“You love Warnie deeply and with such devotion. If only everyone in the world had such love.”
“He’s my brother,” Jack said, as if that answered all doubt. “When Mother died, I would have also if not for him.”
I withdrew my hand from his wrist and settled back into the chair. “Jack, have you ever been in love?”
He laughed, and in his way scattered the question across the room like ash. “If I ever find the beautiful blonde I’ve been looking for all my life, I will let you know.”
His joke, so like him to deflect, hurt no differently than if he’d taken down the sword from above the mantle and swiped it across my heart. But I tried to laugh. “I will keep my eyes out for you.” I smiled.
“Of course I’m being cheeky, Joy.”
“Your humor, Jack, you use it to hide your heart, an armor to keep anything from touching it. I know because I do the same.”
He was silent for a long moment, and I wondered if I had crossed a boundary. When he spoke it was with his face set to the roaring fire. “Do you know the German word sehnsucht?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “The idea of an inconsolable longing for what we don’t understand. You believe that longing is for God. Or heaven. And that we can confuse it with longing for someone or something else.”
He leaned forward, and for a moment I thought he might touch me, but no. “This deep and abiding friendship means more to me than I can say.”
“Yes.” I bowed my head. “It means more than we can say.”
The morning came bright and clear, the fog lifting for the first time since we’d arrived. By the time I appeared in the kitchen after a restless night’s sleep, the boys had already gobbled down their breakfast and set off into the woods to say their farewells to the pond and the kilns and the forest itself. I dropped our packed bags by the front door. Jack sat at the wooden kitchen table still in his lounging clothes, a cigarette already lit. “You must eat before you leave,” he said.
“I’m not hungry.” I patted the packed bags. “I’ll eat when I arrive back at Avoco so I don’t get travel sick.”
The boys then burst back into the kitchen, a whirling cyclone of my sons.
“Well, boys,” Jack said. “I have something here you might enjoy.”
They stopped dead still, bundled in their coats, and looked at him.
“What is it?” Douglas asked eagerly.
Davy adjusted his crooked glasses and leapt forward.
From the side table Jack produced typeset pages. “This is the newest Narnian book, set to come out this year. I’ve dedicated it to the both of you. It’s called The Horse and His Boy.”
Davy removed his gloves and took the pages from Jack’s hands and held them against his chest. “No one has read it yet?” he asked with wide eyes.
“Only my publisher, and your mother, who typed some of the pages for me. And I’ll tell you a couple secrets about it, if you please.”
“Yes!” Douglas’s enthusiasm could not be bound. He, like his mother, could not hide what bubbled below the heart.
Jack lowered his voice and placed his hands on either side of his full mouth as if telling a grand secret. “I wrote it before The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was released. The events happen before The Silver Chair.”
“What’s it about?” Davy asked, looking down at the treasure he held in his hands.
Jack sat up and resumed his normal voice. “After the last chapter in Wardrobe, there is a battle in Narnia.”
“What happens?” Davy’s voice dropped.
“I won’t tell you what happens, but I will tell you my favorite part.”
“What is that?” Davy asked.
“The battle cry.” Jack paused for great effect until the boys were straining forward. “Narnia and the North!” he said with great gusto and lifted his hand to the sky. “Narnia and the North!”
“Where home is,” I said softly. “North.”
“Yes, true home.” His kind eyes held such a look that I would have believed it love if he had not told me otherwise in every possible way.
“Home?” Davy asked as if just remembering we didn’t truly have one. “Where will we spend Christmas if we don’t have a home? What about . . . Santa?”
I switched on my brightest voice. “Oh, Davy, we do have a home. Avoco House. We’ll get a little tree and I’ll cook turkey and Mrs. Bagley and some other friends are coming to eat with us. Jack.” I turned to him. “This is too kind. Dedicating the book to them.”