Title: The Witch's Boy

Author: DeppleICk

Pairings: None (for now…)

Rating: T for occasional violence, bad attitudes, and general not-niceness.

Summary: AU: Edmund goes through the wardrobe first and foolishly closes the door behind him. Found by the White Witch, he wants nothing more than to go home. But when the Witch discovers something about him even he did not know the journey back becomes entirely more complicated...

Disclaimer: General Narnian awesomeness property of Sir C. S. Lewis. Crappy other stuff property of me.

Chapter Two: The Castle of the Queen

Posted: 1/9/11

The trip to the Queen's house was not an enjoyable one for Edmund. He was still very cold, for though the Queen's fur cloak was warm around him the Queen herself seemed to emit a coldness herself so for the entire ride Edmund felt like he was sharing a cloak with a very beautiful snowman rather than with another person. In addition, the Queen seemed to like asking him a barrage of odd questions that Edmund didn't know how to avoid. She got him to tell her that he had one brother and two sisters and that none of them knew anything about Narnia. She seemed especially interested in the fact that there were four of them and kept coming back to it. Edmund felt uncomfortable with her questions but continued to answer, afraid of her reaction if he refused.

Eventually she grew weary of questioning him and fell silent. Edmund was exhausted from all of the crying he had done and the stress of finding a brand new world in the back of a wardrobe and wanted nothing more then to sleep. He fought to keep his eyes open as the sky grew dark. His head bobbed with the effort he put forth trying to hold it up. So tired was he that when their destination finally came into view his sleepy eyes would have missed it if the Queen had not raised a long finger and pointed.

"There! There is my castle!" she said, startling Edmund awake. His eyes snapped open as he followed her finger.

Sat in the valley between two tall hills was the Queen's castle. It seemed to be all towers; little towers with long pointed spires on them, sharp as needles. They looked like huge icicles growing the wrong way up and they shone in the moonlight and cast strange shadows on the snow. The castle itself was made of gray stone but was so covered with ice and snow it looked white from a distance. Edmund thought his fear of it nearly even matched his fear of the Queen, a well matched pair.

But he had no way to turn back. The dwarf drove the sleigh across a bridge over a frozen river and through the outer wall by a huge arch whose great iron gates had been left open. Edmund's heart battered on unsteadily as they entered the castle's courtyard. Scattered about the snow covered lawn were hundreds of stone statues. Most were of animals - a bear on its hind legs, a rabbit in mid hop, a horse rearing up – but others were of stranger creatures. Edmund saw a stone figure that looked perfectly human except for a pair of shaggy, goat legs; a little ways off there was a girl that was halfway turned into an elm tree. There were also some creatures that Edmund recognized from stories but wouldn't have believed existed, like dwarves and centaurs. There was even one huge stone giant complete with a huge stone club and a murderous scowl.

"Do you like my statues?" the Queen asked, startling Edmund again. He swallowed away his fear.

"T-They're very good," he shivered. "V-Very realistic."

A shrewd smile touched her lips. "I should think so," she said. The dwarf snorted in a way that sounded suspiciously like amusement.

The sleigh came at last the steps of the castle. The Queen stood, pulling her cloak from around Edmund and he realized to his dismay that she was even more fearsome when standing. She stepped regally off of the sleigh and Edmund wrapped his goose-bumped arms tight to his chest and scurried after. The large doors of her castle swung in and Edmund saw two dwarves pulling them open with all of their might. Another dwarf stood further in and bowed so low at the Queen's presence that his nose brushed the floor.

"Your Majesty," said the bowing dwarf who didn't straighten himself until she had walked completely past him. Edmund walked behind the Queen by a few small feet and couldn't help but looked over his shoulder and frown as the two dwarves by the door pushed them shut again with a resounding echo of wood on stone. He shivered and turned around.

Inside the Queen's castle winter still reigned. The floors were a polished white marble that reminded him of ice and the walls were barren of any ornamentation. It might have been a beautiful place had it not seemed so cold. Every window was hung with icicles and framed with frost. Above all, the castle seemed empty. There was no sound but that of the dwarves, the Queen, and himself.

The Queen ignored Edmund as she walked the length of the room and sat down on a large, golden throne situated on a raised platform. Edmund hesitantly stopped before he reached the dais and stood awkwardly as he waited to the Queen to look at him.

"Krumpis!" the Queen called sharply. The dwarf who had bowed on their entrance quickly scurried over and fell into another bow at the foot of the platform.

"Here, your Majesty."

"Find Maugrim. Send him to me at once," she commanded.

"Of course, O Queen," the dwarf called Krumpis said and bowed one last time before scurrying off through a door to the right. In less than a minute he returned through the same door, this time accompanied by a huge black wolf. In the back of Edmund's mind a voice was going on about the terrible teeth and the terrible claws of a terrible beast that could easily swallow up ten-year-old boys.

What happened next gave Edmund the biggest shock of all, beyond even finding Narnia and meeting the Queen. For growing up Edmund had never been told that there couldn't be worlds hidden in wardrobes, it simply wasn't something adults thought necessary to say. But he had always been told, over and over, by numerous adults who thought that they knew everything (which really just showed that they didn't) that never, never, never in a million years could an animal talk.

And then the black wolf stepped up to the raised platform, inclined its head, opened its great jaws and said, "Your Majesty," and that rule that Edmund had been taught over and over again was suddenly shattered and it was in that moment that Edmund realized anything could happen and he really knew very little about anything at all.

Edmund sat down, hard, and didn't care how foolish he looked as he stared open mouthed at the talking wolf that had broken his reality.

"Ah, Maugrim," said the Queen. If she had noticed Edmund's abrupt seating she gave no notice. "I want you to send out a pack of your best wolves to patrol the Lantern Waste. Tell them to look for humans. Two Daughters of Eve and one Son of Adam, like that boy there." She waved a hand and Edmund and he froze as the wolf's terrible eyes flicked to him for a split second. "They should smell like him too – disgusting things."

"It shall be done, my Queen," the wolf, Maugrim, proclaimed inclining his head again. "If I may get the scent?"

The Queen inclined her head slightly and the next thing Edmund knew he was frozen in fear as the wolf took one bound and suddenly towered over him. Edmund cowered and covered his face but he could still feel the wolf's warm breath stir his hair as he inhaled the scent of man. What seemed to last a hundred years to Edmund was in reality only a few seconds and Maugrim stepped back, a cruel grin on his muzzle. In the next moment, the wolf had bounded away and in the seconds that followed howling was heard in the courtyard. Edmund's heart had trouble returning to normal.

"As for you," the Queen said, looking at last Edmund. "A room for the night. In the morning, I will decide what more to do with you."

Edmund scrambled to his feet, finally finding his voice. "What about going home?" he asked. "I want to go home!"

The Queen's face darkened. "Such a child," she sneered. "How revolting. You are lucky I do not turn my wand on you for such disrespect!" At this, her wand was indeed leveled at Edmund for the second time. He gulped. For a long time Edmund and the Queen merely stared at each other before Edmund finally adverted his eyes.

"Sorry, your Majesty," he mumbled, feeling terrible about everything.

"Quite right," said the Queen, lowering her wand. "Dwarf, take him to the small west tower. That is all."

"Yes, your Majesty," Krumpis said. Edmund gave an awkward bow of his own and then followed the dwarf as he quickly scurried through a side door and into an open corridor. As soon as they were out of the Queen's view the dwarf's attitude abruptly changed. The bearded man glared at Edmund with all his might and scowled like he smelt something nasty.

"This way," he growled and stalked off down the hallway, giving no mind to the stone statues that filled covered the floor in no apparent order. Edmund was less unaffected and stepped lightly around each one. Every statues he passed seemed to boast an expression of horror even worse than the one before it. Edmund was filled with a deep sense of dread. Run, the statues seemed to say – if only he could.

The path Krumpis chose was one that Edmund would not have been able to repeat if his life depended on it. The corridors were always turning and he was led up so many different stair cases he was sure that they had passed the third floor long ago. One thing remained the same; it was always quiet and cold.

After several minutes of walking in strained silence, Krumpis at last stopped just out of a plain, wooden door and resembled a dozen others that they had already passed.

"Through here," grunted the dwarf shortly and stalked off at once. Edmund wasn't sad in the slightest to see him go.

Edmund faced the door and opened it, surprised when it swung outward and revealed a case of spiral stairs going up. He stepped in and quickly took the stairs. At the top was a landing and another door. This one he pushed open and was relieved to see a bedroom beyond.

There wasn't much to say about what he found. The room was obvious a tower as it was circular and had windows facing out in all directions. A four poster bed was pushed against the wall opposite the door and cushioned with thick white blankets. A desk, a chair, a closet, and a bedside table served as the only other furniture in the room. The floor was covered by a blue, circular rug that took up most of the floor space and the windows were all hung with dark, heavy curtains. Edmund was happy to see that there were no statues in the room and that the bed looked warm and inviting.

Slipping out of his sopping wet trainers, Edmund threw back the covers and snuggled into the bed. His last thought before falling asleep was wishing there was a wardrobe in the room that could take him home again.

AN/ Thus concludes chapter two. I'm sorry to say but I doubt that chapters will much longer than this. I am aiming for 3,000 words but seem to be falling short. Hopefully I'll be able to remedy this.

I'm not really happy with this chapter, mainly because it doesn't seem to really be doing anything.

I'm trying to start a weekly updating schedule so the next chapter should be up by next Sunday. No promises though, I'm bogged down with homework. AP History sucks. It will devour your life!

But you don't really care about any of that, do you? What you really want to do is click that shiny, little button down there and write me a review. Go on. You know you want to.