"Jadis. We meet again."

Aslan spoke and his voice echoed in the cave. He was so big that his head almost touched the ceiling and he covered the exit completely. Normally Jadis would try to cut his throat with her swords, but it all happened too quickly. He was standing so close to the gate that he trapped her between himself and the ice wall that locked instantly behind her. Jadis twisted, trying to cut his legs instead, but as she had so little space for the maneuver, he easily threw her on the ground with his claws. The swords hit the ice and suddenly disappeared.

"How did you…," she couldn't control the shaking of her voice.

"You broke this rule first, witch! With the moment you crossed the gate. Did you forget our pact?" He roared and she tried to turn her face from the hot breath, but he was too close. So close that although she protected herself with the entire power, she couldn´t move away. The lion pinned her wrists to the ground and the more she struggled, the more he leaned over her.

"I only did it to protect Lucy." She regained her voice. Aslan stared at her for a long while and then he lowered his head and sniffed her from bottom to the top, touching her with his nose. Jadis shuddered from disgust. "What do you want?!"

The lion's gaze was almost gentle, as was his voice as he spoke.

"You have taken my beloved Lucy away from me. You destroyed her faith in me, you controlled her and ruled Narnia through her hands. Did you really think I let you continue, witch?"

He growled so loud that everything in the cave shook.

"I didn't control Lucy and you know it. She chose me herself. Therefore, she is mine. Did you forget the rules? Leave us in peace!"

"Don't speak of rules, witch! You used the connection with little Lucy to break the spell, do you deny?"

"I did it to protect her, you fool! If you care about her as you claim, you could see the Calormenes would have killed her in a second without me.

"And you predicted it all, didn't you?" He continued gently. "You would save Narnia, gain the trust of Lucy, first, then, all of them, one after another, would fall for your charm. Again. And they wouldn't even know that you stand behind their decisions. Clever, my beautiful Jadis, but not clever enough."

"How dare you speak to me in this manner." She hissed. He stared at her eyes, and could see fear in them. For a moment it seemed like he pitied her, and his grip softened. But then the hot tongue ran over Jadis face and she screamed with fury.

"The emperor… He will know what you are. You have no right…"

"I have every right, Jadis. You, who caused suffering to thousands, you, who were turning into stone everyone who not obeyed you. You deserve the punishment and the executioner is me." And he started to tear apart her armor with his teeth and claws, one part after another. Jadis struggled fiercely, but she couldn't get free. She trembled and when the tongue reached under the lower part of her tunic, she cried.

"Please, no…"

Aslan looked at her in surprise and apprehension.

"Are you asking me for mercy, witch?"

He looked at her face. She was shivering and trying to hold back the tears.

"After all these centuries, did I manage to make you cry, Jadis?"

"Is that what you want?" She whispered.

Aslan made a sound that almost resembled a cat's purring. Then he sighed, not letting her go, and said equally silently, but for Jadis it was deafening.

"I want you to love me. I always did."

"You have no idea what love is."

"Oh, yes, I do. Jadis, I will make you mine. At last."

And he ripped off her tunic. She screamed in terror, but a strange thing happened at the same moment. The gate changed into a swirling whirl of icy cloud, it surrounded Aslan and sucked him back to the ice wall. The lion roared furiously and tried to come back. But the spell was holding again.

"Time's up, bastard." Jadis composed herself and stood up. She fixed her clothes quickly and was now standing again furious and as triumphant, as in the old days, and stared at him, proud and cold.

"You could be here only as long as I was on the other side. You should have known better, your old fool. Pathetic lion, who cannot control is desire. And you claim yourself as kind? Mark my words, everyone will know about your assault. You are no different than those wild beasts who tortured me before. You are as wild, as primitive and…

"Silence, witch!" He roared again, so loud that she silenced indeed, as the cave echoed his voice, it seemed almost like he was still there, she could feel his smell on her skin and it disgusted her. "I was every faun and centaur who touched you that day. I was torturing you, as you caused so many to suffer before. It was your punishment."

Jadis paled. For a moment it looked like she was going to faint. Her breath fastened and her knees bent, but she controlled herself again and the mocking tone came back to her voice.

"Oh Aslan, that´s pathetic. To cover your own desire under the form of centaurs and the excuse to punish me. You could take my body, but you will never get me and you know it. It bothers you a lot, isn´t it?"

"Remember who you are talking to, witch! I cannot enter your world, but I can forbid anybody else to come back to you!"

The fear came back to Jadis' eyes.

"That´s what you are after." She said with the shaking voice. "You have no reason to punish her. She never did anything against you."

"I can smell your fear even here. You think I will let you just take her from me? Narnia is my world, Jadis, and you could be a part of my world, too. Accept me as your king, as I asked you many times.

"And my answer is still the same. You are neither king, nor god you claim to be. I am not one of your toys and I will never be. Even you cannot break the law. With the moment Lucy gave the forgetting potion to Mr. Tumnus she became a traitor to you. She is mine."

"No, witch. I was the one who gave Lucy dream about the ice wall. I was the one who created the link between you two. I helped Lucy find you, and through her dreams she trusted you easily and opened her heart to you. I gave you Lucy´s love. You thought about everything in your spells, but you missed the one detail. Strengthening the bond with Lucy you also gave me the access to you. Through Lucy I could watch you, I could appear in your dreams. And in your dreams I could take you. Everything that happened, was never about Lucy, or even Narnia. It was all about you. You have taken so many lives. Of those who were loved, who were needed. You think you could redeem yourself creating this little shelter? In barely fifteen years after the centuries? No, Jadis. Now you are about to lose someone who you love. As you love for the first time. Yes, I know that you really do, I can feel your change. I can even tell you, what made this change, my Jadis. It was also Lucy. Little Lucy, who ran with her healing potion through the battle field, so scared and confused that she didn't notice that one of the bodies she passed was yours. Her hands were shaking and a drop of the enchanted cordial fell on you, as did her tears. Her innocence and compassion reached what was left of your heart and healed you. Oh, I have waited for this so long. Creating the bond between you two, I hoped you would open to this new ability to love. So you can experience fully the suffering you caused to others. To me. The loved one will be taken away from you. Unless… you show me, how much you love her. How much you can sacrifice for her."

"What?" Jadis' voice was merely a whisper. Her pride was gone, even the anger seemed to be overwhelmed by despair. She was trembling. At that moment Jadis looked smaller and more fragile as anybody who ever met her, could believe.

"Jadis. Let me in. Open to my love as well. Accept me as your king." The gentler was the lion's voice, the scarier it sounded.

"Your cruelty exceeds mine a thousand times. This is not about the punishment, or justice. You don´t care about the suffering, or about Narnia. It is all about your desire, isn´t it? My mistakes from the past give you a wonderful excuse to make me your slave, aren´t they?"

"No slave. I want your love. I want you to be mine, Jadis."

"Pathetic lion. Your lust blinds you."

"What is you answer witch?" The gentleness was gone. He hit the ice wall with his pawn, but it remained unbreakable. Jadis seemed to regain some of her strength.

"Never! I will never surrender to you." She hissed with breaking voice.

"Then you are choosing your pride over your beloved one?"

"No. There is no choice here. You are breaking all the Great Laws the Emperor ever set over Narnia. You can´t make me love you. You cannot make anybody obey you against the will. Now this entire world will hear about your true nature. And if you hurt Lucy, even the Emperor Beyond the Sea will know your reason. You have lost here. Leave us."

"She will forget you by sundown. I will send them back to their world and you will stay here alone, forever. This is your punishment." Aslan roared and disappeared.

"No!"

The ice wall was shining before her, cold and hard. Jadis clung to it, scratching its surface almost to the blood, and screamed, long and loud, until she fell on the snow.

}{}{}{}{}{

"I have a strange feeling, like I had to do something important, but I forgot…" Lucy set in her room where she and Susan were getting ready for a hunt.

"No idea," Susan replied, searching through Lucy´s clothes for a cape she wanted to borrow. "Lucy, why on the Aslan´s Mane, are you keeping a big mirror in the wardrobe?"

"I don´t know, the maid must have put it there during cleaning." Lucy mused. The strange feeling had returned, along with a particular kind of anxiety. She stared at the mirror that was very dusted. But then she shrugged and smiled dreamily. Aslan had returned! Well, at least for a moment, but still! They were all a little bit disappointed, as he only showed up for a while on Rabadash´s trial, and vanished again, not even looking at her. But after his visit everybody, she, Edmund, king Lune and Prince Corin felt, like the grass suddenly got more fresh and green, and their hearts were fulfilled with an overwhelming joy. But well, as Mr. Tumnus used to say, "Aslan comes and goes as he pleases, he is not a tame lion."

"Come on, you two! The white stag doesn´t come to Narnia very often, maybe we will get the chance to talk to him!" Edmund´s voice sounded from the corridor. Susan and Lucy left the room.

}{}{}{}{}{

Asbjørn crawled out of the snow and slowly, took a step forward, one, then another. It was more difficult than ever, since the Sanctuary was covered in a grey, freezing mist, and the fierce wind made every move hard.

"Grandpa, is it the end of the world?" A little bear raised his nose from the hole where he spent the last days, like every other animal in the winter land. Since everything got dark, they were afraid to move, so just stayed at homes, waiting, when the weather would get better again. Only Asbjørn felt, it wouldn't. He called his friends, and the bears moved themselves towards the cave, where the queen was still lying in the snow. They approached her, like fifteen years before, surrounded her in a protective circle and waited for a sign of life.

"We are at your side, whatever happens." He spoke to her. He guessed what happened, he was a very old bear after all. He had seen enough. "We are at your side, whatever happens." He repeated. Jadis, opened her eyes. "But the little ones, all the creatures who have found here shelter, they shouldn't suffer."

Jadis listened to this, and he spoke to her for a long time, about things that only bears know. And as she listened, the wind seemed to calm down a bit.

"There is a deeper magic than the one of Aslan. And it will show itself, in the right time."

Jadis sat in the snow, first, then stood up. After the bear's speech, she knew what to do. She came back to the cave and touched the ice wall with her hand.

"Dearest, you cannot hear me, but there will come a day you will. You have a talent of breaking spells. Lucy, there, in your world, you will see the snow. You cannot remember me, but you can remember the snow. Please, remember the snow. I will be there, in every snowflake touching your skin. Beloved, there is only an ice wall between us. I know you can break it. I will be waiting for you. Always."

And Jadis called all the creatures of the Sanctuary and gave them a choice. They could either leave her world and come back to the Wild Lands of the North, or stay with her and fall into a deep, unbreakable sleep. Jadis put a spell on her entire world and on herself. From that sleep, nobody, but Lucy herself could wake her up.

Lost in the darkness

Hoping for a sign

Instead there's only silence

Can't you hear my screams?

Never stop hoping

Need to know where you are

But one thing's for sure

You're always in my heart

I'll find you somewhere

I'll keep on trying

Until my dying day

I just need to know

Whatever has happened

The truth will free my soul

Lost in the darkness

Tried to find your way home

I want to embrace you

And never let you go

Almost hope you're in heaven

So no one can hurt your soul

Living in agony

Cause I just do not know

Where you are

Wherever you are

I won't stop searching

Whatever it takes me to know

("Somewhere" by Within Temptation)

The End

Author´s Note

The story about Aslan as evil being hunting Jadis was on my mind since I have first read The Chronicles of Narnia at the age of thirteen. I always had a thing for evil queens in fantasy stories and the White Witch was one of my favorite. I remember how much I wanted her to have a deeper background, and to redeem her, the way Disney did with Maleficent in the last production. Within the past years my vision of Jadis got influenced by the incredible role of Tilda Swinton in the Narnia movies. This genial actress put exactly the depth I needed in Jadis. Her expressive face changes, from a smile to anger in the second, a gentleness from one side, to a total wilderness from the other, this was the Jadis I fell in love with, so describing her I was basically describing Tilda, that´s why the blonde hair, the only discrepancy to a book I deliberately made.

I also have to thank my absolutely wonderful life partner, who was the first beta reader of this story and stopped me countless times from making major mistakes in the plot. It was thanks to her that Jadis remained Jadis in behavior, and each line was brutally censored with "no, she would never say that" or "no, Lucy cannot hug her after their first meeting, that would be way too soon". Thanks to this, the story also grew to the actual size and I guess it cannot be any shorter. The mentioned before "Maleficent" movie was a great inspiration of my Sanctuary. Before my eyes, I have hundreds of scenes with Lucy playing with the animals over there, and Jadis watching her in silence, the way Maleficent observed Aurora. But here comes again my beta reader, who reminded me that Lucy needs more reasons for visiting the White Witch than simple "hanging out on the snow". "The Horse and His Boy" was a wonderful background for the growing relationship, as it gave me not only the reason for Lucy´s trainings, but also a deeper insight on Lucy, whom the author himself described as good as a boy in combat, dressed in male shirt, golden haired and gay. Although the word "gay" had a different meaning then, I can bet every fan of femslash had a wide smile while reading this particular fragment of the book.

I do know it was sudden and some of you may think that I cut the story in the moment when it was getting interesting. But hey, this is exactly what Aslan did in the original book. He just threw the Pevensies out of Narnia and didn't give a damn what happens with the country. Who read all the books knows, what happens next. For a long time, I had a problem with the ending. Since I am always getting attached to the characters I write about, the final chapter was simply heart breaking. There is a big happy ending on my mind, giving a comfort to the last scene, but, obviously, it cannot happen yet. So the spark of hope I gave in the last words of Jadis can remind all who read all volumes of Narnia, that everything comes to an end. But writing the sequel will probably take me another year or two.