Further Up & Further In

(Un)believers

Edmund and Susan were always alike. The doubters, the black sheep, the shadows. They grew close in Narnia, and closer still after.

I. Edmund says, "We are kids," and Peter replies, "Well, I wasn't always." Edmund and Susan exchange a glance - a glance that says they've had this conversation before. A glance that says "No, but we are now. We will learn to live with it." They've stayed up way too late and found each other pacing the halls, and they have gone to sit in the Professor's yard where they can see they sky so clearly that they can almost pretend it's the Narnian stars looking back at them. "We'll go back one day," Edmund insists. He still sounds old. He still looks 10. "And if we don't?" Susan whispers, barely daring to voice her fears. Edmund sighs, and the wind blows cold all of a sudden. "Then I suppose we'll learn to be kids, again. It doesn't mean it's over. 'Once a King, always..." but he can't finish the thought. The words catch in his throat. He doesn't feel like a king. But he still believes he will be one again, and with him, Susan lets herself believe it, too.

II. Peter tears his shirt and begins fashioning it into a torch, and Edmund and Susan exchange another glance. They're almost laughing. Susan knows, though Peter apparently doesn't, that Edmund holds his torch in his bag. It's so like Peter, of course, to forget something like that; he doesn't keep track of the What and the When - only the Who. Peter would look after his siblings to the death of him, but not the way Susan would - not the way a mother would. Edmund and Susan both know this. They don't judge him too harshly as he wraps the tatters of his shirt around a stick, but they do laugh. Edmund begins reaching for his torch, and Susan already knows it's coming. She knows her brother. She knows Edmund.

III. They don't know what Aslan's How is until they enter the main chamber. Susan sees the table, and her breath catches in her throat for a moment. Edmund stops breathing altogether. He never dared to visit it, after Aslan's sacrifice, and Susan had never dared to go there again. She knew he had risen again gloriously. But she also knew that his blood still stained the crack of the table. The two of them see the stone, and they see the image carved above it, and they turn to each other - with awe and with fear. They believed they'd come back - scarcely dared to believe - but not to this place. They each remembered the sacrifice; the terror of that night; Susan remembered the Lion's eyes rolling back, and Edmund remembered the fear of going off to war. They don't exchange words - all their words have already been exchanged - but their eyes find each other again. They each know what the other is thinking.

IV. Edmund watches Susan say goodbye, and makes a joke about not understanding, but he does, better than even she does. The goodbye comes easy, but the leaving is hard, and as he watches Peter reach out to reassure their sister, Edmund knows she might not snap back this time. Susan believed, but it was hard to believe, and Edmund had heard this in nearly all their late night conversations. He didn't know if she could take leaving again; leaving for good. He didn't know what she might do. And as they made their way through the doorway Aslan opened, Edmund was scared - not for himself. Hardly even for Peter, who was leaving, too. Susan said goodbye and for the moment believed everything would be alright. Edmund knew better. Edmund knew Susan.