THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART EIGHTY-TWO:

Marshall felt so content, wandering through the big house with Eden as she was seeing it for the first time. He was walking with her through the one place that had always been the physical center of his world, and her entering into it beside him was more important to him than even he had realized it would be. He wanted her to see everything, be aware of what it meant to him, so a constant stream of anecdotes flowed from him as they walked from room to room.

Eden's favorite so far was the room that had been Marshall's father's study. It was paneled floor to high ceiling in a rich wood that seemed to glow from within.  There was a stone fireplace here, too, a beamed ceiling, and a tall diamond-paned series of windows looked out toward the front of the house. A deep burgundy rug lay over a polished hardwood floor. There were paintings on the walls of old English manor houses, the largest of those centered behind an enormous roll-top desk.

Marshall stopped beside the desk, letting his fingers play over a carving on the wood. Watching him, it really hit Eden how, though he knew this room intimately, he only knew it piece by little piece. He'd never gotten the over-all sense of it like she had merely upon walking into it for the first time. Had anyone even ever told him about the beams in the ceiling or did the sighted people merely take them for granted? She'd ask about that some other time.

On the other side of the room from the roll-top was another desk, very long and not so deep, with quite a breath-taking array of technical equipment on it from end to end and two matching swivel chairs in front. Marshall led her there, past the central set-up of furniture covered in soft café-au-lait leather, saying, "This is where we'll write Morgan and Susannah."  He smiled at Eden. "It's probably got more bells and whistles for me than I'll need now that you're writing, too."

"I like this room," she said, turning her head to take it all in again. "It's a good room for writing in." She looked back at the old roll-top. "Your father, Jonathan, did he write, too?"

"Ledgers, account books, things like that," Marshall explained. "He was a financier. I guess that's the best description of what he did. And very good at it, too, which is why this house is as

it is."

"I remember at the inn," she continued, "your telling me how so much of the wood in the house was carved because he wanted you to have plenty of things to touch."

"Yes, after I was born, he had a lot of the wood completely redone just for me. Sometimes it was...," a thought struck him and he broke off in mid-sentence. "Come with me."  He took her hand again. "This is a bit over-the-top, perhaps, but I want you to see something."

He led her up the main staircase, a marvelous structure with spiraled railings under the wide banister and the most amazing newel post she'd ever seen. They went up to the second floor,  didn't stop but turned to go up another flight of somewhat less grand steps, where he paused,

his hand on a door knob. "The attic," he said. "I'm going to show you the Christmas present he gave me the year I was eight."

"I love old attics," she replied. "So you keep the Christmas presents of your youth up here, then?"

"Only this one."

"Why this one?"

"You'll see," he answered with a wide grin and opened the door.

He ushered her into a fairly large room with sloped ceilings, remembering to flip the light switch for her, something else Jeff had drilled into him. As she looked around, she didn't see anything particularly striking beyond the usual array of attic items...several pieces of old furniture, cardboard boxes, a steamer trunk, shelves with smaller boxes on them, a bicycle, and in a corner, a battered blue tricycle. That last item did catch her eye. Marshall's tricycle that he'd run into the tree while riding.

"What...?" she asked.

"Oh, not in this room. There are three rooms up here. The next two are my present."

"Your present takes up two rooms?"

"My present IS two rooms."

"Now I'm really curious," she admitted. What in the world had Jonathan come up with that would need two rooms?

Marshall opened another door, flipped another switch. "Make sure we turn these off," he said over his shoulder. "I tend to forget that end of it."

He stepped aside, then, letting her enter the room, which was about a third of the size of the larger room they'd just left. There was only one thing in it and that occupied most of the wall directly across from her.

"A...a...wardrobe?"  She walked toward it. It was about the most glorious wardrobe she'd ever seen, though, completely covered with intricate carvings that seemed to tell a story. Bending close, she studied those on the left door panel a moment, then straightened and turned her head toward Marshall. "Oh, my goodness! THAT wardrobe!"

Marshall chuckled. "Yes, that wardrobe. You see, when I was a little boy I was entirely enthralled with Narnia. My father must've read the whole series of books to me more times than I can count. I just never got tired of them. And that Christmas when I was eight, he decided he wanted to make it as real as possible for me, so he commissioned this wardrobe. Since I couldn't see the pictures in the books, he had them carved on it. Here...," He found her hand and unerringly guided it down to the bottom section of the right-hand door. "That's Susan and Lucy riding on Aslan." He closed his eyes. "I wanted to do that so badly. Ride Aslan like that, you know."

"This is just amazing, darling," she said, straightening again. "What a wonderful present."

"This is just the beginning," he grinned, opening both doors to reveal a rack of fur coats.

"No!" she laughed. "Not fur coats, too!"

"This one belonged to my grandmother," he said, running his hand down a long sleeve. "I don't know where he found the others. But, come."

"Come?"

"What good is a wardrobe if you can't go inside it?"

Indeed, the thing was so big that even fully-grown Marshall could stand easily in it, which she noted as he stepped inside and held his hand back out for hers. She stood there a moment, something in her finding it totally unbelievable that she was about to take his hand and actually step inside a wardrobe full of fur coats. She'd read the books herself and seen the movies, too, but what she was looking at right now was still unbelievable. "Ok," she finally said, and, inhaling a deep breath, took his hand.

Immediately she was enveloped in fur and let herself settle into the sensation of being Lucy. "Are you Peter or Edmund?" she whispered to Marshall, whose front was pressed delightfully close to hers.

"Peter, of course," he chuckled.

"Well," she replied, "I must tell you that with you all pressed up close to me like you are, I'm not feeling all that sisterly toward you at the moment."

He laughed again. "I don't think I've ever had a better time inside this wardrobe."  Then he cleared his throat loudly. "So...we'd best be on our way."

She turned back to open the doors but he stopped her arm. "Not that way."

"He...didn't...?" she almost gasped.

"Oh, but he did."

She looped her fingers through his belt and followed him toward the back of the wardrobe. There was a second row of fur coats then a third. The side of the wardrobe hadn't looked anywhere near that deep! "How....?"

"Shhhh!"

When pine branches began to touch her face instead of fur, some childish instinct in her almost began to feel nervous and her fingers tightened their grip on his belt. The last of the coats left behind, they stepped out into a thick clump of evergreen trees of all sizes. "What the...?"

"Artificial Christmas trees," Marshall explained. "This is the third room. It's big like that first part of the attic and my father had the walls of the wardrobe extend out into this one to make room for rows of coats and give you the feeling like you were going somewhere. Then out here

he put a couple dozen Christmas trees."

She was standing ankle-deep in artificial snow. "He gave you...Narnia? He actually gave you Narnia?"

There was sort of a path through the trees and he took her around a curve of that. "There."

A lamp post. A real lamp post stood in the 'snow'. Not far from that was an almost life-sized stuffed male lion. "Where...where could he get...?"

"Right down in Canonsburg. You know Sarris, that chocolate factory? They have a display room filled with stuffed animals, many of them large as life. That's where he got it."

She walked around the lion, touching it here and there in wonder. "Did you, did you sit on it?"

"There were days I almost lived on him," he replied softly, his voice full of memories as he buried his fingers in the mane. "Sometimes I could even feel the wind in my face. He took my favorite story and made it real for me."  He tipped his chin suddenly, blinking back tears, the sound of his father's deep voice coming to him as clearly as the touch of the fur beneath his hand. This was the first time since his parents had died that he'd been up to the attic.

Eden walked around the lion, took his arm, and together they went to the lamp post where she indicated she'd like to sit in the snow. So for the next hour the two of them leaned against the post, their fingers interlaced, as Marshall told her stories about these two rooms, sometimes with
Jeff with him, other times alone. He pointed out the wall rack with its rubber swords, told her which shield was Peter's and therefore the one he'd used. "Sword fighting is hard when you can't see what the other guy is doing with his weapon. That's why they're a really soft rubber. Maybe I can't see," he paused, "but I still liked the feel of it in my hand."

She closed her eyes, leaning her head against his shoulder. Somehow she found it quite easy to imagine him with sword and shield.

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