Chapter Eight
Behind the Cloth
'Coombe Halt' the sign on the platform read. The four siblings just stood in silence staring at the sign. The train had left moments ago and they were now left to wait for the owner of the house they were staying at. So far, on all the stops they had been on, all the families that were keeping children had been waiting at the station for the kids. Except for the Pevensie's family, it looked as if they had forgotten to get them.
Then they heard the sound of a car coming from down the road and the four grabbed their luggage, racing down the platform to the road to great the car. The car only honked at them as they passed by, not even slowing down.
The siblings all stood on the side of the road in silence. As they stood looking down the street for any sign of someone on their way, Susan was the first to break the silence. "The professor knew we were coming," She stated looking to Peter.
"Perhaps we've been incorrectly labeled," Edmund muttered lifting his ticket to his face so he could look at what it said.
"Come on, hup!" They heard someone shouting from down the road. The siblings turned to the sound of the voice and at first there was nothing there. Then, a few moments later, a horse drawn carriage came pulling into view. A woman in her mid-forties was behind the horse with a long stern whip in her hands. "And whoa, whoa." The woman told the horse as it came to a stop right in front of the Pevensies. Lucy took one look up at the horse and took a step back behind her sister.
Upon a closer look at the woman driving the carriage, she had her hair in a French braid down her back and a hat on top of her head. She also wore glasses and had a very stern look on her face as she looked down at the Pevensie children. Peter and Susan exchanged a quick look before turning back to the woman. "Mrs. Macready?" Peter asked the woman raising an eyebrow.
"I'm afraid so," She said still staring at the children with the same cold look. Peter and Susan looked stunned while Edmund had a grin plastered across his face. Lucy was still currently hiding behind Susan, peaking out at Mrs. Macready.
"Is this it then?" Mrs. Macready asked them observing their luggage. "Haven't you brought anything else?" She asked with a slightly confused look quickly crossing her face before returning to her stern look.
"No ma'am," Peter made out. "It's just us," he stated looking at his siblings around him. Lucy popped out from behind Susan nodding repeatedly at Mrs. Macready.
"Small favors," Mrs. Macready said as she made a quick tilt of her head towards the back of the carriage motioning for the siblings to hop in.
The Pevensies made no arguments and did as they were told. They picked up their luggage and all hopped into the back with Peter picking Lucy up and placing her on it. Before they could get settled down, Mrs. Macready was already off towards the house.
"Come on, good girl. Come on," Mrs. Macready encouraged the horse up the hill towards the house. Every so often she would crack her whip on the horse to give an occasional boost. "Come on."
This went on for a couple of minutes as they continued riding in the carriage. The Pevensies all sat quietly in the back, not really having anything they wanted to discuss. Once the horse reached the top of the hill, a mansion came into view across the field. The house was beautiful. The Pevensies were shocked to see that was the direction in which the horse continued traveling. As they continued to get closer to the house, the children sat in awe from the back. Lucy looked thrilled towards the house seeing as they would be living temporarily in a house as fine as this one while Susan looked excited about how old the house appeared which meant for her that it must be filled with a ton of historical artifacts for her to discover. Peter and Edmund just looked happy to be getting off the carriage.
Once they arrived in front of the house, the children pulled out of the back and put their luggage on the ground. "Wait here while I put the horse and carriage up. I will then give you a tour of the house," Mrs. Macready told them as she then cracked her whip and disappeared to the stables. When she returned she then gathered the children together and had them follow her to the front door. She pulled the key out and then unlocked the door, leading the Pevensies into the mansion. The children looked around in awe and wonder at the inside of the mansion. If they thought the outside was a sight, the inside was even more so.
Mrs. Macready, not waiting for the children to suck all this in. "Professor Kirke is not accustomed to havin' children in this house." She began as she started to walk up the staircase. "And as such," she continued. "There are a few rules we need to follow. There will be no shoutin'." She stated as she swiveled around to look at the children with her big stern eyes. "Or runnin'," she continued and then turned back to continue up the stairs. "No improper use of the dumbwaiter," Mrs. Macready continued on.
The children all shared a blank bored expression on their faces as they followed after Mrs. Macready up the stairs. In the middle of the staircase, before it split off into two different directions, there was a stone statue of a head. Susan looked at it beaming with fascination and reached out to touch it.
It almost seemed as if Mrs. Macready had eyes on the back of her head because she turned on her heal so fast to face Susan. "No touchin' of the historical artifacts!" She reprimanded Susan looking horrified at her and Susan quickly whipped her hand away. Lucy stood watching the exchange with big scared eyes while Peter and Edmund exchanged a look between each other trying to hold in their laughter. Susan had never been yelled at like that before, it seemed only right to see her being put into her place. Susan turned to look at her brothers with a sick expression before turning back to face Mrs. Macready.
But Mrs. Macready had already turned around and continued to the top of the stairs. "And above all," she stated. "There shall be no disturbin' of the professor," she said with a quiet voice and her eyebrows rose up. She stuck her hand out motioning to a room to the right of the staircase which must have been where the professor was located. Then Mrs. Macready turned around and left down the hallway and Susan, Peter, and Edmund rushed up the staircase after her. Lucy, however, paused a moment in front of the door that Mrs. Macready had motioned to. She wondered what was behind it; I mean you can't just tell a child not to go somewhere or not to do something without them wanting to know why. As she walked up to the door she heard a pair of footsteps behind it and saw a shadow being cast at the bottom of the door frame, the professor was right behind the door. Lucy gasped and dashed out of the room and towards her siblings. She didn't want anything to do with that room anymore.
After the tour of the house, the siblings were shown to their rooms and after unloading their luggage were called to have dinner. The only ones present at the dinner were the Pevensie siblings, the dumbwaiter, and Mrs. Macready, the professor was nowhere to be seen. Once dinner was over, the siblings retired to their rooms and all hung out in the girl's room. Even though there were enough rooms in the house for each sibling to have their own, they didn't like the idea of all being separated in the giant house.
As they were sitting in the room together, the radio was playing the news for that day of what was going on in 'The Blitz', which is where the Pevensies just came from. Peter was sitting on the window still looking outside as he was listening to the radio station. Susan listened to the radio for a quick moment before looking at Peter on the window still and then marching over to the radio and turning it off. Peter shot around to look at Susan and Susan tilted her head motioning at Lucy. Peter turned to see Lucy sitting on the bed looking over at him with a hint of worry across her face. Peter felt a tang of guilt before getting away from the window and walking over to Lucy.
"The sheets feel scratchy," She stated as she rubbed one hand across the sheets and the other squeezed her stuffed
bunny tighter.
Peter sat on the edge of Lucy's bed and Susan came over to stand beside the bed post. "Wars don't last forever Lucy," she reassured her. "We'll be home soon," she said with a smile at her baby sister.
"Yeah, if home's still there," Edmund smirked upon walking into the room dressed in his bed robe.
"Isn't it time you were in bed," Susan let out a sigh and sneered at Edmund.
"Yes mum," Edmund retorted back to her.
Peter rolled his eyes at his brother. Give it to Edmund to be smart-aleck. "Ed!" He said sternly to him. Edmund let out a sigh and looked down at the ground at his brother's correction. Peter then turned back to Lucy with a smile. "You saw outside. This place is huge. We can do whatever we want here. Tomorrow's going to be great!" He told Lucy as he patted her legs. Lucy continued to look at her bunny with a sad expression. "Really," Peter pushed and Lucy looked up at Susan and Peter with a small smile crossing her face.
Unfortunately for Lucy, the next day the Pevensies woke up to a downpour of rain outside. It looks like they wouldn't be going outside anytime soon. Lucy stared outside at the rain wishing it was sunny so they could go outside and play, instead of playing Susan's terrible idea of a game.
"Gastrovascular," Susan stated.
Edmund was busy underneath one of the chairs messing with the bottom and Peter was sitting on the chair beside the one Edmund was underneath looking as if he was going to pass out of boredom. "Come on Peter, gastrovascular," Susan repeated nudging Peter as she said so.
Peter rolled his head around to face her with a blank expression on his face. "Is it Latin?" He asked her.
"Yes," Susan replied as she looked at the dictionary.
"Is it Latin for 'worst game ever invented?' " Edmund asked climbing out from underneath the chair. Peter let out a small laugh at Edmunds remark. Susan gave Edmund a quick sneer before slamming the book, giving up on her game.
This was pointless, it was the time they did something else Lucy decided. She got up from her seat beside the window and walked over to Peter's chair. "We could play hide-and-seek," she said to Peter leaning on his armchair.
Peter was not really in the mood to play the witty little game. "But we're already having so much fun," he replied giving a bored look to Susan.
Susan let out a smirk, he can act that way if he wants. She thought her game was at least way more fun than hide-and-seek.
"Come on Peter, please!" Lucy begged him as she shook his arm. Edmund rolled his eyes from the ground. He wasn't in the mood to play hide and seek either. "Pretty please," Lucy asked giving Peter a sad look on her face, trying to guilt him into playing it with her.
"One, two, three, four..." Peter started counting smiling at Lucy who was ecstatic to play.
"What?" Edmund grumbled on the floor before he and Susan jumped off the ground and chair to play.
"Five, six, seven, eight..." Peter continued to count as he stood up and covered his eyes on one of the bookshelves in the room they were in. The three siblings then ran from the room looking for a place to hide. Lucy ran into the hallway until she came to the staircase where the professor's office was and ran down the stairs away from it. Edmund ran in the opposite direction looking under dressers and cabinets for a place but couldn't find a spot good enough.
"Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven..." Peter continued as Susan ran into a hallway with an empty coffee table up against a wall and climbed into it and closed the top, hiding inside.
Lucy ran up the next set of staircases while Edmund ran up another one and they collided in the next room together as they were both reaching for a curtain that was hanging up. Edmund pushed Lucy away from the curtains before yelling, "I was here first!" at her.
Lucy just gave Edmund a nasty look before continuing to run down the hallway and up three stairs before she found a small hallway with three doors beside each other. She tried to unlock the first door but found it wouldn't budge because it was locked. Running up to the second one it opened but only till you could see a crack inside and wouldn't budge after that, there must have been something blocking the door on the other side. Lucy closed the door back up and then ran to the last door on the hallway and was satisfied to see the door was unlocked and opened all the way up. As she ran into the room she froze when she stepped in because the room was empty, except for a big cloth draped over something huge in against the back wall of the room. The only light in the room was coming from the two windows on the left wall of the room.
Staring at the cloth in the back of the room, Lucy shut the door behind her. What was behind that cloth? There was a small staircase because the room was elevated and Lucy climbed the five stairs up to the main floor of the room. She looked around the room and was amazed to see that there was absolutely nothing in the room, except for the cloth and whatever was behind it. Looking out the window she saw that it was still raining. She then turned back to the cloth that was in the back of the room. Curious, she walked up to it and looked it up and down. The cloth was almost up to the ceiling, whatever was behind it was extremely tall. Slowly, she placed her hand on the cloth and pulled it off and watched as the cloth fell off in ripples to the ground all around her. She saw what was hidden behind it, to be a wardrobe.
The wardrobe, however, did not appear to look like just a regular wardrobe. It looked really old, but somehow the wood still looked brand new. All over the wardrobe, there were carvings etched into the wardrobe. On the top right there was a pair of rings intertwined together. Beneath the rings was a couple of trees with what might have appeared to be pools of water underneath the trees, Lucy wasn't quite sure what it was exactly. Underneath that, Lucy wasn't sure what it was. Did it look like a world perhaps? Only it wasn't Earth so Lucy didn't really know what to make of it. On the very bottom on the right, there was a bell drawn into the wood. To the left on the bottom was a winged horse and above that etching was a garden at the top of a hill. The second one to the top was a bird with its wings spread in a tree. The very top one on the left was an apple. In the bottom center, there was half a sun covering the square it was etched in. At the center top of the wardrobe was two crowns. But the most interesting etching was the one in the very center of the wardrobe of a tree.
Lucy smiled at the wardrobe as she observed the carvings and traced her fingers across the pictures. The drawings were so elegantly and carefully drawn but they were beautiful to look at. The actual door to the wardrobe was quite small as it contained the space of the pictures down the center of the wardrobe.
"Fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four..." Peter continued counting, somehow Lucy was still able to even hear his voice. His counting reminded Lucy that they were even playing hide and seek. It only took Lucy a total of two seconds to decide to hide in the wardrobe. Who wouldn't want to hide in a fancy wardrobe such as this one?
Lucy grinned the whole time as she opened the door to the wardrobe and climbed in. Her siblings would never think to look up here, she was sure to win the game. Hiding in the wardrobe she grinned as she peeked out the door, leaving it cracked only a little so she wouldn't be left in the dark. Lucy kept that smile on her face as she started walking backward with her hands behind her so her hands would touch the back of the wardrobe before she hit it. There were fur coats in the closet that Lucy was brushing against as she crawled to the back. She kept her eyes on the door as she was walking towards the back. After a few minutes the smile faded from her face, she had been walking backward for a while now. She should be at the back by now.
That's when she felt it. Her hands touched something spiky and cold on the palm of her left hand. Lucy gasped when she touched it. That didn't feel like a coat. Then she felt something falling on her head, it wasn't heavy like rain, but it was light and soft. This was odd.
Slowly, Lucy started turning around and was shocked to see the sight of snow in front of her. Not just snow, but pine trees covered in snow all in front of her. Her hand must have touched the pine tree earlier. As she turned back around, Lucy could still see the coats and the door to the wardrobe cracked.
How could this be? Lucy was in a whole different world, hidden in the back of the wardrobe. Deeming it to be safe, she turned around once more back towards the snow and moved the pine tree branches out of the way. She was in a winter wonderland. She was in a forest with real snow. Lucy knew it wasn't false because she could feel everything and felt the cool touch of winter as opposed to the mustiness of the house from moments before. She watched the snow falling down and blinked the snow off her eyelashes giggling at the sight. The grin on her face would have been contagious if someone else was around.
Lucy reached out in front of her trying to grab the snow and chased it. She started walking little ways before pausing and turning back around, still able to see the light from the wardrobe door that was still cracked. She let out a small laugh, her siblings could have minded that much if she was only gone for a little bit.
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A/N:
Yay Lucy's in the wardrobe!!!
But man, I just want Edmund and Elizabeth to meet so they can fall in love with each other and they can be together (which I know sounds pretty stupid considering I can just make them get together). But on the bright side, if Lucy's finally in the wardrobe that means it shouldn't be too long till the two meet!!!
Oops, did I say that out loud?
Please vote :)