By mutual agreement, they never spoke of Narnia to their parents—not straight on, at any rate. They were heedful of the Professor’s advice. Yet still, still Lucy could not help but try to tell her mother, somehow. Some things were too important to be kept from Mama.
Mama, with her soft auburn hair and her lilting lullaby voice. Lucy had told her mother everything, once upon a time. Before they’d gone to the countryside, Mama had known about every book her youngest read, each time a boy tugged her braids, all her dreams and her tender eight-year-old heartbreaks. Lucy’s mama was magic.
Her siblings had done that work in Narnia. All of them had easily closed ranks around their youngest sister to make sure she felt cared for in their new, strange land. Susan had rubbed her back and made tea the first time Lucy had loved a boy who didn’t love her back. Edmund had given her dog-eared books to read and an ear to listen to her opinions when she finished them. Peter had sat in her room and they’d talked for hours of all the battles that Lucy had left to fight. But when Lucy first caught sight of her mother at the train station, the old need stirred in her heart for her first and best confidant.
Helen, for her part, was more than a little bewildered by the changes that the countryside had wrought in her four children. In Edmund it was the most obvious; she and her husband had spent many late evenings fretting over the spiteful streak that ran through their younger son and now, suddenly, it had vanished. There was a fierce kindness in him now and, more than that, a desire to do right. Edmund moved through their home with purpose now, as though he himself could right all the injustices of Finchley.
In Peter and Susan, the change was more subtle. Peter spoke with authority and Susan with grace. There was something new, some indelible sense of strength and goodness, buried in both of them.
And Lucy. Little Lucy spoke in riddles.
Perhaps Lucy could not sit curled up on her parents’ bed, as she once would have, and tell her mother all the details of her life in Narnia. She longed to (oh, she longed to), but it was an impossibility for now. Yet, if nothing else, Lucy was determined to tell Mama about Aslan.
“While we were in the country,” she told her mother, “we met someone beautiful. I wish you could have met him too.” She was curled up on the right side of her parents’ bed where her father would usually sleep, tucked in beside her mother like an errant sparrow.
“Oh?” Mama said. “Beautiful how?”
“Golden,” Lucy answered firmly. “Oh, you should have seen him! The bright, golden glory of him. You would have been perfectly in awe. ”
“He sounds like quite the Prince Charming.” Lucy’s mother knew how her youngest loved her fairy stories. Perhaps she had fancied a neighbor boy.
“He wasn’t a prince. He was King.”
“And what was this king’s name?”
Another time, after Peter and Lucy had come home carrying groceries, Lucy was dutifully helping her mother put the dry goods away when she said, “Aslan gives the best hugs. He’s the solidest, safest place I know. I could never get tired of running to him. And he smells lovely. Fresh and wild. A bright yellow scent that wakes you up and makes you feel stronger.”
Lucy’s mother bent down and embraced her youngest. “Better hugs than me, sweetheart?”
“Yes, Mama. Better than you. You would agree if you knew him.”
Perhaps the strangest—or maybe the most profound—riddle that Lucy told her mother came on a rainy day when Helen and all four of her children were together in sitting room. Susan was at the table sketching, her posture so poised and elegant that she almost looked like a little queen. Peter and Edmund sat cross-legged on the floor, a chess board between them, laughing like the schoolboys they were and passing cryptic comments about strategy back and forth. Lucy was cuddled up beside her mother on the sofa, nursing a mug of precious hot chocolate. It was a lovely, lazy sort of day that Helen treasured. How sweet it was to have her children back with her again.
Lucy looked up, bright-eyed like her mother scarcely knew she could be, and asked, “Mama, do you know what it’s like to be rescued just by hearing someone’s voice? Has that ever happened to you?”
Peter and Edmund fell silent. At the table, Susan’s charcoal stopped scratching.
“No, Lucy-bear. I don’t suppose it has,” said Helen.
“When I first met Aslan—”
“Lu!” Susan interrupted sharply.
“Go on, Lucy,” Helen said. Then she turned to her other children, fixing a particularly strong maternal gaze on Peter and Susan. “Unless, this Aslan person is meant to be some sort of secret between the four of you? Would any of you care to tell me who he is?”
“I’m trying,” said Lucy fervently. “I wish I had the words to tell you more. But I’m telling you the important things. The first time he spoke to me, there was something born in my chest. Something with wings, Mama. Radiant and courageous. And it’s still there.”
