Ch 31: A Token And A Gift

Edmund tumbled out of the wardrobe onto the floor of the old house, falling in a heap with his brother and sisters. For a moment he lay there, disoriented and panting, until he noticed his shoes. Not the leather boots he'd worn that morning. Certainly not the saddle-colored leggings or blue tunic he'd put on. Instead he saw two knobby knees exposed under a pair of short, grey tweed pants. What in Aslan's name...?

He raised his hands to pick at the strange clothing, only to find them small and not nearly as callused as they should have been.

Then he saw his brother and sisters. Children. He touched his face. Him, too. They stared at one another in shock. What had he been looking for a moment ago? Something important, something he wanted more than anything.

The door opened. In walked a man with a bushy white beard and hair. "There you are," he said. "What were you all doing in the wardrobe?"

Edmund remembered a White Witch, a great battle, years of peaceful rule of Narnia. Extraordinary.

But after that ... nothing.

He remained silent most of that day, thinking hard on the blank spot in his memory. When it came time for bed, he pulled his pajamas from the dresser, trying to reconcile the boy he was--again--with the man he'd been mere hours before. Peter seemed to be having the same difficulty. All of them had wandered the house in such a quiet confusion that the Macready demanded to know what game they were about.

Peter put out his light at last and settled in to bed. Edmund left his own bedside candle burning while he put on his pajamas and folded his day clothes. What was it, that nagging suspicion that he'd left something important undone?

He went to stuff a turned-out pocket of his pants back in when his hand touched something smooth and cool. Curious, he pulled it out.

A silvery birch leaf, as supple as if it had been newly plucked from its tree, and almost the perfect shape of a heart. For the barest second, he remembered a flash of pale hair, and his chest hurt so badly he had to stop and just breathe.

When he climbed into bed and blew out the candle, he tucked the leaf into the chest pocket of his pajamas. Silly, really, but he couldn't make himself put it down somewhere to get lost.

He kept thinking on the puzzle while sleep stole up on him. And just before he crossed into slumber, no matter how outlandish it sounded, he vowed with absolute certainty that he wouldn't rest until he brought the leaf back to the tree from which it had come.

- # -

On their return home, he and Peter went back to the boys' school, and Lucy and Susan to theirs, as if nothing had changed.

Except that it had. Edmund and Peter worked harder than ever in school, no matter how they disliked it, no matter how they chafed at being children on the outside when they'd lived to manhood on the inside.

The administrator of the struggling school saw this--especially saw Peter and how diligently he worked to get high marks--and it worked like a tonic on him. He'd lost his only son in the war, and Peter resembled him so much that the man was both comforted and proud to have such a student. He renewed his efforts to get funding for the school. The teachers were happier and the classes got better, and thereafter any student who went through his school was sure to be a man of high worth in the world.

Edmund befriended a shy, unpopular boy and shared his talent for law. The boy went on to be a great man in Parliament, and all of England came to benefit from the knowledge of a boy who'd once been a Narnian king.

Lucy and Susan, too, had this strange ripple effect on everyone around them. People who saw Susan's grace and Lucy's buoyancy could not help but see the good in the world. Every person whose life the Pevensies touched grew happier, more hopeful, somehow better for it.

For his part, Edmund noticed none of this while it happened. Each night he climbed into bed and took the birch leaf out of his pocket and just looked at it. And each night, before he turned out the light, he whispered to it without feeling at all foolish. "I'll find you."

~ The End ~

A/N: Thank you to all of you who read and reviewed this story. Your support means a lot to me. I'm glad I could share this story with you, and I hope you enjoyed the characters as much as I enjoyed writing them. I've added a "soundtrack" of the songs I used in writing this fic to my author page, so if you're curious, feel free to check them out. For Narnia, and for Aslan! *g*