Disclaimer: I do not own any of the original characters from the Chronicles of Narnia. The are the property of C.S Lewis

Illness Through the Eyes of a Child

The years had come and gone after the dreadful train wreck in London and the passing of time had secured the memories and the faith deep in the recesses of the mind. Susan Pevensie hadn't heard about all of the particulars until almost a full day later and it was then that she realized her family was gone. The only person left was herself. She mourned them for a long time, feeling alone and desperate to be with them, but soon she realized that they had moved on to a better place and that they would want her to move on with her own life. This she did, though it was hard in the beginning to be the last of her family, she managed to move on. She lived shortly with her grandparents and then once she was able to she moved out on her own she obtained a job, a career and even a husband, Charles Williams. Her life begun to be normal again and though she missed her family every day, new and wonderful things were happening to her in her life.

Susan hardly ever though about Narnia in her early adult hood but she thought about her family and what she had lost. There was an anger within her that had given up the childish beliefs for a cynical modern view of a world filled with evil. She was more preoccupied with life itself and the wonders that the world placed before her. They were there for her to learn by and the death of her family made her realize that life was too short not to enjoy every minute of it. With her wonderful job and the love of her life everything seemed perfect, but soon even those good times must turn to serious times and it was now her turn to have a family of her own. Susan was now the proud mother of two. Her oldest child was a boy, Samuel, dark and handsome like his father he had been keen to follow along in his footsteps. He was brave and athletic and most of his young life and into his teen year he played football any time he could. He did poorly at school but was learning to try or he would be punished by not being able to play. He was a carefree boy and all that mattered to him was the lover of the game. Her youngest, Faith, a daughter, wasn't anything like her father or her mother. Faith had a wild imagination and didn't care much for any of the things that Susan herself had taken interest in when she was her daughter's age. Oh no, Faith was almost a spacey child, with a heart for adventure and the mind to believe that anything was possible. She found the miraculous in the most common places and you could even say she was more like the aunt that she had never met. Faith could have been a twin sister to Lucy, they were so alike in personality and looked that Susan had marveled in it every time she caught her daughter in her many adventures. Faith held onto Lucy more so than Susan ever did. She believed in her like a child believes in the imaginary and saw Lucy in everything. Lucy was the best friend of Faith's young life and she was her every time she looked in the mirror of into a pane of glass, Lucy stared back at her. Susan marveled at the ideas and the beliefs that Faith held so close to her heart and lived so fully by and she wished that in a way she could have lived so openly and not closed her mind to the miraculous as she had done. Faith kept her young and through her children she lived, loved and began to see as she had once only dreamed possible.

Faith was a small child, and yet, was an imaginative child but very much a child that learned to be on her own. She spent most of her time making up her own adventures as her father, mother and brother were all far to busy to spend time with a little, imaginative child. It was through Faith; however that Susan began to remember her childhood and the wonders that were Narnia. She expected that some day her daughter would come rushing into her, as Lucy once had, to tell her of a whole other world through a great door that no one else had the change of knowing about. Many times Faith had come to her filthy from her play with an absolutely magical glow in her eyes, a glow she remembered in the eyes of a great lion. Another world would have certainly been something that little Faith would have adored to find.

One afternoon, while the boys had gone out and Faith had remained in with her mother, she realized that something was wrong in her mother's eyes. She sat quietly on the floor and watched as her mother fidgeted and couldn't bring herself to a comfortable position. She seemed distant and unaware of her surroundings. Her face was pail and for the first time Faith could see how old her mother was becoming. Faith had kept and old photograph on her bed side table that showed her mother, young and beautiful. She saw this picture every day and in her mind her mother would always look young and angelic. But now, the signs of fatigue and age were written deeply on Susan's face. It was one of the worst realizations that a child could have but she did not let her mother see that she was worried. To Susan it didn't look like she was being watched, for Faith had occupied herself with a large bit of canvas and some paints on the floor by her feet.

Faith was an amazing artist. For a child of her age she was wonderful at capturing the subject that she had been studying and much like the master painters of our time she wasn't appreciated for her talent. It seemed to Faith like her parents never really saw anything that she had done. Not her father, that was certain but her mother was much more attentive. Susan had marveled, many nights, at paintings by her young daughter and though many of them were of every day objects or of flowers from the garden, there were some that, to Susan, had far more magic in them than she could have ever imagined and it was these paintings that drew her further back to Narnia. They had a Narnian look to them and even some, she was sure, had a Faun or a Centaur amidst the trees and flowers. Or even in the colours that the child had chosen, Susan was reminded of something, especially in the blues and gold. They were the most vivid reminders and she could nearly see Aslan looking back at her.

Sadly, Susan had long ago lost her faith in such a magical place as Narnia. Even while her family was still with her she had began to doubt the existence of such a place. She believed she had dreamed it and that imagination and the closeness of siblings had made it real. Logically it was impossible to grow up believing in magical worlds and Susan had put her belief aside and fancied the idea as nothing more than an idea. When her brothers and sister died, along with her mother and father, anger had taken over her. She hated that they believed so fully. That Narnia had become to them a refuge and it had been because of Narnia and their belief that the children had boarded that train. She cursed the lion and the magic and all of the wonderful things she had once believed so completely in and she pushed it away from her life and began to forget and move on as she was forced to say goodbye to the security of a family.

Susan's discomfort only grew over the next few days and her mind began to wander. She felt pains that she had never felt before and sicknesses had begun to take hold of her daily. Finally her husband had taken her to the hospital and left his son to watch Faith, after all there was no need to worry the children about anything. But really there was plenty of cause for worry and Faith had caught it in her mother's eyes as her mother and her father left the house that morning.

As soon as their parent had gone Samuel, Faith's brother, had shot across the street to the football field where he met up with his friends, leaving little Faith alone and terrified.

"Stay in the house," he had said to Faith as he rushed out, "and don't do anything to get me in trouble," and with that he locked her in.

Faith spent the afternoon alone, which under most circumstances would not have bothered her, in fact she thrived on being along, no one judged her, but this time it troubled her deeply. She began to worry, though her father had told her not to, and fled to her bedroom where she hid herself away. Her bedroom faced out into the street and from her window she could watch her brother and his friends but she couldn't bear to watch him out there being care free when she knew that something was wrong. She had seen it in her mother's eyes and had felt it in the atmosphere that surrounded the family. Something inside her struck at her heart like a giant drum, like a battle was about to begin and she had no way to defend herself against. She shut the sun out of her room by pulling closed her drapes and she found herself in darkness. Quickly she pulled herself under her huge four poster bed where she kept all of her secret things and with an electric torch she could see all of the things that would comfort her and protect her from the coming darkness.

Under her bed, Faith had made herself a little den, like that of a wild animal and beneath the mattress she kept some of her most prized possessions, like paintings she had done that she would never show anyone, for if she had shown them to her mother, Susan would have know it was Narnia and a voice within her told her it was not yet the time for that. Faith had never been to Narnia but her wild imagination had always been filled with it. It was like she was looking through someone else's eyes at this wonderful place and could see everything as vividly as if it were in her own garden. Lucy was of that magical place and every time she saw her in the looking glass or in a window pane she could see the magical world everywhere around her. She didn't know what this magical place was called but she could see it clearly in her head. This was where she went when she was sad or lonely because she knew that there she was not alone. She also kept with her an old photograph of her mother and her siblings. She had always seen herself in her Aunt Lucy's picture and could tell by her face that she would have been understood by this person. Her heart ached for Lucy, Edmond and Peter and she mourned the family she had never met. Her tears ran smoothly down her cheeks and quickly she cried herself to sleep, alone, under her bed and longing for Narnia.

When she awoke there was a great commotion in the house. Samuel had returned and it sounded like her mother and father had as well. She rushed out from under her bed, looked quickly in the looking glass to straighten her hair, smiled at Lucy and ran to see what was going on. Samuel caught her at the door to their parent's room before she could run in to see them.

"You can't go in there," he said severely, "mother is ill and the doctor is with her. Father doesn't want you to bother anyone."

"I won't be a bother," Faith said as she struggled against her brother, "I just want to see mother, what is wrong with her?"

"Father won't say," Samuel said trying to stay brave, "but it must be something bad."

"Why didn't she stay at the hospital if something is really wrong?" Faith asked fear building within her.

"Because there is probably nothing they can do for her now," Samuel said as he let a tear roll down his cheek.

Faith stopped fussing against her brother and hugged him tightly, "is she going to die?" She whispered as tears rushed down her face.

"I hope not," Samuel said as he hugged her tighter, "I really hope not," he looked more like a child than he had ever looked to Faith and despair filled them both.