I wake in the creaky cottage of Padraig’s aunt Mary in Crawfordsburn. Her house is a tiny thing, made of whitewashed plaster with a thatched roof. I hear a fire crackling in the main room as morning rises outside, painting the world alive. Padraig slept on the couch out there, while his aunt has slept nearby in a tiny alcove on a cot. They’ve given George and me the bed.
George is asleep, curled next to me like a puppy. His soft sounds of sleep are comforting. He breathes in and out so easily, as if this journey has made him healthier. Dare I hope?
I lie as still as I can, recalling yesterday as one remembers the lines to a poem recited over and over.
We arrived at Crawfordsburn after dark. I called Mum and Dad on the pay phone in the village to let them know all was well. After assurances that we’d kept George warm and fed, Mum hadn’t sounded mad—although she was reserved. I wondered what I would come home to today: anger or fear, disappointment, or worse.
Amazingly enough, right now none of that matters so much.
Yesterday matters.
George’s adventure matters.
Our adventure matters.
My heart feels as if it dropped a rock in the sea below the broken castle. Or perhaps my heart has opened up in a swirl of laughter and wind, sweeping aside logic that had kept me so locked up. Logic—it can’t help me in the soul things that matter.
I sneak my tingling arm out from under George and shake it awake. Morning creeps through a window covered in white lace, and I see George’s notebook. His many-colored pencils are poking from a leather drawstring bag. I lift the notebook to see what he drew in the late-night hours before we fell asleep. He hid the pages from me, and I drifted off to the sound of the pencil scratching across the pages.
In his notebook is a rendering of Dunluce Castle.
George’s drawings are becoming better and better. His talent can be observed roaring to life in the progression of these sketchbook pages. Dunluce Castle is jagged on a green hillside overlooking a riotous sea. But here is not the castle we saw. Here it is restored and whole, triangle flags flying from the highest towers, walls intact, and windows reflecting the sunlight and overlooking the sea. He found its hidden wholeness.
When I turn the next page, I see a lion standing at the edge of the cliff, his head thrown back and his mane tangled in the wind. His mouth is open in what must be a mighty roar, bellowing across the sea.
I begin to cry. All that has been locked inside bursts forth. I shake with the tears, and it wakes George, even as I try to swallow my sobs.
He stirs and then sits, touches my wet cheeks.
“Don’t cry, Megs,” he says. “All will be well.”
* * *
When we emerge for breakfast, Padraig’s aunt is as congenial as one might dream up an aunt to be. She is as round as she is tall, and her hair is bundled up like a ball of wool on top of her head just as it was last night when I met her. Her dress, resembling a tablecloth we have at our cottage with blue and yellow flowers scattered across the fabric, is swaying about her as she bustles to make porridge and tea.
“Oh, Padraig, my boy,” she trills. “You must stay and say hello to Uncle Danny and Auntie Sorcha. Liz and small Padraig and Thomas and James will be so disappointed.”
Padraig rips off a piece of the soda bread she is wrapping up for our journey. He gobbles it with a smile. “Aunt Mary, I must get these two Devonshire treasures home. I took them away and their parents are quite worried. They don’t yet know how trustworthy and kind I am.” He winks at his aunt and she bursts into laughter—not because it’s not true, I can tell, but because he’s so frank and unassuming.
They love each other; I can see that.
I realize that Padraig is a boy—no, a man—who says the truth. He is the man he appears to be. His charm isn’t a cover, as it seems most boys’ charms are, but instead is an outgrowth of his true-blue character and wit.
Soon enough, though, loaded down with bread and apple jam in a basket she gives us, Aunt Mary kisses me straight away on the cheek, holding my face in her hands as if she has known me all her life and loves me the same. She then sits in a chair to face George and places her hands on his shoulders, looks him in the eye so long that he eventually throws his arms around her and she around him. I look to Padraig, who watches them, and we both blink back the tears.
After a few hours’ drive, during which George reads the names of countries and towns he flips to in the atlas, we are back on the ferry to England. The sun brightens the sky with a new day. For the rest of the drive home to Worcester, George sits in the back seat with the atlas as his friend, a smile on his face.
We are quieter on the drive home, the radio playing while the countryside flashes by. We are each in our own worlds, thinking of yesterday and what it might mean. My absolutely stunning realization that stories are a kind of answer, the same as any physics equation, will take me some time to fully absorb. It was as if I had seen the periphery of a large foreign landscape, and soon all of it would come into view.
When we finally drive through Worcester, it is late afternoon. The town is preparing for Christmas Eve services and gatherings. Padraig stops the car at the main square, and we all glance around.
The village twinkles under lights that have been strung from lampposts to storefronts and back again, a zigzag of lights swaying in a biting winter wind. Tonight everyone will be out. The local parish will perform a live nativity scene after finishing communion and a candlelight service. The townspeople will greet each other cheerfully with “Happy Christmas” and “Noel.” Hugs and cheek kisses and all-around gaiety will surround the small makeshift stable in the middle of the square.
“Your town is so jolly,” Padraig says.
George leans forward from the back seat. He’s just woken up and sees where we are. “We are almost home.”
“Yes,” I tell him. “And tonight is Christmas Eve.”
“You know, Padraig”—George touches Padraig’s arm—“in Narnia, it is always winter but never Christmas.”
“I know,” he says.
“But tomorrow,” George says, “we will have Christmas.”
Padraig puts the car in drive, and in a few moments we reach home. After he stops again I meet his beautiful eyes. “This was an amazing gift you gave us. I could never have done this without you.”
“Oh yes, you could have. You underestimate yourself.” He grins out the windshield, but I know the smile is for me. “But of course without me you wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun.”
I laugh and glance at my home. It is four in the afternoon. The sun is weak in the sky above a thin layer of icy clouds that can’t decide whether to snow or not.
“Padraig,” I say, “don’t come in, okay? Let me bear the brunt of however cross they might be. You can meet them another day when their faces might not be so red and angry.”
I climb out of the car and lean down in the open passenger door. “Thank you so much, Padraig.” The words get caught for a moment, and I have to clear my throat. “These two days were the most astonishing I’ve ever had. I really believe that to be true.”
He nods quickly, and I realize that if he speaks he, too, might cry. I close the door, then open the back door. George crawls out and into my arms, resting his head on my shoulder. I set his feet on the ground, and Padraig jumps out of the car. “Wait!”
Padraig comes to stand with us. He leans down and stares at George so hard I’m uncomfortable, but George isn’t. George gazes right back into Padraig’s eyes as straightforward as an arrow. “George,” says Padraig. “I want to tell you I am so happy to have met you. You are the kind of wise, curious, and clever man I would like to become when I grow up.”
George laughs. “But you’re already grown-up.”
“I am trying.” Padraig takes George’s face in his hands and kisses his forehead.
Then Padraig stands to face me. He smiles, brightly and clearly, sending wings of a thousand birds to fill the middle of me.
“Happy Christmas,” I say.
“Nollaig Shona Dhuit.” He returns the sentiment in Gaelic. I want to kiss him. It is a sudden and irrepressible desire, but I am sensible.
I merely smile. “We need to get inside,” I say. “Are you traveling back to Ireland today for Christmas or staying in Oxford?”
“Father and I are staying in Oxford until tomorrow afternoon, then we’re off to visit family. Though I will see you soon.” He leans again to George. “And you too, chara, you too.”
“What is chara?” George asks with a tilt of his head as he grasps the atlas to his chest.
“It means ‘friend’ in Irish. It is pronounced cara but spelled c-h-a-r-a.” He grins. “Friend.”
“I like it,” George says and laughs. “Chara, chara, chara.” He walks toward the front door and I follow.
Chara.
Friend.
I will not get seduced into a fantasy about who and what Padraig and I are. Chara is lovely and sweet, and I’m lucky to have even that with him.
Padraig drives away, and I know our adventure is over. Now I turn to my family.
It is enough. It must be enough.
George and I reach the door, and he sets his hand on the knob and then looks up at me. We both wonder silently what awaits us inside.
George opens the door.
Mum and Dad are sitting at the kitchen table. Between them is a plate of uneaten scones and a pot of tea. Mum has been crying; that is clear. Dad is holding her hand, and they both look to us as we walk in. Mum jumps up from the table and takes us both in her arms, hugs us close. “You’re home!”
“Mum!” George’s voice is muffled in coats and scarves and Mum’s embrace. “You’re hurting me,” he says, though laughing.
Mum lets go and looks at us both. George yanks off his scarf in the warm house, and then his mittens and coat, all the while talking as fast as a runaway train. “Mum, it was the jolliest adventure in all the world. The wild sea and the fairy folk of Ireland and a castle that had a kitchen that fell into the waves. There were seabirds and I have an atlas. Padraig’s aunt has a little house that looks like it’s in a fairy tale and—”
“Whoa!” Dad interrupts and stands. He steps toward us, and I feel the problems brewing. This is the part where we’ll be in trouble. I’ll be sent to my room or lectured.
But Dad stuns us all. “Did you see a talking beaver or a faun or”—he bends closer to his son and whispers—“a white witch?”
If Dad grew wings and flapped about the room like a madman I would not have been more amazed. That’s when I see the book next to the flowered teapot and the folded green napkins: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
George’s book.
Our book.
And my notebook.
I had left it behind in the rush, and Mum and Dad had read my tight handwriting, the jumbled stories of Mr. Lewis’s life that tangled with the land of Narnia.
“You have written a most beautiful story.” Mum puts her hands on my shoulders and speaks, tears in her eyes. “The love you have for your brother will carry all of us through. What you have done for George is more than anyone could ask.”
Dad sits and motions for George, who crawls into his lap. “You are so brave,” he tells his son.
“You’ve been reading the story!” George says.
Mum and Dad look to each other and nod. Dad says, “Tell me everything about the castle. Everything.”
“It is wild and free and sits on the top of a green hill at the edge of a cliff, and . . .”
As George tells his story, Mum’s tears drip onto my notebook of Mr. Lewis’s life.