Fearless • P. Pevensie

The Wood in the Wardrobe

"I expect you'll have the list completed before dinner. If not, then you'll just eat your food cold once you've completed it." Macready hands me a list written down on old parchment paper.

I read it over. Daily tasks I do anyways, on top of cleaning the study they allowed the Pevensies to occupy. Cleaning their rooms, to boot. Dusting the entire top floor. Cleaning the stables, both for the horses and the cows. Collecting eggs from the coop for tomorrow's breakfast.

Macready stops me about halfway, stepping in front of me so that I look at her.

"The Professor may have pardoned the Pevensies for last night's shenanigans, but I will not have you get off so easily." Macready berates me. "Running through the house at night. Scarcely dressed in the presence of a delinquent boy your age."

"Peter has no record of delinquency, ma'am. He was trying to help his sister." I defend him.

She takes a step somehow closer to me. She breathes out the smell cigarettes and coffee, no doubt both of which she's already consumed this morning. Her face is just in front of mine as she stares me down.

"Running around the house at night in just your night clothes. Allowing that boy to practically hold you in the hallway when you were caught. You had no business acting like such a frivolous and deviant seductress! That child has got his own problems to deal with. He's got no concern with an orphaned nobody like yourself. Miss Wilson, how would your mother feel if she were to see you like that?" Macready demonizes me.

"Too bad I can't ask her ashes, seeing as she's dead." I remark, talking back for the first time since I was a child.

She strikes me across the face so hard that I fall to the floor. My hand comes up to feel my stinging cheek as I look up at her from the floor.

"You're not to see this boy without one of his siblings present. Ever. For any circumstances. If I find out otherwise, I will release you from my custody and you'll be on your own." She seethes, turning and beginning to walk away from me. "I will not shelter a whore under this roof." She calls.

A sob escapes from me. Not from the pain. I can handle the pain. It's been a while, but I'd gotten accustomed to her outbursts. No, I sob from her words. Who is she to tell me what my mother would think? To berate me for something that I didn't even intend on doing!

I bring my knees up to my chest, sitting on the floor as I wrap my arms around my legs.

I doubt he'd even find me very beautiful at the moment anyway. In my grey stockings, worn-out shoes. A black skirt I've had since I was eleven. A once bright-red jumper, now dulled with age and several dozen washes. I'm sure I'd be beautiful in another life. If clothes did not hang off of my frame from one too many missed dinners as a child. If my posture was straighter, if my hair was cut and styled, not just thrown up all the time. In a different life, my features would have surely made me one of those delicate pin-up wives. A trophy for whoever managed to marry me. Bearing beautiful children, tending a grand house.

But this life is cruel. This life is unforgiving.

This life has left me weeping on a dusty old floor, in a house that's never been my home.

I raise myself up. I take my hands, first wiping at my face before moving to dust off my clothes. My face still stings, and I look up into a mounted wall mirror.

A red mark has welted into my cheek. My eyes, once sunken and hollow, are puffy and red with tears. I look like a complete and total mess.

I allow myself three deep breaths. The first, to remember that I need to breathe. The second to allow myself the comfort of anger. The third, the third to prepare myself to move. Once I've done all three, I bend down and pick up the list of chores I've got to tend to.