This is for viennacantabile because I was already making up excuses not to continue when I saw your review. Bless you. I'm trying hard to finish this thing but it's been a struggle.

Also, sorry for what is mostly a filler chapter. The story was supposed to progress more quickly from the last part, but then it turned out that important groundwork was still to be laid. Alas.

Look for a faster advancement through Lucy's time abroad next chapter.

Standard Disclaimers: I own nothing, I make no money. All mistakes are my own.

Months passed quickly in the pleasant idleness of the court at Narrowhaven. The island of Doorn was a busy port that lay in the middle of a major shipping lane and there was no lack of girls near to Lucy's age. Of the ladies she had brought with her only Drumelsda proved to have a head on her shoulders, the others being rather more concerned with the most fashionable cut of dress and who was the handsomest boy at court. She had made also a close friend of Lady Clarine, granddaughter and ward of the current Governor of Doorn, and the three girls where often as not in each other's company.

The city of Narrowhaven was preparing for its annual winter festival, signifying the end of the shipping season and celebrating the safe return or remembering the loss of those sailors that called her home. Talk at the palace was primarily concerned with the upcoming ball and every dressmaker within twenty miles was engaged to outfit the ladies and gentlemen of the court. Servants carried bits of cloth and lace back and forth between the palace and the dress-, shoe-, and mask-makers to ensure a coordinated costume for the lords and ladies of the court.

For days, rumor had circulated that in the heart of the city there was a mask shop of singular quality and originality. It was the dearest wish of every fashionable lady and gentleman to find this shop and secure for herself (or himself) one of its illustrious masks. So it was that Lucy and the Ladies Clarine and Drumelsda ventured forth into the city two days before the festival, slipping away suddenly in the midst of a lawn party to avoid notice and unwanted company.

Three hours later, lost in a maze of streets, weary and footsore, the girls at last stumbled upon a run-down, gray sort of establishment. They would not have known it for the fabled mask shop were it not for an equally gray, wizened woman sitting on the steps, surrounded by beads and feathers and ribbons. She fumbled in a tray next to her and her gnarled fingers searched among the varicolored feathers; Lucy saw suddenly that she was blind.

"Come for a mask, your Majesty?" the old woman croaked. She had before her an almost bare maskform, half-covered in ivory feathers. As they stood, dumbfounded, her deceptively crippled fingers nimbly added three feathers to the mask's total. Lucy shook off her surprise and crouched down (quite unladylike) beside the woman, peering into her face.

"How do you know who I am?" she asked, searching the woman's eyes for confirmation of her blindness. "You cannot see?"

The mask was nearly half-again covered with feathers by this time. The old woman's hands stilled over the tray of feathers and her leathery face creased in a grin.

"My eyes are blind, Majesty, but I do see much." A piece of deep purple ribbon was now added to the mask. "I see that you three are in search of the final piece of your costumes." The woman began to string beads on ribbon.

"Masks for your ladies are there, in the shop window." Drumelsda and Clarine shared excited looks and fairly raced into the shop. Lucy could hear their exclamations of delight.

"And yours, Lucy Pevensie." She held out the half-finished mask to Lucy, who was stricken and pale at the mention of her almost forgotten surname. Lucy reached out a trembling hand to the mask. The old woman pulled it away at the last moment, into her lap, and sewed the string of beads by one end to the side of the mask.

"Not done yet, no." She turned her blind face up to the sun as Drumelsda and Clarine clattered out of the shop, clutching their masks in boxes. "Your's will find you tomorrow night, or the next." Still sewing, she cackled and shook her head. "You'll get what you want, yes. Tomorrow night, or the next."

"Come away, Queen Lucy," said Drumelsda. "We will send a man for your mask."

"Only think how splendid we shall all look!" Clarine squealed. Then, remembering herself, she said, more sedately, "As befitting a queen and her ladies." Then a smile broke through her somber facade and her infectious laughter spread to the others and, laughing, they went up the street, weariness forgotten. Only Lucy looked back, haunted still by the strange encounter, but the street was empty and there was no sign of the old woman.

By the day of the festival, Lucy still had not received her mask. A servant, sent to fetch the mask from the shop, returned empty handed, reporting that there was no mask shop in that quarter, nor had not been in living memory. Drumelsda had placed an order for a replacement immediately but when it arrived it looked sad and plain beside the two masks from the old woman's shop.

"Well," said Lucy as the girls reclined about her room in their dressing gowns, "it will have to do." She held the mask - quite ornate in its own right - before her face and looked out at her reflection through the rounded eye holes.

"Certainly no one will expect me to be the queen, not in the company of two such spectacular masks as your own." Clarine and Drumelsda exchanged a worried look.

"Lucy," Clarine began, but Lucy interrupted.

"Perhaps it is the best disguise of all!" she said gaily, putting the mask aside. But her smile did not reach her eyes and her forced tone did not fool her friends.

Shortly after, the girls parted, each to her own room, to prepare for the festival. Lucy herself was bathed, brushed, coiffed, and being buttoned into her gown when Clarine and Drumelsda burst through her door.

"It has come!" Clarine said breathlessly, holding out a box to Lucy. Lucy took it and collapsed in a chair, opening it hurriedly.

"A chambermaid said she found an old woman wandering the upper halls and when she asked who and what the old woman wanted, why, the old lady thrust the box at her, telling her it was for you and then-" Drumelsda paused to take a breath.

"She disappeared!" Clarine was nearly beside herself. "The servants all think she was a witch!" Indeed, Lucy's maid was inching nearer, trying to see into the box over the ladies' shoulders. Drumelsda noticed her suddenly and turned about with studied indifference.

"Thank you. You may go. I will attend Queen Lucy now." Knowing a dismissal when she heard one, the maid bobbed a curtsy and was gone.

Lucy lifted the mask from its wrapping paper. It was indeed the mask the old woman had been working on. Lucy held it to her face and Drumelsda tied the strings behind her head.

Covered mostly in bone white feathers, it was trimmed in deep purple lace and ribbon. Strings of strange, smooth beads hung down the sides, framing Lucy's face and mingling with her hair. Tufts of feathers skimmed her cheekbones and then swept back up like white wings to either side of her head. The eyeholes were slitted and slanted upwards and surrounded by strange curling designs painted or etched into the maskform itself. The longer she stared, the more detail she found in the mask - three small stars outlined in black on a bead, a fine lining of gold on the edges of the feathers, a pattern of waves painted at the bottom edge of the mask - until she began to believe that it must have taken magic to finish the mask in only two days.

"It's beautiful," whispered Clarine, almost reverent. The girls stared at Lucy silently and Lucy stared at her own reflection. She looked mysterious and grown up, with her hair piled in curls at the back of her head and her eyes glowing darkly from behind the mask.

A bell began to toll the hour and all three of them shook as if awakening from a spell.

"It's eight!" Clarine exclaimed, leaping to her feet. There was a flurry of laces and scarves and gloves and shortly they left Lucy's chamber, elegant and polished, and joined the steady stream of foot traffic going out from the palace into the bright lights and music of Narrowhaven's winter festival.