Lost - Edmund Pevensie

Chapter Twelve

His dark hair gleaming under the newly rising was disheveled from the previous battle and the wind. He'd been further ahead of the rest of the Narnians for a while and they'd just started to catch up to him. Although  Edmund hadn't slept all night, after seeing the gory battle, he'd lost any thought of sleep. Even as the rest of the Narnians caught up with him, there were no sounds. Everyone was mourning the losses from the battle. Sure sleep would probably be a good idea for hi aching muscles, but he knew for a fact none would come.

Edmund looked down from in the air as he was on the griffin. His eyes scanned over the troops searching for one girl. He flew over the entire remaining army, not seeing her long, chestnut brown hair anywhere. A bad feeling rose in his chest, but Ed pushed it back down, not wanting to think negatively. He probably just missed her. Edmund landed down on the ground a bit behind Peter, stepping off the griffin.

"Peter? Where is she?" Peter turned to look at Edmund, his face twisted in exhaustion, guilt, and fear. Peter felt ashamed. He'd assured his younger brother that he'd take care of Madelyn. If he had done a better job, she would be walking back to the How with them right now. Caspian was walking a bit further behind them, looking at the two brothers warily.

The memories of what had happened a few hours earlier were still fresh in their minds. The cries of the falling Narnians were like whiplashes.

Edmund's hope was withering away with every passing second as he saw the dejected look on his older brother's face who stayed silent. He looked around, seeing the mirrored expressions on Caspian and Susan's faces. Edmund's jaw clenched and his hands balled into fists. It seemed as if the color in the world had become dark all of a sudden. His eyes were no longer the warm brown. Instead, they were now an abyss of lost hope.

He looked around, his eyes landing on his older sister, who shared the look on Peter's face. Her eyes were red and puffy. The way they looked at Edmund made him want to scream, but what good would that do? So instead he just looked Peter dead in the eyes.

"Peter, where is she?" His voice was starting to shake with anger. His hands were trembling and his whole body felt hotter than it had just a few seconds earlier as if the sun had moved closer to the Earth all of a sudden.

"Edmund." Susan approached the two of them with an unsure look in her eyes. Her throat felt raw from screaming for Madelyn. She remembered the look in Madelyn's eyes when she looked at her from inside the gate. An arrow had hit her and she was in pain, but that didn't stop her from putting on a brave face as she turned around and kept fighting.

She knew how awful the pain of an arrow was very well. Even if it just grazed the skin, the pain was awful and with Madelyn, the arrow hadn't just grazed her skin. It had pierced her skin.

"Where the hell is she Peter?" His eyes were hard and he had no hope left. A small part of him already knew the answer to the question, but he refused to believe it. He didn't know why he kept asking the same question. Maybe if he kept asking, he might just get the answer he wanted so desperately to hear. His voice was dangerously quiet.

Some people think the quiet is better, but the truth is, it's so much worse. It makes sense. Isn't the quiet in the darkness that scares people so much?

It was a tone that the Pevensie siblings hadn't heard in Edmund's voice in a long time. The last time the Pevensie siblings heard that tone in his voice was a dark time in his life. They prayed that they'd never hear that voice from their brother again, yet hear it was. It was threatening enough to make even Susan flinch back.

After the Battle of Beruna, something in Edmund had changed. He was more reserved and it seemed that all the childlike wonder had left his eyes. With time, he learned to cover it up and live with it so it wouldn't worry his family. Maybe it was all the guilt that he felt. No matter what happened, he couldn't seem to shake off the guilt.