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Daylight was fading. From the garden Tirian could see the shadows stretching like fingers across the lands far below. A lifetime ago – and it had truly been a lifetime since he had last stood by the window in Cair Paravel and watched night descend on Narnia – the sight might have filled him with foreboding. But Tirian had not known fear since he had walked through the garden's golden gates. Nor had he known sorrow or want.
It had been strange at first, though he did not miss the vices that had hounded him while he lived and reigned. For a time he had sought to convince himself that the only fear to which he might now succumb was the fear that he might someday grow jaded and take for granted all he had been given.
But the days and the nights and the seasons and the years had flown by like a song and, though Tirian never aged, he had never grown tired of walking quietly through the arbors, or swimming in the lakes, or climbing the mountains of this eternally new and radiant place.
As he watched, stars flickered like candle flames and the smell of rich, cold earth and of night flowers opening floated to him on a breeze. Behind him, leaves and branches rustled as an owl awoke and unfurled its wings.
Tirian stood by the wall and watched until the sky had gone a dusty purple and the stars burned more brightly than they ever had when he was King of Narnia. He wondered, as he began to walk slowly along the wall, if the stars overhead now were the same stars he had seen fall when Aslan brought an end to the old Narnia, or if these were the children of those stars, or the memory of them.
He was still wondering this when he reached the gates and came upon a woman standing there and gazing out over the darkened land. Her long hair shone despite the darkness and Tirian recognized Queen Lucy.
"Your Majesty," he said at once, humbly.
The queen turned to look at him, and the slight movement caused her hair to ripple and spill about her shoulders. Shadows hurried away from her mouth as she smiled. "Tirian," she said in greeting. Then, "I'm waiting for Emeth. He's gone out again to look for his people."
Tirian moved closer until he stood just beside her. "He's found a few, hasn't he?"
"Yes," said Lucy. "And guided them here. His mother, his two elder brothers, his sister..."
Her voice seemed to trip over the last word.
"You miss your own sister," Tirian surmised gently.
"Yes," said Lucy, looking away again. "I miss Susan. Despite everything she used to say about Narnia being nothing more than a game we used to play as children. Despite the nylons and the lipstick and the parties and the boys. She's my sister and I don't know how many years have passed since I last saw her. How many years have passed in England, I mean. Time runs differently there, you know."
She sighed. "I think about what Mr. Tumnus said when we first got here, that all real worlds are only spurs jutting out from the great mountains of Aslan. And how they are all joined. So I stand here in this garden and I look down on all the real worlds and I don't see my sister in any of them. Sometimes I think it must mean she is alive, back in the England I used to know. Other times I wonder if she is lost somewhere and trying to find her way."
She fell silent and Tirian, touched by her candor and troubled by her sorrow, said nothing for several moments. The moon had risen and in its light the gate gleamed like silver. Tirian concentrated on the thin vines that coiled around the bars of the gate, and on the tiny bell-shaped blossoms. At length he said, "Doesn't Aslan know where she is?"
"He must," Lucy replied. "He can see what's happening in all the worlds. I've asked him. He tells me to be patient."
She was looking away from him, making it difficult to tell, but Tirian thought he saw her smile again sadly.
"I'm patient," she said. "I trust Aslan. But I still miss my sister. The funny thing is, I don't know if I only miss the way she was when we were children, or if I miss all of her. We barely spoke during – well, in the last year or two before the railway accident. Peter and Edmund would say there was good reason for that. Well, Edmund would, anyway.
"This is my only sorrow," she said in a voice so soft that she might have speaking to herself. "Standing at the hub of all the worlds and looking down on them, this is the only thing that grieves me."
She was silent again, and Tirian did not know how to comfort her. This was Aslan's land and Tirian knew that grief, sorrow, fear, and want had no place here. And yet Lucy felt them.
He wanted to gather the flowers and the moonlight, to breathe in their sweetness and pass it to her. He wanted to take her hand and lead her to a Dryad circle he knew of, where the wild and graceful dancing of the tree-folk would help her forget that there was any sadness in any world.
But Lucy loved Emeth, the young Calormene soldier who had once come to Narnia seeking his god, and who had found him in the shape of a magnificent golden lion, not the vulture-headed monster he had expected. Lucy loved Emeth, who had found his way to paradise and who left it each night to look for his fellow countrymen. Emeth, who had the fire of the desert in his cheek, and the spices of Calormen on his lips.
As though she sensed his thought, Lucy lifted her head and this time her smile was unmistakable. "I see him!" she whispered. "And – I think there's someone with him. Two people. One is a man," she reported breathlessly. "At least, I think it is. It's hard to tell. No – I'm certain. Perhaps it's his father. He's been looking for him..."
She clasped her hands, stood very straight, and her golden hair streamed around her like rays of light. The little flowers caught her radiance and glinted with it.
She is a beacon, thought Tirian, lighting his way.
Then he had another thought, one that warmed him like the sunrise, like the gentle rumble of Aslan's voice: this garden is a beacon, lighting all our ways. We will all find our way here someday.
05/27/05