Lucy After Narnia: Part Two
Yet child she is now. Again. And English too. But still a Narnian, still a Queen, through and through, as she feels she always has been and always will be.
Once a Queen of Narnia, Always a Queen of Narnia
No matter if her country is a world and a wardrobe away, if her crown lies on a forest floor. No matter if her legs are too short and her hands are too small, if her reflexes are too slow; no matter if sheโs tripped over her own feet eight times in the past five steps, if sheโs battered her nose because she couldnโt catch herself in time. No matter if the voice in her mouth doesn't match with the one in her mind, if its unpracticed tongue keeps tripping over once familiar words, if the language that first tumbles out is English, not Narnian.
No matter if her head aches, full of more memories than this childโs body can hold.
No matter if those fifteen years have been distilled into one sentence; I once went through a wardrobe to a land called Narnia and lived there for fifteen years. A lifetime turned into a Fact, like those of childhood your parents used to spout, saying โoh you met your Great Aunt Lucinda when you were two,โ and digging out an old, faded photograph as Proof, and you look at the toddler who is supposedly you and feel no deep feeling towards them, feel no identity in them, because you do not remember being them, because you do not remember that day or the days, weeks, months, years around it. Not really. Not enough to call them yours. But she has no Proof of this Fact; no photograph or painting, no memento or keepsake, not even her scars remain. She has nothing to hold on to, to point to, to remind her of those years.ย
She was Once a Queen of Narnia, so she is Now a Queen of Narnia. She will Always be a Queen of Narnia. Even if she has nothing to point to, no proof but her own memories.ย
And even those are quickly fading.ย
She no longer remembers her last visit to the Lone Islands, nor the first poem she ever memorized. The Laws of Narnia are trickling out her mind, and the names of everyone at the Cair. Her mind can move through the steps of the dryadsโ dance, can play Mr. Tumnusโ lullaby on an imagined flute, but her body can only stumble through the motions, hesitant where she used to be confident, halting where she used to be smooth.ย
By the end of that first day, Lucy can no longer conjugate a Calmoren verb, let alone speak it, let alone write its script. Hazy memories of her times in Calmoren flood her mind, but the speech is clear enough, hours of conversation and storytelling as clearly articulated as if they had come through on the wireless. Yet she cannot make heads or tails it. She, who mere hours ago had been the most fluent of her siblings. The conversations she had, the very words she herself spoke, are inscrutable to her now, even as their sounds are sharper than the memory of the Beaversโ cozy lodge, sharper even than her memory of Mr. Tumnusโ face the day before, when he came rushing into the Cair full of news of that accursed White Stag, which had blurred now, as if hidden behind thickly falling snow.ย
It is no wonder then that Lucy almost goes mad during those first few days. The pieces donโt fit; Lucy Pevensie of Finchley, daughter of Helen and Richard had no place in Narnia, not after she found Mr. Tumnusโ door kicked in. Lucy the Valiant, Daughter of Eve, Queen of Narnia has no place in England, and yet here she is, and she will not be overwritten as easily as Lucy Pevensie had been; she will not settle into the back of Lucy Pevensieโs mind as Lucy Pevensie settles back into England. Lucy the Valiant is at odds with Lucy Pevensie; Lucy of Narnia no longer fits in this too tight childโs body with its clumsy fingers and knobbly knees. During those first days, it is almost more than Lucy can bear, being both Lucy the Valiant and Lucy Pevensie.
There is nothing here that Lucy remembers, nothing save her siblings that she loves, and so she desperately tries to cling to that now gone life, to bring any small facet of it into this one. As her memories begin to dull and fade and slip away, she turns to the comforts of her Narnian life: racing on horseback along the banks of Beruna, training with her knives or her bow or her sword, embroidering something for her siblings or her friends; all the things she did when her duties seemed overwhelming and the world seemed to be and she seemed too small.ย
She begs Mrs. Macready for embroidery supplies, asks the Professor if she can ride a horse from his stables, secrets dull knives away from their displays. But all of that is gone now too, because this body does not remember.ย
Her fingers fumble needles and tangle thread. Sheโs too short for the horses in the Professorโs stable, and theyโre too dull anyway, too tame to run wild; not that she would be allowed to anyway, child that she is now, confined to stout ponies who walk at a steady sedate pace; perfect for children learning to ride for the first time.ย
Each time she stumbles, each time her thread tangles, each time she is confronted by the horrible reality that this is not a dream, Lucyโs scowl deepens. Mrs. Macready begins to avoid her like the plague, little understanding how such fury can suddenly appear in such a small girl. And she almost feels bad. Mrs. Macready has done nothing to her after all; any sensible adult in this drab grey world would take away knives from an eight year old, and scoff at her outsized frustration over beginner mistakes at embroidery. Lucyโs fairly sure she had done that herself in Narnia, whenโฆ when that Archenlander prince, Coโ Corโ... when he had been their ward at Cair Paravel.
And thatโs what stings the most about it, thatโs what really cuts Lucy to the quick; theyโre both right, the Professor and Mrs. Macready. Lucy Pevensie is no more capable of handling the spirited horses that she loves than she is of reaching the top shelf. She is no more capable of safely handling her knives than she is of handling that accursed embroidery needle.
In a detached way, as they days wear on and grind her memories to unrecognizable dust, as the gaping wound of the vanishing fifteen years continues to throb, not yet obscured by the eight, as she weeps for what she has lost and rages against the injustice of it all, she understands why the magic is taking those fifteen years, why it is dulling the shape edge of her past. Otherwise the dusty memories of the young Lucy Pevensie of Finchley never stand a chance of pushing past the memories of Lucy the Valiant. Otherwise the irritation and the anger and the frustration never would begin to fade. Otherwise, Lucy thinks during that last night, when only the lamppost and a red scarf and the smell of fur remain, we might never get over it; we might stew in this rage for the rest of our lives and never appreciate our life here, never settle into our lives here. Otherwise, she thinks, I might really begin to hate that Lion.
On that last moonless night, Lucy curls tightly into herself, clutching the blankets in white knuckled fists, screwing her eyes shut, and repeats โOnce a King or Queen of Narnia, Always a King or Queen of Narnia,โ in a hushed whisper over and over again, until the mantra dissolves into sleepy mumbles, and her last conscious thought before sleep takes her is, โI will always be Narnia, I will always be Lucy the Valiant. Even if I donโt remember that I am.โ
Months later, it is Lucy Pevensies who steps off the train at Kingscross Station. It is Lucy Pevensie who lights up when she recognizes her motherโs face, who runs at a breakneck speed into her arms. It is Lucy Pevensie who thrusts the little packet of neatly embroidered handkerchiefs into her motherโs hands that night, as they all sit around the fire. And Lucy the Valiant is now just a dream of a dream at the back of her mind.ย
But fifteen years is a lot to forget, and there is not a lot of room in an eight year oldโs mind for fifteen years to get lost. And Lucy Pevensie cannot explain when asked why she took up embroidery while at the Professorโs, cannot explain why she embroidered a lamppost and a faun with a red scarf on one of the hankies, nor beavers on another, nor the simple wardrobe that adorns the third. She cannot explain why she begins to dance when flute music plays on the wireless on their second night home, or how she knows the steps or where they come from. Nor can she explain to herself why a sudden overwhelming sadness washes over her or where the profound sense of loss and the rage at that loss comes from. She canโt even explain what sheโs lost.
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