Random Narnia fanfic - the last day in Narnia.

[annwfyn]

On the last day, Peter woke with the dawn.

In the half tent he had been sleeping in – canvas strung between two trees to make a canopy, the sides open to the wind – the early sunlight fell in a kind of dappled pattern across the dusty grass. The campfire had burnt low and now cast out little heat but the scent of woodsmoke lingered.

The other man asleep in the tent with Peter did not stir. Corrin of Archenland was, however, notorious in the army for his ability to sleep through anything and everything when he chose to lay down. Jokes had been made that if the giants attacked at dawn, Corrin would be the sole guaranteed survivor, simply because he’d never be awake for it. It was, Peter thought with an affectionate grin, therefore not surprising that he didn’t stir now as Peter tried to get up, even with his head still resting on Peter’s stomach (where apparently he, like Peter, had simply passed out, tangled together, at some point the night before).

Peter lay back and shook his head, before poking Corrin lightly.

“It’s morning,” he tried and received only a grunt in reply. He tried once more and the other stirred enough to grumble “not morning. Go back sleep,” and slung an arm across Peter’s thigh.

Peter grinned, and pushed the optimistic arm back.

“Morning,” he said firmly, and pulled himself away from the blankets.

Outside, he stopped to pull on his trousers and then added some wood to the fire. For a moment, the High King felt a rush of absolute contentment. This, he thought, was where he felt like himself. Not in Court, dressed in stiff brocades and a crown that had never stopped feeling heavy since the day Aslan placed it on him. Not on the battlefield, his nose filled with the stench of death, making every victory a little bitter. Overwhelmingly not in the gardens at Caer Paravel, making awkward small talk with a tall woman with red hair who he knew was beautiful but somehow didn’t seem to be able to touch him at all.

But here, in the wilds, with a crazy-brave-chaotic twenty year old at his side? He felt….right.

The contentment faded, replaced with a kind of tightness. He wasn’t meant to feel like this.

Peter sighed and ran a hand over his hair.

“Aslan’s wounds,” he swore quietly to himself. “You’re the High King. Act like it,”

Warm arms snaked around his waist.

“What does a High King act like anyway?” Corrin enquired politely, and pulled back, grinning at Peter’s expression. “What?” he protested. “I can get up when there’s something to get up for. Is there still meat in the pack from yesterday?”

Peter, in spite of himself, realized he was smiling again. “Aye,” he said. “And a bit of bread too, although that’ll be going stale now.”

“Feed that to the birds then,” Corrin said with cheerful disdain. “I’ll fry up the wild boar for breakfast and we can get more later. Oh, and I’ve got an idea,”

“Really?” Peter asked, with only minimal scepticism. “Is it a better idea that me letting you cook?”

He laughed out loud as the Prince of Archenland made an obscene gesture at him. “Go on, your highness,”

“So,” Corrin said, as he fished in the saddle bags for the oilskin wrapped packages they’d put together after the hunt a day or so ago. “You’re due at the Archenland court in ten days time, right? For Cor and Aravis’ wedding?”

“Aye,” Peter agreed, and then added “since apparently children get married these days,”

“That’s my twin brother, he’s twenty, and you didn’t call me a child last night,” Corrin responded lightly. “You’re just weird about marriage. He’s wanted to marry Aravis since he was about fourteen anyway.

“But that’s getting away from my point. Why don’t we go there now?”

Peter blinked. “It’s three days ride,” he said.

“Sure. And I have to go there anyway. So why don’t you come with me instead of heading down to Caer Paravel? You know you will only be there a week before you have to leave again. You could just leave Edmund and Susan to rule – which they do most of the time anyway – and come with me.”

“Three more days like this?” Corrin added hopefully and smirked at Peter's response. 

In another world, a teenage boy silently begged this dream self to agree. Don’t go back to Caer Paravel. Don’t go hunting a stupid white stag to take your mind off everything. Just go to Archenland. Stay in Narnia. Don’t go back to the flat grey world, to be trapped in a boy’s body.

Across the room, the boy can hear others talking, even though it’s lights out in the dorm and he feels a surge of frustration at the fact that this is his life now – trapped amongst children, trying to play their games, pretend that he cares about their nonsense.

And in Narnia, time ebbs away.

On the last day, Susan came home with the dawn. She had been dancing all night with the fauns and nymphs – an indulgence a queen wasn’t often allowed, but it was close to midsummer and that was excuse enough.

She and Lucy had both gone, although they had been separated early on, and she’d last seen Lucy sitting beneath a tree, surrounded by giggling nymphs, before the beat of the dance had pulled Susan away.

She had kissed one – two – three of the fauns as they spun around the fire, albeit only for a second each time before the dance drew them on. Then finally, in the small hours, she had found herself dancing with Arnus, a faun with jet black tight curling hair and dancing dimples in his cheeks. He had lifted her up in the air to spin her around and when her feet touched the floor, Susan found herself giddy with joy and desire. They had kissed, fierce in the moonlight, and he’d pulled her towards the shadows of the trees.

“It’s midsummer,” the faun had said when she’d demurred, and then let go of her hand and stepped back to show her that it was her choice.

I’m the queen, Susan had thought. Queen Susan the fair. I’m the prize that every foreign prince wants, the jewel of the Narnian court. I can’t run off into the trees with a faun, like any country girl.

Arnus had taken another step back, sensing her uncertainty, and then swept a courtly bow. “As my queen commands,” he had said softly.

But, Susan had thought, I am also Narnian. And Narnia means dancing, and singing, and living, and loving. We celebrate Bachus and Silenus. Maenads dance in the forest and the naiads swim skin bare in the streams.

The old world – cold dreary England, where she’d worn thick prickly woollen stockings to cover her legs and pulled her hair back into plaits that tugged at her scalp – where she’d been told that nice girls just don’t – was years ago in the past and now Susan was Narnian.

She had tossed her head, suddenly sure of herself again and held out her hands.

“As your queen commands,” she had said and seen the smile on the faun’s face.

Now it was dawn, and Susan the Fair found herself walking home, barefoot with her hair streaming over her shoulders. She was twenty eight years old, and sure of herself in her skin. She had lived and loved that night, and although she did not know if she would see that particular faun – Arnus, who always had been one of the wittiest at court – again, she realized that perhaps it did not matter. That wasn’t what tonight had been about. She didn’t need to find a lover to know she had found herself, and Susan now knew why she had avoided accepting all those marriage proposals from all those grand foreign princes from foreign lands.

“I am Susan of Narnia” she said out loud to herself, and spun about beneath the bright dawn sky. “Not of Calormene or the Lone Islands. I am Queen of Narnia and in Narnia I belong and will remain,”

“Why do you have to go on about it,” another Susan snapped at her sister. “Those stupid games we played when we were children,”

The words burnt in her mouth but she spat them out anyway. It was the only way to numb everything she felt inside, in this awful world that she’d been trapped in. This world where she had to cover her legs again and plait her hair and where she knew every single girl at school would throw foul words at her if they had ever known that she’d had a lover with corkscrew black curls and she’d dreamt of him the very night before.

“It never happened,” she said, and managed to force her voice into that calm and certain tone that had always worked with diplomatic functions. Susan has not forgotten that. That, at least, still works in this horrible place. The adults here say that fourteen-again Susan sounds mature when she says that, which is better than nothing. “It was never real. This world is all there is. Just grow up, why don’t you?”

On the last day, Lucy wrote a letter to Aravis. She was half dead with a lack of sleep, because she had also come home at dawn, but was determined to still meet all her responsibilities. Being a Queen, after all, was not just dancing and parties and Lucy had a very long ‘to do’ list.

She had washed her face and hands, and put her hair up and met with the stewards to discuss whether Caer Paravel needed to look at a new dairy for supplying cheese and milk, because she had concerns about the welfare of their animals “and,” as Queen Lucy had said firmly “just because they are not talking cows, does not mean we should not care about them. All living things deserve some measure of respect,”

Then Lucy had met with a small delegation from Calormen who had arrived from Rabadash to re-establish trade relations, and had sharply expressed her concerns about rumoured raids on the Lone Islands. Afterwards, she’d stopped for a quick mid morning breakfast which consisted of a cup of tea (which would, she thought hopefully, be less of a rare luxury if relations with Calormen were normalized) and then headed on to look over the wedding gifts which were being sent down to Archenland for Cor and Aravis’ wedding.

It had, Lucy thought, been a good day and she was increasingly excited at the prospect of the trip to Archenland. It had been ages since she’d seen Aravis, who was one of her closest friends, and the thought of a whole glorious week with her soon to be fellow queen was enough to lift Lucy’s mood no matter how little sleep she’d had.

It was, however, a shame that poor old Ed couldn’t come to the wedding and was going to be stuck at Caer Paravel, as there had to always be one of them there. Lucy frowned at that thought, even as she skimmed over a report on a conflict over fishing rights that an optimistic otter had handed her. She needed to think of something nice they could all do together, including Ed, before she and Susan and Peter all had to head south.

Edmund had, Lucy continued to muse, been really quite dour about everything lately. It was probably that awful Ettinsmore case that was bothering him. She rather wished that Peter’s fiancée – the Lady Lili – hadn’t become involved. But then, Lili was generally a problem. The marriage had seemed like a good way of resolving the conflict between Narnia and the North. Lili was of the royal lines and would act as an ambassador to the Narnian court, and although she had giant blood, she looked human enough to not bother Narnian sensibilities (which were, Lucy sadly acknowledged as prejudiced as people were everywhere).

Plus, Lili was beautiful. She was tall and graceful, with a mass of blood red hair, and spoke passionately and intelligently. She was everything that any King could want in a consort, and the solemn and scholarly hedgehog who acted as arbiter in these matters had even declared that although she was not a Daughter of Eve, and therefore could not be a Queen, her sons would still be descended from Adam and would be able to inherit the throne.

So why, then, was Lucy so unsettled by it all?

“Your Majesty?” a small voice said at her elbow, and Lucy forced herself to smile and cast such worries from her mind. A Queen, after all, thinks first of her people and worries about her brother’s love life later.

She would, however, definitely find a fun outing for Ed and the rest tomorrow. Mr Tumnus had said something about the white stag being seen in these parts and that might be fun. Imagine catching him and getting him to grant wishes?

“It wouldn’t have made a difference if there had been unicorns at Agincourt, Lu,” Peter said sadly. The two children were sitting on the staircase at home, listening to the faint sounds of adult conversation drifting up the stairs. “They would still have been taken down by the archery.

“The reason the Narnian unicorns were thought of as invincible was because I always paired them with the great eagles. The eagles could take out archers with a bombardment of rocks, and then the unicorns moved in,”

He was silent for a moment and then added “and at the final battle against the northern giants, Corrin and his commando troops moved around the back. The sergeant – the talking goat – took them up something that looked like a sheer rock face. The giants didn’t expect it. They….”

His voice trailed away and Lucy saw that her brother was crying.

On the last day, Edmund woke up early. The dawn light crept in through the ivy that half covered his bedroom window, casting odd shadows against the wall. Edmund didn’t move at first.

“Too damn early,” he muttered to himself and tried to close his eyes and go back to sleep.

He failed.

Frustrating stray thoughts danced through his head – the rabbit with the broken paws, the slim dark marsh wiggle woman with the odd crooked smile, the flaming argument he’d had with Lili the day before over the whole cursed court case.

Lili

Edmund’s stomach twisted, in a strange mix of anger and lust and guilt. She was his brother’s fiancée, and never mind that it was a arrangement of state and not love. She was still Peter’s wife-to-be and he should not be feeling this way. Never mind the other issues with Lili – her giant blood, her occasional ruthlessness, her brutal honesty – because all of those paled compared to the horrible truth that she was his brother’s betrothed and every single time Edmund was close to her, he was a part of a betrayal once more.

“Traitors can mend,” he said out loud. It didn’t sound very convincing. He wasn’t convinced. Right now, ‘Edmund the Just’ seemed like possibly the most stupid name he’d ever been given.

He rolled over once again. Why was the light this bright? Even with the covers pulled over his head.

“Aslan’s wounds,” Edmund growled at last and threw a pillow in the direction of the window. It didn’t stop the light coming in. “Focus, Ed,”

What could he focus on?

He did have a full docket today in court. The people on Narnia knew that they all had the final right of appeal to the King at Caer Paravel, and they trusted him and so often did. He had land disputes, inheritance disputes, and a particular awkward case that might be murder or might be a horrible accident. The evidence seemed to show the former but Edmund’s instincts told him it was the latter and he wanted to order further investigation.

For a brief moment he was distracted but then the image of the rabbit with the broken paws floated back before his eyes, followed almost immediately by the memory of Lili’s voice, sharp with anger.

“That isn’t law you’re speaking of,” she had said. “That’s your sympathy for the rabbit. Tell me, if it was a Narnian standing opposite him, instead of a giant, and if instead of a kindly old talking rabbit, it was one of my people, would you really make the same decision? Would you?”

Edmund had had no answer for that. Not really. He rarely did when Lili spoke because she was normally right, even if Lucy and Susan and even Peter didn’t much like it because they didn’t really trust her. He had been swayed by sympathy for the rabbit and disgust for the giants and their complaints, as much as by any legal argument brought by the tall cool marsh wiggle.

“Damn,” he said quietly to himself. “I have to make this right,”

Aslan alone knew how. Sometimes Edmund truly yearned for the days of old, when it had been simple. The right thing to do was stand by your people and fight the monsters. The wrong thing to do was eat the Turkish Delight. Not that Edmund had seen Turkish Delight for a long time now. Why had he liked it so much?

But that was then. He’d been a boy of eleven when he’s come to Narnia. Now he was a man heading into his later twenties, with all the complexities that brought.

Lili.

Edmund sighed and sat up in bed. He would not think about that today. Nor the case. He would adjudicate on the cases before him and when Peter and Susan and Lucy set off for Archenland he would talk to Lili. He’d….say something. He didn’t know what, but he’d make it right, somehow. For the giants, who maybe were in the right and had been wounded. For the old rabbit with the broken paws. For Lili, with the blood red hair and fierce gaze who had to marry the High King, with or without love.

He’d make it right. He just needed a few more days…

Edmund knew, within a year of returning back to England, that Lili would be dead now. Narnian time worked differently, after all. He’d been gone for close on sixteen years in Narnian time and returned within an hour of time to his own world. How long was a year here in Narnian time? Too long.

So had his other friends. The marsh wiggle barrister, the hedgehog who kept the records, the fauns that Lucy and Susan had danced with. All of them. Dead.

At school he had a reputation for being quiet and maybe a bit glum. He didn’t know how to say it was that for months he had woken up every day and thought about the people he had lost. No one at school would understand that for an instant, let alone the rest that churned within him – the lust and anger and guilt and frustration.

Who the hell had adjudicated on that case?

The last night in Narnia, Susan had stood on the battlements of Caer Paravel, looking out across the ocean. She knew the others were all restless tonight – Ed was worrying about a case, and had fought with Lili, again. Peter was not intervening because he was avoiding Lili for some reason, and had vanished upstairs looking like a storm cloud when someone had made a joke about their impending marriage. Lucy had spent half the evening trying to simultaneously arrange this hunt for tomorrow, make sure everyone was ready to leave for Archenland the day after, and that the Calormen delegation were happy, while also trying to sneak away for a catch up with Mr Tumnus which kept being interrupted.

But Susan found that nothing could quite dent her good mood. She’d need sleep soon – she was, after all, twenty eight years old now and not quite so good at staying up all night – but for now she just wanted to breathe in the sights and sounds of her kingdom and be happy.

Maybe when she came back from Archenland she would go walking in the woods and see if she could find Arnus again. The idea pleased her a little, although she wasn’t sure if she wanted the commitment of having the faun as her lover, rather than as a single perfect midsummer’s meeting, but she could take some time to think about it. After all, Susan thought, they had all the time in the world….