Susan Not Gentle
Sometimes Susan remembered England. She remembered that first year when nightmares of blood and bodies mixed with nightmares of being parceled away from the city as the stars lit on fire and rocks fell from the sky. She remembered England when she couldn’t be sure where the blood from her dreams came from. Those nights she called for a candle and a history book. After all she couldn’t go back and this world needed her to know their stories.
Sometimes Susan remembered England. She remembered clothes that didn’t fit quite right because of rations and shortages. She remembered her mother stitching by candle light because the electricity was turned off so the Germans couldn’t find them. She remembered the time her mother went to the black market and found a box of stale cookies and brought them home to painstakingly share. Those days she rushed to her next meeting with the druids and the Animals who lived in their branches to mediate a disagreement.
Sometimes Susan remembered her mother. She saw her mother in Mrs. Beavers face as the old Animal sat her down at fifteen to make sure Susan knew where kits came from. She had some trouble calling up her mother’s face but Mrs. Beaver smelled like the river and the woods and home and that seemed close to how her mother must have smelt. Those times she buried her face into the Animals coarse fur and tried to forget she couldn’t remember what scent her mother had used before the war.
Sometimes Susan remembered her father. She remembered when she watched the soldiers come home from their battles. She saw the shadows of death in their eyes. She couldn’t remember her father's cologne but she remembered how he looked. After he came home injured. Before they were sent away. Before the sky exploded and her home became unsafe. She traded one war for another and so did he.
Children couldn’t stay in England but they could be brought and promised to a entire country. One ruled by a witch and governed by magic.
Sometimes she remembered England. Sometimes she remembered feeling trapped by the weight of responsibility that she took on before she ever knew what it would cost. Sometimes she remembered clothes that scratched and shoes that pinched. She remembered feeling powerless to her mother’s fear and her father’s broken spirit.
Sometimes Susan remembered England and she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to remember being twelve and feeling unsettled in her bones. She didn’t want to remember being afraid and not being able to do anything about it. She didn’t want to remember any of that.
Sometimes she did though. When she was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, sometimes she’d remember. Sometimes it’d be in the day and she’d run to the court yard and shoot her bow for hours. Not the one gifted by a fairy tale come to life but one she had claimed for her own after the battle. After the Lion laid dead on a table. After a twelve year old who had been sent from one war for her safety was dropped into another and handed a weapon. She’d fire her weapon into the target again and again and forced the memory of the sound of an arrow hitting flesh to be replaced by an arrow hitting straw and wood.
Sometimes she remembered at night. Sometimes the dreams jerked her from her sleep and forced her awake and sweating. At twelve years old she became queen after a war. The memories of the war drove her from sleep and to a lit branch of candles. She’d find solace in the library. Reading the histories that the Badgers had began to record in word and not just memory. The war wouldn’t be the first time her arrows found flesh and not straw but if she could just be a good enough queen maybe she could prevent it.
At fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, she sometimes remembered England. She remembered how she used to wear shoes that pinched and dresses that itched. She remembered holding the responsibility of her siblings and being afraid. Now she wore silk slippers and dresses that flowed over her growing curves. She remembered being ignored. She wasn’t ignored anymore. Not only did the men of the court and visiting courts listen to her but they started to look at her now. They offered her drinks, asked for dances, for rides in the orchard.
This was when Mrs. Beaver made sure she knew where kits came from.
The memories still came in the daylight. But now she had visiting dignitaries to entertain, council meetings, treaty negotiations. Her country had been rebuilt from 100 years of neglect and cruelty. Rebuilding that took three years, but they rebuilt it. Now they had to keep it. That meant establishing trade, creating alliances and a hundred other things.
The memories still sometime came at night. But now she often had company. There were two queens who could marry and and two kings who could help produce heirs. It didn’t matter if the elder queen choose to keep her bed warm at night. The elder queen could never leave her country. Any heirs she produced would belong to Narnia. Any husband she took would have to leave his land and come to hers. Her heart and her soul belonged to Narnia, her body belonged to herself.
The witches who acted as healers and midwives could prevent a child from growing inside her.
Her bed companions could keep the nightmares away- at least most of the time.
Her days were so full she didn’t have time to remember.
Still sometimes Susan remembered but she could never go back so it didn’t really matter did it?
Sometimes it was easier to tell herself that her life started at twelve and everything before was just a dream from a long time ago. Especially when she was twenty, twenty-one, twenty five. Especially when she’d been a queen in Narnia longer than she had ever been a child in England. Narnia was her world and her responsibility- England was just a dream.
Than they were sent back. She was twenty-seven, on a hunt with her siblings, planning a fantastic feast when they returned and an even better night with her latest bed partner and suddenly she was twelve, stumbling out of a wardrobe into a room she’d almost convinced herself was nothing but a dream. It had been fifteen years but no time at all had passed here.
Susan didn’t remember much of the next few months. They passed in a haze of foggy dreams (memories) of this world coming back to her. They passed in sweat soaked nightmares and her fleeing to the professor's library. If time stopped here did it speed up in Narnia? What was happening to her people?
How did she live without her responsibility to them?
The professor found her a bow and she cried when her child’s muscles could hardly pull back the string. It gave her something to do however, something more than remember and mourn. She began to train her body again. She swam in the pond, ran down the halls, lifted her own body weight. The physical exhaustion helped quiet her mind enough that she moved out of the fog.
She remembered Narnia. She remembered the parties she threw to keep bodies off of the battlefield. She remembered how she perfected her smile to be polite and interested. She perfected her smile again, practising in front of the mirror, trying to remember this body and this face. She hated it.
She remembered her arrows hitting flesh as she shot into a tree in the yard. She remembered all the times where her parties and her planning and her treaties didn’t work and she needed to use strength to keep her people safe. There was still a war going on here in England and for the first time since she was twelve (the first time she was twelve) she couldn’t do anything to stop it.
She remembered sitting over maps with her siblings and planning battles, refugee care, field hospitals and reconstruction. Here all she could do was sit by the radio and listen to the names and numbers of the dead. She could see the other itching in this new/old skin. Peter’s fingers played with the knives at dinner and she knew he remembered holding a sword. She saw Edmund reach behind his ear for the quill he used to keep there- wanting to send codes and letters to their spies. Lucy couldn’t go an hour without reaching for her cordial or her little dagger. Things that she had never gone without for long.
Helpless all of them, children in England.
They had never really been children in Narnia. Not Edmund with his guilt of betrayal, not Lucy who healed the dying. Not Peter who wielded the sword as an extension of his arm. Not Susan who wielded charm, diplomacy and a bow. Peter was in the battle, Edmund around it, Lucy after it and Susan above it- watching and telling what she saw as she fired her arrows.
During the day Susan ran, played and remembered with her siblings. Forcing the memories, talking about them, seemed to keep the bad ones away. The professor helped. He listened at the very least. He found swords, daggers and bows for them to practice. He let them do as they needed to do.
At night Susan fled to the library and read until her eyes were grainy with sleep and her mind too tired to call forth nightmares. Now the past of her country didn’t scream at her but the future did. She wondered every night what was happening.
She wondered every night if this was just a dream and she’d wake up in her chambers, with her tax reports and seating charts in her study and her current lover in her bed.
It was so much worse than a dream. It was real. This body had never felt a lover's body, this body was still learning to run, to shoot, to be strong.
She still couldn’t remember her mother’s face. She still couldn’t remember anything but her father’s war haunted eyes. It had been fifteen years.
It had been one year.
They were eventually parceled off back to London. The city was now safe for children who had been promised to a magical war and who had fought in their battles. At the train station none of them could remember their parents enough to pick their faces out of the crowd. They stood on the platform clutching their suitcases and each other’s hands because they needed to just feel a little bit safer. These adults in children’s bodies looking for parents they could barely remember.
They stayed for a bit, stayed with these strangers who were their parents. They called up decades old memories and tried to stuff them back into their child bodies. Soon though they were packed and parceled again, this time back to boarding school. They didn’t make it though.
They had to back to Narnia. Back to the kingdom they had been stolen from. Back to see the ruin of their abandonment. They hadn’t wanted to leave, they never thought they’d leave, but they did. They left with no plans in place. They knew exactly what would happen if one of them died of battle, disease, or assassin plan but none of them knew what would happen if the Lion that crowned them took them back to a home they’d forgotten.
They weren’t to worry. They were called back to save the day. Put a new Blessed King on the throne and leave again. For good this time.
Sometimes she remembered Narnia. She remembered when her sister tossed her head regally and laughed when older girls said magic was a game for children. She remembered when Peter held counsel in the student government. She remembered when Edmund in this child’s body weighed his words with an adults consideration. She remembered when she picked up a bow in her physical education class and hit the target perfectly each time.
She went to her dorm and cried to the shock and surprise of everyone but Lucy. Lucy who sat with her and told her stories of other worlds. Anywhere but England. Anywhere but Narnia.
Sometimes she remembered Narnia. She remembered when she carefully learned to apply this world's cosmetics and fashion. She remembered the weight of the jewels her lovers and ambassadors had gifted her in lust of her body and in lust of peace between kingdoms. She remembered the weight of her crown as she pinned on her hat. She remembered the dresses that flowed over her curves when she put on tight, scratchy confining clothes.
Sometimes she remembered Narnia. She remembered as her body grew and men and boys let their eyes linger over her again. She remembered as her hair grew longer and longer. She remembered as she cut her hair in the shortest style that was still fashionable. She didn’t want that weight hanging from her head as a daily reminder.
In this world she didn’t rule a country. She didn’t protect her people. She didn’t do anything. In this world she couldn’t even rule her own body. She turned fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and no kind Mrs. Beaver came to tell her where kits came from. Her mother only told her to be a good girl and wait for her husband before she was ever alone with boys. The girls in her school were just as ignorant as she had been, just as longing as she had been with none of the resources she had been gifted. She taught them as best she could, little warriors who just needed a bit of power over themselves.
Sometimes Susan remembered Narnia. When she volunteered as a nurse in the war clinics. When she wrapped bandages with hands that used to hold a bow. When the boys she cared for woke screaming from the ghosts that haunted them. When they looked passed her with haunted eyes.
Sometimes Susan remembered Narnia. She remembered how Mrs. Beaver smelt of home, safety and comfort. She remembered that she could rule her own body. That she could stop wars from happening in the first place. She could prevent children from coming home from the front lines with lost and haunted eyes. She could lose herself in books and meetings and in a lover's body. She could be something.
Sometimes Susan remembered Narnia and it didn’t matter. She could never go back and even if she could it wouldn’t be her land. It’d be somewhere new all over again. Somewhere where the time had passed to the point where she wasn’t even a legend anymore. Where not even the Badgers knew her name. Countries change and grow and she was now a relic of a forgotten past.
She started to write. Things that no reputable place would let a woman publish. So she sent them in under different names. She tried on different names until she settled on Frank Cornelius. The first king of the country she swore she forgot and the name of the Doctor of a man she could have cared for if it didn’t hurt too much to remember. She’d see her columns in the paper and smile with her friends. The same little warriors she found at school and taught where kits come from and it’s ok to own your own body. One of them proof read her articles every Sunday at tea.
The stipend she earned from her pieces of politics and policy allowed her to rent a small flat with several of her little warriors. One was a secretary, one was a shop girl, one was a seamstress. All girls from good families who wanted to be more than mothers and wives. They shared a tiny little flat with two of them to a room. It wasn’t much but it was theirs. They all pitched in with everything and the phone down the hall let them call their families when the money was too tight for a visit.
Susan’s parents didn’t understand but they supported her. Susan’s siblings were both angry that she didn’t want to remember and confused that she needed her own life in this world.
Maybe they would have understood someday. They never got the chance though. A train took them all at once. Every member of her family that she liked and spoke to were gone in the blink of an eye.
It turned out when you are the sole surviving member of several estates you gain a decent family inheritance. Another girl took her bed in the tiny cramped flat and she found one to rent by herself.
She wrote her articles. She held tea at her flat for her warriors every Sunday. It didn’t matter anymore that she had been a good girl from a good family. There was no family left to be accountable to her reputation. She started returning the lingering looks men gave her. The nightmares were back and another body fueled by lust and whiskey could help chase them away.
“Aren’t women supposed to be gentle?” an American asked with the smoke from his cigar swirling around the pair of them.
“I haven’t been the Gentle for a thousand years.” she replied tasting the bite of whiskey leftover on her lips. “I have no desire to be gentle now.”
“What do you want then doll?”
“To forget. I think you want that too.” She said as she placed a practised hand against his thigh. She had retaught this body how to seduce and knew her old self would be proud. She watched the American’s eyes darken and flick down to her hand and smile.
“Well, here’s to forgetting.” He said tossing his hand in the air to flag the bartender for a final drink.
An hour later they were walking arm in arm back to her flat. His breath tasted of cigar smoke and whiskey and she knew her lips tasted the same. She let him brace her against her flat door once it closed and in turn grabbed his hand to trail it from her cheek down to her waist. For one of the first times in this body she felt the heat begin to pool in her stomach again. She’d had a fumbling tumble with a soldier the summer she was seventeen, eighteen and nineteen. She wondered if she’d only ever find companionship in soldiers with haunted eyes.
“John.” He breathed.
“What?” she asked confused.
“My name, it’s John.”
“Susan. Pleasure to meet you. Please return to what you were doing.”
She woke in the morning to an ache between her legs and mind rested from a night without nightmares. John sat at the edge of the bed with a picture held in his hands. A woman and a small child smiled up from the crumpled paper.
“Who are they?” she asked as she sat up. She didn’t bother to clutch the sheet around her.
“My family. They’re back in America.” John answered.
“Why didn’t you go back. The war is long over.”
“Things I did? I can’t be a father or a husband any more. Should have said that last night if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“I’m not. I can’t be a wife or mother. I found I like my freedom too much. Breakfast? I have a lunch appointment this afternoon.”
The next time she saw him at the same dingy bar near her flat they shared a whiskey again before he followed her back. In the morning she gave him the number to ring for her flat. The third time he rang her flat and brought the whiskey with him. On the little balcony they shared the familiar bite of whiskey and burn of a cigar.
“I still love my wife.” he said the fifth time.
“I still love my freedom.” she replied laid out in her bed, the bruises from his hands and teeth starting to appear on her hip and waist. She could see the marks of her nails trailing down his bare back as he went to the washroom to find a flannel.
“Leave some rubbers when you go in the morning. I’m almost out of ones to give to the girls. I have some monies from my last article I can give you for them.” she called stretching her aching muscles.
The tenth time he asked about the picture of her family she kept on the nightstand.
“I lost them to a fairy tale.” she said, “I lost them because I kept a promise I made nine years ago.”
“I made a promise to my wife and daughter before good old Uncle Sam came knocking on my door. Guess in the end I couldn’t keep either.”
“Neither could I.” Susan said reaching for the whiskey tumbler. She drained the glass and kissed him hard. She let her teeth nip at his lips and brought his hands to grip her waist tightly. Together they chased their demons away.
The twentieth time she told him she couldn’t love him either, she’d love and lost too much to feel that again, but she cared for him and he helped keep her demons away. He told her he felt the same.
She lost count of how many times when she offered him to move in with her. The picture of his family sat next to the picture of hers. They still didn’t love each other. He still loved his family and she still loved her freedom but they kept the nightmares from each other and the companionship made the world feel a little less empty. She didn’t wake up from nightmares looking for Lions amongst the bodies of dead fairy tale creatures and he didn’t wake from nightmares of bodies dead in the trenches.
Sometimes Susan remembered Narnia but it didn’t matter. She could never return. She was condemned to England with it’s dreary skies to live with a man she could never truly love- who could never truly love her- and write articles under a name that wasn’t hers.
Sometimes Susan remembered Narnia but it hurt too much. She settled into and with her life in England. It was enough.
It had to be.