This world and its inhabitants belong to C.S. Lewis. I am borrowing them for my own amusement and will return them unharmed.

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PETER

I trip now, over my own feet. I have to concentrate to walk up or down stairs, because I don't recall how to walk with such short legs, and such little weight. My center of gravity is different, my stride all wrong.

My hip feels bare without the comforting weight of the sword that hung there for so many years, but my hand still flies to grasp the invisible hilt when I am startled or angry.

When I walk past a mirror, I don't recognise the pale-faced boy who looks out at me. Look at his dark eyes, so lost and confused... he doesn't even have his first beard yet. This cannot be me!

The servants laugh behind their hands when they hear me speak, and even I can hear how out of place the high courtly phrases are, and so I have begun to train myself out of them, trying to recall the way I spoke all those years ago.

EDMUND

My voice breaks, and so I have gone back to not speaking, merely sitting and listening to the others. Often I catch myself reaching to stroke my beard—a habit I have had for years—and my fingers meet only soft, bare skin.

I took the sword from the suit of armor in the hall today. I could barely lift it, and my little boy's arms ached from the effort.

This body is small, weak and flabby. I cannot even run as I used to, running in the early morning with the bite of the wind clearing all thoughts from my mind, and so I work each day to trim and shape it, hoping to find a way to be at rest.

I do not even venture to the upper hall where the wardrobe stands. I do not know which I fear more...that it will not open to Narnia, or that it will, and we will see ourselves—our real selves, the Kings and Queens, ruling over our beloved country.

SUSAN

I think the oddest feeling of all is the sudden weightlessness of my head. From hair that brushed the floor, I have gone to a school-girl style that only reaches my shoulders.

I feel shockingly bare, in my short skirts and simple blouses. Wool and serge feel so coarse against skin that recalls the soft brush of silk and velvet. I still expect the rustle of skirts as I walk, and the weight of a crown on my head.

The Professor smiles at us, fond and yet a little sad, and somehow I believe he understands, at least a little of what we are feeling...

I worry for my country. What will Peridan say, when he hears that Their Majesties did not return from the hunt? I can imagine the hue and cry that will go up, the fruitless searches throughout the Shuddering Woods. They are wise enough not to grieve us as dead, but to know that we have left as mysteriously as we appeared.

LUCY

I forgot how short I was—not that I was ever very tall, but I'm almost as small as a Mouse! I have to call Peter or Susan if I want to reach anything on a high shelf, or even open a window.

I talked to the cat today, a long discussion about Silverpaws, the grey tabby who so efficiently ran messages in Cair Paravel. She looked back at me and then began to wash her ears. I don't believe she listened to a word I said, and she didn't know how to run a message either.

Peter hides in his room, or in some forgotten corner of the house, and when he comes out his face is weary and his eyes are full of pain. Susan still walks like a queen, with the short brisk steps that always seemed to float her across a marble floor, but now merely make her look impatient. Edmund is quieter than ever, and drives himself to breaking, running and lifting weights, shadow boxing, fencing with a foil made of willow.

And I? I sit, and remember, and wonder. I believe we will return...of course we must return. When our tasks here are done, Aslan will bring us home.

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