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𝑪𝑹𝑰𝑪𝑲𝑬𝑻 𝑨𝑵𝑫 𝑨 𝑾𝑰𝑪𝑲𝑬𝑫 𝑯𝑶𝑼𝑺𝑬𝑲𝑬𝑬𝑷𝑬𝑹
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𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐍 𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐂𝐀𝐌𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐀 𝐏𝐀𝐔𝐒𝐄 a few days later. The warm early-autumn rays of sunshine drove back the sombre atmosphere that had hung in and around the mansion ever since the news of the bombing of London had reached this part of the countryside. Though the puddles scattered around the meadow needed a little more time to dry up, the muddy sand between the grass leaves dried swiftly. The late blooming flowers got all sorts of vibrant colours and their sweet scent spread all over the land; carried along with the gentle gusts of wind.

The Pevensie and Summers siblings' hearts filled itselves with an elated feeling as soon as they set foot outside. They had been cooped up in the mansion for far too long, and at the edge of the porch, near the small stairs, they halted for a moment to breathe in the fresh air. In the distance, the forest seemed to wave at them with its branches while the streak of clouds peaked above it, almost representing white mountains.

Peter carried a flat wooden bat, a ball, and six small posts: all gear to play cricket with, while Susan had a checkered blanket tucked neatly under her arm. It was nearly midday and all of their stomachs rumbled when the breeze blew the scent of freshly baked bread past them. Its source came from the basket that Rosaleen carried between her hands, she had been busy all morning preparing the picnic.

She gently bumped her hip against Lucy's side to interrupt whatever thoughts were going through her mind as the youngest Pevensie still looked a bit downcast since the incident of last night. Lucy glanced up at the older girl with a half-smile but Rosaleen could tell she still thought about it.

Lucy's enthusiastic shouting had woken everyone up in the middle of the night, she had claimed she had been into Narnia once more, but this time Edmund had been there as well. When Peter had questioned his younger brother, though, Edmund had said it had only been a game. To say Lucy had been distressed would be an understatement, and none of the older teenagers knew what to believe anymore.

Rosaleen was the first to descend the stairs towards the cobbled path that laid in the shape of a circle in front of the mansion. It supposedly functioned as a drive-lane, but it sprouted out of nowhere as the other, nearest pathway lay several miles farther up ahead. The countless white, grey and black stones shimmered in the sunlight and wobbled underneath their shoes as they walked over it, but they only followed the lane for a few steps before leaving it and stepping onto the grass. The group walked around the outside of the mansion, most of them chatting happily to each other but Lucy clasped her book tightly against her chest, her mouth pressed into a tight line, while Edmund stared at the pointed ends of his old brown shoes as he followed behind the others.

'This is a good spot,' Rosaleen said when they reached the west-side of the mansion. 'At least, I think,' she quickly added, her uncertainty taking the upper hand, but both Peter and Susan nodded in agreement as they let their eyes wander over their surroundings.

The great oaken tree ─ that could both be seen from out of the window in the music room and the one at the head of the grand stairs ─ stood several yards away, towering far above the teenagers and creating some shadow from the sun that still climbed her way through the sky. Dozens of rose bushes were planted in a line near the wall of the mansion while groups of anemones perched up further around the yard. The white flowers bloomed best in autumn and though they had only small petals and short stems, they were still tough as they could withstand heavy rain and a howling wind.

'I think so as well, Rose,' Susan said to ease the anxiety of her new-found friend whose eyes immediately lit up in joy.

Alexander offered Susan to help spread out the blanket and it didn't take long before the six teenagers sat down on the peaceful spot as they enjoyed their lunch and the rare sunny day.

When they had finished eating the sandwiches, Peter challenged the others to a game of cricket.

Lucy refused, however, and grabbed her book to sit down at the foot of the oak tree as she ignored the pleas of her oldest brother that if she didn't play, they would have uneven teams.

'I have never played cricket before, though,' Rosaleen admitted, already thinking of sitting this game out as she fiddled with a strand of her blonde hair.

'Somehow that does not surprise me,' Edmund said with a roll of his eyes, but he hissed in pain when Peter smacked his thigh with the flat of the bat.

'Be nice, Ed.'

'You didn't have to hit me!'

Peter ignored him and offered his hand to Rosaleen who still sat as the only one on the blanket. 'I'll teach you how to play,' he said to her while Edmund rolled his eyes once more behind his back.

Rosaleen's gaze shot between Peter's outstretched hand and his eyes, but then she gave in.

'All right.' She took his hand and he helped her on her feet with a smile on his face.

'There isn't much to learn, though,' Susan said with a suppressed chuckle as she threw the ball from one hand to the other. 'It isn't a very sophisticated game. It involves hitting a ball, running, and catching the ball.'

Rosaleen's eyes lit up. 'Running?' she repeated, and Peter nodded as he made a fake swing with the bat.

'Yes,' he began, 'if you hit the ball, you sprint to the other wicket to score a run before the other team can knock it down with the caught ball.'

'A wicket?' Rosaleen asked in confusion, and Peter pointed with the bat at Alexander who stabbed three of the six wooden posts in the ground. The posts barely reached his knees and looked rather unstable. Then, Alexander jogged a few yards in a straight line before placing the remaining posts.

'The wickets,' Peter said and Rosaleen made a noise in understanding.

'I think I get it.'

'Let's just play already,' Edmund complained, and though Peter shot him an angry glare, Rosaleen agreed with a nod.

'I learn faster by doing it. What are the teams?'

'Since we're with five people, I'll just be the keeper,' Susan said. 'I don't like bowling or batting anyway.'

All the new terms confused Rosaleen but she hoped they would make sense soon enough.

'Very well,' Peter said. 'Then it's you and I against Edmund and Alexander,' he decided.

Half an hour flew by as they played several rounds, and Rosaleen had especially liked the surprise on Edmund's and Peter's face when she had successfully smashed the ball away on her first try and scored a so-called run before Alexander had even caught the ball after it had landed on the ground.

Edmund seemed to grow annoyed that his team was losing and he growled painfully when Peter bowled the ball against his leg.

Peter let out a chuckle. 'Whoops. You should try harder if you want to win, Ed.'

Edmund glanced at Rosaleen who balanced elegantly on her feet, ready to run wherever he would send the ball flying off to. Her speed was unfair. 'Can't we play hide and seek again?' he asked.

'I thought you said that it was a kid's game,' Peter retorted.

'Besides,' Susan added as she threw the ball back at Peter, 'we can all use the fresh air.'

'It's not like there isn't any air inside,' Edmund commented which quickly silenced Susan.

'We can also play hide and seek outside?' Rosaleen suggested, trying to find a compromise between the quarreling siblings.

Edmund huffed at her attempt to be at his side. 'Never mind,' he snarled. 'Bowl it if you can, Peter.'

Peter slightly shook his head as Edmund tapped the ground with the bat. The oldest Pevensie threw the ball between his hands a few times before pitching it with all his strength at his younger brother. Edmund however, was determined to hit the ball far out of Rosaleen's reach and he whacked it good. The ball soared high through the air, flying right towards an upstairs window and it smashed through the glass. The loud, shattering sound startled Lucy out of her book, and all six stared shocked at the broken window of the mansion.

'Was it just me or did it sound as if something else beside the window broke as well?' Alexander asked, and though Edmund in particular wanted to deny that question, it had indeed sounded as if the ball had knocked over another thing in the room.

Edmund threw the bat on the blanket not far away, and the six of them quickly ran back inside the mansion to assess the damage. Once they reached the upstairs chamber with the broken glass, they were also met with a broken suit of armour; the pieces laying scattered over the floor. The iron boots still stood upright and Rosaleen spotted the knee pieces nearby the red ball that had caused all of the damage.

'Oh well done, Ed,' Peter scolded his brother.

'You bowled it,' the other argued indignantly, he hardly thought this was his fault.

Rosaleen picked up one of the knee pieces. 'Maybe we can still fix this,' she said as she knelt by the boot and made sure that her dark blue skirt did not get stuck behind something else. She carefully placed the piece on the boot but then it started to wobble and the last pair of standing parts fell over as well. She flinched as the loud clattering sound echoed through the chamber and escaped through the open door.

'All right, maybe not,' she corrected herself, but she shot up straight when the distant, angry voice of Mrs Macready reached their ears.

'What shenanigans are you children up to now?!'

The colour drained out all of the teenagers' faces.

'We have to hide,' Edmund said frantically and in a hushed tone, involving all the others as he definitely did not want to take all of the blame.

'Quickly,' Peter said as he pushed Lucy with him out of the room, and the others followed suit.

The sound of the housekeepers' clicking heels emerged at their right and they burst into a sprint towards their left. They rushed through the maze-like hallways of the mansion, but Mrs Macready seemed to move as fast as they did. The clickety clack of her heels sounded behind them, then next to them, and now out of the hallway they wanted to go to.

Susan crossed eyes with Rosaleen in disbelief as the clacking sound bounced off against the walls, and Alexander ushered everyone into another hallway. It was almost as if there was something else going on than just a furiously wicked housekeeper; as if something led them into a specific direction.

The hallway came to a dead end and they tried all of the doors, but they were all locked, apart from one: the chamber with the wardrobe.

Edmund ran towards the wardrobe while the others froze near the door opening of the room after Peter had closed the door again.

'Come on,' Edmund said, opening the wardrobe and gesturing towards it.

'You have got to be joking,' Susan began but she redirected her gaze from the wardrobe to the door behind her when Mrs Macready's clicking heels came closer.

Without a second thought, they all sprinted towards the wardrobe and hid between the thick fur coats. They all stood huddled close together and the streaming daylight got cut off partly when Peter closed the door until its opening was just a small creek.

Their rushed breathing sounded far too loud in the cramped space and Peter hushed them to be quiet. Lucy placed her hands over her mouth while the others tried to calm their breathing. Peter glanced through the creek and his heart skipped a beat when the knob of the chamber door turned.

'Get back, go,' he whispered, taking a few steps back and bumping against someone else. Edmund pushed him to the other side, hissing that this was his spot, and Rosaleen gasped quietly for air when Peter crashed into her. He quickly apologised but Alexander pulled him away from his sister, and everyone shuffled around to find the best spot in the wardrobe.

Unbeknownst to most though, they moved farther and farther backwards, and as Peter ordered everyone to stop shoving each other, he and Susan tripped over something protruding out of the floor. They fell backwards and landed on their bum on something cold yet soft. Several branches of pine trees, covered with snowed-over pine needles, hovered above their heads, and both of them squinted their eyes against the bright light as they turned around on their knees. Susan pushed one of the branches out of her eyesight and though some snowflakes whirled down from it and blocked her view, in front of them lay, unmistakably, a forest.

'Impossible,' Susan breathed out, crawling back on her feet while Peter next to her looked just as perplexed. The pair of siblings stepped onto the open field where Lucy and Edmund already stood, and behind them, Rosaleen and Alexander emerged from the wardrobe as well.

'Don't worry,' Lucy said to her older brother and sister, 'it's probably just your imagination.'

Peter stopped gazing around at the beautiful forest and his regretful eyes landed upon her. 'I don't suppose saying we're sorry would quite cover it?'

Lucy shook her head. 'No, it wouldn't,' she said but a spark of mischief shimmered in her blue eyes and before Peter fully understood what was happening, she had already formed a snowball between her hands and threw it right against his face.

'But that might,' Lucy laughed while Peter shook the snow out of his hair. He quickly scooped up a handful of snow as well and threw a snowball right back at her, laughing merrily as it hit its target.

Naturally, it didn't take long until a full-on snowball fight erupted between five out six teenagers. Laughter drifted through the air between the trees but the thick layer of snow on the ground muted most of the sounds before it could travel much farther than the open field.

Rosaleen chuckled as she spun out of the way of the snowball coursing for her head, sent in her direction by Peter, but her chuckle turned into a shriek when Alexander came up from behind her and simply pressed a handful of snow against her bare neck.

'That's not funny, Alex!' Rosaleen exclaimed, whirling around to smack his upper arm while he and Peter hollored with laughter. Some snow fell through the collar of her light blue blouse and a shiver ran down her spine as the snow slid down her back at an antagonizing slow pace.

'I hate you,' she growled at her brother who had tears in his eyes from laughing, but his laughter came to an abrupt end when he spotted something soaring towards him out of the corner of his eye. He narrowly dodged the snowball thrown by Susan and with a muted thud, it collided with Edmund's arm instead.

'Ow!' Edmund rubbed his sore arm and glared at his older sister. 'Stop it.'

Everyone stopped throwing around snowballs as they focussed their attention on Edmund whose presence they had temporarily forgotten. He had been uncharacteristically silent while staring at the two hills in the far distance.

'So you have been here before,' Susan realized.

'You little liar,' Peter added, looking down on his younger brother in a condescending manner.

'You didn't believe her either,' Edmund said, taking a defensive stance and he didn't back away when Peter took a step closer towards him.

'Apologise to Lucy, say you're sorry,' Peter ordered and Edmund yielded when Peter took another menacing step towards him.

'All right, I'm sorry,' he said to Lucy, but truth to be told, it didn't sound very sincere.

Lucy, however, knew just what to say. 'That's all right. Some children just don't know when to stop pretending,' she said with a smug smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

'Ha ha, very funny,' Edmund mocked her, and with that, everything seemed to be set right again between the Pevensies.

Susan rubbed her arms in an attempt to stay warm now that they were no longer moving around and throwing snowballs at each other. Her breath created small clouds in the frisk air, but they only lingered for a few moments until they got whisked away with a chilly breeze.

'Maybe we should go back,' Susan suggested, but Edmund shook his head as he turned halfway around, gesturing to their ethereal surroundings. The ice crystals hidden within the layer of snow sparkled as the sunlight fell upon them and the icicles covering the pine needles jingled in a soft tune as they bumped against each other in the wind.

'Can't we take at least a look around?' Edmund asked.

Rosaleen and Alexander crossed eyes, both still quite flabbergasted by the idea that they were actually in the land their grandfather had written about, but before one of them could speak up, Peter made a fair point.

'I think Lucy should decide,' he said, and Lucy's eyes lit up in almost the same sparkling manner as the ice crystals all around them.

'I want you all to meet Mr Tumnus,' she said.

'To Mr Tumnus it is, then,' Peter said and he walked back to the fur coats hanging in the opening between the branches.

Susan bit her lip when Peter grabbed some coats and handed a light brown one to Lucy that seemed to be right her size.

'Peter, those don't belong to us,' Susan argued, but Peter shrugged it off while he gave Rosaleen black coat.

'Well, I don't think the professor would mind,' Peter began, handing a black one to Alexander as well. 'If you think about it logically, we're not even taking them out of the wardrobe.'

He pressed a grey coat in Edmund's hand who shot him a look in disbelief.

'But that's a girl's coat,' he exclaimed angrily, but Peter simply grinned.

'I know.'

Hesitantly, Susan took the coat Peter handed to her, but she felt warmer immediately after she put it on, and she had to admit: they didn't really take them out of the wardrobe.

Once everyone was covered in warm, thick coats, Lucy took the lead and guided them through the winter scenery. There weren't any obvious paths within the forest, but she knew the way to the faun by heart already, and she couldn't wait for her siblings, Rosaleen and Alexander to meet him.

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