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May 13, 1950

Parish of St. Mary-At-Finchley, Finchley, England

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The organ, a relic of a bygone century, had been heavily damaged along with the rest of the building during the war. But now it stood restored, the notes bellowing lustily from it echoed by the bells high above the church. These bells had tolled for far too many a funeral over the decades. That day, though, they rang a message of hope, of renewal and new life. For the bells tolled no more. Instead, the bells pealed with the joy of a wedding.

Joy, for a few months, had been a foreign emotion for Susan. Hurt, anger, and despair were far more familiar terms. She and Alberta would have understood each other. But as she watched the light filtering through the windows and off the radiant faces of those around her, Susan reminded herself that these emotions were now buried.

Have you ever seen beams of sunlight reflecting off suspended particles of dust in the air? It makes one want to sit still, afraid to breathe and maybe disturb the glorious sight. It calls for reflection; it evokes nostalgia. And so many a memory passed before the young woman as she waited.

Particularly, Susan thought of a book she had read, in those dark days after the accident, that had given hope to her. It was titled "The Problem of Pain," but it might well have been called "The Problem of Susan." She would love to talk to Mr. Lewis one day. For words by that fledging author constantly came back to mind: "Nothing will shake a man-or at any rate a man like me-out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself." And this could well have been written about Susan.

"There is no Aslan! There is no Narnia!" Yes, her beliefs had become merely notational, and then withered almost completely- belief in humanity, belief in Him, and belief in Narnia. How could this Narnia be such a beautiful place, if all that could be remembered of it was battles and hard knocks and long trudges? Cair Paravel might have reminded her otherwise; but like the Golden Age, it was in ruins. How could this Aslan be so good, if He had allowed Narnia to fall so low, to become as depraved as that bear? What if Susan's last impressions were of a devastated land, one that was left in the hands of strangers? The pain had spoiled all her interactions. Whether it was the dryads or Bacchus or the Old Narnians, she had barely noticed the awakening future. Life in London and then Bristol, without inconvenient reminders of the sorrow, was much more pleasant. And so she had been swept away in the swirl of invitations and lipstick and nylons. But it was an empty life; she never had a triumph over difficulty, because she avoided difficulties. It was not truly living, because it lacked suffering. And it lacked Him.

Suffering…she had sought to avoid it, and it had found her. Her family was taken away, she found herself without the allowance that her parents and Peter had silently scraped together, and the false friends flittered away from the penniless orphan. Susan had gone through torture, indeed. But in the suffering she discovered herself and her beliefs again.

It began one evening at a bookstand. Books had ever been good friends for her, until she abandoned them—books, with their ability to remind her that far greater horizons existed than the mundaneness of living from one day to the next, of wearily putting one foot in front of the next. It started in boredom and weariness, and became an hour filled with the thrill of reunion. And so she returned the next evening, and the evening after that, and so on until one chilly night when the bookseller hastily pointed out a new arrival before bundling back into his muffler and greatcoat. She went home with the book that night, and sleep did not come as she huddled by the radiator and read.

The title had attracted her- "The Problem of Pain." It was provocative, and it seemed to capture the battle that had been lost in her soul. Pain, suffering- what purpose was there in it all? But Mr. Lewis claimed it was because of love that suffering existed. Suffering, he wrote, shattered the illusions that all was well in her life. It was a reminder that she belonged in another place; earth was but a step on her path. The book claimed that it was all due to His love. And finally it seemed logical to Susan.

It was not a thunderous, earth-shaking moment. But a seed had been planted, and Susan felt more at peace as she stood to face the cold and loneliness. The chill wind off the Severn Firth did not blow any gentler or her clothes feel any less shabby, but life with its burdens had meaning again. And as the days passed, realisation came to her. Could they have died for her? For it was only through their deaths that she had come to her senses. No answer appeared before her, but she knew this was the case.

Peter. Edmund. Lucy. Eustace. Jill. Digory. Polly. They had reminded her of Narnia, and so she had sought to avoid them at the end. And now it was too late; her farewells had been to shrouded bodies, and then she had gone back to Bristol. Far from home, far from all the memories, just as before. But now she returned, at least in spirit, and found others waiting with open arms and hearts. Shortly after that chilly night, Susan finally answered one of Owen Leakey's persistent rings. When the hours of conversation were over a plan had been formed. The two set to work gathering all those most directly touched by the departed, and in the following months somehow succeeded in uniting a most inhomogeneous group. The new friends were all gathered in the pews that day: Susan and Owen, Sir John Crowder and Eleanor Blakiston, Spivvins and Macready, Marjorie Preston and the Poles, old comrades of Edmund's. Together they found comfort, not in mourning for the articles in the Encyclopedia Britannica that would never be written, but in imitating the individuals who been a blaze of light to those around them.

This flame was now dimmed, but it could never truly be extinguished while beating hearts remained to carry on their work. Whether it was the Macready's shelter for troubled youth, or Spivvin's sudden interest in law, or Owen and Eleanor's soup kitchen in the East End, the influence of the departed was felt. And though she now lived across the country, above it all Susan hovered- an encouraging talk here, a logical plan of action there, reminders of what the departed would have wanted. After all, it was she who had the most direct inspiration.

She remembered Peter, late at night, excitedly whispering of his dreams for a better world. She remembered Edmund silently embracing her before he left for Malaya with head held high, and again when he returned with medals and a broken spirit. She remembered Lucy going to care for those affected by an influenza outbreak and then apologising to her afterwards for recklessly ignoring her admonitions. They had been family, not only in name, but in the bonds of a true love that could never be broken or truly forgotten, though eternity separated them. But she would not cry now.

She was a queen of Narnia, and so she would not mope for the departed. She had failed them before in doing so. But now there was work and atonement to be done, and her task at the moment was ensuring that the wedding of Owen Leakey to Eleanor Blakiston was a smashing success.

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"You look beautiful today, Phyllis," Owen remarked as he made his way to where Susan stood, having brought a cup of tea to the Macready. He could not realise the seeming incongruity of a queen serving a domestic.

The young woman shrugged this off. "Do you know that you were the first stranger I ever told my middle name? I hated it, to the point where I think even my siblings had forgotten it. But Owen, I am so happy for you today."

"Or are you simply relieved that there's no longer any danger of me chasing you?"

Owen and Susan shared a jolly laugh at this. "I knew you would be true to what Lucy wanted for you," Susan finally said. "Besides, I think I'm past allowing young men to chase after me. I have neither the time nor the desire anymore."

The young man gave Susan a long look. "Are you certain that you're happy? With life?"

Susan nodded. "It's a hard life, living alone and having to support myself now, but I haven't been so happy in years. I…I have purpose again. I have a reason to wake up in the morning…besides your wedding, though that's important, of course."

"Well, in any case it's splendid to see you back with us," exclaimed Owen. "Ordinarily I'd embrace you…"

"I can handle that for you," chuckled Sir Crowder as he hove into sight. "Mr. Leakey, your bride is about to be abducted by that young officer. I suggest you rescue Eleanor from his clutches."

Owen laughed. "I haven't been that boring already, have I?"

Sir Crowder shook his head at the retreating bridegroom. "Strange, isn't it? So much tragedy, and yet here we and the world go on spinning without a thought to the departed. It's almost obscene."

"But we won't let their memory die," exclaimed Susan. "It's up to us to carry on into the future. And I'm sure they would prefer that we shape the future that they wanted, rather than mope over their loss."

"Humph," was Sir Crowder's reply. "I suppose you're right. Well, you do know that my own son Petre was elected for Ruislip-Northwood? He makes his maiden speech in the House on Tuesday."

"The last part is news for me. My congratulations! How is he taking it?"

"Horribly," grumbled Sir Crowder. "They will be considering the agricultural side of the finance bill, and if there is one subject in which he has no experience, it is farming. He would always pester your brother with questions about cattle and crop times. I had to remind him on occasion that there are no farmers in Finchley."

Susan laughed. "I'd consider it a good sign; he cares about his duty and his people. That's hardly something of which to be ashamed. Rather, I say it's something to be encouraged and cultivated."

"Perhaps." Sir Crowder paused, then remembered what he had been leading up to. "The strangest part is that your brother always had an answer. I never had a chance to ask him how he knew so much about agriculture, of all things."

Memories came rushing back of the green fields of Narnia and vast bushels of Archen grain. "We spent a good deal of time in the countryside during the war," she said, quite truthfully. How she longed to return to that land…

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Mechanically the bells sounded hour after hour, and all too soon Susan knew that it was time to leave.

"Would you like a lift?" asked Sir Crowder paternally. "My man Francis can take you home."

Susan shook her head. "Thank you, but I drove myself here, so it won't be necessary."

John Crowder snorted. He would still be surprised nine years later, when a woman whom history would know as the Iron Lady supplanted him from his chair in Westminster. But then he remembered another Pevensie, one with the same regal attitude, one whose sage advice he had also learned to follow… "You know, Peter would always respond in precisely that way when I offered to find him a proper timepiece."

And so, after heartfelt farewells and repeated congratulations, Susan left the pleasant party and the shelter of the building. Hendon Lane was barely visible in the pouring rain, and it was with a sigh of relief that she found her car and began the long drive back west to Bristol. Especially on the motorway, it took all her concentration simply to see the road. Perhaps she should have taken Sir Crowder's offer…

Rain, rain, and more rain. Thunder and lighting. A storm whose origins the meteorologists would dissect and whose effects would cause a good deal of grumbling from the local landowners. She was in the heart of it, though, and the only concern was the present.

She glanced to her right and, to her horror, noticed a lorry skidding straight towards her. In the rain, its driver had lost control. Now its headlights loomed like those of a fast-approaching lighthouse. But Susan was not thinking of poetry. To her, the lamps represented only a dark reality.

If this was a tale like that of King Arthur and his knights, Susan, like Guinevere, would have immediately entered a convent after the accident in atonement for her sins. Owen and Sir Crowder and all the others who had been most directly touched by the deceased would have gone on a modern crusade and died in some foreign land, taking their remembrances with them. Other bards would prefer that Susan not suffer at all. Why couldn't Aslan take her too? Surely, now that her eyes had been opened, she could be reunited with her family?

But neither fate awaited Susan. She had a life to live, and life would be neither a fairy-tale nor an epic drama for her. Ever the logical one, she told herself that the odds were simply not right for her to die so soon after the others. She could not allow their memory to fade.

The sacrifices that the others had made were not meant to be fully understood. They were infinite, and we mortals cannot understand infinities. But they enabled Susan to truly live again. Maybe one day even Alberta Scrubb would come to some comprehension. Every action, every tragedy has meaning, and the events of May 7, 1949 were no exception. So much was taken away, and yet so much was given. All that remained was for those who survived to grasp that offering and never let go. And so, with a sickening screech of rubber and a slight jolt as the frame of the lorry's bed scraped against her door, Susan lived.

Some say that in sacrificing oneself, a person approaches the divine. If so, Susan would seem the most human of them all. They were in Aslan's Country. She would continue to tread the thorny paths of Earth for many years. Aslan had set a path for all of them, and the path for the others led to that fateful train ride. Susan's path would be different. She would remain as an example of human frailty and failure, and also of acceptance of pain and suffering. To continue living would be her sacrifice.

Life. It's a strange thing. It's full of joys and heartbreaks; we live in the thrill of one moment or, when so much of it remains, wish for it to end. And only when it is taken away do we realise its value. Life, you with all your sufferings and comforts both great and little; meaningful death, you with your majesty and dark glory; may we never fear either of you. There can be beauty in both of you. And Susan finally saw both of you and understood. She lived.

That day, in a land far, far away, bells immeasurably lovelier than any bound by earth and metal pealed.

Fin

"We ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough…There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the only bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning." Thornton Wilder

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The last time I read Prince Caspian, I was looking for what could have gone wrong in Susan and I was struck by the sense of loss she experienced at seeing Narnia in ruins, and how opposite it was to the flippant attitude she adopted towards Narnia afterwards. I do not think it was accidental. I also noticed that she had precisely one interaction with a Narnian not named Trumpkin; it seems that she faded from the picture after the meeting with Aslan, as if she had already rejected Him and Narnia then.

There you have it, my labor of love, aside from a (remotely) possible epilogue. I hope that this story will be enjoyed; if it helps one person, then I will be more than satisfied. As for myself, it has given me insight into C.S. Lewis' characters and the times in which they lived; however, more importantly, I believe it has had a positive impact on me personally. For example, I had drifted away from meaningful literature, and as I wrote this I began remembering several books with deep purpose, with true beauty, and picked them up for the first time in years.

I would like to thank Loopyloo2610, whose help was invaluable in making this story as accurately British as possible. I would like to thank C.S. Lewis for the world he created, in which our minds can freely roam. Also, Thornton Wilder's "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" was a large inspiration for this story, first subconsciously and then explicitly once I realized the similarities. It has shaped me in many ways. A BBC movie on Margaret Thatcher, "The Long Walk to Finchley," was the main basis for my depiction of Sir John Crowder. Petre Crowder's excellent maiden (first) speech and John Crowder's question on eggs can be found in the parliamentary archives linked to their Wikipedia articles. Any other information on the Catcher-in-the-Rye, the convent, and the church were from their websites and Google Maps. The Crowders and Mike Calvert are historical; Mother Perpetua was my invention; and Owen Leakey, of course, was "Geeky Boy" from the movie "Prince Caspian." His name was a play on the words "owing" (to Lucy) and "geeky." And last but certainly not least, thanks to those of you who have reviewed! You've been a huge encouragement to 'put pen to paper' and finish this task.