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It was a cold unlike any he had ever experienced before.
Tumnus had experienced a great deal of coldness throughout his life. Indeed, his life and the lives of countless other Narnians had been largely defined by the cold. It surrounded them. No matter how far you traveled, no matter how sturdy a shelter you built, no matter how loudly your fire roared… to be Narnian meant to be in the cold. Some among the especially long-lived could remember a time before the cold, a time when the landscape was covered in soft grasses and dotted with delicate wildflowers, rather than a uniform blanket of snow. But even those memories had begun to feel more like dreams than reality. One hundred years of winter is as harsh on the mind as it is on the land.
Yes, Tumnus was used to the cold. He was so used to it that he might even have deluded himself into believing he was comfortable in it.
But this was not the cold he knew.
This cold consumed every part of him. This cold left no room for warmth, despite his hairy legs and wooly scarf. This cold… this stone coldness… it defined the faun just as its long-lived counterpart defined all of Narnia.
And with that cold soon came darkness- and following just behind darkness was stillness. Each new arrival was just as all-encompassing as its predecessors. They consumed him, they blocked out anything that was not of themselves. Eyes of stone cannot see, and ears of stone cannot hear.
But a heart of stone, no matter how rigid and impenetrable it may seem, still feels.
Tumnus’s heart had a great deal to dwell on. There was, of course, his immediate circumstances. He had betrayed the ruler of Narnia. His treachery had led to punishment. The Witch’s justice was as quick as it was cruel. There was no trial, no chance to defend himself, only a swift sentencing and immediate execution. Even so, the faun was content. He had sworn allegiance to a terrible taskmaster, now he simply faced the consequences of disloyalty.
No, it was another betrayal that tore at what was left of his consciousness. It was another act of treason that elicited the sob now permanently etched across his face. It was not the great and powerful Witch who he regretted deceiving, but a small and fragile child. It was her name he had begun to cry out at the moment of his petrification, her name that would remain just on the tip of his stone tongue.
As his cognition faded slowly into the darkness, a few last thoughts crossed his mind. Most were dreadful things, the sorts of things that make one wish they could stop thinking all together. Lucy’s poor and pitiable brother, a traitor just like himself, still being held by the Witch. The Beaver’s dam, their home, on which they had worked so hard, being torn apart. A family of human children, strangers in this land, being chased by the same merciless secret police that had arrested him. Such cruelty being rained down on children, not as punishment for treachery, but simply for the crime of existing.
Still, even as despair washed over him, one thing kept his stone heart afloat. It had come from the most unlikely of places, the lips of that foolish boy. It had come from a place of trembling fear, but it gave Tumnus an abiding hope that he clung to even now. One name was all his soul had left to believe in.
Aslan.
Could it be? Could it truly be? He had long believed it impossible, Aslan had been away for so very long, after all. But, ever since that chance encounter at the lamppost, the impossible seemed to be happening all around him. He could scarcely let himself believe it- that a quivering child, fearing for his life, would be the one to announce the true King’s return. But it was true- and made all the more so by the usurper’s reaction. If Edmund had been fearful saying the name, then (even if only for a moment) the Witch had been terrified hearing it. Had it truly been impossible for good to return, then evil would not have feared it.
Yes, indeed, it had to be true.
Aslan is on the move.
And that thought, that lone happy, hopeful, thought, would be his last for a long, long time.
Tumnus had no way to know how long he remained in this state, anymore than you or I could know how long we dreamed. With no way to tell the time, no seconds to count or mind with which to count them, it didn’t matter. It could have been a minute, or an hour, or a century. All that was certain, was the darkness.
Until it wasn’t.
One would expect, quite reasonably I might add, that darkness would be broken by light. But for Tumnus, a faun with eyes unable to see and ears unable to hear, what broke his darkness and silence was not light and noise, but simply… warmth. It was profoundly gentle sensation. Tumnus had not felt such gentility since his days being held in his mother’s arms. And even that he knew could not compare. It was a warmth has spread slowly from his head to his horns to his hair.
As gentle as it was, it roused him from his slumber like no one had before. It shattered his darkness; it broke through his deafness. The magical bonds that had imprisoned him did not break but simply ceased to be entirely. After a moment, he recognized the warmth that had saved him, the warmth of breath. And before he even realized that he capable of it, he breathed that warmth in deeper.
Tumnus’s eyes, so long dull to the world, burned suddenly at the return of light. Still stiff, still breathing in as much as he could, still overwhelmed by the sudden return of stimulation, the faun fell over. Expecting to find himself on the cold stone of the Witch’s courtyard, he instead found himself wrapped in a warm embrace, albeit one that struggled to support his weight.
As soon as he could, he opened his eyes.
And the light of the joy on Lucy Pevensie’s face made all the darkness worthwhile.