Author Note: For a long time now, I've been wondering about Susan. In my last read-through of the Chronicles, I suddenly decided that I liked her very much, more then I ever did when I was younger. Then, she was just "the one who stopped believing." Now I see her as a lot more. I've read plenty of brilliant stories on here that deal with the Gentle queen after her horrific loss. I've also written several, but this is the first that came out at all decent. Reviews are very much appreciated!

Disclaimer: I do not own Narnia, Susan, Lucy, Edmund, Peter, Mr. Tumnus, etc. They belong to C.S. Lewis. I do, however, own Ann, Martin, and Rose. (*cough* Although the names also came from Mr. Lewis. But the characters are mine.)

"I think it's a lovely idea," Rose said, setting her bulging grocery bag down on the counter. "I'm sure your parents will be delighted."

Ann smiled and bounced on her toes. "It'll be better then last year, for sure. Breakfast in bed was the wrong idea."

Martin snorted softly. "Wrong because someone apparently can't carry a cup of coffee without spilling it all over."

"I told you it was too full!" Ann cried. "I didn't mean to!"

Rose pulled several cans from the bag and whipped open a cabinet door. "And who was the one who filled it?" she asked, her twinkling eyes focused on Martin.

"Well…" Martin shuffled his feet. "I…"

Their neighbor nodded wisely, sweeping three more cans up. "I thought so. It's the job of older brothers to see that their sisters can handle what they're given."

"Exactly." Ann set her hands on her hips. "What she said."

Martin sighed and deposited his own bag next to Rose's. "Can we just put it down as a failed effort and move on? It made Mum laugh, at least."

Ann grinned and bumped him. "See? I lighten all moods." She pulled out a loaf of bread and skipped across the kitchen to the pantry.

Rose chuckled, crumpled the first bag, now empty, and tossed it into the wastebasket. "Who told you that?"

Ann blinked. "Daddy."

"Ah." The older girl's curls bobbed as she nodded. "He was right, Goldilocks."

Martin rolled his eyes. "Goldilocks? That's a new one."

Rose shrugged lightly and tapped the end of his nose. "I enjoy giving people terms of endearment, Freckles."

The twelve-year-old shuddered and backed away, rubbing his nose furiously. "Freckles? She gets Goldilocks and I get Freckles?"

Ann giggled, and he shot her a glare. "Well, at least I don't have the habit of stealing beds and porridge."

She stuck her tongue out and turned her nose up. "I will have you know, I have never stolen a thing in my life."

"Never?" Martin asked wickedly, a slight gleam in his eye. "Are you sure?"

She paused. Had she? She racked her brain, trying to think of anything Martin might know about. "Well… not really. There might have been a few…"

Rose finished putting away the last groceries. "Children, children." They both turned to glare at her, and she smiled cheerfully. "If you're going to make dinner, we had best get started."

Ann couldn't help but smile back. "I know where Mum keeps the china; in the attic. She showed me last summer, when we packed up my baby books."

Martin snickered, and Ann narrowed her eyes. "They were in a box before that, you know. Just in my room, not the attic."

"Okay, okay," Rose said, gently setting a hand on each of their backs and nudging them toward the stairs. "You get the dishes, I'll start on the chicken. They won't know what hit them."

Ann bobbed her head and darted upward, clinging to the banister with one hand. Martin followed at a somewhat slower pace. "Ann, the house isn't on fire."

She wrinkled her nose. "Well, of course not. If it was, I would be going down."

He chuckled in spite of himself. "That's cute, Annie. Really cute."

Ann scurried down the hall and stopped at the last door, bouncing again as she waited for Martin. He ducked into his room, and she sighed impatiently.

He emerged with an electric torch gripped firmly in his fist. Noticing her strange look, he defended, "What? It's dark up there, even with the light on."

She decided not to argue that and pushed the door open. These stairs were steeper and narrower then the others, and didn't have a handrail. Martin was right; they were a little spooky. He flicked on the light and pointed it at her feet, but didn't say anything.

At the top, Ann stepped to the side and let him go first. She rubbed her arms, wrapped in her new red sweater. "Why's it so cold up here?"

Martin aimed his flashlight at the ceiling and moved it down a support beam until a single bulb came into view. He jumped for the dangling string, falling several inches short. Muttering something under his breath, he tucked the torch into his waistband and tried again. He caught the very end of it, and the light came on with a pop. "Don't know. Where are the plates?"

Ann started toward the back of the attic. "Over here, I think."

"You think?"

She ignored him and peered at the closest stack of boxes. "There was a bag on top of it, I remember."

Martin shined his light into the depths of the attic, illuminating a dozen airborne dust particles. Pixies, Daddy always called them.

"Umph!" Ann tripped abruptly and crashed to her hands and knees. "Ow!"

Martin rushed toward her. "Are you okay?" He hooked a hand around her arm and pulled her up.

Ann nodded, blushing. "Yes. I just tripped over that box." She crouched down again. It had fallen over, probably when she bumped it.

Martin moved his flashlight to the exposed side. "Memories," he read out loud. The handwriting was sort of familiar, but it wasn't Mum's; Ann was sure. The old tape securing the flap had come lose, and a big book stuck out.

"What's this?" she asked. A square piece of paper protruded from the top.

Martin leaned over and pulled it out. "A photo?" He flipped it over and scanned the back. " 'Spare Oom, 1940'. Spare Oom?"

Ann arched up on her tiptoes to peer over his shoulder as he turned it again and shined the torch on it. It was grainy, rather dusty and faded, but she could still make out four children, two boys and two girls. The bigger boy was sitting in some kind of doorway, with the smallest girl on his knee. The smaller boy was on their left, with the bigger boy's arm around him. The bigger girl was on the right, both hands resting on the bigger boy's knee and her head on the littler girl's shoulder.

"Are they in a wardrobe?" Martin asked in disbelief.

Ann furrowed her brow. "That's what it looks like, isn't it?"

Her brother hovered a finger over the smaller girl. "She looks like you, Ann."

Ann squinted at it. It was hard to make out faces, but Martin was right. Her hair was the same, at least: blonde pigtails that were just a little past the shoulder.

He pulled the picture closer to his face. "And the big one looks kind of like Mum, when she was little."

Ann tilted her head sideways. "I can't tell. And there're probably a million people in the world with dark hair. It could be anyone at all."

Martin shook his head. "I'll bet anything it's Mum. She would have been about…" he paused, apparently calculating. "About twelve in 1940. And we know you look lots like Aunt Lucy, so that's who the little girl probably is. And the boys are Uncle Peter and Uncle Edmund."

They were both silent for a minute. "How old would Aunt Lucy have been?" Ann finally asked.

Martin spread out his fingers, murmuring to himself. "Eight."

"Just one year younger then me. And Mum was your same age." Ann took the picture out of his hand and pulled it close to her face, trying to see through the fuzz. "What were they doing?"

"How should I know?" Martin sat down, cross-legged, on the floor and pulled the book out of the box. The blue cover was faded, just like the picture. He turned it over so that the front was up. It was a scrapbook, Ann could see now.

He blew on the cover, scattering dust. Ann sat down next to him, still pinching the photo between two fingers. There was a little picture window on the front of the book. The paper inside had yellowed with age, but Ann could still make out a flowery border and a title, written in beautiful script.

"Narnia? What does that mean?"

Ann shrugged. "Could it be 'memories' in another language? That's what the box says."

Martin frowned. "I don't know." He took a deep breath as he lifted the cover. Ann did the same. This was a very special picture, and a very special book, she could tell. It deserved lots of reverence.

The first page had a hand-drawn border very similar to the one around the title. All kinds of flowers, mixed in with birds and butterflies. The paper had faint blue lines on it, like Ann's school notebook. Several rows of neat handwriting were centered, broken apart evenly. She could tell at once it was a poem.

Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,

At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,

When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death

When he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

"Aslan? Who's Aslan?" Martin asked.

Ann traced the name with one finger. "I don't know. It's a lovely name though, isn't it? Aslan." She couldn't explain the good feelings that rose up in her when she said it, like unexpectedly getting a present or finding out that Grandmum Anderson was coming to visit.

"It's not a person," Martin said after a long pause.

"Of course not," Ann replied, a little miffed. She was smart enough to figure that out.

"So what kind of animal, do you think? It has a mane…"

Ann thought for a minute. "A horse? Horses have mane."

Martin snorted. "A horse? When have you ever heard a horse roar? Or seen one bear its teeth?"

She turned to glare up at him. "A loud whinny could be a roar! And do you have any better ideas?"

"A whinny couldn't be a roar, silly. A roar is ferocious, it's fearsome, it's—A lion! That's it! I'll bet you anything Aslan's a lion. Not a horse."

Ann turned to look at the book again, pouting a little. "Well… Maybe." Actually, she agreed. Aslan had to be a lion. The very name just sounded lion-y. But he didn't have to be mean about it.

There was an awkward pause, then Martin said, "All right, Ann. I'm sorry. A horse was the first thing that popped into my head with 'mane', too. Can we move on?"

Ann smiled and squeezed his arm. "Of course… Freckles," she added with a mischievous giggle.

He rolled his eyes. "I'm turning the page now…"

She settled down right away and turned back to the book. Martin made a dramatic show of lifting the old paper and letting it slip to the side. The next page had a border of trees. Some of them looked almost human, although Ann didn't dwell on that. The only text on here was at the bottom. In the center was a square patch brighter then the rest of the sheet, with lumps of dried glue along the edges.

With a smiled, Ann picked the photo up from the floor next to her leg and set in the square. She held it there with one finger as she read aloud from the bottom, "Once a King or Queen in Narnia, always a King or Queen."

"Narnia's a place," Ann said softly, after another reverent pause.

"That doesn't make sense," Martin argued. But it wasn't a mean arguing. More of a trying-to-understand arguing. "That's definitely a picture of Mum and her siblings. They weren't kings or queens of anywhere. And how could they all be rulers at the same time?"

Ann slowly pulled her hand away from the wardrobe picture, making sure it stayed in place. "I don't know."

Her brother abruptly turned the page, sending the photo flying toward the binding.

"Martin!" Ann shot her hand in and grabbed it. But when she looked up to give him a scolding, she forgot what she was going to say.

The next page was the most beautiful yet. On the previous two, the left-hand sheet had been blank. This one was entirely covered in a drawing. It showed clearing in a snowy wood. A lamppost stood at the center, with a creature holding a red umbrella below it. Ann thought at first it was a human, but she soon saw that couldn't be right. The legs were far too hairy. And instead of shoes, the umbrella-bearer had hooves, like a goat. "It's faun!"

"Or a… a which-a-ma-call-it… A satyr."

Ann brushed the umbrella with her free hand. "I guess. But I still think it's a faun."

When the pair was at last done looking at the lamppost picture, they turned their attention to the right-hand sheet. This had a border of—what else—snowflakes. They were big snowflakes, too, fluffy ones, and all different. The text here was much, much smaller then on the other two pages. It filled nearly all the space, apparently telling a story. Ann squinted at the first line. Martin shined his light on it and read aloud,

"I was eight the first time we went to Narnia. We had been sent away from home because of the war. There were air raids nearly every night. Those are horrible memories. The scream of the sirens, the shrieks of the children as they ran to their bomb shelters… Thank the Lion we didn't have to stay long. Mum sent us to Professor Kirke. He had a huge mansion, way out in the country where the Germans would never think to go. I was scared the first night, but I soon got over it. Peter cheered me—all of us, really—up by talking about all the exploring we could do and the things we might find. Of course, the next day, it would be raining. At the time, it seemed like an awful bore, but now I count it as one of my greatest blessings. We still wanted to explore, so we decided to do it inside the house. Not long into it, we came to a room with nothing but a big wardrobe, filled with fur coats. I loved to feel fur, so I hopped up inside. It was something only such a young child would do, but, again, it was a great blessing in the end. I soon discovered another row of coats. I couldn't, however, feel the back of the wardrobe. Thinking there might be still more fur, I went forward with my arms out… and forward… and forward. Finally, I touched something sharp."

"Ann! Martin!" Both children blinked several times, already taken in by the story. It took Ann a long minute to realize what was happening.

"Rose!" she exclaimed.

"The dishes!"

"Everything all right up there?" She sounded like she might be coming up.

"Yes!" Martin called back. He shut the scrapbook, a little reluctantly. "Ann just knocked over a box!"

"You don't need help?"

Martin carefully laid the book on the nearest stack of boxes and set the one it had come from upright again. Ann still had not moved from the floor. "No, we're fine!" He added to his sister, "Come on, Ann! We still have to get dinner for Mum and Dad. A Valentine's Day surprise, remember?"

"But… I want to see what happens!"

"Come on." Martin glanced at the book. "They'll be home in less then an hour."

With a sigh, Ann climbed to her feet. She gave the wardrobe—she was quite sure it was a wardrobe, now—photo one last longing look, then tucked it into the page it belonged on. "We'll come back when we're done, right?"

"Of course, of course." He nodded hastily and stretched out a hand. "But we've got to find that box!"

"All right, all right." She took the offered hand and pulled him toward the back of the attic. "I'm pretty sure it was over here."

She loosened her grip on Martin and slowed down as the reached the back wall. Most of the attic boxes were pushed to the sides, except for a few stacks, like the one with the "Memories" box in it.

"Here!" she crowed triumphantly. "I found it."

Martin pulled a large cloth bag from the box's top and set it aside. "Great. Now, we have to be really careful not to drop it, okay?"

She bobbed her head in agreement. "Okay. You take that side, and I'll get this one."

He clicked off his torch, making the attic even darker, and shoved it into his pocket. The siblings slid their hands under opposite corners of the heavy box and shuffled sideways until it was clear of the stack.

Ann grunted. "How're we… gonna get this down the stairs?"

Martin frowned. "I have no idea. It's heaver then I thought."

Despite their awkward bundle, the pair made quick progress across the attic. Ann gave Aunt Lucy's scrapbook a wishful glance as she passed, but didn't say any more about it. She could see Martin staring that direction, too.

"I'll go backwards down the stairs," he said finally. "Just be sure you go really, really slow and don't push."

She nodded, concentration overtaking her features. "Got it."

One painfully slow step at a time, Martin eased backward onto the stairs. "Whoa! Whoa! Watch it!"

"I am watching!"

He craned his next to look over his shoulder and didn't say anything else. Ann bit her lip, hard. She made sure not to move down a stair until her brother did. Her arms ached with the weight of the box, and she desperately wished they were already at the bottom.

After what seemed an eternity, they emerged in the second-story hall. Rose was just coming up the main stairs. "Oh, goodness!" She rushed forward and slid her arms under Ann's. "Look at you two strong children!" She checked her feet and said, "I'll take it from here, Ann."

With a sigh of relief, Ann shook her arms and wiggled her fingers. "Thanks, Rose."

She smiled, shuffling sideways. "No problem, sweetie. Here, Martin. Let me go backwards down these steps."

The pair slowly descended. "Ann, can you shut the attic door?" Rose called back.

Ann nodded and turned back the way she had come. She paused with her hand on the doorknob and looked back. Rose's head was already out of sight, and it would just take a moment…

She darted through the gap and pounded up the stairs. They were much scarier when she was by herself. Now panting a little, she skittered across the attic and scooped up the Narnia scrapbook. Dust stuck to her sweater from the old cover, but she didn't care. Hugging it to her chest, she ran back down the stairs and shoved the door shut with her foot. She leaned against the wall and tilted it back slightly to read the cover again. "Narnia."

"What was that, hon?"

"Nothing!" She straightened up and trotted over to her room. Reverently, she laid the book on her bedspread. On an impulse, she kissed her fingers and pushed them against the cover. With a skip in her step, she turned and headed back toward the kitchen. As soon as they were done with dinner, she could come back upstairs and finish the story—find out where Narnia was, and who on earth Aslan was.

End Note: Part Two will be up soon! Probably tomorrow, but I know as soon as I promise it, it won't happen. Oh, and the picture Ann and Martin found was inspired by a still from LWW. It's currently my avatar, for those who are curious. Except, obviously, they saw book!Pevensies, not movie!Pevensies, lovely as they may be. Review, please!