“The sullen indifference of despair came next, the bitterness of smouldering revolt and misery, the reckless casting away of all good.”
~Lucy Maud Montgomery, “Each in His Own Tongue”
Upright in the wooden pew, make-up expertly applied (they needn’t know it took her four tries before her hands stopped trembling), clothed in black. (Even as a queen, when had she ever worn unrelieved black? Oh, stop, shut up, I can’t argue with myself about whether or not it happened now. I can’t.) She didn’t look at the pity or sorrow in the glances sent her way. She looked straight ahead, at the five closed coffins laid side by side, one much shorter than the rest. Just her family. Harold and Alberta hadn’t wanted Eustace buried from a church. (“That is what funeral homes are for, Susan. And don’t tell me Eustace would want it. Eustace doesn’t want anything now.” Her aunt’s voice had strained with grief as much as anger. “He can’t. He’s gone. Forever.”)
Susan almost wished they were in a funeral home too. The preacher wouldn’t stop talking. She used her own thoughts to drown out the words.
Lucy’s coffin was shorter. At least it hid her face, and that wrenching, eternal smile. For a moment she wished the dwarves had made the coffin, covered in golden stems with flowering jewels in Lucy’s favorite colors.
They’d had no need for coffins in Narnia. The four of them always came back.
(“You have listened to fears, child. Come, let me breathe on you. Are you braver now?”) But Aslan hadn’t cared for them once they’d gone back to England. Once He told them they couldn’t come back.
Peter and Edmund, on either side of Lucy, like they’d been all their lives, shielding her. She had no need of shielding now, she wouldn’t ever hurt or cling to them again, slim arms wrapped around their waists or shoulders in a hug that gave even as it asked for protection. Never, never again would Susan see that.
And their parents to the side. They’d been hurting over how Susan had changed during her trip to America; Susan had walked out on their last conversation.
She wished she had a recording of their voices, even disappointed. She wanted to hear them again. She wanted to be unable to forget the sound. She hurt with longing for the sounds and movements that would never come again.
The pastor finished. She got up, to walk behind the coffins. Even with five, there were more than enough to carry them. Edmund and Peter’s friends from schools, from rugby teams to debate partners, her father’s war buddies, the homeless and veterans her mother had helped, and Lucy had never lacked for those who loved her. She was walking behind a crowd.
It took many of the living to carry the dead, because the dead were so heavy.
She didn’t remember walking through the church, but they were at the large door. She’d left her family before, walking through other doors, to escape the weight of their disapproval; the weight of their hurt. All that was left was her own hurt now.
No, that wasn’t true. Around her the light fell through stained glass windows on row after row of black. The entire church was filled with weeping. But none of them had lost their family and Narnia and—a lion.
She shuddered and walked faster, away from the full pews, out to the rows of parked cars, shining and hot in the sunlight. They wouldn’t let her drive, so she sat in the back seat, alone, and kept her eyes on the black hearses. The real cars, real coffins, stopping at stop lights, made it final. This was the quest—trip—her family would not return from.
Only Susan. Because Susan had chosen so often to be alone, and she’d paid for it by having the choice removed.
She refused to dwell on the burial; she left, right afterwards. She didn’t—couldn’t—care about the others or appearances right now.
She went back to her parents house, locked herself in Peter’s room, and slid to the floor against his white door. Tears came, running down her face and leaving black streaks from her make-up, but there was no one left to see. And that thought hurt so much.
“Aslan sees,” she heard Lucy in her mind. (God, I always want to hear her voice. Don’t let it fade.) “He can see you, Su. He hears.”
Aslan. A golden Lion who made a world and then stripped it away from them. It had been theirs, as its guardians, and he’d taken it.
He’d taken their home from them; yes, their home. Susan couldn’t deny it now, not when all pretences were ripped away, when all she had ever loved was out of her reach as absolutely as Narnia was, with its hills and forests and sea. He’d taken everything that had made them them and taken their kingdom as well.
And He’d said He was in this world, just under another name.
If He was, then He’d taken away her family as well. He’d taken everything. He’d left her nothing, nothing to live for, nothing to hold, nothing to love.
She looked up, at the head of Peter’s bed. Last Christmas Ed and Lucy had given him a present together, a lion with Aslan-like eyes, and a Narnian verse Edmund had remembered scribed beneath it in Lucy’s beautiful calligraphy:
A king, a dwarf, a lion, a bird,
All things e’er seen or heard
A cottage, cave, castle, home
Are ever his, and not my own
His, not mine.
No, they weren’t, they weren’t his, they were mine! My parents, my brothers, my sister, mine!
And maybe she hadn’t stayed with them, maybe she hadn’t been the sister or daughter she should have been, but they were hers still, and they loved her! And He had no right to take them!
“I hate you!” she cried, the formerly gentle queen’s voice screaming through the High King’s room at a God she’d turned away from. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”
OOOOO
The golden Lion was with her still, the Lion of Judah who had died for her. He was standing in the corner of the room. He was waiting.
His love is patient. More patient than her hate.