FicWad

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THE LION, THE CAT AND THE TURTLES
Chapter Six:
To Properly Address a Mouse



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"Man, Mrs. Palmer!" Michelangelo exclaimed as he leafed through one of the oldest, dustiest photo albums. "I don't think I've seen anyone with a collection of family photos this huge! Where'd ya get all of them?"

"My husband," said Susan, looking up from her own album. "He was a passionate amateur photographer. He was always taking pictures, and then re-arranging them and placing them in different albums... I haven't really looked through any of these since he died, five years ago."

Mike continued thumbing through the album with great interest. "Oooh, who's this? She's pretty!"

Susan gazed at the page Mike held up. "Oh, that's me at the age of... let's see... I must have been in my late twenties. I'd been married for a couple of years then. That means that you're holding a much too recent album... try looking for an older one."

Mike cast one last glance at the woman on the picture, trying to see whether he could find something left of her in the Susan of today and reaching the conclusion that he could -- there was something about the eyes that, upon closer inspection, made it obvious that they were the same person.

He placed the album in the ever-growing pile of rejected photo albums and reached for a new one. This one was filled with even newer-looking photos, with an instantly-recognizable older Susan (though still much younger than the present Susan) and a myriad of other people, both adults and children, in a variety of places and situations. Her family, no doubt.

In most of the pictures Susan was in, he noticed, she was smiling or at least looking like she was enjoying herself.

"These pictures kinda makes me wish I'd known your family," he commented. "They look like nice people."

Susan nodded. "Oh, they were. Or are, the ones who are left. Husband's gone, of course, and my oldest son... Let's see... yes, that's him there," she said, pointing out a tall, dark-haired man with a mustache in one of the photos. "He was named Peter after his uncle, he went to war and never came back..."

"I'm sorry," said Mike.

"It's all right. He died a hero, or so they tell me." Susan smiled, a little sadly. "But, those aren't the pictures we're looking for. We need older ones. I wish I could remember which albums my husband put those really old ones in..."

Silence spread in the living room, the only noise being the turning of cardboard pages as the Turtles, Splinter, April and Susan meticulously went through the huge number of photo albums and pictures in Susan's collection. They all knew what they were looking for, but had very little idea of where they would find it.

(Only Klunk -- who had no hands to turn pages anyway -- was exempt from the search. True to his cat nature, he had decided that if there was nothing he could do at the moment, then he might as well not do anything, and so he had curled up in Mike's lap and fallen asleep.)

It was fascinating, really, Mike thought, how much of a life you could sum up in a few pictures. Susan hadn't said a lot about her life outside of Narnia, but even from looking through a fraction of the pictures in the albums, most of them no doubt taken by her obviously photo-mad husband, Mike could already sum up quite a bit of Susan Palmer's life: She had been born in England, but had moved to America in her early twenties, and there she had met her husband, married and raised three children -- one boy and two girls -- who had all eventually married and had children of their own. They seemed like a happy family too... well, not insanely and abnormally happy, like families in old sitcoms or anything, but just normal people who knew how to appreciate the good things in life.

There was, in short, very little that Mike could see of the sadness and bitterness he had heard in the woman's voice when she told about her last moments in Narnia.

Either Susan Palmer was the world's greatest actor, or...

"I think I found something!" Donatello's voice abruptly pulled Mike out of his line of thoughts and back to the here-and-now.

Mike looked up, seeing that everyone else had stopped their own searching through photo albums and were looking at Don. Klunk stirred and yawned.

"Are these the right pictures, Mrs. Palmer?" said Don, holding up an old-looking photo album, having opened it on a page displaying an unnatural number of pictures of an old wooden wardrobe. The pictures were clearly old, and the wardrobe itself was markedly unimpressive, with a certain, well, home-made quality to it.

"Either it's the one, or someone had a strange obsession for old wardrobes that I don't particularly wanna know about," Klunk commented from Mike's lap.

Slowly, Susan raised herself and, almost like in a trance she reached for the photo album. "It's the one," she said. "I would know that wardrobe anywhere. This," she stated in a much stronger voice, holding up the album for all to see, "if the gateway to Narnia."

Mike looked down on Klunk, then over at Master Splinter, who nodded. It had been obvious, really. According to Susan's story, when old Professor Kirke had been forced to part with his manor and all his things, he'd had Susan's brother Peter walk around his property and take pictures of everything the Professor assumed he would miss the most. If both of them knew about the wardrobe's magical properties, there was no wonder there would be many pictures of that.

Susan carefully removed one of the pictures from the album -- a straight-on shot of the front of the wardrobe -- and placed it gently on the table in front of her, so everyone could see. "These photos are just about the only things I have left of the Professor," she said, a little sadly. "After he'd died in that train accident, I discovered that he'd stated in his will that I should have his photos. He was quite insistent upon me keeping them, too... I wonder if he ever suspected...?" she trailed off.

"All right, so now we know what the wardrobe looks like," said Raph, leaning back in his chair after having examined the picture. "But so what? It's not gonna help us any further. We still can't get to it if we don't know where it is!"

"I got it!" said Klunk excitedly. "What we do is take copies of the picture and put up wanted posters! 'Have you seen this wardrobe? Report immediately to Susan Palmer! Do not attempt to apprehend this wardrobe yourself, as it is armed and dangerous and --' ...what?" he added as everyone looked at him.

"We really have to start being careful with what we watch on TV when you're in the room," said Don with a sigh.

"I believe Mrs. Palmer has somewhat simpler solution in mind," said Splinter.

Susan nodded. "I remembered something that Aslan once told me. You should always do what you can, with what you have, where you are... and we don't have the actual wardrobe itself, but we do have a picture of it."

"Oh, great," said Raph, his voice oozing with sarcasm as he raised himself from his chair. "Perfect. We got a picture, yeah, that'll help! Hey, maybe we can get a pair of scissors and cut out a tiny little door in the picture, and then we can all walk through it, one by one, go on, there's plenty of room for us all --!"

"RAPHAEL!" Splinter snapped. "You are a guest in this house, and you will behave!"

"Well, I'm sorry, but I'm worried about Leo, all right?" Raph said, a little more subdued. "Master Splinter, he could be in trouble, and all we're doin' is sittin' around here and lookin' at old pictures!"

"Hey, Raph, chill --" Mike tried. The last thing they needed now, he thought, was for Raphael to fly off his handle and go storming out like he sometimes did when he got too frustrated.

"Don't you get it, Mike?" said Raph. "We're wasting our time here! We can't help Leo by studyin' pictures! It's all just a load of --"

"Enough!" The voice was sharp and loud enough that everybody turned to look at Susan again.

The old woman had raised herself from her chair, having drawn herself to her full height for the first time Mike had seen, standing surprisingly tall and straight and with a fierce, almost regal look in her eyes. Seconds before, she had just been a melancholy old woman whom Mike wouldn't have bet on would last half a second against a warrior like Raph; now, though no real physical change had taken place, she looked strong and steadfast, and Mike was almost sure that if Raph had been foolish enough to hit her with a sai now, the weapon would break in two.

Susan spoke again, and her voice had gained a core of solid steel. "I realize that you are just worried about your brother, Raphael. Therefore, I will forgive you for your lack of manners. But you will not speak like that in my presence again! Old and worn I may be, but I am still Queen Susan of Narnia!"

Uncharacteristically but quite understandably, Raph backed away. Armies would have backed away, Mike thought, half-impressed and half-scared. Instinctively, he grabbed Klunk and held the cat close to protect him.

Susan turned her gaze to the picture on the table. "I," she said, "am Queen Susan of the Horn, ruler of Narnia under my brother, the High King Peter, and under Aslan, the great Lion! And in the name of Aslan, I request the gate to be opened!"

For a couple of moments, nothing happened. Then, to Mike's surprise, the picture came to life, the tiny doors on the wardrobe slowly parting and swinging aside, a blinding white light streaming out from inside the wardrobe and filling the apartment.

"Hey, not bad..." was all Mike had time to say before the light filled his vision entirely, and he felt something -- or someone -- pulling him up from the chair and through the air. He held tightly onto Klunk as everything else seemed to vanish.




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The third thing Mike noticed after his vision returned was that Susan Palmer was lying at his feet, on her back, unconscious and unmoving.

The second thing was that none of the others seemed to be around, apart from Klunk, who was still in his arms and gazing around with big cat eyes.

The first thing was that they were no longer in Susan's over-filled apartment, but on a grass-covered hilltop overlooking a seemingly-endless grassy field, with no sign of a house or car or cloud of smog or anything that even hinted of New York City.

"Whoa..." for a moment, it was all Mike could do to keep himself from falling over in sheer astonishment. But then, he came to his senses. No, his mind told him. There'll be plenty of time to wonder what the heck happened later. There's an unconscious woman by your feet, deal with that before you do anything else.

Anxiously, he put Klunk down on the ground before kneeling beside the unconscious Susan.

"What's happened to her?" said the cat, sniffing at the woman's fingers.

"Dunno," said Mike, hearing how worried his own voice sounded. "Hope she's not -- nah, she's breathing... and a steady pulse too..." He breathed a sigh in relief, but only a small one. What was wrong with her? Had she simply fainted after the strain of going all, uh, Queen, or was it something more serious?

"What happened to us, then?" said Klunk, looking around. "And where are all the others? Splinter?!" he called. "Raph? Donny? Apriiiil!"

There was no answer.

"Looks like we're alone here, buddy," said Mike anxiously. "Looks like that light... whatever it was... either just took us since we were closest to Mrs. Palmer when she started going all Queenish, or it took the others and sent them somewhere else."

"Like where?"

"No idea. Hope they're all right, though." Mike swallowed, looking down at Susan again. "Man, what I wouldn't give to have Splinter or Donny here right now. They'd know what to do with a fainted woman." Mike tried to think -- wasn't it something about turning them over to their side, so they wouldn't choke on their tongues, or something?

Suddenly, Klunk spoke up again. "Hey -- I know this place! This is the same place I visited last night, with Splinter! Same place where we met Aslan!"

Mike looked up. "Really? I thought that place was just a vision or something."

"Nope, it's real enough. Unless maybe we're inside someone's vision right now?" Klunk offered.

"I really hope not," said Mike. "I'd hate to think what'd happen to us after the vision was over." He decided to go ahead and turn Susan over on her side, being reasonably certain that this was what you were supposed to do.

He reached out, grabbing her arm and shoulders and began to turn her.

"Step away from the lady, fiend!" a sudden voice ordered; a small but stern voice filled with a cross demanding; a voice that was clearly used to being respected and obeyed.

Mike instinctively let go of Susan, who rolled limply back on her back, and looked up to see one of the strangest things he had ever seen outside daytime TV: A large mouse, standing on its hind legs and with a white feather stuck behind one of its ears. In its paw, it held a miniature rapier that was pointed threateningly at them.

"Whoa, who ordered the dinner?!" said Klunk, looking at the mouse, who was easily larger than him.

The mouse shot him an icy glare. "I am no-one's dinner, and certainly not yours. I told you to step away from the lady," it repeated coldly.

"Go and nibble on a bit of cheese, why don't ya?" said Klunk, arching his back and fluffing out his tail. "The lady's a friend of ours, and no mouse with a toothpick is gonna get to her!"

"Excuse me?" The mouse looked furious.

"I told you to go stick your head in a mousetrap!"

"Uh, Klunk..." said Mike, making 'quit it' motions with his hands. He'd had no idea that his cat could be so... Raph-like when faced with a weapon.

"You, sir, are mocking my honor!" The mouse threatened Klunk with his rapier. "Be grateful, vermin, that my business here is only with the Queen, or I should have been more than happy to teach you a thing or two on how to properly address a mouse! Now, stand aside, unless you will --"

"Whoa, wait, wait," said Mike, scooping a struggling Klunk up in his arms. "You know that she's the queen?"

"Of course," said the mouse in a dignified way. "I have been sent here by the Lion himself to tend to her in her time of need, like my people once tended to him in his! Now, I shall tell you again: Stand aside, or --"

"Look, this is obviously some sorta mistake," said Mike hurriedly. "We're with her. Or, I mean, we're here to..." he paused, realizing that he had no idea why they were here. "Look, we don't want anything bad to happen to her, either!"

"Then do stand aside and let me tend to her," said the mouse, a little calmer but still glaring suspiciously at Klunk.

"Don't let him do it;" the cat hissed. "You can't trust a mouse as far as you can throw it! Or even as far as it can throw you!"

"I come from the country of Aslan," said the mouse. "They do not let untrustworthy people in there. For the last time, and in the name of the Lion, stand aside!"

"Well," said Mike. "Not to be disrespectful or anything, but how do we know you're not gonna hurt her?"

"How do I know that you aren't?" the mouse countered. "Aslan told me only to go and tend to the Queen, he said nothing whatsoever about green, turtle-like creatures who try carrying her off --"

"I wasn't gonna carry her off!"

"--and rude felines. But if you truly are on the side of the Queen and the Lion, swear to me now that you will not do, and have not done, anything to harm Her Majesty!"

"We swear," said Mike immediately. "Don't we, Klunk?"

"I'll swear if he swears," Klunk answered, who seemed just as suspicious of the mouse as the mouse was of him. "And no four-letter words, either!"

"Four-letter...?" The mouse looked slightly confused for about half a second, but then seemed to shrug it off and raised its rapier to the sky. "I swear upon my honor, upon my tail, and upon Aslan himself, that I seek no harm to the Queen."

"That good enough for you?" said Mike.

Klunk nodded slowly, and didn't protest when Mike stepped aside to let the mouse go up to the still unconscious Susan.

"Thank you," said the mouse courteously and held out something that looked like a little piece of red-hot coal. How it could touch the coal without burning itself was more than Mike could guess, but before he had any time to speculate upon it, the mouse had dropped the coal into Susan's open mouth.

Klunk twisted and wrestled himself out of Mike's arms, landing on the ground and running up to the mouse. "Are you crazy? Whatcha go and make her eat hot coal for? As if she wasn't in a bad enough situation as it was?! And you swore by your tail that --"

"Cat!" snapped the mouse. "I am no oath-breaker, and if I wasn't preoccupied with Her Majesty's health, I would have challenged you to a duel for those words!"

"Oh yeah?" said Klunk. "Come on then -- you and me! Mano-a-mano -- catto/-a-/mouso!"

Mike was just about to interfere, not having any wish to risk his cat hurt by a mouse with a rapier, when a loud gasp from Susan made them all turn and look at her.

She had opened her eyes, and was now staring up at the sky with an astonished expression on her face.

Mike leant over her. "Mrs. Palmer?" he said. "You okay?"

Very slowly, she nodded. "I... think so. What happened?"

"You're telling me that the red-hot coal actually made her better?!" said Klunk in a disbelieving voice. "Why didn't anyone tell me that coal had healing powers?! I can think of at last a dozen situations where knowing that would have come in handy --"

"Do not display your ignorance," said the mouse, glaring at him. "It was not a piece of red-hot coal, it was a fire-berry from the valleys of the sun."

"A what from the valleys of where?"

Susan slowly raised herself into a sitting position, staring at the mouse. For a long time, she said nothing, just staring at it with increasingly wide eyes, while the mouse seemed to momentarily forget its quarrel with Klunk and instead bowed deeply and elegantly.

"Your Majesty," it said. "I am proud and delighted to meet you again."

"...Reepicheep?" said Susan, in a voice barely above a whisper. "Is that really you?"

Mike and Klunk looked at each other, and almost simultaneously mouthed: "Reepicheep?!"

"Indeed, your Majesty!" The mouse straightened itself and smiled widely. "Reepicheep, former leader of the talking mice of Narnia. I'm honored that your Majesty has not forgotten me."

"Believe me, you're not someone easily forgotten." Susan shook her head, but with a faint smile upon her lips. "So, the photograph did work. Am I -- are we," she added, glancing at Mike and Klunk, "back in Narnia?"

But Reepicheep shook his head. "Aslan once told your Majesty that you would never return to the land of Narnia, and your Majesty should know as well as anyone that Aslan never lies. And I," he straightened himself, "have sworn never to return to Narnia's shores. I'm sorry, your Majesty, but this is not Narnia."

Susan's face was a mask of disappointment that quickly changed to one of concern and anxiousness. "Where are we, then? And -- why did you swear never to return to Narnia? Has something happened?"

"Many things," said Reepicheep. "But worry not about Narnia. The story behind my oath is a long and complicated one, not swiftly told. I would have thought that your royal siblings, king Edmund and queen Lucy, might have told you about it."

"They..." Susan paused and shook her head, just as Reepicheep had. The emotion drained from her face and she was once again an old, mournful woman. "They might have, but I didn't... I didn't want to..." She sighed heavily. "Lucy and Edmund... they died a long time ago. Along with Peter, and... everybody. There's only me left. And I'm old now... Too old."

Reepicheep placed a gentle paw on her knee. He smiled. "As long as one is alive, your Majesty, one is never too old. And death is never enough to part you from your loved ones. We shall all meet in Aslan's country when the time is right for it."

"You really think so?"

"I know so. I come from Aslan's country now, to greet you here in this land." Reepicheep took a step back and grew more cheerful. "As for your first question, the one concerning our current location; well, that is easily answered. If your Majesty would please follow me?"

"Hey, what about us?" said Klunk hurriedly. "You're leaving us behind?"

Reepicheep looked at Klunk, then at Mike, and then at Susan. "Am I to understand that these two are, in truth, friends of your Majesty?"

Susan nodded. "They are, Reepicheep. If not for them, I wouldn't even have come here."

"Very well," said the mouse, looking back at Mike and Klunk. "You may come along, if you so wish. Though you, cat, could do well with learning some manners."

Klunk opened his mouth, and Mike, who just knew that the cat was about to spurt out another insult, quickly bent down and scooped him up, saying: "Hey, no worries! If you're with Mrs. Palm -- uh, I mean, uh, the Queen, we got no quarrel with you! Sorry 'bout earlier, but when someone you know falls down unconscious and someone else that you don't know steps up with a sword, well, you sorta can't help being a little suspicious. Reepicheep, that was your name, right?"

The mouse nodded and gave a short bow. "Reepicheep the Mouse, your humble servant."

"Humble? Don't make me -- " Klunk began, but Mike quickly interrupted him:

"My name's Michelangelo, but everybody just calls me Mike. This is my pal, Klunk. Very nice to meet you! What happened, see, was that my brother Leo somehow ended up in Narnia, and we're trying to --"

"I'm sure your tale is one worth hearing," Reepicheep interrupted him, but sounded much friendlier than he had before. "But I must request that it waits until later. We shall all drink and swap tales later -- for now, there is someone waiting for her Majesty, and we have a way to walk."

"All right," said Mike, placing Klunk on his shoulder where the cat could perch and have a good view of everything. "Lead the way!"

"You really think we should trust him?" Klunk whispered as they started walking -- Reepicheep in the lead and Mike and Klunk making up the rear. "Maybe he's leading us into a trap."

"Mrs. Palmer knows him," Mike whispered. "Besides, he fed her that... that... whatever it was, and she looks a whole lot better now, doesn't she?"

"But -- he's a mouse!"

"So? Master Splinter's a rat, and ya never had any problems with him."

"Of course not. I don't mind rats. Particularly not if they're Splinter. Splinter's nice. But mice? They're horrible! Always tormenting poor cats, dropping anvils in their heads, hitting them with frying pans, blowing them up with dynamite..."

Mike couldn't help laughing. "Donny was right... we really need to start being more careful with what we watch on TV when you're around! Klunk, buddy, Tom and Jerry isn't real! No actual cats were hurt in the production of those cartoons," he added in an announcer's voice. "I really don't think you have to worry. 'Sides, we don't really have much of an alternative, do we? He's the only one who knows where this place is, so he's prolly the only one who can help us get back to the others... and maybe even find Leo!"

Klunk didn't look like he was completely convinced. "All the same, if that mouse starts reaching for a frying pan, I'm gonna have his hide -- no matter if he was sent by Aslan or not."





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To be continued....
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Author's Notes: Klunk vs. Reepicheep -- it had to happen! Yeah, I know Reepicheep threw away his sword at the and of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but he got a new one for this occasion. There'll be more on that (and more confrontations with Klunk) in a later chapter.

By the way, Klunk is misinterpreting the Spanish phrase "Mano-a-mano." It means "Hand-to-hand," not "Man-to-man," as he seems to think. Nobody ever said he gained great knowledge of Spanish when he learned to talk...

In two chapters, we'll see what happened to Splinter, April, Don and Raph, but before that time we'll return to Leo in his new job as the King's Man... uh... Turtle.

Oh, and I know the wardrobe in the movie The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is much more impressive-looking than the one I briefly describe in this chapter; but the wardrobe in the book was, in fact, rather plain-looking. The impressive carvings are pure movie-canon. Just in case anyone wondered.