Cold Beauty
by Angel

Written for Yuletide 2004's New Year's Resolution, Susan/Jadis, PG


Susan carries her secret as she moves through the school day. Classes, uniforms and the endless
throng of girls around her have no effect. She hurls herself into her schoolwork, into parties and pranks,
into make-up that must be hastily washed off before class.

She keeps her secret. In the dark, she hears the other girls in her dormitory. The kisses, the hastily hushed
giggles. She knows well enough what the sounds mean.

No one comes to Susan's bed after curfew, nor does she slip out for the taste of girlish kisses. Instead,
she remembers.

It had been a dreadful summer in the country, always having to stay out of the way of tour groups, and missing
Mother and Father. Professor Kirke was an old dear, but the house was creepy. And that one empty room with
the wardrobe seemed to always be cold.

When Lucy started her ridiculous story, she and Peter had gone to the professor about it. Edmund was a nasty
brute, teasing Lu about it endlessly. Susan, on the other hand, had tried it out herself. She chose a time when no
one was looking and stepped into the wardrobe.

Once inside, she realized why the room was cold. Lucy's tale had been accurate in all particulars, including the
endless winter. Susan made for the lamp-post, just wanting to look around.

The tallest, most beautiful woman ever had found her there, just as dusk was falling. Susan shivered in her fur
 coat (no one would notice it was gone, since it had never left the wardrobe in our world), and gratefully accepted
the offer of hot food and drink.

At the castle between the mountains, she found no more warmth. But the drink Queen Jadis gave her made her not
 mind the cold of the room, the way the food chilled on her plate or the icy fingers in her hair later as Jadis brushed it.

"Your Majesty, should I not serve you?" Susan asked as Jadis plaited her hair into long dark braids.

"You are, my dear. You are. It has been a long time since I've see a girl as beautiful as you. Do you
know, I have no heir? What a pity it would be were I to die and leave all my beautiful frosty Narnia to
some great rough beast or a man. A daughter, even an adopted one, would save my country."

Jadis, with her sweet voice and beguiling words had induced Susan to stay the night. She remembered
 time ran differently, according to Lucy, and agreed. It was an awfully long trip back to the lamppost
and the wardrobe, and she was very comfortable where she was. She sat on a soft cushion, her head
against Jadis's knee, watching the chill blue flames on the hearth as the Queen told her tales.

She heard the stories of Charn and the Deplorable Word, of sledging across Narnian plains, the first to
mark the newfallen snow with runners, of all the secrets that trees and birds could whisper.

The Queen's fingers never left her hair. They stroked and played and lulled Susan into a half-dream
where all the tales ran together.

"It's late," Jadis remarked, startling Susan awake. She pulled the girl to her feet and looked her
over. "Sweet daughter, how old are you?"

"Twelve, Your Majesty."

"Twelve, for the daughters of men, is nearly a woman. Are you one yet?"

Susan blushed at the straightforward question. Even her mother had only hinted about what
growing up meant. She'd learned more from the girls whispering in the bathrooms at school.
"No, Your Majesty."

"Ah, splendid. Dear Susan, stay here tonight. In the morning, I shall take you back to the lamppost.
The snow is blowing again, and there will be lovely sledging tomorrow."

Susan questioned nothing as she slipped between the cold white sheets, the icy satin of the
nightgown clinging to her in a disconcerting way that made her feel all grown-up and a little scared.
Her dreams were full of Jadis, of the Queen laughing and then touching her in ways that Susan
knew were wrong.

Breakfast was cold meat and hot chocolate. Susan ate the strange fare without complaint, encouraged
 by the smiles of Jadis.

"Oh my dear. I wish I could keep you here with me." Jadis embraced her, and held her tightly, burying
her face in the warm sweetness of Susan's hair. "But you must go back. Your own parents will doubtlessly
be missing you."

Susan explained, as best she could, that she did not live with her parents at the moment, that because
of war she and her siblings had been sent to the country."

Jadis was quite interested to learn of her two brothers and sister. She asked many questions, before letting
go of Susan. The girl was getting uncomfortable, she could tell. Her people were probably not demonstrative.

"Susan, child of my heart if not my body, come back to me? Make your farewells to that drear world of war,
and come be my princess and in time, queen." Jadis turned away. "But now, you must go. I will make you one
more drink, that you will not suffer the cold on our ride."

Susan sat quietly and watched the Queen pour out a small vial. A glittering red drop hung in the air for a
brief moment and then fell, turning into a goblet that steamed deliciously. Jadis brought it to her, speaking
under her breath.

"Your Majesty?"

"An old travel blessing of my people. Drink, my dear."

Susan drained the goblet dry, the hot creamy drink flooding her with warmth and languor. She didn't
want to go home. Not to prosaic Edmund who tracked train schedules for fun, or sensible Peter who
was trying so very hard to be Father and failing. Most of all, she didn't want to see Lucy,. She wanted
to stay here, in the glorious palace with her beautiful queen. She would fit here.

"But you cannot stay. The cup of parting is already drunk, my Susan." Jadis extended one hand down
and pulled Susan to her feet as if she were no more than a rag doll. She held the girl close, stroking the
 length of her back, the curve of her side. "But you may return." She bent in and kissed Susan.

Susan had been kissed before. Her father's rough cheek after a hard day's work had scraped her own
soft one every night she could remember. Her mother, soft and smelling of violets, had pressed little
butterfly kisses to her a dozen times a day. Peter although less frequently of late had never been shy about
bussing her cheek. Lucy had always kissed her, from infancy onward. And there had been Charles behind the
grammar school, but she'd never told anyone about that stolen kiss and the way it had made her go all hot
and cold and want something she had no name for.

But no kiss had ever been like this. Not even Charles. The Queen's mouth was cold and tasted of frost-stars
and moonbeams. She did not press lightly, but clung, and her tongue was cold and slick as it entreated entrance.
The chill of it spread through Susan, banishing the languid warmth of the drink, and awakening her to knowledge
she should not yet have.

Jadis let the girl go, and smiled. Susan did not see, her eyes still glazed from the kiss. The daughter of Eve
was of her enemy's line no longer. There was giant blood in her now, and she could never fill one of the
empty thrones.

"Come, my dear. And do hurry back to me."

Susan moved out the door and into the sleigh, her movements dreamy and slow. Jadis was careful not to
lose patience or unleash the temper that had destroyed all of Charn. The girl nestled into her side, tucked
up in the fur robe, and said nothing on the journey.

At the lamppost, Jadis could not resist a last kiss. Susan was innocent and untouched. She would take that
and turn it into world-shaking power, until the time came to rip the innocence from her beautiful prize. And
they would rule forever, not as mother and daughter, but as women and lovers, over a frozen Narnia which
could never be rescued now.

Susan watched the Sleigh until it was out of sight and then made for the wardrobe. She hadn't been gone
long enough for anyone to worry. Professor Kirke's house was too hot, and she felt as if she was suffocating,
until the day they all got into Narnia together.

Edmund hadn't the sense to keep his mouth shut, and tipped Peter he'd been there. Susan could see the
Queen's marks on him, too. She kept her own mouth shut through all the events that followed.

The Witch's last cup had not been enough to undo prophecy, at least so long as Susan stayed in Narnia. She
sat on the throne of Cair Paravel, a daughter of Eve, and the great princes of Calormen and Archenland courted her..

It was not until she returned to England, dear, grey, safe England, that anything had happened. When Eve's
curse had come to her, for the second time--with only her headmistress to lecture on hygiene instead of naiads and
dryads to bathe her in secret pools and whisper the mysteries of womanhood to her--so too had Jadis' last spell.

Susan knows the taste of a woman's kiss, and the betrayal and selfishness of the female heart beneath it. These days,
she does her hair carefully to hide the ice-white strands a seventeen year old should not have. She longs for winter,
when the world is comfortably cold, and she need not suffer through slush and rain and heat. The words of the Hag
in Aslan's Howe keep coming back, words she knows are just her childish imagination running riot, like all of Narnia.

"Witches are never really gone. You can always get them back."