It was late at night, and everyone in Professor Kirke’s house was asleep. Everyone, that is, except for Digory Kirke himself, who had been waiting until he could be sure of privacy to head for the wardrobe. He stood hesitating for a long while at its closed door, before opening it and stepping in. Hardly daring to breathe, he reached out… and his fingertips touched wood. With a sigh and a shake of his head, he turned around and sat down on the floor of the wardrobe, leaning against its back. He’d known he would have to check for himself, from the moment Peter and Susan brought him their story, but if he were truly honest he hadn’t expected to get through. The apple that had grown the wood of this wardrobe might have been a gift to him, but this was not his way back into Narnia. Lucy, he suspected, would go through again, and perhaps take her siblings with her, but the door was shut for him.

And if he were even more honest, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go through. Narnia, to him, was memories of Fledge and a magical ride, of the coronation of Frank and Helen, of the birth of a new and wondrous land, of a lifesaving gift. Lucy had claimed to be gone for hours, yet no time had passed in their world… who knew, then, how long had passed in Narnia since his boyhood? What if those days were no more than a distant memory to the Narnians, or faded entirely and lost in the mists of time? He had seen Narnia’s sun rise on the first day that ever dawned there; he was not sure he wanted to know how many times it had risen since.

With a sigh, he pulled himself to his feet. No, this was not his way back to Narnia, and he didn’t need it to be. Perhaps one day Lucy would tell him of her adventures there, and he would tell her of his (what do the Narnians say about him, if they remember him at all, he wondered? Do they speak of the boy who brought the apple back to protect Narnia? Of the boy who brought evil there in the first place? Of both?). For now, though, he had a letter to Polly to write.

******

Once more, Digory found himself standing before his wardrobe in the small hours of the morning as the rest of the household slept. Once more, he stood hesitating before it, and once more when he finally stepped in he found only wood at the back of it. This time, though, he didn’t sit down, but stood there, head bent, palms and forehead resting against the solid planks.

“Aslan,” he whispered under his breath, and found he didn’t know how to go on. What was he asking? How could he ask it? He thought back, to that first of all Narnian days, to how he had found the courage to beg Aslan for his Mother. He remembered how Aslan had granted his request.

“Aslan,” he murmured. “You told me you understood grief. These children are grieving for their lost kingdom. I don’t ask for myself, you already gave me my greatest wish once, but… let them return, please.”

There was no answer, no change in the wood beneath his hands, and he suddenly thought of buried rings. Could they be retrieved? If he could give them to the Pevensie children, could they find their way back to Narnia through the wood between the worlds? Even as he thought of the rings, though, he remembered Aslan commanding him and Polly to bury them, so that no-one could ever use them again. Almost he thought he could hear a warning growl.

“Aslan,” he said once more. “I shan’t disobey you, I shan’t go against your will. But please, let them go back to Narnia. I told them they would, and I believed it with all my heart… Did you put those words into my mouth? Did I do right? Or have I just given them false hope?”

There was no audible reply, no Lion’s voice ringing in the air or whispering in his ear - but suddenly, for a second, the rich golden smell of the apple he had once brought back surrounded him, rising from the old wood. Only for a second, then it faded, but there was no mistaking that scent, and Digory felt warmed through.

‘Thank you,’ he whispered, and stood there for a moment longer, before stepping out of the wardrobe and closing the door firmly behind him.