring at the ceiling. That was the moment when the memories rush in. She turned to the side and cried herself to sleep.

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Since that night of the party where Susan saw the lion, she saw the lion every time she closed her eyes, in every dream; even in the streets. She knew that the lion was not like the ones in the zoo. That lion was different, but at the same time, it looked familiar. At first, she thought the lion was hunting her, but all they did when they would see each other they would stare. She tried so hard to see where the lion was from, but nothing came to her mind. She started thinking she was hallucinating or going crazy, maybe from the lack of sleep she had. That did not stop her from going out and socializing.

That week was the hardest week Susan had had in months. She looked at the gravestones, trying to hold the tears back. It had been a year since the death of her family. It had been a hard year, but that did not make her change her way of living. She had done the complete opposite, going to every party she's invited to. During that week, she received various words of sympathy and pity looks. Why not? She was an orphan with no siblings nor relatives.
She got home from visiting her family in the graveyard. When she was taking off her jacket, she heard a knock on the door.

"I'm going!" she walked to the door, after like two steps there was another knock but a little more desperate, "I said, 'I'm going'," Susan said.

Susan opened the door, and there was a man with a briefcase and an orange envelope.

"Are you Susan Pevensie?" the man questioned.

"Yes, I am she.  Why?" Susan said

"I have a package for you," said the man handing the orange envelope to her.

She grabbed it and the man nodded and left. Susan went inside and closed the door behind her. She went to the living room and sat on the sofa. She opened the envelope and started reading the papers from the envelope. The words on them were what overflowed the cup. The papers were a warning from the bank saying that she had to leave the house and find another place to live.

She put on her jacket back on and left to graveyard. There she cried and yelled, questioning why was this happening to her, but nobody answered. Later that day, she went back home — a home she was going to lose soon ­­­— and laid in her bed. She fell asleep with her face felt sticky because of her now dried tears.

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Susan was standing in the middle of a nowhere. She looked around but could not tell where she was because it was dark. Susan could barely see a figure in front of her. It looked like the lion, the one she saw in her hallucinations.

"Who are you?" asked Susan

"You don't recognize me. I know that you deny knowing me, but do you really not recognize me?" said the lion. Those words triggered something in her. Every memory of Narnia came to her.

"Aslan?" questioned Susan, "But it cannot be. Narnia was just a game my siblings and I used to play."

"Who said that? Don't deny what you saw. Don't deny where you lived." Aslan said, "You were Queen Susan the Gentle, Queen Susan of the Horn, Marksman Queen. Why did you forget that? How could you forget your friends, Caspian, Reepicheep, Tumpkin?"

Susan started crying understanding and remembering her best and worst moments in Narnia. She remembered. She started to believe Narnia again. She herself could not believe that she thought that Narnia was fiction; that Narnian friends were fiction. She even called her siblings immature for believing in Narnia.

"I'm so sorry, Aslan. I know I did wrong and I hope you can forgive me," regret was clear in Susan's voice.

"You are already forgiven. Forgiveness was waiting for you." Aslan said, "Susan, come here. I would like your help." Aslan indicates her to move towards him. "What do you see?"
"Nothing. It's so dark, I cannot see anything."

Susan said, "Where are we?"

"We stand where Narnia used to be." Aslan replied her question. "Narnia was destroyed by evil. Everything good went to Aslan's country while all the bad was banished."

When she was going to answer, she heard a roar and the light came to be. A beautiful sun, just like the one in England in the summer, was floating over her. She heard another roar, and saw a huge ocean in front of her. She looked at the floor and it was sand. She took off her shoes to feel the soft sand. She looked around and she saw what she could recognize as Narnia. It was filled with trees, animals, peace.

"This is not Narnia, you knew. This is a new Narnia, Narnia's new beginning." Aslan answered her unspoken question. He turned to Susan and said, "Now, you will wake up remembering where you were and where you've been."

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When she went back to England, she stopped worrying about nylons, lipstick, and parties. She changed her life completely. Susan found a perfect husband and moved to the countryside. The house was similar to Prof. Digory's house, where she had first visited the old Narnia. Susan had 2 children, a daughter and a son. Every night she would tell her children stories about her adventures in Narnia. She would also tell them about their brave uncles and aunt. The children fell asleep.

"Where did you get those stories from?" her husband would always ask her.

"From memories, someone told me to never forget where I had lived and what I saw." She would always answer him. He never understood it and never questioned it either.

After that encounter with Aslan, Susan never returned to the new Narnia, but never forgot about Narnia, old and new, or the people who lived there. She did not know that someday in the future, her children would go to Narnia....