XIV

(NaNoWriMo - Day 11)

As the eagle approached them, all the animals fell to their faces before his majesty.

“Lord Inri, is it you?” asked Hedegar, daring only to half look up.

“It is,” answered the bird, “Rise faithful servants.”

“We didn’t know, Lord. All this time, you were with us,” continued the hedgehog, returning to his normal position. “Forgive us.”

“Surely you know I am with you always,” the eagle answered, “But often you serve me best when I am unseen or unnoticed. But I never leave my realm unprotected.”

“Will you tell us what to do with the seed?” asked Vixel.

“The choice is yours, I will only advise you,” Inri replied. “You need to consider what is best for Susan and what is best for your people.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” began Scaltard a little nervously, “But…could you not heal Susan without the aid of the seed? And then we could still plant the seed and need not have to make so terrible a decision.”

“I am able to heal anyone,” Inri replied, “But I seldom work such healings on my own. And I only ever do so when it is the best for all involved. For now, however, I will ease her pain somewhat and talk to her. It seems none of you have thought to find out what Susan thinks of the situation.”

“But Lord, she has been sleeping since before we found the seed and we didn’t wish to disturb her.” It was Ratel who pointed this out.

“Yes,” replied the eagle. “But now I will wake her as I can bring her relief from her pain. Give me some time alone with her first and once we have spoken, if she is not too tired, you may talk to her also.

The animals assented to this arrangement, not that they would dare to do otherwise.

The eagle now made his way over to where Susan lay sleeping. He placed both mighty wings gently over her face and closed his eyes. Opening them again, he removed his feathery wings and spoke.

“Susan.”

Susan opened her eyes slowly. She felt foggy from sleep, but the unendurable pain seemed to have lessened, for now.

She ought to have been frightened of such a powerful bird standing over her, but one look into those gentle eyes and she knew she was safe.

“Susan.” He spoke her name again.

Recognition flooded over her and she half sat up as tears streamed down her face.

“Aslan?”

“I have not gone by that name for some time, my child. I was once known as Aslan, but that world is no more. Its story has ended. Here I am known as Inri.”

“Narnia no more!? What happened?” she began. “Oh, of course. The trouble Jill and Eustace were meant to help with; they never made it. What happened? Has the land been conquered? No don’t tell me, I wouldn’t care to hear about more deaths.”

“It wasn’t conquest. And it wasn’t just Narnia. That whole world is no more. Like Charn after the time Digory Kirk and Polly Plummer visited it,” Inri explained.

“Would Eustace and Jill have been able to save it?” asked Susan.

“They did save it,” the eagle answered, “I brought them from the train to Narnia. They… But that was to be Narnia’s last battle. After that, Narnia and that whole world’s time was complete and the world overwhelmed.”

“So they died in Narnia, not in the train wreck? And what of the others?”

“No child, they died in the train wreck. They all did. But Eustace and Jill were needed first in Narnia.”

“So what became of them after Narnia was destroyed?” asked Susan, her head was starting to spin with the realisation that more had been going on in unseen realms than what she knew of from the train wreck.

“They, like all other faithful Narnians, and all other faithful people from every world who have passed on, are now in my country. Narnia, your world, this world – they are all but shadows of the True World that is my country. They are all now at peace and reunited, living and serving in my everlasting land.”

“All of them?” asked Susan, uncertain of how to feel about this revelation. Could it be true? That her family’s lives had not been snuffed out at the crash, but instead had truly begun?

“All of them,” he answered. “Peter, Edmund, Lucy, your parents. Jill, Eustace, Digory and Polly. They are all there.”

Susan didn’t know what to say. She let the tears flow and the Eagle watched her with compassion.

“Asl…Inri, if I had been on the train, not believing in you or Narnia or all that is true, would I be….?” She left the question unfinished.

“My child,” the Eagle had tears in his eyes.

“I failed you. How could I be so weak? I suppose I deserved all that happened to me. That last time we spoke, when you told me I couldn’t return, I promised so much. I intended to follow you and serve you in our world, but instead I denied your existence. But even back then, you knew, didn’t you? You tried to warn me? And still I failed.”

“Yes child, but all that is past. Now you remember.”

“Only because I see you now.”

“But you remembered before you saw me. You had already begun to remember after the train crash. Why else did you go to look for the rings?”

“I suppose. But I wasn’t sure. I was grasping for anything I could hold onto to make sense of what was happening. But I wasn’t sure of you, of whether I believed in you. Of whether I liked who you were.

“Aslan, why did you let it happen?” In her distress, she used his old name. She knew she had no right to ask, but she felt had to.

“Oh my child!” Here, he stretched out a wing and covered her in an embrace of soft feathers.

“You ask the right question, not querying why I caused it to happen. These things happen in your world, and in others, because they are fallen. You know this. It hurts me as it hurts you. As to why I did not prevent it; there are so many reasons, and all of them were for good – for the good of Narnia, for your good, for the good of the people in this world. I use all situations for the good of those who love me and those whom I love. Do you believe this?”

“I think so,” she said. “At least, I want to believe. And when I look back on all you’ve done, I must believe. It doesn’t all make sense, but as Mrs Beaver once said, ‘You are good’”.

“My child, that is faith. Remember what you said the first time you came here and the animals didn’t all trust you? Remember what you said about sometimes needing to trust without knowing for sure that you could?”

Susan remembered how the weaver had been watching her so intently during that speech. She nodded.

“You were right. Sometimes faith requires a shot in the dark – trusting without knowing for sure that a person deserves your trust.”

“But I do know you. Time has shown me that you don’t let us down. I’m sorry for doubting when I’ve had so much more interaction with you than most people. I know I don’t deserve it, but will you forgive me?”

“I already have.”

With those words, he placed his second wing over her, and she buried her face in his feathers, allowing his forgiveness to sweep over her as it had done those many years ago in Narnia, when she had let him down the first time.