𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕄𝕒𝕘𝕟𝕚𝕗𝕚𝕔𝕖𝕟𝕥 - ᵖᵉᵗᵉʳ ᵖᵉᵛᵉⁿˢⁱᵉ

꧁(Tʜᴇ Iᴄᴇ Pᴀʟᴀᴄᴇ)꧂

Edmund had eaten the dinner Mrs Beaver had prepared. But he had not really enjoyed it as all he could think about was Turkish Delight. There is nothing that spoils the taste of good ordinary food half as much as the memory of bad magical food.

He had listened in on the conversation earlier, and he had not enjoyed it much either, because he had kept on thinking that the others would not take notice of him and he felt all of them, especially Katherine had been trying to or had given him the cold shoulder. They were not in reality, but in Edmund's imagination, they had been.

Then he had listened until Mr Beaver began to tell them about Aslan and only once he had heard the whole arrangement for the meeting of Aslan at the Stone Table did he dare to begin edging under the curtain. As he edged over the thick red fabric that hung over the door he could not help but feel a mysterious and horrible feeling was over him, just as it gave the others that mysterious yet lovely feeling.

When Mr Beaver began repeating that old rhyme about 'Adam's flesh and Adam's bone' he very quietly started to turn the door handle. By the time the beaver had finished the rhyme he had gotten outside into the snow and cautiously begun to close the door behind himself. He glanced at the coat rack where his old coat hung. Peter's coat Katherine was using hung next to it as if taunting him.

For a few breaths, he tried to decide whether to take it or not to try and spite Peter. Eventually, he opted not to as he heard the beaver talking. He had to move quickly and taking the coat would draw attention.

As Edmund trudged up the mountain you cannot think he was so bad that he wanted his brother, sisters and potentially Katherine turned to stone. All he was thinking of was Turkish Delight and becoming a Prince and later on King. Not to mention paying Peter back for taking Katherine away and possibly paying back Katherine for not siding with him.

As for what the Witch would do to the others, Edmund did not want her to be particularly nice to them, however, he did not want them on the same level as him and so he believed or pretended to believe she would not do anything very awful to them.

"Because" he muttered to himself as he walked on, "all these people who say awful things about her are her enemies and probably half of it isn't true. She was really nice to me, much nicer than they are anyway. I expect she is the rightful Queen of Narnia"

Or at least that was the excuse he made for what he was doing. As deep down inside of him he really knew the White Witch was wicked and cruel.

The next thing Edmund realized was that the daylight was almost gone, as it was the afternoon when they sat down to dinner and the winter days were short. He had not considered this element to add to the cold, but he would have to make the most of it.

So he rolled his shirt's neck up and crawled up the top of the dam and luckily it was not very slippery since the snow had fallen. From here he crossed to the other side of the river. It was pretty bad when he got to the other side. Every minute it got darker and with that and the snowflakes spinning around him he could barely see a meter ahead.

And then there was no pathway either. He kept sliding down deep piles of snow, skating on frozen puddles, stumbling over fallen tree trunks, sliding down steep banks, and hitting his shins against the rocks, until he was wet, cold and bruised.

The silence and solitude were appalling. In fact, he really began to think that maybe could have given up on the whole plan and gone back and owned up and befriend others, if he hadn't said to himself.

"When I'm the king of Narnia the first thing I shall do will be to make some decent roads"

And of course, that set him off thinking about being a King and all the other things he would do and this cheered him up a good deal.