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Move-in day was always terrible, but it at least left Mark plenty tired. He'd get a good night of sleep tonight, at least. It's a nightmare trying to keep a decent sleep schedule in engineering school, but this was starting things off right.
He stretched, and dodged cardboard boxes to get to the tiny closet he shared with his roommate. He'd only unpacked one box of clothes, but there was probably a set of pajamas in there. He was digging through a drawer when a blast of cold air hit him and he gasped. That felt amazing.
"Max?" he called. "Was that you?"
His roommate didn't answer. There was no way for it to have been Max anyway, he was at some sort of math department welcome-back party for the grad students. Right.
Where did the cold are come from, though? The dorm AC and the awful insulation in these buildings couldn't keep up with the boiling August heat. Mark had been dying all day, soaking in sweat and he was really looking forward to taking a shower and changing into clean clothes.
Oh well. Maybe the dorm was haunted. That might as well happen.
Shaking his head, he went back to digging through the drawer and found a clean t-shirt and some basketball shorts. Not really what he was looking for, but it was move-in day and he didn't care at this point. Time to hit the showers and crash.
But as he turned to leave, the chilly wind hit him again.
"Hello?" he called. "Is there a ghost in here?”
No reply.
“Look, I don’t really care if you are a ghost,” he said, “That actually felt amazing, I don’t mind. I’m Mark, I’ll be living here this semester, it’s nice to meet you.”
The wind came again, and he shivered a little. God that felt good. He couldn’t wait for winter, Midwestern summers were the worst. “Hey, uh… ghost. If you want to keep blowing cold air in here that would honestly be fantastic. I don’t know what ghosts like, but I’d… I dunno, put flowers on your grave or something, if you like.”
“Flowers on my grave?” came an affronted voice. It was British, and strangely high pitched. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”
Mark nearly jumped out of his skin. Whoever that was, it was in the closet, and it wasn’t Max… and he couldn’t see them.
The voice kept going, “It’s always cold here, I was honestly just enjoying the strange phenomenon of the warm breeze by the lamppost. Who are you? I can’t see you.”
Mark took a step toward the voice. It seemed to be coming from behind the cardboard boxes, but when he rounded the corner-
He wasn’t in the closet anymore. There was snow on the ground, a forest clearing ringed by pine trees with a lamp post in the middle. And on the ground, looking quizzically at him, was a fox.
“Where am I?” Mark asked.
“Who are you?” asked the Fox.
“I’m Mark,” he said, still stunned by the sudden snow.
“And this is Narnia. Land of the Lion, cursed by the Witch, a world of wonder and winter… Say, you’re not a human, are you? I’ve never seen a real human before.”
Mark blinked. “And I’ve never seen a talking fox. This is… this is impossible, I was just in the closet in the dorm room… what’s going on?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said the Fox, “But I know who might. Come on, let’s go.”
And the Fox took off into the pine woods.
Still a little stunned, Mark headed into the woods after the Fox without even thinking about it. Snow began to fall as the pair of them headed deeper into the forest, until the Fox reached a rocky outcropping.
“Tumnus! Tumnus are you in there? Mr. Tumnus!” called the Fox.
Mark started to ask who Tumnus was when a Faun wearing a red scarf and nothing else stepped out of the cave.
“What is it, Mr. Fox?” said the faun, who was apparently Tumnus. Then he looked up and gasped in shock and delight. “A Human!” he cried, giving a little jump in the air, “A Human, to break the curse upon our lands at last! Oh hurrah! What is your name, Son of Adam?”
Mark was still taking in the fact that first a fox and then a faun was talking to him, but he’d played enough D&D to know how this went, and that he didn’t want any part of it. “I’m Mark,” he began, “But I’m really just looking for the way home. Classes start on Monday and I have shopping to do-“
“Oh, but Mark!” said Tumnus, “You simply must stay here! After all these long decades of eternal winter and no Christmas, you have come at last to break the spell of the White Witch! She holds our fair country in everlasting ice, but it has been said that ‘When Adam’s flesh and Adam’s bone/Sits in Cair Paravel in Throne/Then the Evil Time will be over and done’! And so you must be here to save us! At last, at last!”
Mark took a deep breath. He looked at Tumnus and the Fox, and said, “I’m sorry, but I really can’t. You really wouldn’t want me to be King of any kind, and I gotta get home. And I really just… Look, I can see you’re having a problem here, but I can’t help you. So I’m going home.”
He couldn’t bring himself to say out loud that eternal winter sounded like paradise to him. These weird creatures seemed to think that he was some kind of Chosen One, which was ridiculous. He had a robotics team to get back to, and a whole slate of classes to take. Fluid Dynamics was rumored to be hellish, and he couldn’t do some kind of quest… but maybe if there was, somehow, a magical land in the closet, he could get his homework done without roasting alive in the dorm’s substandard AC.
“But um… I’ll be back, okay? I’ll look up how evil curses work and I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
Mark immediately kicked himself. Curses? There was no such thing! This was ridiculous! But maybe… Look, he knew this wasn’t a Good Guy move, stringing these little fairyland creatures along, but if he could get some kind of home base set up here… the next two years would be a lot easier if he could escape to Winter any time he wanted.
“Hey, uh, Mr. Tumnus, is there someplace nearby that I can set up as a place to… study and train to break your curse? I just uh… this seems like a big job, and I don’t know how long it’ll take.”
Tumnus brightened. “Yes, of course! There’s an old cottage just the other side of the Lantern Waste! Used to be a dwarf lived there, but he’s long since moved on, said he couldn’t find any metals worth mining in the area. The furniture might be a bit small for you, but I’m sure we could get the Beavers to make you something a little bigger! Oh, everyone is going to be so thrilled!”
Mark nodded. “Sounds perfect. Show me?”
“Of course!” cried Tumnus, and he positively skipped past Mark and the Fox. They found the cottage a few hundred feet past the other side of the Lamppost.
“That’ll do,” said Mark, wondering if he could somehow get internet to work through a portal. “Thank you both,” he said, and headed back to the lamppost. He walked around it once, twice, and was back in the closet where he started.
He shook his head. That was absolutely wild. He’d come back tomorrow and see if he could find it again. Maybe he was exhausted and seeing things.
“But if not,” he mumbled, heading toward the showers, “I’m going to make a sign that says ‘No solicitors and no quests’.”