Susan The Gentle
Susan was twelve years old and could count the number of times she’d been truly afraid on one hand.
One- when she was five years old and she lost her Mum in the store. She didn’t cry because even at five Susan was already a stoic little mother. She found the checkout girl and told the young woman she was lost. The woman helped her find her mother and that night everyone told her how brave and clever she had been.
“But I was scared.” Susan told her mother.
“Sometimes being scared but doing something anyway means you’re extra brave.”
Two- When Susan was eight years old she got sent away to school for the first time. That first night she had a nightmare and it was the first time she couldn’t run into her mother's arm.
Even girls who are a little too serious, a little too motherly need their own mothers.
Three- When Susan was ten years old she climbed to the highest part of a tall tree in the orchard. She was alone- running from her siblings, from the role that had been handed to her and the one she’d picked up in a child’s hands. Sometimes even at ten Susan didn't want to be the little mother. She didn’t want to be her mother’s pretty, good, kind, nice, responsible girl. She wanted to run down the hall like Peter and Edmund or sit and dream like Lucy.
Lucy was born dreaming and Susan liked to think she died dreaming too.
On this summer day Susan wanted to run and so she did. She climbed a tree and fell crashing to the ground and broke her arm. She lay there for over an hour waiting for someone to find her. No one did and Susan picked herself off the cold ground and cradled her aching broken arm and walked home.
Some girls were dreamers and some were mothers.
Four- When Susan was twelve her mother clipped a tag on her jacket and the jacket of her siblings. Her parents put them on a train to go out into the country to stay with a man they had never met but was (maybe) distantly related to her mother. She was packed and parceled like a package and sent away.
“Take care of your brothers and sister.” her mother said.
“Who is going to take care of me?” she thought.
People forget that little mothers need to be taken care of.
Five- “I found a woods in a wardrobe.”
Her sister had gone mad. There was nothing but mothballs, coats and wood in that wardrobe. She swore she’d been gone for hours but not even minutes passed. Fauns didn’t exist. Lampposts did not appear in forests. Witches did not create winters with no Christmas and countries did not grow out of mothballs and wardrobes.
Her sister had gone mad and they were away from home and her mother had told her to take care of all of them but especially Lucy. Especially the dreamer. Susan had failed her mother and failed herself. She’d taken duty on as a mantle on her thin child's shoulders and she’d been found wanting because her sister had gone mad.
Susan was twelve and she couldn’t count her fear anymore.
Fauns existed. Lampposts could be found in forests. Witches existed and they tricked her little brother. Winter without Christmas existed. Countries could be found in wardrobes. She failed a different sibling.
She was promised. Her, the little mother, her brothers, the leader and the quiet sneaky one, and her sister, the dreamer. They were promised, waited for, expected.
They were children. They were children who were called to fight a witch who had reigned for more than all their years put together. They had gifts given to them by a story she’d outgrown years ago. Her eight year old sister held a knife, she held a bow and her brother held a sword. She was given a weapon and then told not to fight for herself or her family.
She couldn’t fight for her country because it wasn’t hers yet. She didn’t know these people, this land, their stories. She was promised idea whispered from mothers mouth to child's ear. She wasn’t a person to them, not yet and if she couldn’t be a person she couldn’t claim ownership or authority of this bit of land.
She had a horn to call for help and a bow she didn’t know how to use.
Even at twelve she knew she would learn though. Father Christmas and the Lion God might not want her to fight but Susan knew better. She knew that a queen was mother to her country and she knew a mother was called to fight for her children. She’d already fought bullies off of her dreamer sister. A bigger bully now held her sneaky little brother and she would fight to get him back. In their camp of desperate fighters she found a centaur to teach her how to wield her bow. She found her arrows didn’t miss with the mythical gift and asked for a different bow. If she was going to wield one she was going to learn one.
She also found a dwarf to teach Lucy to wield her knife. She never wanted that little blade to be stained with blood but she knew the best way to protect her sister was if her sister could protect herself.
Father Christmas and Aslan wanted them to be gentle, wanted Edmond to be a lesson and Peter to be a leader. Susan knew she couldn’t protect these people who put their faith in the legend of these four children of Adam and Eve and keep her hands completely clean.
She wondered- years later as she looked at kingdom budgets and food shortages and wondered how could she tax her people to pay for the food they needed to survive- if that’s how Jadis had started. Had Jadis ever been a young girl trying to keep her people fed and knew that no matter what she did someone would go hungry?
The golden years did not start on the day they were crowned but about five years into their reign. Five years of learning how to flatter diplomats, train armies, tax citizens, sell jewels, buy food and run a kingdom. Five years of Peter becoming the face of the monarchy. Five years of Susan becoming the beautiful queen and diplomat. Five years of Edmond becoming the Shadow King, his spies bringing them all information about their new world. Five years of Lucy becoming both the most loved and the most underestimated of them all. Her dreamer's eyes saw the things others missed. She whispered to Susan what diplomat liked what foods and Susan arranged her parties and her meetings with these in mind.
Words have power. Susan knew this, she watched Edmond weigh each word carefully on his tongue before speaking. She saw the weight of his mistakes pressing into her bones. She watched as her people listed eagerly, hungrily, for each word Peter spoke. She watched the genuine smiles that her sister's voice evoked. Words held so much power and it scared her.
They had called Jadis the High Queen. Jadis called herself High Queen. She became a dictator. Susan learned the stories. She knew how Aslan breathed life into this world and everything grew including the Lamppost. Everything but Jadis, everything but one Son of Adam and one Daughter of Eve and Jadis. Jadis who had already aged beyond what they knew. Jadis who had seen centuries and worlds live and die. Jadis who forgot what it meant to be queen. Jadis who forgot that the people in her kingdom were hers to take care of, hers to watch over, hers to guard.
Jadis who somewhere went from Queen to Dictator long before she ever stepped foot on Narnian soil. Jadis who was called High Queen.
Words are powerful and Susan was terrified of them. She was terrified of becoming so jaded to the needs of her people she became the last High Queen of Narnia. She clung to the title the Gentle with a white knuckled grip.
She knew she wasn’t gentle. A mother was a lioness bathing in the sun until someone threatened her cubs. Than she’d rip the flesh from the offenders bones and bathe in his blood to warn every other threat off. Susan had always been a mother. As Susan grew from a girl-mother into an adult queen she realized that she never had truly been a child.
A mother to her siblings. A mother to her country at twelve. A diplomat by fourteen. There was no place for a child on a throne. Or at least no place for four children and while Susan might not be the oldest she was always the responsible one. Peter would think of games of pretend for them to play and Susan would find the costumes and props. Peter planned, Susan created, Edmund horded his secrets and Lucy dreamed.
Some girls were allowed to stay dreamers. Some girls were never allowed to be them in the first place.
She spent twelve years in England, most of the memories faded and forgotten. She spent fifteen years in Narnia. By the 5th year she began to feel comfortable on her throne and confident in her choices. By the 10th year she’d forgotten her favorite book in England and her favorite dress. She couldn’t remember the smell of her father's cologne or her mother’s perfume. By the 12th year she couldn’t call their faces to memory and began to wonder if England had been a dream.
(She knew it wasn’t but it was easier to think that maybe it was a childhood game. Maybe she’d been brought to this world from Aslan’s breath at twelve and never had a mother or father for whom she cried over for the first two years.)
(She’d try to play this same game later when she was exiled from her kingdom. It didn’t work in England either.)
By the time she’d been a queen for fifteen years she couldn’t remember the drafty old country house her siblings had stayed in for a few short weeks. She couldn’t remember being parceled like a package for her safety. She couldn’t remember being lost in a store.
She could remember being afraid. She could remember picking herself off the cold ground and walking home cradling a broken arm. No matter how much your family loved you sometimes you were on your own. Even when you were Queen. After fifteen years Susan still clutched the title the Gentle with white knuckled fists. She knew now more than ever words had power. She’d written tax codes, school charters, treaties, letters, invitations and seating arrangements that guided the course of her country.
Then she was shoved back into a forgotten land in a forgotten body. Suddenly she was twelve again with a 27 year old mind. Her fingers had been permanently ink stained, her hair had fallen almost to her feet when it was unbound, her beauty had brought suitors from seven kingdoms.
Now her hips were strange and narrow, her chest flat, her hair dull and her face still round with baby fat. Her body was a stranger and her mind remembered everything. Her mind remembered being handed a bow that couldn’t miss and told not to defend what she had been promised for. Her mind remembered a Lion breathing his blessing on her. Her mind remember selling off every single jewel she could find so her people could make it through the year the crops all died. Her mind remembered every sleepless night she spent pouring over political theory and trying to find the best way to stay the Gentle.
That first week back she tried to trace her hands over her body every morning when she woke up. There was a long mirror in the room she had here in the drafty mansion her twelve year old body knew and her twenty seven year old mind couldn’t remember. As a Queen of twenty seven she had been comfortable with her body. Knew every plane and curve. Now shoved back into her twelve year old skin she couldn’t bring herself to look.
Her beauty was gone but her beauty had never truly resided in her skin. It came from building her life and her bones into a country that she had been promised to. It came from sleepless nights and a neck bare because the jewels had been sold. It came from the posture of bearing the weight of a country on her shoulders. It came from accepting her duty and learning a bow that can miss. It came from trying to forage marriage alliances and fleeing in the night for safety. It came from knowing that Gentle was more than just a title it was also a promise.
This body held none of that but her mind still did. She had built her hopes and her dreams and her promises into a country she couldn’t return to and was shoved back into a country she no longer belonged to.
“I once help command armies.” she thought.
“I’ve held dying soldiers in my hands praying Lucy and cordial arrived in time.”
“I have seen war and I have treated peace.”
“I have held widows and children, I have raised funds. I made a difference.”
But here in this country that was not hers her hands were useless. She was exiled from a city that was too dangerous for children.
A Lion had thrown her into war at the age of twelve all because he promised her to a country born of magic.
He exiled her and he brought her back at his convenience. He brought her back to be the promised legend. No longer the future but the past come back to haunt the broken walls of Cair Paravel. She did her duty and her reward was permanent exile. She was twenty eight years old shoved into thirteen year old skin. She had been promised, she had been forgotten, she had been brought back and now she was to be exiled again.
“Find me in your world.” a Lion told her.
Where was she to find him? In the girls who whispered about marriage, boys and sex?
Sex is beautiful she wanted to tell them as they giggled at night, her twenty nine years pressing into her fourteen year old skin. Sex is fun, it is silly, it is one of the closest ways to touch another person. Sex doesn’t have to happen only with men. There are many ways to love- including to love yourself.
Should she find him in boys (they might be five, six, seven, twenty years older than her body but she wasn’t fourteen was she, not really) who returned home broken from war. Should she find him in their eyes that were still haunted by sights on the battlefield.
She wanted to tell them she’s seen what they’ve seen. She’s looked the beast in the face and shot an arrow at it’s heart. She wanted to tell them that peace would last for a little while because it always did but there would be another war. She wanted to tell them that it was ok to wake up screaming from nightmares and running to turn on every light to make sure the blood in your dreams didn’t soak into the waking world. She wanted to tell them she knew what it was like to never leave the battlefield behind. She wanted to tell them she knew the weight of taking a life and it was a weight that never left. Or it was a weight that should never leave because carrying that weight meant you were still human, the battle didn’t take all of you.
Was she supposed to find him in the woman who left their disapproving families and became nurses on the front lines. Was she supposed to find him in the woman who took it one step farther and became soldiers themselves?
When her body turned sixteen and her mind turned 31 she began to sneak away from home, away from school, away, away, away and she walked back on to the battlefield. Not as a commander, not as a soldier but as a nurse, as a medic. The trainers were shocked to see how quickly her soft, uncalloused hands picked up the art of splints and bandages. She worked in every hospital she could walk, bike, train, tube or bribe a ride too. She befriended soldiers and helped them heal in body as much as she could.
She knew enough of war that she couldn’t help them heal their minds.
She couldn’t even heal her own.
She befriended another nurse. One of the women who did more than bandage wounds. One who carried a gun in her pressed white skirt. She asked the woman to teach her the weapons of this world.
Her body might be sixteen but her mind still remembered the countless hours practicing and honing her eye. She picked up the gun as quickly as she picked up the bandages.
At seventeen Susan graduated and left home to move in with the woman who taught her how to shoot a gun. The second bedroom in their little flat was a pretty well lit office. Susan studied languages and policy because those were the lessons of her first childhood and they were too precious to lose. Her lover studied codes and secrets because this war might be ending but there would always be another one. There would always be another High Queen with no gentle title to hold her to her kingdom.
Was she supposed to find the Lion in her lovers eyes? In the touch of their skin sliding against each other, naked and sweating in the summer heat. Was she supposed to find him in her lovers laugh? Or maybe in her touch?
Four years in her final exile did not erase fifteen years of responsibility, of being the little mother, of being the Gentle. She still sometimes woke from nightmares of seeing her people lying dead on the battlefield but now amongst the centaur, wolf, dwarf, mouse, otter, beaver, nymph, dyad bodies there lay the bodies of Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve- the soldiers of this world. She refused to look for the Lion in her dreams. She thought they might be the one place she might always find him and the one place she couldn’t bear to remember him.
Nightmares plagued her when she was a Queen and they plagued her from the moment of her first exile. Now she had someone to wake with her every night. Someone who carried her own demons, who carried nightmares of her own. On bad nights they made tea and sat on the floor and told fairy stories back and forth. They changed them though- little girls didn’t get eaten by wolves but instead cut the stomach open themselves. They did not let princes climb their hair but cut it themselves and made a rope. They did not trade their legs for the heart of a boy but for love of the hills. They did not eat poison apples but instead turned the stranger away. They did not beg a Fairy Godmother for glass slippers but walked away before the slippers were ever needed.
Susan never forgot Narnia but some days she wished she had. She wished it was just a child’s game. She wished she had been allowed to be a child in both this strange world that was starting to feel like hers again but also in the world born of magic where a Lion put four children on four thrones.
Susan couldn’t remember how old she was, was she twenty one or thirty six? Did it matter? They were gone. They were taken. She didn’t know if it was a freak accident or a cruel Lion’s joke. It didn't matter. Just like when she was eight years old her family didn’t come back for her, didn’t come to find her cradling her broken heart.
But she wasn’t alone. Her lovers hand was clasped tightly in her own- as tightly as she used to grip the word Gentle. She wore her stockings and her lipstick because they anchored her to this world. This world she lived in, this world she couldn’t, wouldn’t leave. Like her jewels, dresses, hair and crown had given her comfort and power in diplomatic meetings in Narnia her nylons and lipstick gave her the courage to face every “I’m so sorry” and “My thoughts are with you.”
She lasted three days before she broke. Crying in gasping heartbroken sobs that ripped their way from her chest, a monster fighting its way from her ribcage, a lioness over her dead cubs body. The last time she cried like this was when she discovered she was twenty seven inside thirteen year old skin.
This time though there were strong, soft arms around her. Susan clasped her lovers hand and traced every callous there. Different than how her own hands had once felt, callouses from a gun- not a bow- but callouses that matched her own in this body. In this world she’d built herself back into. It still didn’t feel right. This world might never feel right again but her lovers arms felt like home.
Susan never forgot Narnia, she pretended she could. She held quiet memorials for her memories when shaken awake by nightmares but she never forgot. She just built herself into the world she was given (exiled) to.