𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓 || peter pevensie [1]

chapter one ~ the return

"Maria!" a young girl called from the glistening waters of Lake Kibo. "Won't you join us?"

Maria looked up from her scrolls, smiling at the group of children who were waving at her, a little way off from her seat near the edge of the water. "You know I don't like swimming," she said.

This was a lie, of course. During the blazing heat of the Island's summer, to swim in the lake was all anyone would have wanted. But Maria hadn't touched the waters in five years. In truth, she was afraid, not of the water, but that once she was immersed, she would never want to come out.

"You're no fun anymore, not since you started reading all those stories." One of the little boys gazed at her with wide, sad eyes. "Don't you like being here with us?"

At this, Maria sighed, rolled up the scroll she had been reading and set it down beside her. "Don't say things like that; of course I like being here with all of you." She stood and walked closer to the water's edge, careful not to get so close as to let the lethargic waves touch her toes.

"Come on, Maria. Please!" The children erupted into a chorus of irresistible begging for her to join them. She shook her head sympathetically and was about to turn back to sit down when the tide surged a little further onto the pebbled bay and washed over her heels. Maria felt a tingle of delight flow from her feet to her head. Her heart swelled. Surely it wouldn't hurt her to bathe in the waters for a little while.

Maria turned back to the children, who were still calling out for her, and stepped further into Lake Kibo. The water covered both of her feet fully, providing long-awaited relief from the blistering heat of the midday sun. Any and all thoughts of heartbreak and loss that threatened to pull her out were washed clean out of her mind and up onto the shore. She took another step, then another. The light silks she was dressed in soon became heavy with water, but she didn't stop, not even when the gold ring around her neck that held up the front of her dress began to pressure the top of her spine. The smiles of the children came closer and closer, and Maria couldn't stand up anymore. She lifted herself to the surface of the lake and floated on her back to where the children tread the water, waiting for her.

"Happy?" she smiled up at them.

"You look like an angel," said one of the girls. She reached out to where Maria's braid floated on the lake's surface, pulling at the end of it, untying the fastening and letting her hair flow free, spreading like a halo around her head. Maria looked at her fondly; perhaps she had been spending too much time in her imagination, instead of appreciating what was around her. What was around her, right now.

"What kind of story were you reading?" asked another one of the girls.

"It was a sort of romance-adventure story."

The girl grimaced. "I'd much rather hear one of your stories than read about that sort of stuff."

"Yeah, tell us one of your stories," the children chimed.

"But you've heard them all so many times; you could probably tell them better than I can."

"Please, Maria," they wined. "Tell us about the magical land. Tell us about Narnia."

Maria's heart swelled again and her smile fell. The water seemed to be getting colder by the second, the sunlight seemed dimmer. She tried to bring herself upright, her now loose hair clinging to her neck as her head came out of the water, strangling her. She had pushed the land of magic so deep into the back of her mind that she wasn't even sure there was any truth in the stories she used to tell. She had even begun to doubt that Narnia had ever existed in the first place, that it was just a fantasy she used to distract her from the real world. Sometimes she pondered whether she'd prefer it if Narnia hadn't existed at all.

She tried to move away from the group, towards the shore, but something was anchoring her. The children's protests became muffled and impossible to understand. There was a tugging at her dress, pulling her downwards. Maria plunged her head beneath the surface of the lake. In the clear blue water, she could see that nothing was tethering her, and yet she was sinking deeper and deeper. Soon she couldn't even reach up and out of the water. She fought hard against the grip of the nothing, desperate for breath.

Her energy began to wane. The water became darker and colder with every moment she held on. The pressure made her head ache furiously. It seemed there was nothing else to do but close her eyes and wait for her flailing body to lose all feeling. In the blackness of her mind, she felt regret; being near the lake was a mistake. She should have fought harder. Where she should have felt relief, she was surrounded by sadness.

She knew exactly what was coming.

♛

Her body should have frozen, coming up to a surface of thin ice. Maria opened her eyes to a bleached scene, which soon faded to reveal an off-white sky hanging thick over the vast expanse of water she found herself in. Looking over her shoulder, she saw a cliff in the distance, mounted with a grand, snow-covered castle. She grappled at the ice, trying to steady herself against the choppy waves, only to have it break under her trembling hands. Maria knew she had to move quickly if she was to survive the freezing waters.

Kicking her legs wildly, she started in the direction of the cliff. The ice became thicker the closer she got to the shore. Once it was solid enough to take her weight, she used what remained of her strength to pull herself out of the water and into the winter air. A bracing wind swept over her bare shoulders and she tried to wrap any excess material of her soaked dress over the exposed skin. Maria lay still. She wasn't sure for how long; it could have been minutes, it could have been hours.

She was back, when she had long since accepted that this part of her life was over, when she thought she had learnt enough to take care of herself. Yet the land she was seeing from her icy bed was not the Narnia that she had once known. It was pale and grim; even from this distance, the country looked sick. Maria didn't want to believe that it was Narnia, the land she had loved for so long. She had never seen this castle, which looked majestically out to where the sky met the horizon.

Her fingers twitched, numb from the cold. But it was still movement and it spurred her on. Pushing her bare toes into the ice, Maria shifted her body forwards. It was going to be a long journey, but she knew that if she could just keep going, forcing her eyes to stay open, she could get herself to shore.

It wasn't long before most of her body had gone numb. Parts of her dress had frozen stiff, ice laced through the threads. Gazing up to see how much further she had to crawl until she reached the cliffs, she spotted two figures at the base of the cliffs where the beach should have been. Maria didn't care if there were friends or foes; she lifted her head and reached out an arm to them. They were already getting closer and closer. Pushing herself onto her back, she lay in wait.

"Stay with us now," a deep, male voice said as both figures, dressed head to toe in dark red, crouched over her. "It's okay, we've got you." Maria's eyelids began to droop. "No, stay with us." A hand found its way around the back of her neck. The speaker lifted her up, cradling her by the shoulders and knees.

"Do you recognize this?" The second figure was also male, but Maria could only see his beady eyes. He was holding something in front of her face. It slowly came into focus; an emblem, hanging from a necklace string, depicting a firebird within a circle. Maria managed to nod her head. "Can you tell us your name?" She could see that he was smiling.

"Nimueh...Fire...song," she croaked. Nimueh; the name that had been given to her the first time she had come to Narnia. She had since always preferred that to Maria.

"Elijah was right," one said to the other as they hoisted her up and began moving towards the shore. "She came back." Maria wanted to ask who Elijah was, but knew that she had to save her strength. With Narnia in the sick state that it was, Maria was determined to find a cure.