Chapter 2
Onwards they march once more, until they come to a river crossing, and even as they approach, a great sheet of ice breaks off, flowing swiftly downstream.
“Well here we are then children,” Mr Beaver says with false joy. “Once we’ve crossed the river it’s only a few short hours to the Table. Come along now.” And he ushers them towards the frozen river, even as Peter attempts to back away, shaking his head in concern. “We can’t possibly cross here! Look at that ice! It may hold two beavers, but I don’t think it’ll hold the four of us!” Cassandra has to agree with him.
But Mr Beaver will not be deterred, “nonsense! It’ll be fine! We’ll cross one at a time if you’re so worried about it though.” And without further discussion he clambers down the steep bank and scuttles across the ice. It groans under his paws, but it does not crack. Mrs Beaver is quick to follow, and Cassandra helps Peter gently lift Lucy down the bank.
They each eye the ice warily, exchanging glances of doubt, but knowing that it’s too late to change directions. “I’ll go first.” Peter says bravely. “If it holds me, it’ll hold the rest of you too.”
Cassandra nods at his logic, gesturing for him to go ahead.
He steps out cautiously, and the ice groans beneath him. But still no cracks.
Sliding carefully further out, he ungracefully skates to the other side to wait with the Beavers.
Susan goes next. She is much more graceful than her brother, and the ice groans beneath her too, still no cracks, but each groan echoes louder than the last.
Lucy looks at Cassandra to go next, but she pushes the younger girl gently out in front. Her footing is not as stable as her sister’s however, and half way across, she slips, falling to her back with a dull thud to the ice.
Cracks begin to spread from where she lies winded, and Cassandra quickly leaps across the ice, uncaring for caution, pushing the younger girl into her brother’s waiting arms as the ice finally shatters. Cassandra falls into the freezing waters, quickly dragged under by the current with water filling her lungs.
She’s thrown around in the water, never knowing which way is up, and the water in her lungs makes her cough and splutter, filling them up even more. All she can see is crashing white. All she can hear is the roaring of the river, finally free from it’s frozen prison. And she can feel large chunks of broken ice bashing into her body, bruising her and slicing at her skin.
At long last, just as her vision is beginning to dim, she feels cool air on her face as she surfaces from the water. She manages to flip onto her back, gulping in huge lungfuls of air even as she coughs and splutters from the water.
Something hits her body, or more like, her body hits something, and before the water can attempt to pull her around the obstacle, she weakly latches onto it, vomiting up large swathes of water that get quickly washed downstream.
After hanging in the river for a while, struggling to catch her breath, she manages to pull herself up onto the log. She lies there exhausted.
Sounds come from two different directions, one, a far off call of her name, that must be Peter, Susan, Lucy and the Beavers. And the relief that fills her at the sound of them being safe is almost unbearable.
And from the other direction, is the much closer sound of howling wolves.
Feebly raising her head she dimly realises a problem.
She hadn’t managed to cross the river.
Wolves quickly surround her, some jumping over her to prowl on her other side, but she’s too exhausted to put up a fight. They nip and grab at her clothes, somehow pulling her onto the back of one of the larger (of the already abnormally large) wolves, before starting a slow run back through the trees.
Cassandra just manages to make out the sight of Peter’s shocked face on the other side of the river before she faints, almost falling from the back of the wolf carrying her.
When she regains consciousness, she is tied to a tree, with a boy tied to another opposite her. He has the same nose as Susan, and Lucy’s shape to his eyes. But unlike any of the other three, his eyes are brown. Not blue.
“Edmund?” she guesses hoarsely, managing to raise one eyebrow.
He looks at her stunned. “How’d you know?”
“Your brother and Sisters are very worried about you, almost walked straight to the witch herself to demand you back.” She tells him gently. He grimaces, “well I’m glad they didn’t, it’s bad enough they have one of us! Who’re you anyways?”
“I’m Cassandra, I’m from London too. Do you know where they took my axe?” She asks worriedly, it’s no longer strapped to her back, and she’d only just been gifted it by Father Christmas! She hasn’t even gotten to use it!
“That massive thing stuck on your back? Yeah they chucked it over there, I think one of the bull-men took it though.” He nods to one of the surrounding campfires she had ignored up until that moment.
And sure enough, sitting on the other side of the flames, is a minotaur, admiring her beloved axe and swinging it experimentally. She can tell it is challenging for him to hold it, it’s weight proving very heavy for the creature, but he shrugs, tying it to his back the way it had been tied to her own.
She snarls at the sight.
Of course, snarling isn’t very ladylike, and Miss Heliotrope would have her hide, but she feels that these are extenuating circumstances, and god-dammit that’s her axe!
A hideous face thrusts itself in her own, distracting her from thoughts of murder.
“Girl! Her Majesty will see you now.”
The man is clearly a dwarf of some kind. A particularly disgusting one however, with an obtusely large nose dripping black snot, and massive bushy eyebrows so large and unkempt that they’d start developing dreadlocks over his eyes. His very few teeth were a blackish brown, and the stench of his breath caused her to vomit all down his front. It honestly didn’t change much about his appearance.
He didn’t so much as bother to acknowledge his now vomit-soaked board and chest, untying the ropes that kept her bound to the tree, and then roughly dragging her off. He’s so short that she is unable to stand up properly, leading her tripping and falling as she tries to walk/run on mostly bent legs. But no matter how many times she falls, he just keeps dragging her, whether she's on her feet, or on her stomach, he just keeps going. And she has to begrudgingly admire his strength. Afterall, dragging a young witch behind you as you walk is no easy task, and he’s doing a very good job, especially dragging her over all the roots and rocks that appear in their path.
Eventually she gives up on trying to walk. Succumbing to her fate of being bruised and broken by the various obstacles that he crashes her into.
Until he stops, dropping her at the feet of a lady dressed in long white furs that glide softly over the ice as she walks closer.
Cassandra manages to raise her head enough to see skin an unhealthy shade of greyish white, sickly off-white hair, and piercy blue eyes that once upon a time might have been striking, but now all they did was remind her of her Aunt Petunia when Uncle Vernon had left the house and she’d been instructed to bake some ‘special’ brownies (which were later hidden in Petunia’s bedside table). Her Aunt had been unintelligible for quite some time, but having been forbidden from touching the phone, Cassandra had merely laid her on the couch with a glass of water and a bowl to vomit into, before retreating back to her cupboard.
All of this passes through her head in an instant.
The woman must be the White Witch the others had spoken of.
“Bitch.” She mutters. “Giving all the rest of us a bad name.”
“What. Was. That?” The Witch snaps slowly, each word punching the air with suppressed anger at being addressed such.
Cassandra just gives a lazy smile, raising one hand, all fingers closed into a fist, except the middle one, which extends straight up in a show of defiance and derision.
The Witch clearly doesn’t understand the gesture properly, but realises anyways that it’s intended as an insult. “Dwarf!” She snaps. “Punish this dreadful little cretin! I want 50 lashings! No! 100! She shall scream for her insubordination!”
The dwarf cackles as he pulls out a riding whip, shoving her back to her knees and tearing open the back of her shirt.
The whip is brought down on her exposed skin with a thunderous Crack!
Her first scream splits the frozen air.
Her throat is raw by the time he’s counted to 20, and she falls silent for the rest, the pain burning too much for her to make sound. Even breathing causes too much pain to bear.
The snow surrounding her is stained red by the time they get to 30.
Her vision begins to dim at 40.
She’s gone by 50.
When she reawakes, she’s lying on her back in the snow, hands and ankles tied to another tree, and with the snarling face of the Dwarf standing above her. “Who gave you permission to sleep eh? Still got another 50 lashing to go yet girly.”
She groans. The coldness of the ice has made her back numb for now, but she knows that as soon as the whip starts back up, the pain will return tenfold. But she has no choice as he rolls her onto her stomach and roughly brushes off the snow sticking where the blood is beginning to scab over. The motion sends a fresh wave through her back, making her gasp for breath, and he chuckles cruelly.
The whip comes down without warning, and she finds that despite her throat being torn, she can still scream for now.
The screams don’t last very long, turning into tortured gasps and quiet heaves as she fights the urge to faint once more. The dwarf doesn’t even bother to count this time, happily cutting open her back with each crack of the whip. More blood stains the snow.
She’s barely awake when hoards of centaurs rush into the clearing and the whip stops coming. Someone picks her up gently and she groans in their arms as she clings to consciousness. She can vaguely hear murmurs of “you’re safe now. We’ve got you Princess. You’re safe.”
But after the ordeal she’s just been through, she’s not quite willing to believe them, so she urges her body to move, trying to fight through the pain-filled fog, weakly batting at the arms that hold her. She tries wiggling too, but the pain causes her to cry out, her torn throat protesting the sound just as much as her back does the movement.
She can feel the thundering of many legs hitting the earth as the centaurs stream out of the camp. Every so often a stray branch or twig will catch at her legs and feet, but they are quickly lost as the centaurs run.
She manages to keep her eyes open as they enter another camp. This one with red and gold banners of a roaring lion, and flying flags above colourful tents.
There’s joyful voices speaking, and cheers rise up from the quickly gathering crowd as they slow to a halt in front of the largest tent.
There is a large golden Lion waiting for them there.
Wait.
That’s not any ordinary lion.
That’s the lion.
Aslan.
Rolling out of the centaur’s surprised arms, Cassandra drops to the ground, somehow managing to disregard the pain long enough to pull her body into a kneeled bow with her head low.
“Rise my child, there is no need to bow, and you are gravely hurt. Lucy, my dear, would you bring that delightful little cordial, I believe our friend here would benefit greatly from a drop?” His voice is a low rumble that vibrates pleasantly in her chest. And she’s so wrapped up in the feeling of his presence and the natural magics that weave themselves through the air around him, that she almost misses Lucy approaching her. But she tilts her head up, cracking open her parched lips and accepting the singular drop that falls from the mouth of the bottle.
A glorious warmth fills her, almost as good as the sound of Aslan’s voice, and the pain washes away even as she can feel the skin on her back pulling together, mending at the seams and the blood disappearing back inside her body.
She stands then, on her own two feet, clear headed and finally able to look around at the gathering surrounding them. Edmund stands beside his siblings, reunited at last, and with a vaguely contrite look on his face telling her Peter must have been quietly rebuking the younger brother whilst she was being healed. But despite the guilt that mares his features, there is also a look of great relief that is evident across the faces of all 4 of the Pevensie children.
“Thank you,” She whispers, both to Aslan and Lucy. Turning to the centaur who carried her into camp, she bows low once more, “Thank you as well, I am unsure how much longer I would have lasted.”
“You lasted a great deal longer than most would have. And you showed us where you were, however unwilling it was.” The centaur nods at her. “I am Oreius, General of the Armies of Aslan, and I believe that this is yours?” He accepts a large parcel from a centaur behind him, and she gasps when he turns back to her to display both her uniform cloak as well as her axe. Her blankets having long since been lost to the river.
She eagerly accepts them, thanking the centaurs profusely as she wraps her cloak around her shoulders and straps the axe to her back once more. She feels right.
Here in this moment, despite just having been tortured, and almost drowning in a river of ice, here she feels right. It is right to be in the presence of Aslan, willing to bow at his feet and fight by his side. It feels right to have her wizarding cloak wrapped around her shoulder, with her wand nestled safely in its holster on her arm. To have her magical key from the rooms beneath the school fluttering around her ears. That adventure seems like it was years ago! Not a mere day or 2!
This moment is not peaceful. How could it? They have an army preparing to march on them! But it feels as though everything has finally aligned, all her worlds fitting perfectly together in one perfect picture. This is where she is meant to be. Everything that had ever happened to her in her life before this moment was leading up to this.
She can only hope that she will be prepared to face whatever comes next.
Word count: 2,573