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Peter’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. There was a battle on the horizon that Narnia had been preparing for for months, with espionage, combat training, and weeks of strategizing. The kingdom to the North had been a concern since Peter had become king. It just so happened that his focus was on rebuilding the ruins of Narnia rather than preparing for another battle. So instead of worrying about the stronger, more powerful kingdom to the North, they focused on the desolate villages, the wavering economy, and their citizens, many of whom were falling ill or hungry. But of course, they knew the kingdom to the North was not kind enough to wait for Narnia’s rebuilding to strike, so Peter sent Edmund and his trusted company to conduct espionage.
For years, no substantial information came. However, six months ago, a particular raven returned with disturbing news: The North was forging weapons for an attack. So Peter began battle plans, Susan started rallying her band of archers, Edmund traveled to their allies, and Lucy raised the trees and led the medics. And now Peter stood, in his chamber, holding a cup of tea that had long gone cold, his hands shaking as he considered the battle that would occur when the sun hit its peak the next day.
But he was not in his lavish royal chambers, and he was not king of anything. Peter was standing, looking out the window at the foggy London night, holding a cup of cold tea as his hands shook from a threat that was conquered thirteen years ago, in a land that no one knew existed. It felt odd, standing there.
It had been a full week and Peter still couldn’t adjust. He would often reach up to adjust his crown or look around for where he left his cloak. Once, he even attempted to unsheathe his sword when a man wouldn’t leave Susan alone. It wasn’t there, so he resorted to punching the bastard. Mother wasn’t happy with that. He had no excuse to tell her.
Peter glanced at the grandfather clock. 2:14. It would be another several hours before he could watch the sunrise. Peter hadn’t slept since he returned home. The room was too different, yet it felt the same. It felt suffocating with both him and Edmund in that room, with a small desk shoved in the corner and a dresser that they shared. Instead of sleeping in the cramped room that had a draft, Peter wandered. He made his rounds around the house, checking up with each person before making tea and waiting until the sun rose.
Susan was sitting in front of the mirror, quietly stitching up dresses that had been worn down. She pretended like her stitches weren’t sloppy because of her rage bubbling up underneath the surface. She pretended like she was just re-stringing a bow for one of her students. She pretended like every prick of the finger didn’t satisfy some part of her. She pretended like she wasn’t thinking about carving a bow for herself. Her eyes scoured the room for something out of place as if the stag they had been hunting had followed them into this world.
Edmund was at the desk in the boy’s bedroom, candlelight guiding his reading as he scoured over history books and political treaties and laws. He had taken as many books out of the library as the librarian allowed and would scour them until the spines would crack and the pages would loosen from their bind. Mother was delighted in his newfound interest in political books over causing havoc with the neighborhood gangs. Edmund’s hands twitched in need of knowledge. He didn’t tell her that he had traded causing childish mayhem for listening for gossip at the corner of the streets.
Lucy was the only one asleep. But she wasn’t in her shared room with Susan, rather she had found that she could only sleep under the stars, cradled by the trees in their yard. And if Peter noticed that the trees seemed to bend a bit to create the perfect bed for the former Queen of Narnia, he didn’t comment on it. And if, somehow, she managed to always be in her bed by morning, set on top of her sheets, with some twigs in her hair… Well, no one commented on that either.
The Pevensie household had never been the same since the war, but they were some of the lucky ones. Many mourned husbands. Some mourned children. Yet Helen Pevensie felt as if she had lost both her husband and her children. Her husband had not returned to the man he once was, the quirky professor who loved math and hated telephones for no apparent reason. Instead, what came home was a quiet man, with a sharp eye, who would often flinch at loud noises. Helen’s beloved husband had been lost at war, and only his shadow remained. When Helen spoke about her husband’s odd change, many of the women at her church noted that their husbands had also seemed… different. At least, the women whose husbands managed to return did.
While this may have been understandable for her husband, for her children, it was just bizarre. Why was Peter standing like a soldier, his eyes heavy with stress that she thought that he would never carry? Why did Susan have a rage underneath her fingertips as if she needed vengeance? Why did Edmund slink in the darkness, whispering about things that had yet to come to pass? Why was her baby girl trekking out into the woods, coming back with bags of mushrooms, flowers, and herbs that she had foraged?
But more than that, more than the sorrows in their eyes and the twitch of their fingers, there were the things that couldn’t be explained with war. How Peter commanded the attention of the room without even trying. How Susan was able to calm any individual with just a few words. How Edmund spun his words like a master spinster that could make anyone agree with his prepositions. How Lucy could make the trees bend to shield her from the rain and flowers bloom in her path.
These were not Helen’s children, just how the man sleeping next to her was not her husband, and yet she loved them all the same, as she didn’t miss how Lucy would get frustrated by her scraped knees and bruised elbows. How Edmund angered over mispronounced words and stuttered sentences. How Susan would cry when she thought no one could hear her. How Peter would stare forlornly out at the fog, fiddling with a golden ring that he must’ve gotten at the Kirke manor.
No, these were not the children that she had seen off at the train station. These children had sharp teeth, quick wit, and an anger that only they seemed to understand. But they were living under her roof, so she would be a mother to them, even if they pretended to not need one. While Helen Pevensie had no idea what her children went through at that manor, in that wardrobe, in her eyes they were still children that needed caring, even if they had lived fifteen years that she would never know about.
As the sun rose over the rooftops of London, Peter finished his tea as he watched the trees gently place Lucy back into her bed. From upstairs, a loud thump indicated that Edmund had finished with the book detailing the common laws of India just as Susan came down the stairs to stash away her mother’s sewing supplies. And as the sun shined through the window of Helen and Christopher Pevensie, their children put on their act of acting like they weren’t forever scarred by a lifetime that never happened.