Further Up & Further In

Haunted

The White Witch haunted Edmund's dreams long after they left Narnia.

Truthfully, it wasn't as bad while he, Peter, Susan, and Lucy remained in Narnia. It's harder to be afraid of your past when you go to sleep every night and wake up every morning surrounded by friends and family. In Narnia there were feasts with all their close friends. In Narnia people bowed and cheered for him. In Narnia he didn't look in the mirror and see a boy. He saw a king.

His dreams didn't bother him much at all when he was discussing battle strategy with Peter. They didn't bother him when he was reading with Susan. And they didn't bother him in the slightest when Lucy was dragging him on adventures and making him laugh. Cair Paravel was free of ghosts.

But when Edmund returned home, he returned to war. Professor Kirke's house in the country was smaller than his castle, and it was lonelier, too. It felt like a shell. So when Edmund went to bed most nights, all he could do was dream. He didn't talk about the images that played across his eyelids when they would close, but his siblings did their best to help anyways. Peter stayed up late talking to him about battles Edmund had won, and how brave he had been. Susan would sit next to him, petting his hair and singing to him, refusing to go to sleep until she was certain he was. Lucy would crawl into bed next to him if he seemed the least bit restless, and on those nights when she couldn't, she'd leave her stuffed dog in her place. Yet, as kind as those comforts were, they could not hold his nightmares completely at bay.

Sometimes he would dream that Aslan never saved him and all Narnia. In these dreams, the White Witch would kill him on the Stone Table, and once she had finished off Edmund, she'd turn her attention to the rest of his family. It was never exactly the same. Sometimes she killed Peter and Susan and Lucy, and other times she held them captive in her icy dungeons for eternity, or enslaved them. Any version of this dream made Edmund wake in a cold sweat, and this one was the most common.

He also had another sort of dream. A dream in which he changed his mind, but was never forgiven. Aslan was there, but he didn't die for the love of Edmund. Sometimes he didn't die at all, and went straight off to war with Peter, Susan, and Lucy, leaving Edmund abandoned in a war camp. Edmund would repent, but his siblings would be made King and Queens without him, and he would be forgotten. Sometimes his siblings didn't even remember that he ever existed.

But his worst dreams - the ones that made him hold his eyes open for fear of going to sleep, the ones that haunted him long after he awoke - were different. Because in these dreams, the White Witch ruled all Narnia in her icy grasp.

And next to her ruled Edmund.

In these dreams, it was not the Witch that haunted him. It was himself; the memories of the traitorous child, and the illusions of what could have been if he had never been saved. Edmund believed he was forgiven, yet the guilt still clawed at him. Some nights he would watch himself turn good Narnians to stone. He'd watch himself lock his brother and sisters away. Sometimes he'd hurt them. And despite that horror, what was worse is that some nights he'd watch himself drive the knife into Aslan's heart, killing him for good. He would wake up afraid to face his siblings, as if he'd actually done these terrible things, and he'd go to sleep terrified of doing them again.

Forgiven and brand new, indeed. But the White Witch still haunted Edmund's dreams... and when he was awake, he haunted himself.