take the hidden paths that run (towards the moon or to the sun)

'Eleanor nodded solemnly and said "that sounds like a troubling situation" and all at once Susan was aware of the two conversations at play: one for public consumption - for her mother's benefit and convincing - and one for her, one that was all safety and belief. This was a place of belief.'
-
Her parents brought Susan to America on the rumor of a friend of a friend of a friend that there might be someone who can fix her. They just wanted their little girl back and Susan - lovely, gentle Susan - seemed the most changed by the children's time in the country and all their shared, horrible delusion.
Susan came to America on the promise of a holiday and stayed - of her own volition - because of the belief offered to her freely in a dusty little office in a poorly kept estate. She spent her days trying to figure out her role in Eleanor West's world, writing letters to those left behind an ocean away, and maybe figuring out how to mourn.

Notes:

Content warnings: this story has some elements of a teacher/student relationship and while the Doors complicate ages, experience levels, etc. I wanted to warn that there could be the perception of that. Susan spends little time in an actual student role. There are also some minimal references to surviving slavery-adjacent captivity (because the Lone Islands arc in Voyage still makes me shiver sometimes).
I hope you enjoy!

Work Text:

They brought Susan with them, under the guise of her being the most adult, the most well suited for a spot of fun on the continent. They couldn't afford to bring everyone, after all. Besides, Susan had, well, changed.

Of course, they'd expected some changes in their children from their sojourn to the country. War does that, after all. But while Peter had become steadier, Edmund more reliable, and Lucy some odd mix of serene and incomprehensibly mystical, it was the changes in Susan that most discomforted her parents. She had left London a responsible, giving child, and returned a regal, giving adult (although perhaps they wouldn't have given themselves quite those words to explain it). And the sheer awe in which she talked about that Place they'd all claimed to go to was simply unacceptable.

Yes, it would be best to start with Susan. After all, they were only chasing a rumor.

Susan arrived on the poorly manicured lawn of Eleanor West's mansion and sighed. A giant wood sign was propped askew in the lawn in front of the house with GO AWAY scrawled in a bright orange paint that might have been friendly in another circumstance.

"Is this the right place?" Susan's mother asked with a soft tremble in her voice that Susan almost recognized, as if from a long ago dream.

The once-upon-a-time queen merely nodded and pressed past the unwelcoming sign. At the door to the mansion, Susan knocked. That, really, cemented the betrayal that had slipped beneath her fingernails like splinters. Her parents had not succeeded in keeping the purpose of this visit a secret when they reached this land and the weight of their discomfort ached like a fresh burn against her skin. And her mother had not the determination to initiate their request into the mansion. She was making Susan request her own isolation order.

A response at the door was slow, heralded shortly by a crash and an unfamiliar exclamation which sounded like a curse. The door was wrenched open, and a little Black girl grinned up at them, two oversized teeth sparkling in her smile. "Welcome to Eleanor West's house of horrors, how may I assist you?" She couldn't have been older than Lucy, Susan thought.

"We have an appointment," Susan's mother mumbled, her eyes too wide and her face too pale. "With the proprietress."

The girl cocked her head to the side and nodded twice. "She didn't say anything about anyone new coming. But that is just like her. This way."

Susan stepped into the house after her and decidedly avoided glancing at her mother. She could just imagine the way her mother's head swiveled back and forth, cataloging the well-built, well-decorated, but perhaps poorly cared for mansion around them. It was a heavy, dusty place, but it did not feel cold. It seemed like the sort of place that seemed to want to be cold but was unallowed to drift into that solemnity by sheer force of its inhabitants will. Their destination ended up being an office, or at least… what seemed to purport to be an office. There were two other doors leading off it, a massive table covered with papers, five mismatched armchairs scattered around, an old grandfather clock in the corner that did not tick, and a singular painting of a sunflower hung lopsided on a wall. A wrought iron lamp stood center stage on the far side of the table and Susan, briefly, couldn't breathe.

"She'll be with you soon," the girl said. "Probably. I should maybe go get her." She left by one of the other doors.

"Well," her mother wasn't quite yet sneering, "this is not quite what I expected."

The freshly scrubbed floors of the old school she'd attended, pre-war, sparkled in Susan's mind as she imagined her mother touring that school and judging all its many elegances. The stone floors of Cair Paravel had never been kept so clean; it was simply impractical. However, Susan did recall those few days she and Lucy would don trousers and work shirts with the sleeves rolled up and haul buckets back and forth and polish until their fingers ached and their floors shined and their laughter sung. Those days were fun and vibrant and missing Lucy felt so immediate and so raw that Susan sunk into one of the arm chairs.

"What do you think?" Her mother said, gingerly lowering herself into a chair next to her. "It doesn't seem quite up to the standard of schools in the home country but I think it will be good for you. To steady you."

"If you still had doubts," Susan said, making sure her words were rounded and smooth and lacked any of the accusatory sharpness that Edmund so excelled at, "my luggage would not have been loaded into the car."

Her mother hemmed and hawed and Susan, for once, indulged in the absolute rudeness of not listening. Talking seemed to comfort her mother, and by the time she'd wandered her way around to complaining about how long their wait had been Susan had pressed four little red half-moons into her palm and, dismayed at her lack of self-control, smoothed the skin back to unblemished.

The woman who finally tumbled through one of the doors - all three of which were a different type of wood - was not at all what either Susan or her mother had expected. She looked closer in age to Susan than her mother, as if adulthood were a new fashion she had only just learned to wear. Her mismatched baby blue blouse contrasted sharply with a soft forest green skirt that was so wrinkled Susan wondered if it had been furiously dug out of a drawer unexpectedly. Her red-orange hair was cropped close to her head. "I'm sorry," she said, "for the delay. I'd been, well," she waved a hand through the air and practically flew into one of the chairs opposite them, "you know how days start tumbling out of control. My name is Eleanor, Eleanor West, and it is a pleasure" her gaze fixed steadily and slowly on Susan, "to meet you."

"This is Susan," her mother said, her manicured hand resting lightly in Susan's shoulder. "We've heard you may be able to help her."

Eleanor West's gaze was a heavy, all encompassing thing. "And why do you think that?"

"Well," her mother prevaricated, "you… we heard…"

Susan looked at her mother and saw each sharp, uneasy, unfamiliar line of hers, and closed her eyes. The skin beneath her fingernails ached for no reasonable reason. "My parents believe me delusional," she said, "and would like to see me rehabilitated into someone who they recognize, instead of who I am."

Her mother's flinch away was almost, almost satisfying.

Eleanor nodded solemnly and said "that sounds like a troubling situation" and all at once Susan was aware of the two conversations at play: one for public consumption - for her mother's benefit and convincing - and one for her, one that was all safety and belief. This was a place of belief, Susan realized, and not at all what her mother wanted it to be. Eleanor's gaze shifted to her mother and she continued, "I do specialize in helping children find their place in this world. It can be challenging at the best of times and with these… added delusions…" She shook herself almost imperceptibly and Susan found herself imagining that the woman wanted nothing more than to clean her mouth out with soap. "...add additional challenges."

The school matron, although that word seemed hardly fitting, learned back in her chair. "We're a small operation," she said, "as I have found individual care often the most effective method of, ah, treatment. Currently there are six pupils staying with me, including Cynthia, who you met."

Her mother's eyebrows peaked on her forehead. "She's a student?"

It was the unasked "and not the help?" that slid chillingly around Susan's spine. She forced herself to stay completely still.

Eleanor breezed forward, seemingly unnoticing except for an angry glint in her eyes, quickly smothered. "Oh yes. I've had Cynthia for almost a year now, and we're making great progress. She's talking to strangers now, which you wouldn't have believed but… Ah, yes. Well. Education is conducted independently as well, as each pupil is at different levels; I have educators come in on different days to oversee student's progress, but we require our students to be involved and responsible in their own learning. Individualized treatment and education lets us focus on each individual's needs."

Susan had to soothe the skin of palm again. She looked at the old clock that did not tick and refused to believe herself in need of fixing. The clock stood with her, silent and friendly, as her mother asked perfunctory questions and Eleanor answered in words that seemed… forced and practiced and tailored to convince her mother that Susan belonged with her. It was just that Eleanor was really, really, really bad at it. Her eyes were too observant, too sharp, and yet too unfocused. She jumped from topic to topic and seemed to shy away from confirming her mother's narrative of her delusion. She'd prioritized communicating that she believed Susan, regardless, and lost what little authority she might have had as an educator by manner of dress and voice and priority. And Susan could feel her mother fading, deciding that this wasn't the place, that they'd just keep looking, that maybe–

And Eleanor blithely tumbled on, sensing she was losing but still trying to fight. She made Susan think of the dryad of a mountain spring she'd once broke her fast with: a bubbly, wild thing that laughed so freely and yet knew nothing of the world except the beautiful spill of herself and all the animal friends she nourished.

"Mother," Susan said, when it had been long enough that the odd angles of the chair felt uncomfortable against her back, "I believe I will be staying here."

Both her mother and Eleanor jumped.

"I presume you allow correspondence?" Susan said, jumping to one immediate, horrible thought.

Eleanor nodded, vigorously.

"Well," her mother said, "I suppose–"

"Delightful," Susan said, with every ounce of authority she could muster, which seemed to be enough that Eleanor's expressive eyes flickered with both recognition and respect, "I will just go get my trunk then."

Watching her mother drive away was not nearly as hard as it should have been. Susan stood on the steps up to the mansion with Eleanor a few steps behind her and watched until the car peeled out of view. With a soft breath, not even a sigh, Susan turned. "Perhaps you can tell me the real story now? My sister is sure to have questions and I'd rather have some actual answers when I write to her."

"Of course," Eleanor said, "perhaps I can show you to your room?"

Susan followed her down two hallways and up an absolutely magnificent stairwell and then down more hallways and then into a hallway with many doors. She had a brief, vibrant recollection of some of the long, long hallways in the professor's house. Were there any unexpected doors lingering here?

"Would you prefer your sunshine in the morning or afternoon?" Eleanor asked. "We have plenty of open rooms."

"In the morning, please," Susan said.

Eleanor nodded and walked further into the hallway. Eventually, she paused and pushed open a door labeled 4. It opened into a large room with an unmade bed tucked against one wall. A desk with a chair was against the other wall, but it was a barren, almost unwelcoming space. Or, at least it might have been, if not for the nearly massive windows overlooking the lawn. Susan laid her trunk inside.

"It's a little sparse," Eleanor said. "If you need anything, just let me know or Cynthia. She's quite good at finding me, which I believe frustrates the others. None of them have ever complained, and yet."

Susan nodded. Then she sat down on the bed and asked her most burning question: "how old are you?"

There was a soft laugh and Eleanor half floated into the chair by the desk. "Old enough to dance until I tire and young enough to never tire." In the natural light of the room, an indirect afternoon glow, she looked positively fae. She seemed almost like Lucy, Susan thought, when Lucy was busy dancing with the trees.

"But not as old as you make people think you are," Susan said.

Eleanor looked out the window and, for a moment, seemed old and frail and thin. "I am old enough, in this world, just barely, to own this property and run this, ah, school. But where one world counts in applesauce seasons, another may count in each fresh pea pressed against your tongue. How old are you, Susan Pevensie?"

Susan felt like crying. She stared down at her hands. "I don't know. I was twelve, I think, when we first arrived, and we stayed there for many years. Decades. Then I was twelve again. That was… four…? years ago. And in the middle there, well, we didn't stay as long the second time, but–"

Eleanor slid up from the chair, as fluid as water, and crossed the cavernous space of the empty room to kneel in front of Susan. "Everyone here has been… somewhere else… and come back. Everyone has their own door. Each world is different, distinct, and each world their own. We will talk, in time, about your door. Maybe about mine."

Susan felt herself pitching forward, "I can't go back," she whispered, feeling the ache of it in every fiber of her being. "He said I can't go back."

All of a sudden, Eleanor's long, slender fingers are clasped tightly over her own hands, and her orange curls are an immediate presence in front of Susan's nose. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry. The loss of it must ache. It sounds like you loved it there."

"Yes," Susan whispered, and for the first time since they stepped through a door in the sky and materialized in a train station back in England, she sobbed.

Susan slotted herself into life at Eleanor's school slowly. She unpacked her trunk first, and then listened to what she imagined Lucy's advice would be and ventured outside. She collected wild flowers to press and tree branches to form into wreaths and evergreen boughs that may need to be changed out regularly but added enough color and scent that the cavernous room stopped feeling so empty.

She started a letter to Lucy, set it aside, and penned Peter a letter just long enough to be worth the postage explaining just what little she can manage: she'll be staying in the Americas for awhile. She's safe. She's here by choice. She thinks she's where she needs to be. She does not explain the school. She hasn't figured out how yet. Navigating her place within the school proved to be a strange task: she came to be a student, but the school has little education to offer her and so many other things that need doing. So she tried to do what she saw needed doing and fit herself into the rhythm of the days. She ate meals with the other students and Eleanor, whenever Eleanor emerged from whatever lost corner she'd wandered into. Meals were always a small gathering, in a room so expansive that the eight of them always huddled in one corner as if to ignore the massive vaulted marble room might swallow them up, otherwise.

She got to know the other students:

Cynthia, the youngest, fluctuated between long stretches of silence and chattering so loudly and so quickly that it was all you could do just to listen. She'd been running away from suffering when she snuck into an old outhouse that asked her to be sure and all she wanted to do was hide. Her world had been a maze of walls so high they could never be climbed and communities so strong and loving they could never be conquered.

Zizi, bright eyed and always furious, had tumbled through a door at a debutante ball and cut her teeth slaying dragons and rescuing lost princes. She rose before dawn each morning and ran laps around the estate with furious dedication, as if each step brought her closer to going back home.

Melle had been a star, one that burned and shined and took such careful care of all the planets in its orbit. It had plummeted back to this universe suddenly, unwillingly, and it did not understand. It was a rigid, lost being now, for to be a star, even briefly, deals in ages and eons unfathomable by the rest of them.

Lou never managed much more than a raspy whisper when she talked. She had followed the sound of a melody she couldn't describe through her door into a world of song. She'd studied music from the masters and been cast out for messing up a harmony before the queen. The queen, fitfully, had wrenched away her voice as punishment. She flinched away from Susan but didn't mind who listened to the slow, magnificent dirges that she plucked out on Eleanor's finicky piano.

Betty was Eleanor's first student and physically the oldest of them. She did not talk much about her door, but Cynthia whispered of shadows that whittled your soul to pieces if you didn't learn how to make your own light. Betty talked about her future, about leaving, about heading to the city and finding a job and being able to afford a roof over her head and a light on all the time.

Harriet had been under the bleachers at her school and found a door of wire and steel that didn't belong. It asked her to be sure and she was only sure that she wanted to play. She'd fallen headfirst into a game she could never quite explain on a team that loved the game more than life itself. She had to get back: each day without her, her team would suffer. Everyone had to pull their weight, on a team.

Very quickly, Susan determined that the guise of a school was merely that. They were just people, trying to live together, trying to live together in the face of the overwhelming holes ripped through their lives. It was a community of grief, and it welcomed her home.

In return, Susan tried to give of herself to the other pupils freely and without reservation, and if sometimes felt like she did it mostly because it seemed to make Eleanor's shoulders relax and Eleanor smile more, well, Queens of Narnia can do what they please, after all.

When she wrote her first letter to Lucy, it was filled with these girls and this star and absolutely nothing about herself.

Her wooden practice sword felt heavy in her hand.

"You're extra slow today," Zizi said, yanking back a blow that would have bruised her side something brutal had it landed. She bared her teeth, almost hissing. "Do better."

Susan steadied herself and raised her blade again. She breathed out and jerked back to avoid Zizi's lunge. She swung her sword up, pressing Zizi's away and at an awkward angle, but Zizi twisted and danced away. The younger girl leapt, covering the distance between them near instantaneously and brought her sword down sharply overhead. Susan ducked and pitched forward, attempting to roll under Zizi's leap, but Zizi flipped, adjusted, and scraped the edge of her blade across her back. They both landed and whirled to face each other. Zizi had not broken a sweat.

"This is the worst," Zizi whined, tossing her blade down and whipping her head back so she could stare at the sky. "You're usually at least almost a workout."

"I apologize," Susan said. "Perhaps Harriet–"

Zizi scoffed and picked her sword back up. She moved a few paces away and began running through her practice forms. "What's wrong?"

"I've had a letter from my sister," Susan said.

Zizi paused her forms. "So what?"

Taking a deep breath, Susan studied the girl before her before admitting, "She and my brother returned through our door. They voyaged across the sea with our cousin and a friend of ours."

"It's so weird," Zizi said, beginning each rhythmic step and lunge again, "that you went through your door with other people."

Susan ran a hand absently over the grain of her practice sword. She could picture Father Christmas' soft precaution against pitched combat and Aslan's order for Peter to care for his weapon in equal measure. Zizi was never one for a bow, and even less so when she knew she'd be beaten, and Susan ached just for the weight of one again. Zizi was also never one to not do something that had been declared solely the providence of boys. "Hrm. Well. There was a dragon."

Zizi jerked to a stop. "Oh? Did she kill it?"

Susan shook her head. "No. The dragon was apparently our cousin, which… Well. You'd have to meet him."

The other girl rolled her eyes. "The only good dragon is a dead dragon, cousin or not."

"Sure, St. George," Susan said, trying to force a smile into her voice. It was, admittedly, not the story in Lucy's letter (well told and strongly woven but clearly missing details) that discomforted her so. The letter had ended with Lucy, well, wailing… about her exile from Narnia in a way she'd never imagined her faithful, trusting sister could possibly lament.

Lucy, who in the face of Peter and Susan's own exile, the year before, had hugged them tight and whispered about how Aslan knew best.

Susan sank to her knees and pitched forward.

"Whoa," Zizi said, "I'm not dealing with this emotion. No sir."

Susan ignored her. She laid prone on the ground for what felt like a long while, the wooden practice sword ungainly tucked against her, digging into her side. For a moment, she despised Lucy. She despised that she got to go back and then, on her return, had the audacity to complain. She despised that Lucy was young enough, was always fanciful enough, that Narnia had changed her into something still recognizable, still loveable, when Susan had been cast out. And then she despised herself for daring to think such awful thoughts.

Someone tugged the sword away and a warm hand rested against her back. Susan twisted a little, just enough to see Melle's soft, worried face looking down at her. Taking a deep breath, Susan pitched herself into its lap and soaked up the radiant warmth of it. Melle petted her hair, but did not talk. Susan laid there and did not cry.

"Can you come with me?" Eleanor asked.

"Of course," Susan said, standing. Eleanor's requests were almost always immediate, top of mind things. "How can I help?"

Eleanor waved one of her hands through the air, cutting a pattern only she understood. "Not now. Later. The next time it's time for recruitment."

"Oh," Susan said, and tried to ignore the warmth blossoming within her. "Why?"

Eleanor looked away and was, for a moment, terribly, deathly still. "I don't know how. To convince parents. I have to practice but I don't understand. I thought maybe…"

Susan reached out and clasped her hand. "I'm happy to help. Eleanor, of course I'm happy to."

She had the hardest time with Betty. Well, and Lou, who already traveled readily at Betty's right hand and looked at Susan only to see the cadence and demeanor of the queen who stole everything that mattered from her. Susan was viciously, wildly intentional to respect Lou's space. Betty knew no such queen and hated her anyway.

Betty needled. Whenever Susan agreed to practice with Zizi, to hide herself away so Cynthia could race around in search, to sit silently with Melle, Betty lingered in the background with a quick, cutting word. Betty was tall and slim, her features fine and stylish. Her beauty was noticeable but practiced. It did not come easily to her. Nothing came easier to this almost-a-woman, who'd learned the cost of things early and had paid the price for her freedom.

The once Queen of Narnia knew, of course, that it was easy for Betty to hate her. She was gorgeous without effort, steady to the point of perceived perpetual indifference, and - most importantly - already whom Eleanor had asked for help.

Eleanor was not one who asked for help. And Betty, old, wise Betty, was furious. She had no interest in being replaced within this community, in being elbowed out from her role as second in command.

Susan could see Betty's love for Eleanor with such a clear vivacity that it hurt sometimes. And while Eleanor loved each of these pupils furiously and fought to protect a space for them all in a world that did not want them, she breezed through the world utterly unaware of the poignancy of Betty's desire.

So Susan waited. She lingered on the edges of things and respected Betty's leadership in the group, even when Betty's inattentiveness grated against her skin. Betty led with orders, directions, and demands. Kind ones, usually, but Susan had grown up under the fire of leadership and made all the mistakes one could make and learned how to lead in a way that didn't look like this, didn't feel like this…

She poured out her frustrations in a letter to Edmund and got a letter back that, as expected, cautioned patience in a way that loosened the knots in Susan's shoulder. He also wrote about the same journey Lucy did, although not the story of it, but his failings. He wrote about his greed and pride and how he'd briefly been the worst possible version of himself. He mentioned being afraid, in the slave markets of the Lone Islands, so very afraid. Lucy had left that piece out of the story entirely. He talked about meeting a star and how small he felt but how magnificent it had been, how in awe he had been and still was.

Susan pressed the letter smooth and went to find Melle. They tucked themselves into a back room where no one but Cynthia would think to look and Susan read out Edmund's account of meeting Ramandu.

Melle listened, eyes closed, warm and open, and glistened. When Susan finished, it opened its eyes and murmured, "it is a wonderful thing to know the heavens as intimately as you know the flex and stretch of your hand."

"I think," Susan said, "that it is a wonderful thing simply to meet a star."

One breakfast, on what purported to be a free day, Susan took advantage of Eleanor's absence to announce that she was going to deep clean the mansion, and would anyone like to help?

Cynthia scoffed and darted away, all fury and indignation directed outwards and upwards at a world she despised and had for so long despised her.

"I'll help," Lou rasped, to everyone's surprise.

The others did too. They returned their dishes to Caroline, the cook, and went to raid the supplies that had been stocked up for when the washerwomen came to visit. Caroline did not have a door; she lived in town and studiously ignored all the nonsense that went on around her.

They claimed dust rags and brooms, mops and buckets, and spread out through the main hallways. No plan of attack was laid and they soon dissolved into disorganized, frantic chaos, but chaos with a goal in mind and six pairs of hands willing to achieve it. Zizi asked Lou if she minded if they sang, and then led the others in echoey choruses of songs only she knew. Her voice was high, clear, and infectious, which somewhat minimized how overwhelmingly bloodthirsty most of her songs were.

The mansion, though, was huge. Far too huge for six ragtag sometimes students. They ate sandwiches for lunch in their main classroom, and then went back to it, calling jokes across the room and having to pause for laughter when it all got too much.

When Eleanor emerged or returned or discovered herself again, whichever, she found the girls collapsed against each other in the main foyer, exhausted. They'd not made it off the first floor, but the entry way, classrooms, and dining space sparkled.

"What a magnificent gift!" Eleanor cooed, jumping up and down and clapping her hands together. "What fun!"

Harriet mumbled, "you better help next time," only to be fruitlessly shushed by Betty's flailing elbow.

The first time Susan went with Eleanor to visit a prospective student no one returned with them. The girl was little, only ten, younger and smaller than Cynthia. As her parents said, she disappeared one day and returned four weeks later, obsessed with fire. She would linger in front of the stove, stick her hand into open flames, and play with matches whenever they left her unattended. It was too much, far too much, and they wanted her committed somewhere that they didn't have to deal with all this utter nonsense.

Susan could feel Eleanor's heart breaking during their diatribe, could see it in her eyes. And the little girl, fidgety and wild, was too young to parse the difference between what Eleanor said and what she meant. The girl's parents were too put off by Eleanor's apparent youth, by her vibrant red dress, by the way she stumbled over words she didn't want to say. And even when Susan tried to step in, tried to give everyone what they wanted simultaneously with all the practiced skill of a seasoned queen, it was too late.

The little girl did not come with them, and Eleanor collapsed into her car in tears.

Susan rested a hand on her shoulder and closed her eyes. She hoped, she so deeply hoped, that the girl would find her way through this world, fire and drive intact, but…

"I can't," Eleanor gasped, stuttering. "It's like this every time. There's so many I could help but I don't know how to get them to listen!"

"I think you can," Susan said, her voice soft and slow. "But I think you'll hate it."

Eleanor sniffed and straightened. "What do I need to do?"

They went to a department store on their way back, and Susan forced Eleanor into rigid, matching skirt suits, staid and ordinary dresses, elegant shoes, a fashionable hat or two, and understated jewelry with classic lines. Eleanor sniffled through all of it and picked at the fabric half-heartedly like it itched. She did not complain. Susan pressed as far as she dared and when Eleanor started to crack under the strain, she bundled everything up and marched out of the store with an efficiency that would have scared everyone but Peter.

In the car, Eleanor sang a lullaby in a language Susan didn't know, and it was slow and mournful and beautiful. They both cried. When she finished, she wiped away her tears and they drove home.

"I'm going," Betty said, stepping into Susan's bedroom unannounced. The door swung shut behind her. "I'm going and I need you to tell Eleanor for me."

Susan stopped her letter writing and studied the other girl. Her face was splotchy from crying but she looked determined. Settled. Almost, unbelievably, at peace. "You should tell her yourself."

Betty collapsed to the ground and rested her head on her knees. "No, no, please."

Susan slipped out of her chair and sat down next to this tall, graceful girl who'd hated her this entire time. She did not touch her, not without permission, but focused all of her attention on Betty's shaking form. "Where are you going?"

"Chicago," Betty said. "I have a cousin there who never… never saw me in the aftermath. She says there's a job for me at the factory."

"You will be able to take care of yourself?" Susan asked.

Betty pulled her head up enough to nod.

"Good," Susan said. "Let's go tell Eleanor together."

The other girl still looked panicked, but she swallowed and took Susan's offered hand to stand up. They looked for Eleanor in her office, and then the classrooms and then the kitchen and then they found Cynthia, who gestured vaguely to the outside. The grounds of the mansion were sprawling and unkempt, but Susan loved the poorly maintained wildness of them. She kept Betty out of the shade of trees as they wandered through the meadows and groves.

Eventually, they found Eleanor sitting next to a creek in the shade of several beeches.

"Can you join us in the sunshine?" Susan asked, pulling Eleanor out into the light where Betty didn't need to look so wary.

Eleanor came willingly, easily, and set herself before Betty, well aware of the reason for the request. She was also finely attuned to Betty's still shivers and devastated face. "Whatever is the matter, duckling?"

Susan stepped away, going just far enough away to still hear but give them some illusion of privacy.

Betty hissed an unsteady breath through her teeth and looked away. "I've got to go, Eleanor. To… graduate, or whatever."

Susan picked up a smooth stone and rolled it through her fingers. She imagined the emotions dancing across Eleanor's expressive face and tossed the little stone into the creek.

"Oh, love," Eleanor said, and it was so soft that Susan's heart almost broke, "I'm so proud of you."

Betty, taller than Eleanor by a wide margin, crumbled again, and Eleanor caught her against her shoulder.

Susan walked away.

It was not until much later, when Susan was back in her room writing her letters by candlelight when Eleanor slipped into her room, curled up on her bed, and cried. Susan kept at her letters, offering the space she needed. The soft, wispy noises were a cold, clear comfort and Susan was ever so grateful to be trusted with them. After a long time, Eleanor stood, crossed the depth of the room, and pressed a quiet kiss to Susan's temple. Then she left without a word.

They had a graduation and departure celebration for Betty.

Lou cried into Susan's shoulder.

Eleanor didn't cry at all, but after Betty left for the train station, her bubbly, effusive face shattered into something quiet and indifferent. No one but Cynthia saw her for three days.

"Why didn't the beavers become king and queen?" Cynthia asked. "Or a centaur?"

Susan looked away. "They did not want to, I think. We all played our parts."

The little girl scoffed and shoveled another bite of dinner in her face. "Were there any people who looked like me there?"

Susan laid down her fork. "Yes. I almost married one." Eleanor had not joined them, so it was just the six of them at a table too large for them in a room far, far too large.

Zizi's plate clattered. "What?! What happened?"

"I–" Susan said before her throat closed and she couldn't swallow past it. "He was a prince of a neighboring country. We wanted… to guarantee some sort of peace."

"Princes," Zizi said, each syllable ringing sharply, "are the absolute worst."

"So what?" Cynthia said, still scowling. "Your brothers were just going to sell you to someone, for peace?"

Susan shook her head. "No. No. We thought about it. But I said no and Edmund agreed and… Well. We didn't exactly have peace but…" It had not been Narnia that paid much of the price for her decision, and Susan had long thought herself reconciled with the deaths of the Archenlanders that had paid for her decision and Rabadash's anger but the weight of it sometimes lingered still.

They were quiet for awhile besides the sound of food, before Cynthia finished, pushed her plate away and said, "I think I'd still rather be ruled by a tree."

Lou and Harriet broke into giggles.

Letters from across the ocean were slow but consistent. Susan gathered them into packets sorted by sender and was only somewhat surprised when she had to add a packet for her cousin. Eustace proved a tentative correspondent but one who was useful, funny, and consistent. He wrote about his school, some, and about his parents, who seemed wildly confused by his change in character but had not yet exiled him to a school on the continent for daring to challenge their expectations.

He talked about his time as a dragon, about how steadier he felt in his own skin now, how grateful he'd been for Lucy's perpetual patience and Edmund's steady guidance. She wrote back about her own school, asked questions about the little details of his voyage, and shared distant recollections of her own seafaring foibles. She asked him the questions she'd never been able to ask her siblings: had they been good rulers? Was Narnia itself good?

The questions hung heavily in her throat as the wait of the mail stretched out and on. She started to move around the school in a daze. She got beat more easily and more quickly when sparring with Zizi, much to Zizi's disgust. She cleaned room after room, but did not ask for help. Harriet joined her, unasked, sometimes, but did not say much. She still sat with Eleanor on the occasional recruitment call, but none were successful.

And then she got his letter and his answer: it was good for me. I desperately needed this land and this people. Yet it was easy to see the suffering that lingered across the land, regardless of the ruler. It may not be a land that was safe for everyone. It seemed disingenuous to need an entire country for my own betterment.

Susan stared at the color of her hand and wondered if Cynthia and Queen Aravis would have gotten along. She and Aravis had never managed more than a polite accord, although Aravis had appreciated Peter and Lucy adored the new King of Archenland enough that they served as the more frequent ambassadors. Somehow, she pictured Cynthia's heavy eye rolls grating on Aravis' pristine and proper comportment. But Cynthia loved a good story and Queen Aravis had been an excellent, if occasionally opulent, storyteller. Of course, it was all academic; Aravis was centuries dead.

Edmund's letters were encouraging and supportive. He firmly believed in Eleanor West's mission, even from across the ocean, and she could feel the warmth of that belief infusing every letter. He had a suggestion for their problem: talk with parents and children separately whenever possible. In a mediated negotiation, whenever possible, separate those who wanted different things. Susan set aside Eustace's letters, took a breath, and got back to work.

With Eleanor's begrudging permission and unconcern about money, Susan hired two women part time from the nearby town to help keep the mansion clean. She cycled through three groundskeepers before finding one who worked for her and for Zizi and for Cynthia and for Eleanor's panicked expression whenever anyone spent too long amongst the trees.

She tore down the sign that said go away and left the mansion unadorned and unnamed. Next to the door, she hung a small sign requesting no solicitors. She tracked down more sheet music for Lou. She begged Zizi to turn her running into racing and help channel some of Harriet's restless energy. Cynthia joined them occasionally but was smaller and shorter and more interested in chasing them then besting them. Susan found a women's athletic league hosted by a nearby women's college willing to take them on and got their new groundskeeper to add driving Harriet and Zizi back and forth to meets to his duties. Cynthia shrugged off her exclusion with a scowl, and Susan felt the weight of that settle against her shoulders.

When they returned, after the first meet, Harriet's steady, peaceful expression was a sight to behold.

Eleanor flitted between them all. She ensured all of the staff were paid on time, and that the pupils were attending lessons more often than not. Regularly, she talked to everyone individually and listened to rants and rages, tears and tantrums. She could find Cynthia whenever no one else could, could brush away Lou's tears, could tolerate sitting too close to a fire when Melle needed extra warmth, could cheer on Harriet's every little victory over whatever trial was at hand, could settle Zizi's fury when needed, could rest a hand between Susan's shoulder blades and remind her when rest was necessary. But she lost track of little things and big things: she'd fail to show up to meals, would misplace documents not desperately needed but still important, she'd disappear - frequently - and return more absent minded, more confused. It was Eleanor's school, they all knew, however little it sometimes resembled a school.

Susan and Eleanor still went out to talk to parents of prospective students. Eleanor forced herself into clothes that fit her but did not fit her and sat ramrod straight to keep from plucking at the fabric. She met everyone's eyes, held eye contact, minded her manners, and lied through her teeth to every parent that wanted some miracle fix for their corrupted child.

Tanis and Martina joined the school within days of each other, only to have Lou's parents withdraw her in despair. Martina managed four nights sleeping upstairs on the dorm floor before she moved herself into an unfinished basement room, well away from the others. It had not been enough days to form a habit, but even without the nightmare screams waking her, Susan found herself jolting awake in the middle of the night and padding downstairs just to listen and guard.

Sometimes, Eleanor joined her and they held vigil outside Martina's rooms until dawn would creep back into the sky.

Lucy's letter asked if she would be coming home soon.

Susan's mother's letter demanded why she still persisted in such a delusion. Couldn't she see how it was harming her siblings? Lucy had been formally censured by her school, for heaven's sake!

Her father wrote nothing and never had.

Peter's letter asked nothing, but shared heady news of his start at university.

Edmund's letter asked if she was happy.

Eustace's letter was full of education theory he'd read (traditional, useful) and observed (atypical, useful in a different way) and theorized himself (practical, incredibly useful) and asked Susan for her own insight into education.

Lou wrote, clandestine and desperate to return, and Eleanor worked herself raw trying to see it done.

It was with Tanis, at first, that Susan first felt more formally a teacher at the school.

"Why?" whined Tanis, as Susan pulled her away from the window once again. "What need could I possibly have with history?"

"Sometimes," Susan said, "it is not about what you need, but what has been reasonably requested of you by others." The seven of them did not fill up the school room, and while Martina had installed herself comfortably at a desk that had once been Betty's, Lou's desk sat horribly empty.

Tanis slouched over her desk and knocked the textbook on the floor. "I won't."

"Guess you'll fail out then," Zizi said, her sneer a more and more common issue.

"Good," Tanis said, into her arms, "then I can spend all day laying about and making art."

"Ms. Eleanor will be mad at you," Martina said.

Cynthia, from her corner, laughed. "Eleanor doesn't get mad."

Susan, who'd brought Eleanor a glass of warm milk the other night after she had phoned Lou's parents, and who'd held the shaking, furious woman close, hummed and stepped away from Tanis's desk. "Do you think art has a history?"

Tanis looked up, said, "I don't answer trap questions," and put her head back down.

"I don't understand," Harriet hissed, "why you all can't be quiet and let me study."

Susan picked up Tanis's book. "Read your chapters and write a summary for me, and I'll get Mr. Highlands to bring you a book about Edvard Grieg and his art."

"...who's that?" Tanis asked.

Susan crossed her arms. "Guess you'll have to find out."

Tanis stared at her, then looked back at her history book. "And if I refuse?"

After a quick shrug and a glance at an amused Zizi who was desperately pretending she wasn't paying attention, Susan said, "I have more faith in Eleanor's dedication to our education than your dedication to avoiding it." Then she walked away and indulged in Zizi's secretive high five.

Tanis did her work.

Eleanor was a constant presence within her school but an unpredictable one. Susan actually didn't know what she might have done if Tanis had continued to refuse scholarship. She took to burying herself away in her office. The only recently installed phone started to get actual work as she both expanded the reach of her recruitment and tried so very hard to convince Lou's parents she should return. They'd committed her to an institution, they said. Lou needed medical help, not schooling. Once her voice got better, she'd let go of all this melancholy nonsense.

It was a challenge finding the right pupils to pursue. The Pevensies had reached out, pursuing a whisper of a friend of a friend of a friend that Harriet was getting help. Melle had shown up on her doorstep, blinked twice, and been let in. Stars did what was needed, after all. Betty and Cynthia had been her first finds, her reasons for starting, when casual mentorship with Betty hadn't been enough to keep her family from being desperate and Cynthia's mother spat in her face and threw her out. Zizi's grandmother had known Eleanor's mother. Lou had been luck. Tanis and Martina were the first fruits of a network of whispers and recommendations and a high enough profile of the school that it might be recommended when the circumstances arise but avoided for those people who just truly misunderstood children.

It was work and it was hard and it made Eleanor want to tear each individual curl from her head and offer them one by one to the crows until together they had woven a most magnificent tapestry. Susan tried to field as many incoming phone calls as possible, but she was technically a student, not a secretary, as Eleanor took to saying, so Susan would retreat and let her do the work. "I'm not really a student here," she insisted, under her breath.

When it all got too much, Eleanor would leave all the doors to her office open and slip away to some new, unfamiliar corner in this old, familiar mansion and wait for Cynthia to find her. No one else ever succeeded, although Harriet would pretend to be searching just to have an excuse to open doors.

In the evenings, she went to Susan and lay on her bed while Susan wrote letters overseas.

"Do you find it unfair," Eleanor whispered one night, "that only you are here?"

Susan knew she cannot see her face but the slight stiffening of her shoulders must be perceptible even in the candlelight. She had a letter from Peter in front of her, and his neat, narrow handwriting read 'he barred me too, you remember. You do not have sole claim to this agony.' But Peter's gravitas had been interpreted as growing up, and what beautiful maturity he showed. Edmund's wisdom was just his natural cleverness, finally directed in productive directions. And Lucy, well, Lucy was the littlest, and she's always been half whimsy, hadn't she? It was only the changes to Susan - steady, quiet, capable, direct, magical Susan - that saw her exiled across the sea.

"I'm sorry," Eleanor whispered. "That was unkind."

"No," Susan said. "Please don't censor yourself for me."

There was a long pause before Eleanor murmured, "I'm supposed to be your teacher. I think. I feel like we may have wandered down a violet path unexpectedly somewhere back there."

Susan turned in her chair and peered at her through the dark.

"You're too steady for me, Susan," Eleanor said.

"I'm not," she whispered back. "I'm a ship, lost at sea, and I'm holding on by the last few nails in my boards."

Eleanor hummed half a line to one of her many unfamiliar songs. "I once had tea with a summer storm. Would you like to hear the story?"

Susan laid down her pen, crossed the room, and laid down on the bed next to Eleanor. The other woman stroked her fingers through Susan's hair and slid backwards so there would be just enough space if they pressed in together. In a low whisper that sometimes broke into song and sometimes danced full heartedly into an unfamiliar language before breaking, cracking, and coming out English again, Eleanor told her story.

She'd been sleeping high up in the branches of a tree when a condor plucked her from the boughs and carried her out to sea. At first the flight was terrifying, and then delightful, for she'd remembered the stash of carrots hidden away in pockets, and she'd traded the carrots for the condor to do cartwheels against the wind. It was a wild, unrestrained flight, or as close as she could get. But her carrots had run out so she traded a magic pebble for a secret and the condor told her how he'd been tricked into kidnapping her by an evil wizard, who wanted a magic human as a final ingredient to an evil soup.

Susan was both too tired and sad to feel like giggling, but she did it anyway.

Eleanor hushed her by pressing her entire hand against Susan's face and continued.

As she clearly did not want to end up a soup, the little girl had charmed the condor into letting her go, even though she was high, high above land or sea beneath her. The cost of the charm was three tears and a favor to be named later. So she fell and she fell and she was scared and cold and miserable and just when she thought she might hit the ground, a cloud caught her. Clouds were notorious tricksters, though, so she had to be immediately on her guard. Out of carrots, and one magic pebble lighter, she traded her left shoe and a cracked tea cup for a gentle lift down and the promise she'd stand beneath the cloud for awhile and let herself be rained upon. The cloud lowered her down and then vaulted itself up, twisted itself around, and let out a torrent of rain so powerful it knocked the little girl to her knees. But it was a warm rain and the ground beneath her feet was so welcoming that she got up and danced with the raindrops until she'd tired and laid down and fell asleep in the rain.

Susan mumbled, "there wasn't any actual tea in that story."

"It's my story," Eleanor mumbled back. "I get to tell it how I like."

"You promised me tea."

"Did not."

"Did too."

Eleanor chuffed and the air was warm and friendly against Susan's cheek. They both smiled. "Tell me a story, then," Eleanor whispered.

Susan exhaled. "Can it be a sad one?"

Eleanor just nodded against her.

It was an old story, Susan said, slipping into a cadence better suited to a campfire and mead and many in the company. A story for cold nights, for chasing away fear while acknowledging suffering. A story first told to her and Lucy by a silver beech dryad named Lapis who lingered long, long while a blight tore down most of her kin. It was a story in verse that she remembered poorly, but the beat and cadence of it pulled Susan through it: separated lovers, exploited land, triumphant reunion, sacrifice to free the land from its pain. She closed the recitation with a little hiccup and squeezed her eyes shut. She had not recognized Lapis's lament when it was given. She'd not understood, fully.

"Oh, Susan," Eleanor whispered.

Susan opened her eyes and in the dark, collected each of Eleanor's precious tears in her palm to save for later.

They got Lou back. The quiet, raspy girl flew through the foyer and caught Susan and Melle - the first within reach - in bone breaking hugs. "I missed you," she whispered. "And, Susan, I'm so sorry I thought you were like my queen. I know you're not and I missed you so."

Melle detached enough that Susan could wrap both her arms around Lou's quivering shoulders and squeeze extra tight. Eleanor came through the door with Lou's luggage wearing a snappy black suit that fit her perfectly. Her shoulders slumped forward and she put down the luggage and stayed bent slightly, just for a few breaths, before straightening and catching Susan's eyes. Her face was pale and gaunt and her eyes looked sunken. "I missed you too," Susan said, and squeezed, before stepping back and gesturing to Melle. "Why doesn't Melle take you over to reintroduce yourself Tanis? I think you'll get along just fine."

Melle and Lou linked arms and skipped away into the house and Susan practically ran to catch Eleanor in a hug.

Eleanor sagged against her, her nose pressing into the curve of Susan's neck. "I'm so tired," she whispered. "I'm so tired."

"I know," Susan whispered back, "I've got you."

Cynthia, as if summoned by a pure and magical sense of her own needfulness, appeared in the foyer and led them to Eleanor's private rooms. For all Susan's time at the school, she'd not yet been invited back there, and yet Eleanor's fist had closed into the fabric of her blouse and she seemed unwilling to let go.

Eleanor's rooms were a riot of color. She had unaltered yardage of fabric tacked to the ceiling that hung in sheaths to the floor, cutting off sight lines and obscuring what may or may not have been of service. Cynthia led them confidently around the fabric to a purple chaise tucked in one corner. Susan shifted to lower Eleanor onto it and asked where her wardrobe was.

Cynthia didn't bother explaining, but left and returned with the most mismatched items she could find: black trousers embroidered with daisies, an orange and yellow blouse, a deep sea blue scarf, a silver hat with three bright green pom poms. They peeled Eleanor out of the suit that didn't fit her and elbowed and pulled her into the color and texture of the clothes that made her feel so much at home. Eleanor helped or hindered them, neither really knew, and then curled up on the chaise in a way that it didn't even make sense for anyone to fit and drifted into sleep.

"I'll show you around," Cynthia muttered, much to Susan's surprise. "Someone needs to know." The tour of Eleanor's rooms was short and to the point. Cynthia pointed out where she often left things and forgot and they became the lost things of Cynthia's domain. The little girl opened a door to a side room that was small and colorless and had only a bed. "She sleeps in here," Cynthia said, "when everything gets too loud. But otherwise…" The room was so un-Eleanor that it made Susan want to cry. They stepped into that cold, unfeeling room.

"Why are you showing me this?" Susan whispered.

Cynthia's face twisted. "Sometimes I know when I'm about to find something. The important stuff, at least. And if I'm going away then someone needs to find Eleanor. Keep her from getting lost."

Susan knelt and clasped Cynthia's shoulders. "You've been very good to her. And to all of us."

"I wish it wasn't you," Cynthia said, in a half-breath that whistled through Susan's skull and lodged like a burr against her spine. "Your divine destiny was rot, your rule was rot, and I don't trust you to build communities of equality and not communities of pure authority. Sometimes, you feel so lost I can't breathe even when you're standing right in front of me."

Susan fell away, collapsing in on herself.

"But you're trying, I think," Cynthia continued in a voice no softer than her critique. "And you're observant and kind and generous in your own way. Maybe you can be good for this place. Make sure there's people like me in it. We need it too."

Susan swallowed. "When… when will you be leaving?" She tried to picture Eleanor's face when Cynthia was nowhere to be found and came only to a horrible, still blankness.

Cynthia shrugged. "Not right away, I don't think. Ely'll be back on her feet first." The little girl stood and pulled open the door to the bedchamber.

"Thank you," Susan whispered, leaning forward slightly.

Cynthia paused on the threshold and sighed. "Good luck."

Susan wrote a letter to all three of them and raged. She poured out every frustration: that they were together, or near to it, and she was an ocean away. She raged that Lucy wrote as if her isolation was her fault and not something due to the impetus of her parents. They were all together and had Eustace and the professor too. She said it never felt like any of them stood up for her with their parents. Her pen scratched out every way the weight of this world landed on her shoulders because she had been a queen and was now just a girl in a world that did not want girls.

She said that getting cast out made her feel unwelcomed, unloved, by the very lion that had been supposed to love her most. And that her exile felt just the same, but different.

She wrote hastily: blamed Lucy for chasing after the lamppost and then scratched it out and wrote it again because she'd want to grow old. She'd wanted to grow old in the cool stones of that coastal palace. She'd wanted to wake before sunrise each day and watch light begin to crest over the sea before it bloomed in full magnificent glory over the Narnia ocean. She'd wanted to dance with the naiads and the dryads when her bones were too old for dancing but she ached with the joy of it anyway. She wanted to see what happened to Narnia when they passed the rule of it on to others and not know it centuries later, not have this gaping hole of history when all the history she had to fill it was periods of suffering.

The verdict of being too old was half a death sentence when she dreamed of what being old might be and knew herself to have been far from the threshold.

Each of Cynthia's little observations and pointed barbs ended up in this letter, along with Zizi's eye rolled priorities and Lou's old flinches: why did Narnia have no humans but the light skinned? Why was Archenland's queen treated as an exotic beauty worth more for her face and strange stories than her wit and leadership and kind rule? Why had Aslan given them Narnia anyway, these four foreigners who may have learned to love the land but were not from it? Why hadn't Narnia ruled itself? Why had they had such wary disdain for the Calormenes: these people, these people, these people? Why? Why? Why?

She cried over the letter, addressed it to Edmund and sent it off.

The estate gave way from a lingering winter to a bright burst of spring. Susan stared at the nature around her: when the spring gave way to summer, she'd have spent a whole year at the school.

A letter from Eustace arrived, far too soon to be any sort of response to her own letter, which introduced her to his new friend, Jill, and contained no Narnia news whatsoever except that his friend Puddleglum the Marshwiggle had shared a story about how his ancestors had once welcomed a most graceful queen to their humble abodes and how they'd been convinced of their unworthiness, only for this queen to sit among them, be present, to join in their hunting and meal preparation, their dirges and their laments. She'd been a queen who understood, the story said, a queen who just let them be exactly as they were.

Susan read the letter twice and laughed, sure that Eustace had heavily edited the telling of such a tale because she remembered the low, distractible cadence of those happily miserable folk. She clutched that letter close. For the first time she knew something from her time there still remained, an imprint of her pressed into the heartbeat of the land.

When she told the others, Zizi thought a Marshwiggle sounded like an excellent companion to go dragon hunting with. Lou asked if she remembered any of the songs. Cynthia frowned, nodded once, and then disappeared.

They were eating breakfast, everyone but Eleanor as was frequent, Cynthia who often came and went as she pleased, and Martina who'd slept poorly and had a fever so Susan had sent her back to bed.

Eleanor jolted into the room at half a run, her eyes wide. "Have any of you seen Cynthia? I can't find her."

Susan laid her fork down and swallowed.

"She went home," Melle said. It stood and crossed over to Eleanor in order to catch Eleanor's hand. "She found her way home."

Eleanor dropped instantaneously onto one of the dining room benches.

"She gave me this," Zizi said, pulling a little wood figurine of a dragon from her pockets and putting it on the table. It was clearly professionally made but its features had been scratched away and tiny down feathers were glued across the spine. The effort to make the figurine more like the dragons that were Zizi's perpetual foes was clear. "I'd thought…" she looked away. "It didn't really feel like a goodbye."

Harriet stood, eyes wild. "Why haven't I gone back? I've looked just as hard. My team needs me. Why did she get to go back?!"

"Hey," Lou rasped, as loudly as they ever heard her, "each door is different." It was the wrong thing to say. Harriet spun, a sense of rage ready to erupt had Melle not crossed back to her and tugged her bodily out of the room. Tanis slipped off the bench and hid beneath the table, like it was something that might protect her.

Susan, Zizi, and Lou looked at each other, and then at Eleanor's hunched, horribly still form.

"...I'll get everyone started on school today," Zizi said, "...or?"

"Can we be outside today?" Tanis asked. "It's so nice out."

"Yeah," Zizi said. "Sure. Let's go check on Martina and then play outside." She pushed aside a bench to make it easier for Tanis to crawl out and then grabbed Lou's hand and they trooped outside.

Susan gathered up all the breakfast dishes and returned them to Caroline in the kitchen. She fixed a fresh plate of bread and thick, sticky jam and went back to the dining room.

Perhaps she should have assumed that Eleanor would flee.

Plate in hand, Susan first checked the office before retracing the spiraling maze of hallways to Eleanor's rooms. She pushed open the door to riotous color and tried very hard to keep from getting jam on the fabric. Eleanor was curled up on her bed in the horrible little room, facing the smooth blankness of her wall, and absolutely still.

Susan placed the plate of food down near the bed and retreated to sit at the entry way.

"I should be happy," Eleanor said, not turning around. "Shouldn't I?"

Susan waited.

"She's gone home, she's found it, and all I can think about is that at least Betty writes."

"Do you want me to notify her family?" Susan asked.

"No." Eleanor's voice was flat and raspy, and sounded almost like Lou had her most labored. "No, they told me they wanted nothing to do with her. That she was my problem in perpetuity if I dared take her on."

Susan clenched her fingers into the fabric of her skirt and tried not to think about Aslan. "I'm glad her family on the other side of her door is good to her."

"I think I'd like to be alone," Eleanor said.

Susan did not believe her, but Eleanor was so quiet and cold and still that she withdrew anyway. "I'll be just outside." She stood, closed the door to that horrid little room, and stumbled through the fabric until she found the chaise in the corner.

In the aftermath of Cynthia's departure, Eleanor threw herself into her staid suits and perpetual phone calls. She attended breakfast and supper with a regularity that made Lou's eyes widen and smart and Zizi spend an extra hour at her running each day. She brought on another teacher, a Mr. Henry Nowak, who taught math and science with a vigor everyone adored and who'd instantly understood when Melle scowled and scowled and walked away whenever it was addressed as if a girl.

The little girl Susan had first ventured out with Eleanor showed up at the mansion one morning with an irritated father, but somehow she seemed older and far, far more rebellious than at that first meeting. She refused to respond to any name but Firebug. She threw a bonfire for herself on the front lawn her first night and burned up all the clothes her parents had provided. Eleanor managed a quiet chuckle from a distance and then bundled her up in Cynthia's clothes and had a very, very long conversation about fire safety in this world.

Eleanor took Susan with her to pick up Julia, ostensibly so Susan could practice her driving. Julia was quiet in the way they all could be quiet, and cold in an entirely different way. She'd found a door in a back alleyway that asked her to be sure and had stepped into a world where dead people lived and lively people died and the barrier between this and that was a razor thin line.

And then, Mr. Nowak brought Bartholomew to the mansion and asked if they would take him. Susan saw Eleanor, fearful, questioning, doubting herself, and welcomed Bartholomew before Eleanor could say no.

That night, Eleanor slipped into Susan's room and they had a vicious, whispered row that made the space behind Susan's eyes hurt and Eleanor to shiver uncontrollably. Eleanor would have said yes, she hissed, but she knew too well for herself and the others, what safety is and who most often threatened that. They tried to be quiet in their discontent and yet, they weren't quite quiet enough, for Melle breezed into the room in its nightclothes and yelled at them both with a fury more immediate and hot than it had ever expressed before. The only one who slept much that night was Martina, but that was okay because Martina always needed more sleep than she ever got.

With more students, the structure and form of being a school seemed to stick more successfully. Susan felt herself floundering on the outskirts. She wasn't really a student, for neither Mr. Highlands nor Mr. Nowak had much they could teach her. They brought books for her to read and she spent more time out of the classroom, somewhere between secretary and a vice principal whom the principal did not want around. She solved problems, or, at least, she hoped she did.

It stung, this new expression of Eleanor's devotion to her school. All Susan wanted to do was help. To help Eleanor specifically and thus Eleanor's mission. She tried to apologize for overstepping her authority. But it seemed like Eleanor didn't want her help and whenever she tried to provide support, Eleanor froze and drew away and reprimanded.

It made Susan want to scream, as did her siblings' silence.

It was firmly summer when she got a response from them, not in the form of a letter, but of Peter arriving unannounced accompanied by a young man that Susan barely recognized as her cousin. Peter caught her up in the most magnificent hug and Susan sobbed in the foyer for everyone to see.

Eleanor welcomed them to stay for a while, and over dinner Eustace entranced everyone with the story of his voyage at sea and then listened eagerly to stories from everyone else's doors as they felt like sharing. It was very late when Eleanor finally shooed everyone away to bed. She snuck Susan a bottle of wine and Susan bit her lip, desperately wanting to ask her to join them but also hurt and sad and scared.

Susan joined Peter in Eustace in the guest suite, wine in hand. "What are you even doing here?"

"I convinced Dad that I wanted to travel this year, instead of when I'm done, and Uncle Harold was easy enough to convince that Eustace should come along. They are so very proud of what a strong young man he is now, after all. The Experiment House was such a success."

Eustace rolled his eyes and took a long sip of wine. "We tried to bring Lucy too, but–"

"She didn't want to come," Peter said. "I'm sorry."

Susan knotted her fingers together and looked away.

"Aunt Letty would never have let her go, anyway," Eustace said, trying to lessen the blow.

"Will you tell me about your last journey?" Susan asked, focusing on Eustace.

He glanced at Peter and then nodded. They lingered all night long over the lost prince, the signs, all the ways Eustace could have done better but didn't, the giants, Puddleglum, the dark, the frantic ride away from the fires of the deep.

Having Peter and Eustace around was a boon for the school. They joined Zizi and Susan's casual sparring sessions before welcoming Harriet, Martina and Julia for fencing lessons. Peter spent his days with the groundskeeper, Melle, and Firebug building a retaining wall to protect one of the estate's hay fields.

Eustace sat for hours picking Eleanor's brain about everything she knew about the doors. Bartholomew and Martina, who'd both stepped into libraries of different shapes and sizes and safeties, lingered on the edges of those conversations with the eager eyes of two taxonomists who knew the value of having enough data to accurately classify things. Susan, Eleanor, and Eustace spent several evenings talking about education, theories of teaching, nontraditional schools, and what made education matter. He swore he'd return when he could, for longer, once his own schooling was done.

It was far, far easier to talk to Eustace than Peter. Susan found herself mostly avoiding Peter if he was not holding court amongst the younger students, making them all laugh. Of course, that wasn't a wholly sustainable approach and when he caught her elbow after dinner one night and asked her to join him on a walk, Susan swallowed away her panic and led him out to the back woods.

"Do you remember the summer of our trip to Dunstforth Falls?" Peter asked, his tone light and airy. "We moved the court up there for a month."

Susan pictured the colorful tents that had dotted the southern field below the falls, the jewel toned water, the eager participatory sway of their hosting trees. She remembered the splash of bathing, Lucy's sharp laugh, and how good it had been to climb up on her mare's back and head home. "Someone," she said, "spent the whole month distracted by a naiad."

Peter blushed. "We were young."

"We were older than we are now," Susan retorted.

"Were we?"

Susan signed. She stopped and leaned against a living, breathing tree that did not dance. "I don't know."

"Look, Sue," he said, standing beside her and not looking at all like a King of Narnia, but like a tired boy, far from home, that didn't know what to do. "If you need to come back with me, we can make those arrangements. The professor's friend, Ms. Polly, we wrote you about her, she can take you in, if you need. Do you think that's what you need?"

Susan tried to picture seeing the beginning of a world and seeing thousands of years of unknown history flash by, unknowable. She swallowed. "But Mum–"

Peter shrugged and looked away. "It's just that you… you seem happier here, than you were before. Your letters were filled with this place, these people. Especially Eleanor, who is incredible. I'll be very happy for you, if you stay."

She tried to grasp the words to explain how Eleanor wasn't really talking to her. How'd she'd stepped too far too fast and Eleanor didn't know what to do and Cynthia wasn't here to settle everyone down and Bartholomew still looked so on edge whenever you caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of your eye. "Why didn't Lucy want to come?"

He ran a hand through his hair. "Edmund thinks she's jealous."

"Jealous? Of what?"

"I think she's more homesick," he said, instead of answering. "Homesick and furious about it, so she has all this new grief and rage and she's never had to learn where to really put grief because she's always been able to fix things. When magic cordials save lives and every death is one timed when it feels appropriate… And, well…"

"What happened to her?" Susan said, pushing off the tree and pressing too close to Peter's side. "On the Lone Islands?"

Peter closed his eyes and turned away. "She was treated as merchandize, for a while. The threat of imminent sale protected her, for the most part. But still. In this world she has always perceived as if not safe, then just and kind…"

She rested her head against his shoulder and shivered. He brought his arms up around her. "Does Lucy need me to come home?"

"What you need, sister, is just as important," he said, "and your letters call this place home so very often."

Susan shuddered and started to cry.

The Compass was Martina's creation, painstakingly drawn by Bartholomew's steady hand, guided by Eleanor's insight and Eustace's clever questions. She showed it to Susan the next morning, glowing with her accomplishments.

"I think it'll help everyone understand themselves better," Martina whispered, pressing her finger against the little dot in high logic, low wicked labeled Hemoldt.

Susan traced the cardinal lines. Nonsense and logic. Virtue and wicked. A list of other directions was carefully spaced down one side until the lines grew closer and closer together as if more items kept being added in. She reached out and touched the dot resting high in logic and virtue. "Who's this?"

"Melle," Martina said. "We haven't figured out how to portray the minor directions, because this shouldn't really be flat, more like, uh, a big ball. And, well, we maybe aren't finalized all of the names yet. But the main four. Those are good." She nodded sharply. "Where do you think yours belongs?"

Susan froze. She, just for a second, saw a huge, rearing visage of Aslan before her. "I don't know. Once I would have put it here." She tapped near where Melle's dot was, "but now… It can be difficult to see a place for its wickedness, when you love it so."

Martina nodded, as if she understood. "Think about it. Eustace said he didn't want to try and place it without your input."

"Are you going home with them?"

Susan was almost angry. It had been well over a month since the last time Eleanor stepped into her bedroom, since Eleanor had spat vitriol like Susan had been trying to steal her school and her pupils away. And in that month she'd kept her head down, avoided Eleanor's disapprobation, but still stepped up and made the school run as an honest to goodness school. And two days, two days before Peter and Eustace were set to leave, Eleanor came like a thief. She took a breath, sat up, and struck a candle.

Eleanor's face was haunting in the flickers.

"Why would it matter?" Susan asked, as if she hadn't seen Eleanor shatter after Betty left, shatter again just to throw herself through flames solely because Lou asked for it, and could still see every little piece of her that had not yet been put into place again after Cynthia's departure home. As if she didn't know.

Eleanor looked down and twisted her hands together. "I don't– Susan."

"I can't be your student, Eleanor," Susan said. "I can't do it. Your coconspirator, your partner, your… friend. Those I can do. I can help care for this school and these students if you let me. Care for you. Please."

She reached up and ran a hand through her close cut curls and turned away. "I wish I could offer you more," Eleanor's voice was as still and silent as Tanis's glass. "I can't make you a queen. I can't even let go of the pieces of this school you are objectively better at than me. I can't and I'm trying and you might leave and you probably should and I'm just… so scared I don't know what to do."

Susan folded, like she knew she always would. "C'mere." She finished sitting up, shifting on her bed so there was space for Eleanor to fling herself across the room and burrow into Susan's side. They clung together. "Your school is beautiful," Susan whispered. "You're doing so much good. And with how viciously you have loved each of your pupils… you'd have done just fine without me. I know it."

Eleanor's breathing was choppy. "No. No, I wouldn't." Susan felt Eleanor's lips press against her neck and shuddered, almost pulling away from the force of the emotion. "You're a storm, Susan, a wild, kind storm. You'd carry me away, if you wanted."

"I want you here," Susan whispered. "Or… over there. I want you to be happy."

"I won't be happy there anymore," Eleanor said. It was the first time Susan had heard her admit that out loud. "Not until I'm old and gray and I've lost all my marbles."

"Ely," Susan said, "you couldn't find any of your marbles in the here and now."

"No," she replied, "I swear they all grew legs and walked away."

They giggled and hushed each other and giggled again.

"I'm going to stay," she told Peter, before breakfast. "I can do good here. You will send us Lucy if things get worse."

"I will," he said, and then pressed a kiss against her forehead. "I'm happy for you."

"What you are is moving all my things downstairs." She grinned at him, laughing. She and Eleanor had snuck out of the dorm hall in the middle of the night and wandered the various unused rooms of the downstairs family wing before Susan settled on an out of the way bedroom that she liked. It looked out over Eleanor's woods and caught the morning sun against the trees.

Their last night, Susan gathered up Eleanor, Peter, and Eustace, and they stole away into the trees. They passed around bottles of Eleanor's good wine and the Narnians tried and tried to come up with a story from their world wild enough and weird enough to surprise Eleanor. They did not succeed, but then Peter settled in to tell the story of how Susan had brokered a peace between Terebinthia and the Seven Isles with the sheer strength of her word, some well timed loaves of bread, and an unexpected jellyfish attack. Susan let the pride and love in his voice wash over her and settle by her spine.

Narnia had been good for her. She had done good, been good, and given as much good as she could back to her people and her land. Doing the same thing would be possible here. It would look different, feel different, and the scale would be different, but it would be good.

And Narnia had harmed her, too. The abruptness of her departures, the loss of what was safe and comfortable and home, the sense of the divine rightness of her assigned role and rule… all of these cut deep within her and she yearned for the community centered, perpetually egalitarian leadership Cynthia had wistfully told them stories about. She could try her best.

As Peter drew his story to a close with thunderous applause from Eustace and cheerful hoots from Eleanor, Susan sprung to her feet. "I feel like dancing."

Peter sprung up too, clapped his hands together thrice, and started singing one of the summer dancing songs of the fauns. Eleanor grasped Susan's hands and even though she did not know the steps, they spiraled through the trees in tune to the song and each other. And when Peter finished, Eustace took up a sea shanty and they clapped and stomped and clapped and stomped. Eleanor sang a dancing song from her world, in a language none of them knew but all of them understood.

The trees did not dance with them, not these old, stately, watchful beings that were magic in their own right but not the magic bubbling in the souls of these midnight dancers. Eventually, Eustace headed back to the house and then Peter, but Eleanor and Susan swung together through the night, sometimes singing, sometimes dancing only to the rush of wind among the leaves. Dawn met them still dancing.

Eustace and Peter left. The first letter Susan wrote in her new bedroom was to Lucy. She told her about her grief and not her rage, and her joy and not her despair. She talked about how much she loved Narnia, missed Narnia, and how much she appreciated the purpose she had found and stitched together all for herself. She told Lucy she loved her.

She wrote to Edmund and thanked him for looking after everyone. She sent letters chasing after Peter and Eustace. She wrote to her mother, even if what she wrote would not make her happy. She bit her lip and wrote to the professor. She explained the mission and vision of Eleanor's school and asked if he had any advice (what she would get in return was a letter full of warmth and enthusiasm and encouragement and a mind-boggling amount of money for a scholarship endowment).

She filled up her new rooms with living plants and dead branch wreaths and elegant fabric she stole shamelessly from Eleanor's supply.

She transitioned into a new role well and weathered Eleanor dealing with the changes… perhaps less well… by trusting Zizi enough to share in exaggerated eye rolls, by sitting in the music room with Lou for hours and hours, by directing her anger at Julia's snide and hurtful comments down into the muck and mulch of a vegetable garden, by listening to their pupils' joys and sorrows and fears and victories, and giving back to them everything she had to spare in return.

She made art with Tanis, read books with Bartholomew, let Martina badger her with theories and thoughts she absorbed but never really grasped, let Firebug play harmless pranks and yanked her back from the precipice of harm whenever she got too close, and sat still with Melle to let time pass them by.

And Eleanor, oh. She stored up all the gifts Eleanor left scattered around, remnants from nearly two years of habit playing hide and seek. She caught, collected, and saved Eleanor's tears for when she ever needed them back for something magical. She listened, she advised, she ranted. She let herself get carried away in a story that made no sense, she learned to sing lullabies, she danced and danced and danced until they breathed perfectly in time.

Susan was no queen in this world but a teacher and a friend. The roles rested against her peacefully and she found herself perfectly, beautifully, comfortably at home.

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