Hello!

This is my first Chronicles of Narnia fan fiction, and I am still learning a LOT about the inner workings of the world, so I intend to do a lot of learning as I write! Please let me know what you think of this first chapter!

I do not own the Chronicles of Narnia, I only own Lark and her bookshop job interview experience...because that was my own experience!

Lark had a song trapped in her throat.

All the poor thing wanted to do was to shout it out, but she didn't know the tune or the words. So it sat in the back of her throat, a soft burn like the last bit of kindling in a fire.

The song wanted to be sung most in early spring mornings, when the sun glinted cheerfully through the budding trees. On those days, the song woke her up, the last few bars humming in her ears as she floated between sleep and wake. By then, she couldn't quite grasp it, and it was too late.

Lark knew that she had never heard the song, but she also felt on those mornings like perhaps she had known it once.

Especially on those mornings where the sunshine streamed into her room, she longed to sing it. While she lay in bed with her blue comforter tangled around her legs, she tried to concentrate on what the song felt like.

"The song sparkles like a small stream," she whispered to her ceiling. "It swishes like long, golden grass, and it is warm."

For three infuriating months, the only place Lark heard the song was in her dreams, and there she expected it would stay.

Asher's Books was the kind of place that made you feel too big to be allowed. Four rooms held shelves filled to the ceiling with new books, old books, dull books, enchanting books, and books of every size and color. There were also shelves that held oddities like knick-knacks and curiously named soaps.

Lark had always been drawn to the way its sky colored door laid against the brick exterior. She passed it weekly as she visited the hair salon on its right and the tiny taco shop on its left. On warm days, the door was thrown wide open to anyone who might like a refuge from the beating sun, and on one Tuesday in May, Lark decided to accept its welcome.

As she breathed in the musty, dusty, old book smell, Lark thought about her family dinner the night before at the tiny taco shop. Cora and Cypress Rutherford had their hands a bit full with their two-year-old triplets, Flora, Flint, and Sequoia, and they often forgot they had another child, except when it came to money. So since Lark was now twenty years old and two years out of high school, they thought it was time for her to live on her own. In order to live on her own, Lark realized, she needed to have money to pay for the necessary things like gas, food, rent, and flowers.

She didn't enter with the intention of seeking a job, but what was the harm in trying? She didn't really know the responsibilities that were required when you worked at a bookshop, but it couldn't be that hard.

"Excuse me, are you hiring right now?" Lark asked the grumpy-looking purple-haired girl at the counter.

The girl didn't even look up as she called, "Tom!"

A squat, graying man poked his head around a stack of books that was hiding a small nook with a computer and a display of bar trivia first place plaques. When he saw Lark, he moved around the counter to shake her hand. "Hi, I'm Tom. What can I do for you?"

"Hi, I was wondering if you were hiring?"

The man gave her a small smile and studied her for a moment. "Why don't we do a quick interview?"

This seems out of order, Lark thought. Wasn't she supposed to fill out an application? Send in a resume? She was not prepared for an interview! What were her strengths? What were her weaknesses? How could she twist the wording when she talked about her weaknesses to make them sound like strengths? She had no time to mentally prepare, because without even waiting for an answer, Tom was already gesturing for her to follow him!

The little man tiptoed over to a cushioned bench next to a display of book lights and patted the spot next to him. Lark hoped he couldn't hear her heart pounding.

"What do you like to read?"

Lark hated the way she could feel her face flushing, her pale skin probably turning a flaming red color. It wasn't that the types of books she read embarrassed her; it was that she had been mentally preparing herself for questions like her name, her level of schooling, her experience in retail, though this didn't seem like a very out of place question to ask in an interview for a position in a bookshop.

"I love children's books. Old, whimsical things. Oh, and Harry Potter. Those are my favorite things to read." Fiction written for adults had never sat well with her. There was a richness to the plot and the descriptions that seemed to get lost from the transition to childhood and adulthood.

The old man smiled encouragingly. "Good choices." He paused, looking up as someone entered the bright blue door, then his pale blue eyes met hers. "When can you start?"

Pleasantly surprised as well as a bit confused, Lark told him she could start after Memorial Day, then shared with him the pertinent information like her name, the days she was free, and her phone number. She left the store (not before buying a pretty book she had seen about using flowers in baking, even though she didn't bake, but someday she wanted to) and was delighted at the thought that it was not yet eleven o' clock and she had already found herself a job, and one at a place she would enjoy, no less. Not everyone was so lucky to find themselves at a job that they liked, especially on the first go.

Two Tuesdays later, Tom shook off the early afternoon rain clung to the little hair he had, and threw down several envelopes on a stack of old, blue books as he walked. "All right, Lark, ready for the grand tour?"

Lark, who had just mastered the cash register and was feeling particularly confident, smiled and nodded as she took her place beside him. "This room is where we keep all of our new books as well as used children's books." Tom spread his short arms to gesture around the bright, airy main room of the store. He turned and Lark's long legs followed him. They twisted through a path littered with boxes and paper bags teeming with books that patrons had brought in to be looked at and hopefully bought, then a small trail of plastic bags full of cheap paperbacks led the pair into the next room.

"All right, this room's Romance." Tom stuck his tongue out like a little boy, emitting a giggle from Lark, and they passed a chest-high mountain (or rather, chest-high for Lark, it almost reached the top of Tom's head) of used books that had been bought and waiting to be priced. It would appear that the entrance to the room was not the best place for them to be waiting. "And true crime, biographies, Western, Michigan history, art, and cooking."

"All that in this tiny room?" It was hardly the size of a normal person's living room.

"Oh yeah. This is a magical store, Lark. Even when we think they won't, things find a way to fit."

Both of them were glad to be leaving the Romance room, as it was quite a bit darker and harder to see than the others. The Romance overstock was piled so precariously that the Nora Roberts books barely brushed the overhead lights, and the room was paneled with dark brown wood, so it was not a very pretty place to be.

Harsh florescent light lit the gray walls of the next room, the only color other than the books were on the a flight of stairs leading down into another room, each individual step painted with a colorful title of a classic children's book. The first few steps proclaimed Alice in Wonderland, Lord of the Rings, and Charlotte's Web. Tom pointed to different sections of the less cramped room. "In here we have fiction, mystery, biographies, mythology, poetry, and some sub-categories of those. Down the stairs are our world history and language sections."

Rounding the Mystery corner was the doorway entering the final room, which was quite small and narrow, so small that lanky Lark needed to duck, while the top tuft of gray on Tom's hair just skimmed the top of the door.

This room was painted long ago with reds and blues, and had a brown border along the ceiling. "In here we have books about religion and theology, as well as horror and sci-fi."

"Interesting combination," Lark remarked, feeling a little nervous about the warring topics in this room.

"Oh, and there's psychology and sports as well," Tom added, seeming to have not heard her. He went on about how he hoped to buy the gym next door (whose loyal customers were literally dying out-it was not as new or trendy as the gym across town, so the young people were not using it) which would give him a large room just for children's books, games, and toys. He hoped they could start a story time like the libraries did, they just needed a large enough space without bookshelves to do it. Tom turned and straightened shelves as he passed without thinking about it, as all good bookshop keepers do, and Lark felt herself breathe a sigh of relief as they exited the strange, last room. She felt cold in there, even though it was a warm, early summer day, but she tried not to think too much about it.

Dozens of trips between the fiction room and the mountain of waiting to be priced books brought with them the late afternoon. After being sent out on an errand by Tom to Dairy Queen to buy ice cream for the miserably humid staff members, it was nearly time for Lark to go home. What a relief it was to know that she had survived her first day of work, the day she had been excited and anxious about for two weeks.

Handing her a heavy set of about thirty keys, Tom gave her a kind smile. "You've done well today. Now, can you do one last thing for me, and then you can go home? We need a new light bulb over in the corner by the pop-up books. There's a little nook in between the Fiction room and the Theology room, where there are two closets, right across from each other. Will you unlock the one on the right and then dig around for a light bulb for me? I'm not positive, but it should be on the fourth shelf to the right, almost at the back of the room."

"Sure." The store grew quiet as people shuffled through the Fiction and Romance rooms with their purchases, and one of the other workers turned off the radio that played through overhead speakers in each room. Lark liked the quiet of home, but here, the silence pressed heavily against her ears, and made her inexplicably nervous.

The closet where Lark was to find this light bulb had a moody lock that didn't feel like opening, and when the lock finally relented and she peeked inside the closet, she wondered how they were able to store anything in it at all. It was quite a long closet, with one wall stretching far back with shelves full of boxes, and the other wall was giving her about a foot and a half of space to squeeze into and look for the light bulb. There was no light switch, only a cord that turned on a bare, hanging bulb. In order to have enough space, she would have to press herself against the empty wall to try to slide through. It didn't help her either that boxes of books were plopped lazily in the first few feet inside, collections each employee kept in the closet until they had enough money to purchase the books.

When she took her first step inside the closet, she heard it. It was so faint, almost impossible to hear, but she was awake, and she was hearing the song for the first time.

Her heart leaped in her chest, and with every step she took, the song was a little louder, a little more clear. She still didn't know the words, but her heart sang along with it. Her long fingers trembled as they helped guide her along the wall.

If not for the boxes, for the necessity to walk sideways, and the dark, she would have run, rushed toward the song. Stumbling over boxes gave her little scratches on her feet, but she kept moving along the wall. The light bulb was forgotten, and she only had one thing on her mind. She wasn't even wondering why on earth the song would be heard in this cramped bookshop closet, or how far she would need to go in in order to hear it. With joy like this, when it is so close that you can nearly touch it, logic does not seem to matter.

That beautiful song was almost loud enough to hear the muffled words when Lark reached the back wall of the closet. Her heart began to sink, now wondering what to do next, she noticed a small door. It was hardly big enough to crawl into. Lark was not normally an impulsive person, but after three months of this song being trapped in her heart, she knew she had no choice. Throwing open the little door, giving no thought to the world behind her, she crawled inside, and was caressed with a large, warm light.

And in its fullness, she heard it.

It was just as she imagined it, and more. Not only did it sound like a small stream, but the splashing of the stream seemed to sing the song. Not only did the song whisper in a sound that delighted her ears like long, golden grass, the grass proclaimed the song. And the song was warm, but the warmth that came from this light, that seemed to be even more than just the sun...made her feel wholly human, and wholly happy, for the first time. Everything around her seemed to be singing this beautiful, joyful song.

So struck with this beauty, so delighted, so silent, so enchanted by it, it took Lark a few minutes to notice that she had no idea where the bookstore had gone.

The small door she had just clambered out of had disappeared, and was now an empty space on the late afternoon sunlit grass. As she gazed around this valley, she realized this new place not only was completely unfamiliar to her, but it didn't even look like Michigan. There weren't any people around.

Lark's heart sank as she remembered that her phone was still in her purse under the counter at the bookstore.

Frightened as she was by these realizations, the joy that she felt from this song, that seemed to come straight from her heart, being sung around her made her feel a bit brave.

She didn't know where she was, how she got there, or how she was going to get home, but she couldn't just stand there, frozen in fear, as she might back in her...world? Was this the same world? She read books, she worked at a bookshop for goodness' sake, she knew that sometimes in stories people found themselves in places where they didn't belong or know of!

"What I must do is try to find a person," she decided. One thing she knew she was good at was making decisions, whether they were good or bad, she knew she had to do something, so she started walking up out of the valley.

In her fright, Lark tried to hold onto the peace that she felt when she heard the song, and tried to convince herself there was a reason of some sort for her coming.

After about twenty minutes of walking, she had noticed an enormous castle on a hill and started up to it, but a suspicious knight had thought she was a spy and grabbed onto her. He had not allowed her to explain herself and was very strong, so she eventually stopped trying to reason with him and submitted herself to be dragged along as he yelled, "HIGH KING PETER!" through the entrance hall.

Was High King Peter someone who was gracious and kind, and would listen to her inexplicable situation?

"King Peter! High King PETER!"

"Samuel, what are you carrying on about?" Lark's heart leaped as she noticed a hopefully less crazy man, scruffy and dressed in a similar knight's uniform round the corridor in front of them. "I've told you that if something happens, you report to your supervisor, have I not?"

"This promiscuous woman woman must be a spy, David," Samuel spat, not even stopping. "Why else would she be dressed in this manner, or not know about our ways? I am taking her to the High King at once, and he will decide what to do with her!"

"I'm not a spy, I promise!" Lark told the scruffy knight. "I wouldn't even know how to BE a spy, I can't lie, and my face would give me away every time! I blush horribly every time I'm put under pressure!" Her face was flaming as she spoke, and David guffawed in spite of himself.

"Slow down, Samuel, let me talk to her."

"NO!"

"Calm down, lad, I've been here longer than you. You're too quick to jump to conclusions, a horrible quality in a knight. Think about it: if she doesn't look threatening, what's the harm in talking before we take her to the king? What's your name, girl?"

"Lark Rutherford."

"Where do you come from, Lady Lark?"

"Michigan."

"Where on earth is Michigan?" Samuel cried, but the scruffy one was silent for a moment. He pursed his lips and stroked his sandpapery scruff.

"It appears you have traveled very far to get here. Where is your boat?"

"I don't have a boat." Lark took a breath, knowing that this was going to make or break their trust in her. She didn't want to sound like a crazy person. "I work in a bookstore and I went into a closet to find a light bulb, and I began to hear the most beautiful, hopeful song I had ever heard. I've heard it in my dreams, but nowhere else except that closet. I longed to hear it louder and clearer, so I followed it out of the closet, through a door, and found myself in a valley, in this land I have never seen."

Samuel began to scoff, but David held a finger to silence him. "All right," was all he said, and he took her arm and began to escort her down another corridor.