Into the Wardrobe

erm.....

/me thinks that when it comes to writing a story actually about CoN... "I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy"

synopsis...

Susan in the Lawyers office... Being told how Prof Kirke left everything to her in the event of anything happening... also being handed a package, the contents of which are unknown, being unopened, which was found on the Peters body, and a letter.

Getting home, Susan opens the letter and starts to read the letter, but cannot continue, pocketing it.

She opens the package, and inadvertenytly touches one of the rings within, and finds herself pulled to The Wood between Worlds, where she sees two empty pools.

A kindly voice tells her that the one poool is Narnia, she turns and see before her, wearing a ribbon.....

etc etc etc


and so goes the mind of a Heretic.

After the funerals, Susan as sole beneficiary goes to the Prof's small flat (remember his house was lost, in VDT) and discover among his few possessions, a book of drawings he did as a boy after returning from Narnia's creation.
They inspire her so much to return to her faith in Aslan/Christ that she tells the whole story to a stranger she meets on the train home. The old man, when he gets back to his rooms at Oxford, immediately begins to write it down, and decides that a children's fantasy tale is the best style for it.

Wasn't there a story about this awhile back that I like relly well. She was rich because of her parents the professor and no siblings but board and sad with life. She attended many charity events and her soon to be husband mabee only a boyfreind gave her a gift or something. Oh! A gift of a lion broach or something. It made her remember the past and she was at peace after that. I printed it off and I think you, Carol, sent it to me. It was about three pages long or so.

I must say that this entire subject has been such a relief to me. I have been fretting over poor Susan's fate for years. Somehow when I read it the first time I lumped the end of Narnia in with the end of our world and didn't leave Susan a chance to change. Then in a different thread the other day somebody made a reference to Susan having to get to know Aslan by another name (as Lucy is told she must in VDT) and I got to thinking about it all and realized how silly I'd been. It was really ridiculous how much genuine emotion I felt over the plight of this imaginary girl. But I suppose if there is anywhere I can be understood for my attachments to fictional characers, it's here. You guys are the best.

I agree--as will many people here, thus all the stories written about Susan's reclamation (there are other threads about the topic, and they are very interesting). CSL never closed the door on Susan; he left it quite open as a matter of fact.

After all, Susan was not an evil woman. She simply lacked an enduring faith that what they had experienced was real. As a young woman her priorities got messed up and this contributed to the death of her faith in Narnia and Aslan. Perhaps the fact that they always emerged from Narnia exactly as they had entered it confused her.

The Chronicles describe the childrens' memories of Narnia (the longer they had been back in our world) as dreamlike. Remember that in Prince Caspian, though Lucy had spent years and years in Narnia, growing up as a Queen, hunting, fighting, and swimming, she had trouble with swimming in school upon her return, and she related to the world as a child of her age would, not as a grown Queen in a child's body would. This tells me that to a large degree, the life they had experienced in Narnia would fade and only linger as a dream.

Perhaps the more often a child went there, coupled with the degree of faith in Aslan that they had, the more vivid and real the memory was on this side, and conversely, the less faith they had, and the fewer times they were able to go (Susan only went twice) the more muddled and dreamlike the memories would become, thus leading Susan to convince herself that they had only been playing games.

I like to imagine that she came to Christ, and in the end of her life , met Him and finally realized that He IS the Great Lion. After all, He is a Lion in both worlds. Figuratively here, yes. But we call Him the Lion.