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When Susan finished counting to one hundred, she paused before leaving the long, low corner room the Professor had decided would belong to "the children" for however long the evacuation lasted.
On the one hand, she had a distinct feeling that Peter might have taken it into his head to try hiding inside the suit of armor in the picture room (he had remarked several times that people must have been shorter in the past, since it was almost his size) and wanted to make sure his sense of responsibility won over his sense of adventure.
On the other hand, she was worried that either Lucy might have returned to that dratted wardrobe, or that Edmund might have decided to hide there to be spiteful. Susan wanted that incident to disappear only slightly less fervently than she wanted the war to end and to know her home and parents were safe, and either of those possibilities would just reawaken the entire mess.
She bit her lip and glanced toward the hall that led to the picture room.
Then she turned decisively toward the stairs that led up to the attic (without passing through the tangle of mismatched floors and the library rooms). She trusted Peter much more than she trusted Edmund at the moment, and after all, a suit of armor could be repaired in a pinch. It was much harder to repair a family.
The wardrobe door was shut, which was foolish if anyone was inside. Then again, Susan supposed it wouldn't be any good as a hiding place with the door open, and perhaps if either Lucy or Edmund were inside, they were holding the door and making certain the latch didn't engage.
"Edmund? Lucy? If you're inside the wardrobe, come out right now," she called. She listened for any rustle or creak that might give away someone trying to keep very still.
The room remained silent.
Susan grasped the wardrobe handle, half-hoping and half-dreading that she might meet resistance.
But it turned quite smoothly and the door swung open on silent hinges, releasing a scent of fur and mothballs. Susan pressed her face to one of the fur coats in relief, for though she was not quite as mad for furs as Lucy, she did enjoy their softness and warmth. When she pulled back, she spent a moment turning and admiring the coat. In style and cut, it looked rather like her mother's own prized rabbit fur coat, only much richer -- the fur was thicker and softer, and an intriguing silvered black rather than a creamy brown.
She was just about to tuck the coat back into place and go search the picture room with the suit of armor, when a gust of cold, pine-scented air blew out from the back of the wardrobe and rustled her hair.
Susan stilled, hands still buried in the sleek silvery-black fur of the coat.
The wardrobe was only four feet deep. She had checked herself, and measured with a fabric tape borrowed from one of the house's many small, confusing rooms that seemed to have once been somebody's sewing room. The back was solid wood, too well joined to let through any draughts. Even if a draught did sneak through some hidden crack, it should be warm and damp like the summer rain still pounding down outside.
I hope you will not think less of Susan if I tell you that she very nearly convinced herself she had imagined that gust of wind. She had a logical, practical turn of mind (whether that was inborn or the result of always having to look after her siblings, I leave as an exercise for the reader) and she had spent a week convinced that Lucy was making everyone miserable over a selfish fancy. If, in fact, Lucy had been telling the truth, that meant several unpleasant things.
First, that the world was much less stable and predictable than Susan had always believed. How else to explain a magical world within a wardrobe, where time ran strangely, and which only seemed to exist some of the time?
Second, that Susan had helped make her sister miserable by disbelieving her. (This was particularly hard to accept.)
And third, that even though she had found no sign of either Lucy or Edmund in this room, that didn't mean neither had come this way. One or both of them could very well have walked right into a magical world and could be getting into all kinds of danger right this very moment.
It was this third thought that spurred Susan into action, for after all, she was a practical girl. She could sort through the implications of magic and apologize to Lucy later. Right now, the important thing was to make sure neither Edmund nor Lucy was in danger.
And so she took the beautiful fur coat off its hanger, as well as two slightly shorter coats, and draped them neatly over her arms. Lucy had said that it was winter in her magical world -- Naranay? No, Narnia -- and Susan had felt for herself the chill on the wind. It would be deeply impractical not to bring something warm to wear.
Then she stepped into the wardrobe (leaving the door a few inches open behind her, for she knew it would be foolish to accidentally lock herself inside) and pushed through several impossible rows of coats and an even more impossible thicket of evergreens to emerge in a snowy clearing. Above her the sky was a thin, pale blue, and to one side the sun hung near the horizon, bright and ruddy orange. Susan peered at it sideways through her fingers and decided that must be east, since the whole feel of this wood was early morning rather than gathering dusk.
She continued to look around, and rapidly spotted two sets of footprints in the crisp, dry snow. There was no way of telling which was Lucy and which Edmund, or even whether they had arrived together or separately, but at least they went in the same direction to start.
Perhaps it would have been most sensible to call for them, but something about the dark and looming wood made Susan wary of breaking the silence. Instead, she hung the two spare coats on a low branch while she struggled into the one she'd claimed for herself. The buttons were nearly hidden in the thick fur and her fingers were stiff with unfamiliar cold, but she triumphed and felt herself quite elegant though the coat was too large around the shoulders and wrists, and fell nearly to her feet.
"It's a coat for a Tsarina in Russia long ago," she said to herself, "large enough to cover a gown with puffed sleeves and a skirt like a bell." Susan twirled, once, just to feel the heavy fur swing around her ankles.
Then she gathered the other two coats and set off in search of her little brother and sister.
In the event, Edmund was not hard to find.
He had scarcely gone a thousand feet from the wardrobe, just to the edge of what might be a trail through the wood, and was looking away from her with an intent set to his shoulders. He didn't notice the snow squeak and crunch under Susan's shoes, nor the branches rustle as she pushed them aside.
Now thoroughly annoyed, Susan crunched up behind him and dropped one of the spare coats on his head.
"Help! What!" Edmund yelped.
"It's a coat," Susan said. "Put it on before you catch your death of cold."
"Su? What-- how?" Edmund said, peering out from under the folds of fur.
"I thought you or Lucy might be silly enough to mess about with that wardrobe again, and I was right," Susan told him. "Now all I want to know is which of you was silly enough to shut the door behind you. I'd bet it was you, since you're obviously silly enough not to think of borrowing a coat. Why didn't you turn back? You're shivering!"
"I was going to," Edmund said with a sulky tone, "only I heard bells and I wanted to see if someone else was here."
As Edmund pulled the coat over his head like a jumper, not even bothering with the fastenings, Susan did her best to listen for something other than the rustle of branches, the crunch and squeak of snow, and her brother grumbling beside her. (She didn't want to dismiss Edmund the way she'd dismissed Lucy, you see.) She soon heard the sound of bells herself, wavering and intermittent like the tolling of a church bell carried on the wind and blocked now and then by buildings or a change in the air.
They were bright and silvery, which ought to have been a cheerful, welcome sound, but Susan found that very brightness unsettling in such a dark, watchful wood.
"We should step back from the path," she said. "If those bells come this way, I want to see whoever is carrying them before they see us. We know hardly anything about this country and it's only sensible to be cautious."
"Lucy wasn't," Edmund said. "She went off with a Faun, willy-nilly, and very nearly got kidnapped."
"Which is exactly why we ought to learn from her mistake," Susan said, and tugged Edmund back into the shelter of two spruce trees, where they could watch the trail without being instantly seen.
The silvery bells sang gradually closer and clearer, and at last a sledge drawn by two reindeer swept into sight.
The reindeer were about the size of Shetland ponies and their hair was so white that even the snow hardly looked white compared with them; their branching horns were gilded and shone like something on fire when the sunrise caught them. Their harness was of scarlet leather and covered with bells.
On the sledge, driving the reindeer, sat a fat Dwarf who would have been about three feet high if he had been standing. He was dressed in polar bear's fur and on his head he wore a red hood with a long gold tassel hanging down from its point; his huge beard covered his knees and served him instead of a rug.
But behind him, on a much higher seat in the middle of the sledge sat a very different person -- a great lady, taller than any woman Susan had ever seen. She also was covered in white fur up to her throat and held a long, straight golden wand in her right hand and wore a golden crown on her head. Her face was white -- not merely pale, but white like snow or paper or icing sugar, except for her very red mouth. It was a beautiful face in other respects, but proud and cold and stern.
The sledge was a fine sight as it came sweeping towards Susan and Edmund with the bells jingling and the Dwarf cracking his whip and the snow flying up on each side of it.
"Stop!" said the Lady, and the Dwarf pulled the reindeer up so sharp that they almost sat down. Then they recovered themselves and stood champing their bits and blowing. In the frosty air the breath coming out of their nostrils looked like smoke.
Susan tightened her grip on Edmund's hand. He squeezed back and edged an inch or two closer into her side.
"Something is amiss," the Lady said, peering to either side of the sledge. "The trees speak of strangers in the wood. Go and search."
The Dwarf looked displeased, but immediately hopped down from his seat and began to examine the ground beside the trail.
I do not know if you have ever personally been in great danger -- in fact, I hope you have not -- but there are three things you should always remember about peril.
Firstly, not all people react to danger in the same way. Some fight like a cat backed into a corner, some flee like a deer startled at the edge of a wood, and some freeze like a rabbit in the center of a motorway. Secondly, people in danger may make choices they would normally recoil from in horror. Thirdly, danger changes the way people think. Most of us lose almost all power of thought until the danger has passed, and must later struggle to recall what happened and make sense of it all. But for some people, in some times and under some threats, everything goes very cold and crisp and clear.
When the Dwarf approached the footprints she and Edmund had left in the snow, for neither had thought to sweep over them, Susan felt (she said later) as though someone had placed a pair of spectacles on the eyes of her soul. The world focused from the comfortable warmth of her assumption that they would find Lucy and return home safely to the cold, glass-edged certainty that unless she found the exact right path through a minefield, all three of them might die here in this impossible world.
There was no point remaining hidden, and they would look better (less dangerous, less guilty) if they came forward of their own accord. (Susan also hoped to forestall the Dwarf from finding Lucy's tracks, and therefore left the third coat folded on the dry ground beneath the skirts of the tree.)
"Come on, Ed," she whispered, and stepped out of the shadows into the morning light that lay ruddy on the snow. Edmund stumbled after.
"Hello, my Lady," Susan said, and did her best to sweep a courtesy in her long, heavy coat. Beside her, Edmund started and belatedly bobbed his head.
The Lady frowned. "Is that how you address a Queen?" she asked, looking sterner than ever.
Bother all, Susan thought, but did her best not to let her nerves show. "We beg your pardon, your Majesty. We are unfamiliar with your land and did not recognize you at first." She swept another, less wobbly courtesy and yanked on Edmund's wrist until he made a proper bow.
"Not recognize the Queen of Narnia!" cried she. "Ha! You shall know us better hereafter. But come-- what manner of Being are you?"
Since the Queen looked so very nearly human, aside from her height and her salt-white skin, Susan at first didn't understand the question. Then she realized that very nearly human did not necessarily mean truly human. It had been some years since she had had much truck with fairy tales, but she remembered enough to know that many creatures could change their shape.
She also remembered that beings who looked very nearly human were often more dangerous than those who wore their differences more plain. Not all fairies and others of that ilk are evil, but none of them are safe, and it is best not to tell them your secrets.
Unfortunately, there is often no good way to avoid a direct question.
"My brother and I are humans, if it please your Majesty," Susan said. She decided against a third courtesy.
"Humans!" exclaimed the Queen. "A Daughter of Eve and a Son of Adam?"
"What?" Edmund said. The Queen frowned once more and tapped her fingers against the stem of her golden wand.
"Yes, your Majesty," Susan said, and squeezed Edmund's hand very tightly, the same way she used to do when helping him and Lucy cross busy streets. She hoped he would understand that she wanted him to hush and let her protect him.
"And how, pray, did you come to enter my dominions?"
"We entered through a door," Susan said. "I think it was magic." And if she were very lucky, the Queen wouldn't ask for any more details than that.
"Ha!" the Queen said, speaking more to herself than to Susan. "A door. A door from the world of men! I have heard of such things. This may wreck all. But they are only two, and easily dealt with."
As she spoke these words, she rose from her seat and looked Susan in the face, her eyes flaming at the same moment she raised her wand.
For a breath, Susan's clarity blurred and her legs locked as if made of stone. Then Edmund's hand convulsed in hers and the world went clear and cold again. She threw them both forward and down, right up against the runners where the Queen would have to risk destroying her own sledge to harm them.
The Dwarf moved toward them, whip in hand.
Susan scrambled to her hands and knees and hurled a clot of snow into his face. "Run, Ed!" she cried.
"Hold!"
The Queen's voice rang out like a trumpet on the field of battle, and Susan's body locked up once again.
"Perhaps I have misjudged you," the Queen said, and as Susan watched, unable to move (not even to turn and see if Edmund had obeyed her and fled), the Queen stepped lightly down from the sledge. Her hands were empty, though Susan was sure the wand was only the most obvious of her weapons.
"Daughter of Eve, what is your name?"
The trapped stillness melted from Susan's limbs. She glanced around, saw Edmund tied up in the Dwarf's whip, and swallowed hard despite her dry throat. "Begging your Majesty's pardon, but I've heard that telling your name to anyone with powerful magic is a dangerous and foolish thing to do. What assurance do I have that you won't use my name against me?"
"Why, none," said the Queen. "However, because you thought to ask the question, I shall allow you to ask one small favor in return for your name."
"Let my brother return to our home," Susan said instantly.
At this, the Queen raised both her eyebrows nearly to the rim of her crown. "Do you mean to tell me that the door you came through works in both directions? Or do you merely hope that such is the case."
Susan wondered which would be worse: to let the Queen know of a way into England, or to risk being caught in a lie?
Of course, the door had vanished once before. Perhaps it could vanish from this side as well.
She licked her lips and said, "I believe it should work, your Majesty, but I cannot say for certain. I have little experience with magic."
"That is obvious," said the Queen. "And yet, I believe you may have the potential to learn." She looked hard at Susan for a long moment, studying her face as if Susan were a chess puzzle or a difficult bit of algebra. Susan clung as tightly as she could to the cold, glass certainty that she would rather die than let Edmund or Lucy come to harm.
Then the Queen smiled. It was not a pleasant smile, despite her beauty.
"Give me your name and your pledge of loyalty, and I shall let your brother go on this day," the Queen said. "However, should he return to Narnia, I make no promises for his fate."
"May I be loyal to you from my own land?" Susan asked.
The Queen's smile grew both more beautiful and more cruel. "No," she said. "You shall come to my house and be my apprentice, for I have some need of other hands to accomplish various works."
"Su, don't!" Edmund said. "You can't--"
The Queen gestured with one hand. The Dwarf shoved the collar of the oversized fur coat into Edmund's mouth and his words trailed off into muffled noise.
"Make your choice, Daughter of Eve."
Susan met the Queen's eyes, which were flat and hard as black ice, reflecting no light.
"My name is Susan," she said, every word like shards of glass on her tongue. "I swear by my brother's life to be loyal to the Queen of Narnia."
"I, Jadis, Queen of Narnia and Empress of the Lone Islands, accept your oath," said the Queen. "Now rise. We have a long way to travel and you have much to learn."