The Boy Outside

I am not alone at all, I thought. I was never alone at all. And that, of course, is the message of Christmas. We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest, the wind coldest, the world seemingly most indifferent. For this is still the time God chooses.

~ Taylor Caldwell

Back during the days when Eustace Scrubb was still small, and the Pevensies still lived down the street from the Scrubbs, Mr. Scrubb taught as a professor of philosophy at the University, and Mr. Pevensie was studying medicine. It was during those long in-between days after the Great War, when Things were happening: like transatlantic flights and the invention of traffic lights. Everything was very modern and up-to-date, and people were beginning to think that Times were Changing, and Old Things didn't Matter Anymore.

One of the Things that didn't Matter Anymore, was something which Eustace's parents puzzlingly referred to as That Vile Holiday. It fell without fail at the end of December, and Eustace knew very little about it, except that it coincided with candles glowing from the windows of houses, and people singing songs at night. There was a time, quite late at night, when Eustace was about five years old, and it was extremely cold out, that Harold unexpectedly told Eustace it was 'Christmas Eve' and would he put his coat on?

They crept out quietly to, "Avoid letting in any mice," Harold said, but really, Eustace thought, so Alberta wouldn't hear them. They walked for a long ways thought the shadows, without even a pocket torch, with only the stars burning down at them through the darkness, until at last, they arrived There.

There was a terrifically large building attached to the New College, with high vaulted windows and buttresses, which Eustace had sometimes seen in daylight, though he had never been inside. On this night, the night of Christmas Eve, brilliant, dazzling lights burning from the windows illuminating colored pictures Eustace had never seen before. The great, stolid, stone building, lit with a glory of colors, was singing.

As Eustace and Harold stood in the shadows on the lawn next to the building, the sound of voices, so high, so sweet, so pure, rang into the darkness with something that Eustace decided afterwards must be 'harmony'. The sound was so otherworldly all his hair stood on end and shivers raced through him. He reached out and clutched his father's hand.

"Harold?" Eustace asked in a quavering voice, "Is that the stars singing?"

Because he couldn't think of anything else that could sound so beautiful. Harold said nothing, only squeezed his hand. That was the first time Eustace felt a stab of something he later called 'Joy'…it was also the last time Harold ever took him anywhere without asking Alberta first.

~o*o~

Exactly a year after Harold had taken Eustace to listen to the singing in the darkness, Eustace waited patiently for his father to offer to take him there again. They sat around the family room (parlors were old fashioned), while Harold read his newspaper (he didn't smoke a pipe, because it was old fashioned), and Alberta darned socks (darning socks became less old fashioned when the price of socks went up). Erik Satie's Gymnopédie was spinning on the turntable, twisting with a mix of hope and melancholy.

But the longer Eustace waited, and the more hopeful looks he cast at Harold…the quieter and more unobservant his father became…until it seemed quite clear that he had no intention of taking Eustace anywhere.

"Eustace," Alberta said. "Stop fidgeting. Why don't you go upstairs and look at your beetles?"

Eustace went…but not to look at beetles. He didn't dare get his coat out of the closet, because the hinges squeaked, so he went straight across the silent, cold front hall, opened the door, and slipped outside.

It was a star-thrown night. Someone had been gliding through the blue, tossing handfuls of silver into the sky…and some had fallen to the ground and burned and glittered. Eustace was not often out at night, and he stopped to stare, his own misty breath blurring the wild sparkle. There were millions of flashing colors. He wasn't exactly certain which way to go to find the place where the stars sang…under the moonlight, the neighborhood looked starkly different than he remembered. It was almost as if going out the door of his house had suddenly taken him to a new world.

Wrapping his arms around himself, he set off down the street in what he hoped was the right direction. In every window of every house there glowed a candle, shining and laughing and drawing him on. Once he paused to look back. His house, crouching in the dark, was shrouded. No lights were shining in the windows, only a thin glow that had crept down the hall from the family room and glimmered in the glass. It seemed very cold, like a void.

Although it was only a few hundred yards down the street, the Scrubbs almost never visited the Pevensies. Eustace had almost passed the house before he stopped and recognized it. It was smallish, and whiteish, and a huge Christmas wreath almost covered the door. There were yellow rectangles on the snow before the windows…and laugher. Eustace hesitated, then walked across the lawn. The snow that had rolled off the roof made drifts almost up to his knees. He struggled through the rosebushes to the bay window. Thornes clung to him.

A Christmas tree, hung with big colored lights, stood next to a fireplace, and an enormous log licked with flames. Mr. Pevensie was sitting in an armchair with the wireless at his elbow, listening to a song with a strange-sounding tune. Eustace saw two of his cousins, Susan and Lucy, tying bright colored packages to the branches of the tree. Even through a closed window, he caught the bright, rich waft of mince pies, and mulled wine. Candles on the mantle flickered and blew in the draft, and across the hall in the kitchen, his Aunt was singing.

And just at that moment, Eustace was struck with incredible sadness. If they had not been laughing, it would not have been so hard, but there was something immensely painful about standing in snow up to the knees, staring through cold glass into a room where people were laughing with raw Joy. He felt insufficient, incomplete…insignificant. He felt as if no one cared. It was too cold to cry as he peered through the fern-frost on the glass; his tears would have frozen.

A story came to mind as Eustace shivered in the darkness, the story of the Little Match Girl, who, like Eustace, had huddled in the Cold on Christmas Eve…and had, one by one, lit all her remaining matches so she could see the visions of Christmas, and feasts, and the only person who had ever been kind to her. It had never occurred to him that she was silly to have used up all her matches, only that it was horrible that she had come to an end of them.

He sat down suddenly in the snow bank and wrapped his arms around himself. He wondered how it would be when they found him frozen there in the morning…he wondered if they would feel sorry for him. He wondered if they would weep as they carried his coffin to the cemetery. He wondered (even more painfully) if his parents would miss him.

He was feeling so thoroughly sorry for himself he was almost tempted to carry through with freezing to death in the snowbank.

Fortunately, at that moment he was landed on heavily, and being landed on heavily is usually enough to pause the plans of even the most determined. There was a lot of floundering, some shouts of, "ow!" and "get off, you bounder!" and "what is it?"

"It's Eustace," a voice replied.

"Oh gosh!"

"I know."

Eustace was pulled to his feet and was forced to stand and regard his two most intimidating relatives. Peter and Edmund did rather wonderful things, like climbing trees and trying to lick their elbows. Eustace was never allowed since he might Fall From a Branch, and elbow licking is impossible, or so his mother said. Secretly, Eustace never thought impossibility was a credible reason for not trying something. Especially not when it came to elbow licking.

"What on earth are you doing here?" Edmund demanded. He was a frank child.

"None of your business," Eustace mumbled.

"Eh?" Peter commented. "You are sitting in our rosebush under our window."

"It's not sporting to just land on a chap," Eustace snapped. "I wasn't doing any harm."

"Spying," Edmund said gravely.

They were going to execute him then and there…they would probably tie him up and throw him in the woodshed. His fate was nigh. Eustace was suddenly seized with a wild desire to ask if it was really possible for one to lick one's elbow.

"Mum was just about the stir the pudding," Peter said suddenly. "Want to come help?"

Eustace stared, glassy-eyed.

Edmund took a step forward and waved his hand before his cousin's face. "I think you just broke him."

"All right," Eustace squeaked.

"Good-o!" Peter exclaimed. "Come on, then. Don't hang around."

It seemed strange to Eustace that it didn't seem strange to anyone else that he was there. Mr. Pevensie twinkled cheerfully at them over his newspaper as they walked down the hall in the colored glow of Christmas lights.

"Oh look! It's Eustace!" Lucy exclaimed, and before he could manage a gasp, all his remaining breath was knocked out of him by her emphatic embrace.

He had smelled tendrils of Christmassy smells through the window, but now they hit him full force. The power of spices and fruit and hot pie crust almost knocked him from his feet. At a collected gallop, Peter, Edmund and Lucy carried him along into the kitchen. Susan was already there, and Mrs. Pevensie, up to her elbows in flour.

Mrs. Pevensie was like Lucy, only much larger…she bounced and laughed, and there was always the smell of pie hanging about her, and she had nice, red hands. She was as unlike Alberta as a color picture is from a black and white one. She enveloped him in a floury hug; her apron smelled of many evenings of roast beef and onions and fricasseed chicken.

For the rest of that evening, Eustace felt like he'd left himself outside. His soul had come alive in a way he had never felt before. He felt a sharp stab of Joy…not the kind that made you smile…smiling was trite…the kind that made you overflow with cool, clear water.

They stirred the pudding, starting with the youngest, "that's you, Eustace," Lucy said, very glad not to be the youngest. Each one made a wish. "Have you got sixpence?" Edmund asked. Peter had. Susan added a thimble. Lucy had a wishbone. The pudding was spooned into a cloth and hung up.

"We were late with the pudding…we should have made it weeks ago," Susan explained. "But a pipe burst in the kitchen wall and there were plumbers and plasterers in here for ages."

Eustace couldn't reply, he was halfway through a slice of apple pie.

That was when a knock came at the front door.

It was his father.

~o*o~

The walk home was colder than it should have been. Colder than the air was. His soul snuffed out like a candle and rejoined his shivering body. It seemed like a dream; a wild flight of imagination while he was peering through the bay window.

"Harold?" he said at last. "Can Christmas come to our house?"

"No," his father replied shortly.

"Couldn't we invite it in?" Eustace continued doggedly. "It seems like the sort of thing that you can catch…and once you catch it you never recover. I want to catch it."

He wanted to feel that sharp stab of Joy once more.

"Your mother is immune," his father muttered.

Alberta had a stony face when they reached the cold, dark hall of their house. She sent him up to his room "to think deeply about what he had done". He went meekly, his mind turning over and over somewhat painfully. It didn't help that his room was very cold and the lightbulb in the bedside lamp had blown. He didn't know where to find another bulb, but there was an emergency supply of candles in the bathroom. His mother didn't trust him with matches. He didn't care.

The single flame drifted about in the draft, silent, but glowing with heat. A strange peace filled the room with the flickering shadows. He felt like the little match girl as he blew out the match. The pale golden glow that lay in a pool around the candle almost felt like Joy.

He hardly knew where he had gotten the idea…he hardly knew it would work, but he found a sheet of paper and a pencil. He wrote with big letters, making them good and black. He addressed it to Father Christmas…he explained that he was wanted…no, needed.

He wasn't sure if he was writing the letter to the right person, but he felt he ought to write to someone. Somehow, he felt, someone would hear the desperate cry from his heart. He carried the letter downstairs and put it on the floor in front of the door. He didn't know what else to do with it…they didn't have a fireplace, and he seriously doubted Father Christmas could get in through the stove.

~o*o~

He woke to the sound of his mother's step in the hall.

It had been so cold last night that he found himself huddled in a ball, and tense with shivering. Cold, white light shined through the thin curtains. It had snowed in the night, and he knew even before he opened his eyes that Father Christmas had not come. There was no Joy in the air.

His door opened. Through half closed eyes, he saw the letter in Alberta's hand.

"Your cousins have been putting nonsense in your head," her words were clipped and hard.

He opened his mouth, but he couldn't even begin to describe the warmth and sweetness of his Aunt and Uncle's home last night.

"They have very dangerous beliefs," Alberta continued. "The things of the Past are no longer relevant. We are enlightened, our society has moved Onward…we are more perfectly evolved than ever before. We have Understanding."

"They were nice to me," Eustace said at last. "I don't think they are so very bad."

Alberta snorted.

"They Believe in Things, Eustace; old, outdated things like honor, and always telling the truth, no matter how hurtful it might be. They go every week and listen to a man read fairytales from an outdated, old book," Alberta said. "Which makes them either ignorant, insane, stupid…or downright wicked."

Eustace stared at her with wide eyes and began to wonder if he'd been safe after all going over to the Pevensie's house the night before.

"They believe in More Beyond," Alberta said with disgust. "Once you allow yourself to believe that there is more beyond our material world, you find yourself in an unchecked progression until you reach the Absolute, the Infinite. They use this Absolute to explain where the Universe came from and comfort themselves with the concept of Afterwards.

"Don't allow yourself to be Taken In, Eustace; there is no such thing as More Beyond the Material. There is nothing more than the dimensions that you can see. Our brains function only as chemicals and electrical connections; the things we think we 'feel', are only the physical workings of our bodies."

"What about Souls?" Eustace asked softly. "What about Love?"

"There is no such thing as Souls," Alberta replied. "Souls are as laughable as the idea of an Absolute. Once you begin to believe that you have a Spirit beyond your body, you must allow that there could be a Supreme Being in that Spiritual World, and you begin to hold yourself to ridiculous standards that can never be met, because in those beliefs, there is an Afterwards, a Reckoning, where you are Judged for a lot of silly things which are thought to be Wrong.

"That's what Religion is all about," Alberta continued. "It's all about 'don't do this and don't do that."

Religion, Eustace thought secretly to himself, must not be very different from having a mother.

"I won't be taken in by a sadistic Being who tricks everyone into slavery…I won't be taken in by the lie. I won't be told what to do," Alberta concluded. "I do not believe in a Supreme Being."

Eustace considered this, "But does not believing in something really mean it doesn't exist?" he asked curiously. "I didn't believe Gussie Wimbledon really had a pet rat, but then he showed it to me one day…it came out and I fed it a bit of stale bread…I say mother, I think it would be corking to have a pet rat-"

"Eustace," His mother said long-sufferingly, "Supreme Beings and Pet Rats really aren't the same thing."

"Why not?" Eustace asked.

"As for Love," Alberta changed the subject brusquely, "Love is like hunger…or tiredness…it's just another feeling. In reality, we bond to each other for survival, and when we end up getting used to each other, we call it 'Love'. It's another of those old, outdated things. The ancients coined the term, because they didn't know any better."

Eustace was quiet at this final revelation, and Alberta got up abruptly and went to the window to look out. When she looked back, Eustace was staring at her with wide, tortured eyes. Alberta threw her hands in the air with a gesture of hopelessness, "Don't think I don't care about you, Eustace. I'm telling you all this because I do care about you. It's an instinct."

There was another long moment of uncomfortable silence.

"You don't Love me, Alberta?" Eustace asked. If he had been older, he might have been able to shrug it all off, or qualify it in his mind, or even reply that he didn't love Alberta, either…but he was just at the age when he still knew that Love meant everything to him.

"You're old enough to accept and understand these things, Eustace," Alberta said; at the best of times she was not an affectionate woman, but she bent down anyway to kiss her son on the cheek. To Eustace it felt cold and meaningless…simply matter meeting matter. Nothing more. He listened to the click of her heels as she retreated down the hallway to the stairs.

Eustace, overcome with despair, bent over and cried.

~o*o~

He found himself, not long after, at the window, staring out at the cold glittering world. In his mind's eye, he saw chemical compounds and physical laws marching like regiments across his befuddled brain. The Magic of snow was gone, the glittering flash of multicolored snowflakes was lost on him. If there was no such things as Love and Souls, then there was no such thing as Beauty, either. The world had lost its color. He supposed he only thought of things as beautiful because he was used to them, or because of some survival instinct.

A moment later, Eustace shook his head to clear it. He was struck…it was almost as sharp as Joy, but quieter. In the white light from the window, gazing at the snow, Eustace came to a realization…he believed Love existed. He believed that Love was somehow Beyond Matter…and if that meant accepting that there might be a Spiritual World beyond the Material one, so be it.

It was Christmas morning…he could feel it in the air. Somehow, even though he didn't quite understand why, or how, Christmas was synonymous with Love; it wasn't the warm glow of candles, or the sparkling voices of the carolers and choir boys, it was something more than that. Love overflowed in the people who celebrated Christmas, and a little of it, a very little of it, had overflowed and showered down on The Boy Outside.

Afterwards

Eustace almost forgot that day and that realization when he was a little boy. That Christmas morning was buried under a new layer of snow every year that passed. He grew older…but strangely, chilled in the deep freeze of his heart, the concept of Love was perfectly preserved when it was finally melted and let out into the light.

Only years afterwards when Aslan sank his claws into Eustace's Dragon Skin and shredded it, leaving something new and fresh and remade underneath, did Eustace finally realize that people weren't experiments by a sadistic Being the way his mother always thought, there was a Way Out. But like his mother always believed, there was a catch, The Way Out wasn't something he could grasp for himself…he'd made a poor effort trying to get rid of his dragon skin…only when he gave up, admitted defeat and allowed Aslan to do his worst, only then, was he made free. Aslan tore away his dragon skin because He loved him.

His mother addressed the problem by choosing not to believe at all. Eustace addressed it by believing Absolutely.

Author's Note: I apologize if that was depressing. Christmas, weirdly enough, beneath wrapping paper and lights and all its pagan trappings has become extremely polarizing in our modern age. I'm still confused how a holiday that, at face value, is just as sugar-coated as Halloween, is so deeply disturbing to many people. There was even a push to rename it 'Holiday' until someone pointed out that 'holiday' is a corruption of 'holy day'. Can't have that…

For us, Christmas is a holy day. Its significance has deep power…everyone stops to listen to 'O' Holy Night' and 'I Heard The Bells'. There is Something underneath the wrapping paper…there is Meaning. Changing the name wouldn't change anything.

Mathematics, the language that accurately describes every particle and function in our universe, allows for more dimensions beyond our three. The Klein bottle is probably the best-known concept of a four-dimensional object, weirdly reproduced in three dimensions. If mathematics can describe infinite infinites… then the concept of the Absolute is just as scientific as the Laws of Thermodynamics.

No matter what your religious (or non-religious belief) is, there is a sticky problem that can't be addressed…that is the Beginning, the Moment Time began, the instant the Material came from the Immaterial. Scientists accept three possibilities…either the Universe is the Infinite and has always Existed (astronomers have 'looked back' to the Dawn of Time, indicating that there was a Beginning), or that it sprang from Nothing. 'Nothing' is not a concept…it can't be described, because the moment you begin to describe it, it becomes Something.

The third choice is that our Universe sprang from Infinity. To be clear, Infinity is; It has no beginning or end. It cannot change since there is nothing it could change to. It is all encompassing...beyond time and matter. It is not the equal of anything…It is not the opposite of anything…It simply Is. In the Bible, the only way God ever attempts to describe Himself is with the phrase: "I AM WHO I AM."

Our Universe is relative to itself, which leads explorers around and around in endless circles. Ultimately, the 'material' doesn't matter, since it can only be described in terms of itself. It is meaningless…yet mankind is constantly searching for meaning. C. S. Lewis suggested that we would never search for something that we did not have the capacity to comprehend…just as creatures without eyes would never have a concept of 'Light'. We search for meaning because we know it is there…somewhere. Having strong emotions about metaphysical concepts shouldn't be possible in a solely material world. The only conclusion I can make is that Meaning is beyond our Universe.

Merry Christmas!

~Rose and Psyche