Awakened

A/N: Five Years into the Golden Age of Narnia...

Disclaimer: No, I don't own Narnia

The wayward wolf stamped its foot, throwing down the burlap sack held between its teeth onto the floor of the cave and lifting its head in a mighty howl to announce its presence.

A moment later, two figures emerged from the shadows of the dark underground chasm. The first was ugly and small, dressed in brown rags and with green hair. One of the last hags inhabiting Narnia. All the rest had fled or been forcibly removed to the North. The second was larger, but less human, and more like the wolf. It was mangy though, the wolf could tell, so he kept his distance.

It had been a long journey to get here, and no one had allowed the poor wolf a moment's rest after the creatures working for these two had found him in the black woods with the burlap bag. The minotaur had led him down here and told him to wait. He was still panting a little. He'd been running with the sack's handles between his teeth for the better part of the day, and it was almost evening now. The sack was heavy.

"Do you have it?" the hag asked, its high, raspy voice coming out in one long breath. It stepped towards the bag in excitement. Water dripping from the ceiling caused the hag to look up.

They were safe here, she told herself. The Narnians typically avoided land this far North, plus they were underground. There was another wolf up above, this one's companion, who was to howl in warning if anyone did indeed approach.

The wolf pawed the ground next to the sack. "Of course. I would not have come without it. But it was a difficult journey, fraught with danger, especially getting in and out of Tashbaan. I do not understand why the boy had to be from Tashbaan. It would have been much more simple to sneak across the border into Archenland and steal a boy from there. One would think they'd never seen a talking wolf before."

He needn't have bothered. The hag and the other creature were no longer paying him the least bit of attention. The hag stepped forward and ran a gnarled finger and long yellow nail along the burlap bag, causing whatever was inside to thrash about a little, and then closed its eyes and smiled.

"Yes," she said. "This will do." A look of pure ecstasy crossed her features, but she quickly buried it down. She had been waiting a long time for this.

The wolf eyed the bag suspiciously. "Are you sure this will work?" He didn't want them getting in trouble for this if it didn't work. He doubted their prosecutors would be very understanding.

Suddenly, the bag began to twitch into movement. The hag jumped back, squealing, and the other creature stiffened. The wolf rolled his eyes, and then leaned forward and growled at the bag. It fell still once more.

The hag turned around to glare at the wolf. She laughed. "Of course it will. Do you doubt?"

"I do not doubt her," the wolf amended, looking nervous for the first time. "I simply fear this legend-,"

"They are one and the same!" the hag shouted at him, all in one breath. It gasped when it was finished and turned back to the sack.

The other creature nodded his mangy agreement. "More than one thousand nights I have sat under a Narnian sun, ruled by creatures who enjoy the warm. I will wait no longer." His raspy voice scared the simple wolf, but the wolf thought of his fallen leader, killed by Wolf's Bane, and nodded his consent.

The mangy creature kicked the burlap sack with his paw, and it moved a little, groaning.

"Where did it come from?" the hag asked. It was the first time the creature appeared interested in the contents of the bag. She licked her lips.

"Calormene," the wolf responded casually. "As you told me. I couldn't find anyone until I reached Tashbaan, though, so I hope you appreciate the danger I was in. See, I told you it was difficult to procure him for you. Why, I almost got captured multiple times-"

"Be quiet, wolf," the hag snapped in his general direction, not paying him the least attention. She turned to the other creature and gestured towards the bag with gnarly fingers. "Open it."

"Why did it have to be from Calormene?" the wolf dared to ask, and the hag fixed him with a glare.

"Because, wolf, anyone taken from Archenland would have been missed. They do not value human life the same way in Calormene. And anyone taken from Archenland..." she did not finish the sentence because she knew the human was awake and did not want to give him any ideas.

The mangy one stepped forward, ripping open the bag with his paws. As it came undone, the contents spilled out onto the ground of the cave.

It was a human. A boy, as the hag had demanded he be. A girl would not have worked. He stepped out into the cave, glancing around nervously and rubbing together his bound hands. The creatures regarded him in silence. He was ugly and hairless, except for his head. He was also short, which made them assume he was a child. He was wearing traditional Calormene clothing, but for the turban, which must have fallen off in the night. There were multiple bruises on his body, presumably from when the wolf had dropped the bag a few times. He stared at his captors-for there was no doubt that these were his captors-in disbelief.

"Animals," he stated stupidly. "Talking animals." He had heard of such creatures, brought to Tashbaan as slaves and sold to the wealthy. The Tisroc was rumored to have one hundred of them, but he had never actually heard one speak before. "Then we must be in..."

"Welcome to Narnia," the mangy one said drily. "Or, just North of it. I'm not sure if where we are technically qualifies anymore. It was once part of Narnia, and many lived here, long ago. But for a long time it has been abandoned."

The boy stared at him with wide eyes. "How did I get here? I was in Tashbaan, and you'd have to cross a desert to reach Narnia. That's quite a journey. What do you want from me?"

The wolf stepped forward, glad someone was taking notice of his troubles. "Yes, it was. Not to worry; we took a ship back to Archenland, and snuck through into Narnia. No one even knew you were with me."

The boy wrapped his arms around his midsection and shivered. Although it was mid-summer here, he was still freezing. Calormene was a desert, after all, and he wasn't used to anything colder. This was one of the most terrifying situations he had been in, and he had been in a lot.

The hag was studying the boy. Now, she spoke. "We do not want to hurt you, child." She didn't sound very reassuring and her grating voice bothered him. "We are simply in dire need of your help, and there are not many humans around these parts." Those who were around wouldn't have helped. "If you do as we ask of you, we shall let you go, and provide you passage back to Calormen land. You will also be richly compensated for it."

The boy liked his lips a little greedily. "What sort of compensation?" he asked.

The hag smiled, pulling the skin on her face taught. "More money than you have perhaps ever seen. You will no longer have to live as a beggar in your own homeland."

The boy considered this for only a moment. The prospect of getting off the streets was simply too hard to pass off, and these people hadn't hurt him yet. In his experience, it someone was bad, they would hurt him. Surely the fact that these creatures had not yet harmed him said something of itself.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked. These creatures frightened him more than any of his masters in Tashbaan ever had, but they didn't seem to want to harm him. And their plight made sense. He had oft heard that Narnia was a land ruled by barbarian children and overrun with talking beasts.

The hag grinned. "Let the circle be drawn!" she shouted in that breathless voice. Then she pulled out a knife and cut loose his hands. At the same time, she cut his wrist, and a trickle of blood dripped from it. He did not cry out. He was a simple Tashbaan beggar; he'd been through worse injuries.

The boy did flinch, however, as the hag began singing a strange song. The other creature started digging the long nail on his index finger into the cave floor, drawing it around the boy and the hag in a circle.

This seemed to go on forever. Then the hag pulled out a long stick, waving it above her head, and the boy felt his ears begin to buzz. At the end of the stick was an icicle that looked like it could easily skewer. If the boy was Narnian, he would have recognized the evil instrument immediately.

The White Witch's Wand.

As it was, he just looked on with curiosity as the hag stabbed the wand into the cave floor in front of her with a loud scream. The boy cringed, waiting expectantly for something to happen, but nothing did.

And then the ground started to shake a little. The floor around the wand seemed to expand for a moment. The boy realized a moment later that the floor was not expanding but being covered in a thick layer of ice that was slowly moving outwards to envelop the walls. Then the ice grew upward, shockingly fast, creating a wall of ice in front of them that blocked the entrance to the cave. The wolf whimpered.

The hag stepped back, letting go of the wand and looking happily at the ice wall. Her bare feet, with their long toe nails, scraped against the ground.

One moment the ice wall was just that, an ice wall, impossibly there in the middle of one of Narnia's hottest summers, and the next, there was a woman inside the ice, startling, serious eyes staring down at the Calormene boy. Unblinking. Her hair floated around her head as if she had just submerged under water. Her skin was as white as snow, and for a moment the boy wondered if she were dead. Only her lips, red like blood, held any color. The boy could only vaguely see the outline of her body. The dress she wore was of the purest white and blended fully into her skin.

The hag, wolf, and werewolf backed up quickly, terrified and awestruck, leaving the woman behind the ice with the boy and bowing low before her.

The boy stood with an open jaw, awed by her beauty. She was obviously barbarian, like the Kings and Queens of Narnia, but she was human. And she was the most beautiful woman the Calormene beggar had ever seen. He didn't dare move, just stared at her. Her eyelashes looked like they were made from snowflakes, and her cheekbones were high. But how was she inside the ice?

"Hello, child," she spoke, alerting him to the fact that she was not lifeless, her voice like little raindrops pattering against his cheeks, and he found himself caught up in that smile, unable to pull his gaze away.

The boy blinked at her stupidly. "You are most beautiful," he said finally.

The woman smiled at him then, for the first time. It did not reach her eyes. No blush stained her snowy white cheeks. Other than her lips, her face did not move.

"Ah, but child, I am only a shadow of the beauty I once was," she sighed, looking softly and pleadingly at him. He found himself enthralled by those eyes. In that moment, he couldn't imagine anything more beautiful.

He swallowed. "What...What happened to you?" He realized then that the wolf, hag, and werewolf seemed to have disappeared somewhere behind him. He preferred it that way.

The woman's face hardened at the question, and the memories that came with it, and for a moment the boy was afraid she was going to hurt him. Then her face went sad again, and she looked serene, examining her hands as she spoke. "Those who sought to do me harm while I roamed the world locked me away in a fate akin to death. I cannot escape this ice prison on my own; they have ensured that. But you, dear, you can free me. And when you do, I shall be indebted to you for your kindness, and you shall see my former beauty."

The boy smiled. "What can I do?"

A smirk touched the woman's lips and she reached out her hand, stunningly pale, sparkling in the dim light of the cave. It slowly came out of the ice wall, and the process seemed almost painful. She pointed in a nonthreatening way to his bleeding wrist. Her eyes were wide with her fervor. "One drop of human blood," she told the boy. "Touch me and you set me free."

Her hand reached out towards him, though he was too far away for her to touch. A desperate look came over her eyes but she need not have worried.

The boy did not hesitate to step forward and take her hand. He clutched it in his bloody one, and the blood slowly began to trickle down into her palm. Her eyes were glued to their clasped hands and she licked her lips. She squeezed his wrist tightly. He cringed and more blood began to come out, spilling on her fingers.

It wasn't until then that the enchantment she had placed over him began to wear off and he realized that he knew exactly who this stunning beauty was. He may have only been a beggar boy, but all of Tashbaan had at least heard of her. His eyes widened as they flitted from her, to his bloody hand, to the wand. He could feel his blood squishing against her palm already, and knew it was too late. He had allowed his greed and her enchantment to get the better of him.

The Calormen knew of the Barbarian Witch Queen who had ruled Narnia with her ice and eternal snow before the Barbarian Kings and Queens. She had been the one thing to keep the Calormen from invading years before, since no one could get past all the snow. She was a powerful lady, and all of the world had feared her at one time.

But she was dead. She had died in a great battle between her, the new Kings and Queens, and their creature, that lion.

And he had just brought her back to life somehow. He still wasn't quite sure how.

The White Witch.

She laughed as the ice encasing the rest of her body crumbled and then melted into water, and stepped out of her prison for the first time in five years. Her legs felt a little wobbly, like she had been injured and was walking for the first time since. The white gown she wore hugged her frame, sleeveless, but it was still stiflingly hot.

"Yes child," she dropped his hand when she saw the recognition in his eyes. "It is I. Jadis, true Queen of Narnia." She took a long suck of air, breathing it in, letting it fill her lungs, and grinned like a child. She could feel sweat breaking out on her brow and knew what had become of her poor country, but did not let it bother her. Soon, she would see Narnia restored to its former beauty and glory.

The Calormene boy who had freed her slowly began backing out of the circle he was still standing in. The hag, wolf, and werewolf stood as one, coming forward and bowing before the witch.

She ignored them all, turning and gingerly picking up the wand still standing upright in the ground, though no ice held it up anymore. She could feel its energy surging through her and knew without a doubt that it had been restored, despite that foolish boy's attempt to destroy the magic in it. She wondered how long restoring it had taken the hag.

Holding it like a child in her arms, she took a step forward, towards the boy. Raw fear radiated through him as she reached out and touched his cheek with her hand, smearing his face with his own blood.

"Thank you, little fool," she smiled icily. And then she took the wand and ran him through. His eyes widened in surprise and his face contorted, his hands groping blindly for his stomach. He gasped as she yanked the wand from his torso and fell to his knees in pain, arms wrapped around himself. She cocked her head, studying him for a moment. He reminded her of Edmund.

Then she turned the Calormene boy to stone. Grinning at him as he knelt in the cave, a painful look permanently etched on his features, she said, "Hag, carry the body somewhere the Narnians will find it easily. Let it be a warning to any who see it. I have returned."

The hag nodded, scraping forward and dragging the heavy stone statue towards the entrance, no longer blocked by ice.

The witch turned to the wolf and werewolf next. "Well done," she praised them. She turned specifically to the werewolf next. "One last service and your debts to me will be paid in full." She took a step forward. The werewolf whimpered in fear.

"Tell me what has become of the little traitor whose blood should have been mine." She leaned down until she was eye to eye with the werewolf, a cruel, twisted smile filling her face, and this time, it did reach her eyes. "Tell me of Edmund, the little King."