Once Upon a Wardrobe(53)

“You, Megs, are far from daft. But yes, archetypes are patterns. They are there in Narnia.” He glances at the notebook on my lap, open to the end with only a few pages remaining. “I do believe your notebook might be full, and it’s time for you, my dear, to live and tell your own stories.”

Tears fill my chest like a balloon. I don’t want this to end, whatever this is. I need to continue bringing stories to George. It seems they are keeping him alive.

“I don’t know if I shall be back,” I say, feeling overwhelmed. “It feels as if we are done.”

“You may visit anytime, Megs.”

“This has felt . . .” I stumble and forge through my thoughts for the right word. “This feels important.”

“Megs, every human interaction is eternally important.” He smiles, and I swear those eyes that usually twinkle are swimming with tears.





Twenty-One

The Kiss




I step off the bus in downtown Oxford. It is eerily quiet. Most students have gone home for holiday. Without the crowds bustling by, the stone and brick buildings seem larger, more eternal, as if they have always been there and always will be, even without us. I kick my way through a snowdrift. I want to be home by dinnertime.

I bundle my scarf and coat as tightly as I can. I’ve forgotten my hat at Mr. Lewis’s house and my hair is growing damp with the few snowflakes falling, leftovers from a swollen cloud that has already sent an inch to the ground. I shiver. I will go home and I will tell George the last of what I’ve learned today, but it doesn’t seem enough.

It will never be enough.

I pass the Bird and Baby, the pub where Mr. Lewis met with the Inklings. Through the dusty window I see a small crowd inside. I remember meeting Padraig in a pub. I thought I’d never be able to really talk to him, but now we are friends. The warmth of the light draws me forward. One pint of cider might warm me up before I get on the train.

Also, I need to catch my breath. I want to write down everything Mr. Lewis told me—the lion and the faun and the umbrella—before I forget.

When I push the wooden door and step inside, warm air rushes toward me. I brush the snow from my hair and find my way to the bar. It is dim inside, the lights low. Its wood-beamed ceiling makes me almost feel like I’m within a ship. I set my satchel on the floor and my elbows on the bar. Behind it are shelves and shelves of liquor and glasses that glisten. The bartender, a short older man with white hair and a nose that appears to have been broken a few too many times, walks over and tosses a towel over his shoulder. “What can I get you?”

“A cider, please. Warm.”

“Just the night for it,” he says.

I sit and glance around the room and see others, students who haven’t gone home yet or are local, talking to each other as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, being witty and gabbing about as if they are in a movie.

I will never be able to be like that.

Then I see him: Padraig is across the room, in a thick Irish fisherman’s sweater. It is the first time I’ve seen him without his school uniform. He’s with a crowd, and the blonde girl—the one who giggles as if it’s an art form—is hanging on his arm. Turning away, I quickly pull my notebook and pen out of my satchel and begin writing as furiously as I can, thinking about Mr. Lewis in his campus rooms, writing with an ink nib and mumbling his words out loud. My cider appears and I take a long swig, my pen moving fast.

Connections are coming to me: Mr. Lewis’s voice, his laughter, and his hints. Lucy is his goddaughter. The lion might be from dreams or from Mr. Williams’s stories. Or somewhere else. The idea had come with a picture of a faun when he was sixteen. He talked about the firmament of stars and planets.

These things begin to turn into a catalog of facts.

I am scribbling as though the world is held together by these very notes, as if the planets spin according to the correct order of all that could have contributed to the universe that is Narnia. As if I can unravel the beginnings of this world the way Einstein tries to unravel the beginning of our universe.

Padraig’s voice startles me from the writing frenzy.

“Stop!”

I come back to myself and the pub and the crowd.

Padraig swipes the notebook out from under me and begins reading it. I have made lines that connect one event or idea to another, attempting to make sense of it all: a web of scribbles and circles to show where one thing came from and how it might turn into another, proof that Mr. Lewis’s story is logical and connected to the pieces of his life and his favorite myths. This diagram of interconnectedness would make sense to no one but me.

Padraig’s gaze still on the paper, he speaks too loudly. “Lucy might be his godchild. Peter is Peter Rabbit? Edmund is Edmund Spenser?” Now he looks at me. Is it disappointment that paints his eyes? “The lions of Trafalgar Square and the Maid of the Alder?” He sighs. “Oh, Megs.”

“Give me that back,” I say as fear crawls up my neck. I am on the verge of understanding, of figuring it all out, and he will spoil my efforts.

Can I solve it?

I must!

I jump up and reach for my notebook, but Padraig is holding it over his head while still reading. Seeing how he’s five inches taller than I am, there’s not much I can do except hop off the barstool and jump up and down, looking the fool.