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0. THE CHOSEN
The first thing they don’t tell you about the Pevensies is this: the deep old magic runs through their veins, pumps their hearts, boils in their blood. Every nerve, every sinew, every bone is made of the deep magic. It lingers at their fingertips and the back of their minds and on the very edges of their lips, always waiting to burst forth.
The second thing they don’t tell you about the Pevensies is that they never let the deep magic go. Well, never is a strong word. They rarely let the deep magic go. They contain it under the layers of their skin and behind their eyes, deep in their bellies and under their palms. They are conduits; they are raw and untumbled stone, flowers in the wind, something unattainable, untouchable, unstoppable.
The third thing they don’t tell you about the Pevensies is that when they do let the deep magic go, you’d best be standing out of the way.
I. THE KNIGHT - peter and the wolves
Peter does not think he can do this. But the horn is blowing and his sisters are screaming and he does not have a choice, he does not have a choice.
He does not know how to wield a sword, but it seems to come naturally to him. Like he was born to do it. Like he was chosen to do it. It sparks something in him, deep in his belly, and he calls on that power as he attacks the wolf.
It is so much different than the river, but it is exactly the same. He is a boy, not a man, and there is little he can do against this fully trained wolfish warrior-
And his littlest sibling calls his name and he knows he must do it for her, because that’s his Lucy, his Lucy and his Susan and even his Edmund and he will do anything for them, he will die for them if he must, and he swings his sword.
It is covered in blood, later, and there’s something in Peter’s gut that he recognizes, churning, a mess of things he doesn’t really understand.
He understands, later. Much later. When he looks at his siblings and he looks in the mirror and he sees the deep magic instead.
II. THE SISTERS - lucy and susan and aslan
Aslan is dead. Aslan is dead. Aslan is dead.
It’s all Susan can think as she and her sister weep, holding onto his still-warm body as tightly as they can. Lucy cries into the space where his mane once was, his beautiful, beautiful mane. Susan clutches one paw, traces the calloused pads.
She feels something, at the Stone Table. Something that she could see in Peter’s eyes after he fought the wolves, something that faded too quickly for her to be certain it was real. But it was real. It was real.
“Lucy,” she says. “The deep magic.”
“What?” Lucy asks through hiccuping tears.
“The White Witch killed him,” Susan says. “With magic, yes. But not with the deep magic. ”
“Oh,” Lucy says. Then, softer, “ oh. ”
Susan takes her little sister’s hand. And together- well, she assumes that Lucy is doing the same thing that she is doing. She is reaching into the deepest parts of herself and she is pulling, pulling, pulling, and sending it straight into Aslan’s body.
Wake up, she thinks, wake up.
They fall asleep like that, the two sisters, wrapped in the warmth of Aslan’s fur. And when they wake up, the lion wakes up with them.
Aslan is alive. Aslan is alive. Aslan is alive. And it is because of them.
III. THE ELDERS - peter and susan and the trees
It has been a long time since we heard the calling of the deep magic. We have spent eons in this land, alive, breathing, moving, dancing. We rejoiced in its golden age and, one day, we went silent. To protect ourselves.
Our brethren are hurting. Our Narnians are dying. There is no chance to stop them. Our king runs through the woods to meet the Queen, the beloved of all Narnia, the carrier of the magic. But she does not know her power. She does not know how to wake us up.
The others do. The older ones, they’re scared for their youngest sibling. The second-youngest, the traitor who is not a traitor and who has done everything in his power to make it right, he is fighting with everything he has. He is channeling the magic as he goes, using it in every strike. The oldest sister, Atlas, who carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, she is reaching into our roots. She is trying to find us, trying to ask us, if we are awake. If we are still alive. She is doing it for her sister, loved above all other things. The true oldest, Icarus, who flies too close to the sun but does not let his wings melt (he is made of stronger things than that), he is doing the same as he fights. He is distracted. He may be hurt. We cannot let him be hurt.
So we wake up. They are talking to us, and we listen. And we travel, our roots clawing through the dirt in a way they haven’t done in a very long time. We can feel the magic that Peter and Susan are using, we can feel how they send it our way. They are strong, though they don’t know it. They will not be in Narnia for long. They will return one day. We know it to be true. We know many things to be true.
What we also know to be true is this: the Telmarines will lose. And it will be because of the deep magic.
IV. THE LIONESS - lucy and the river god
Aslan stands next to her, but it is not Aslan who calls on the river god. No, that honor goes to Lucy herself. Aslan roars at the crowd and Lucy draws her dagger and watches her siblings and the boy-prince and she smiles.
She twists the blade in her grasp, ever so slightly, so the sun catches the metal and shines over the water. It begins to churn, to ebb away, and the men attempting to cross stop in confusion. And Lucy- Lucy knows that this is it. This is her moment.
Please, she says to the river. We require your aid.
With what power do you wake me, witch? the river god replies, but he is awakening anyway.
I am no witch, Lucy says, thinking of Jadis and her horrible winter and her frozen waters. I am a Pevensie.
There’s a great rumbling, and then she sees him, falling over himself in an attempt to get there faster. The bridge is nothing, broken wood just particles in his mighty hands. The river god, stirred by Lucy’s call, stirred by the magic that she channels through her dagger, lifts the bridge and Sopespian and within a moment the man is gone.
The horse, miraculously, surfaces after the river god tumbles back into nothingness. No, she thinks, not nothingness. Not nothingness.
Everythingness.
“Lucy,” Aslan says softly, but she’s not quite finished yet.
Thank you, she murmurs to the river god, and though she receives no response, she knows he is listening, he is at her command. And the river parts to wet sand and mud so that her siblings may cross unharmed.
V. THE BELIEVERS - edmund and lucy and the painting
Edmund slams the door, and they’re fighting, he and Eustace, going back and forth with each other about who did what, and Lucy is just staring at that stupid painting-
“Why do you keep looking at it like that?” Eustace cries. He knows his cousins are crazy, they have always been crazy, but this is getting ridiculous. “It’s just a stupid painting.”
“Because it’s very Narnian-looking,” Lucy says, and when she turns back there is mischief in her eyes. Edmund gets the same grin, and he takes a step forward. Eustace holds back as the two siblings approach the painting, and he is really truly revolted by the awe in their eyes, by the way that they stand, like royalty.
“Do you think-” Edmund starts, reaching out a hand to trace the edges of the ship in the painting. Eustace could swear the ship wasn’t there the last time he looked at it. “Caspian is sailing somewhere?”
“He might need our help,” Lucy agrees, and the water in the painting begins to move.
“Stop that!” Eustace cries, well and truly terrified. “Stop it, I’ll tell mother- mother!”
“It’s too late,” Edmund advises him as water begins to drip from the edges of the canvas. “It’s already started.”
“She can’t hear us,” Lucy says softly. “Do we have to take him with us?”
“No going back now,” Edmund shrugs, sending Eustace a disgusted look that Eustace takes great offense to. He’s about to say something when the trickle of water turns into a gush, filling the entire room. He lunges for the painting, intent on just breaking the thing, Edmund and Lucy screaming at him to stop.
It doesn’t stop.
VI. THE JUST - edmund and the serpent
Edmund knows that there is deep magic in his blood. Hell, he’s known for a long time. He’s known as long as Lucy had, during whispered conversations after the war, while he was still healing, the deep scar in his stomach unafraid of causing him aches.
He also knows that Lucy is the most powerful of them. She’s never been an archer, not really, she prefers her dagger. But her arrow strikes true, directly in the eye of the serpent that Edmund conjured up with nothing but fear and a little bit of this darkness feeding on his power.
He created the serpent, and he will be the one to kill it.
His sword glows blue. He knows Eustace is placing the last sword on the table, he can feel it, and Rhindon is screeching at him to strike, strike, strike. But he waits, and he waits, and he waits, for the perfect moment, because he knows he only has one shot at this. He has one shot to kill it, to make things right, and Rhindon shines brighter than anything Edmund has ever seen, except for maybe Caspian’s eyes, maybe Lucy’s laugh, maybe Susan’s wide smile, maybe Peter’s hand reaching out to help him up.
Jadis is whispering in his ear to give in to the darkness. The sword shines even brighter. Someone is calling his name, and he can’t tell if it’s Lucy or Caspian, but in that moment it doesn’t really matter.
He drives the sword straight through the roof of the serpent’s mouth. Jadis disappears as the beast screeches, and he pushes harder, pushes every bit of magic that runs through his body into killing the darkness.
And it works.
I. THE GODDESS - lucy at the edge of the world
Lucy is the one who was chosen, so long ago, Caspian knows this. All of the Pevensies have the deep magic in their veins, but for Lucy it runs so much deeper. It’s in her bones, her tendons, her every muscle and joint and piece of sinew. It’s her flesh and blood and her mind , it’s in her eyes and at her fingertips.
Lucy was the one to first discover Narnia, out of all of them. It was Lucy that the deep magic chose, and it chose her siblings by proxy. Caspian knows this, he’s always known it. He isn’t sure that Aslan has quite gotten the message.
Which is why it is no surprise to him that, at the very edge of the world itself, before they can cross that roaring wave and enter into oblivion, Lucy stops.
“Why would we go back?” she asks.
“Narnia has given you all that you need, dear one,” Aslan says, in that great, rumbling voice of his. Standing near the Queen, Caspian can feel the magic flowing off of her in waves as she begins to tremble.
“But we have not given everything Narnia needs back to it,” Lucy says. “I know our world is broken, and it needs help. But there is no magic in that world. If I go back- if I go back, I will never truly be myself, ever again.” She looks to Edmund first, to Caspian on his other side, clutching his hand like a lifeline. She looks to Eustace and Reepicheep, the mouse perched on her cousin’s shoulder. “And I don’t think Edmund or Eustace will be, either. We don’t need Narnia, and Narnia doesn’t need us- but she chose us. She chose when I first walked through that wardrobe.”
“What are you saying, child?” Aslan asks.
“You didn’t bring us here,” Lucy says, not accusingly, and Caspian has never felt prouder of the girl he considers his little sister. Of course it is her that will finally speak the truth. “The deep magic did. It- it chose me.”
“It did,” Aslan says softly, and the great lion has never looked more human. It’s always been there, in his eyes, Edmund has always been able to see it, Edmund told him so one day on the ship when the topic came up. But now- now it’s prominent, prominent enough that Caspian tenses next to his lover.
“So, no,” Lucy says. “Narnia has not given me all that I need. What I need is a long and joyful life, and I can only achieve that here. And one day- one day I will pass on to your country. Maybe. Maybe not. Because the magic is part of me.” She takes Edmund’s hand. “It’s part of all of us.”
“So it is,” Aslan says. He looks to the others, the four men standing behind the High Queen. “And you?”
“I made a better dragon than I did a boy,” Eustace says quietly. “I believe that there’s a lot Narnia still has to teach me. I think- I think I would like to stay. And to learn.”
“Very well,” Aslan says. “Then you shall stay.” Slowly, he looks to Reepicheep. Reepicheep says nothing, and that is answer enough.
“I cannot pass on,” Caspian says, looking to either side of him. “Not yet, anyways.” He doesn’t know if he can say more than that without tearing up. He has so much here to live for.
“Nor I,” Edmund agrees. He squeezes both Lucy’s and Caspian’s hand. He does not need to explain himself. The lion knows him possibly better than he knows himself, because the lion was chosen by the deep magic, too, and he understands that one does not ignore the deep magic.
“Then you know what to do, dear child.” He looks at Lucy as he says it, and Lucy nods. She holds out a hand, beckoning the water closer to her. It shifts, minutely, the portal back to London closing, the boat Reepicheep would have taken disappearing into the waves. It comes closer, closer-
and then it drops. Back into the sea once more. And Lucy is atop it all and she is laughing and she turns and flings herself into Edmund’s arms. He catches her, dropping Caspian’s hand as he does so, though the King joins the hug a moment later, followed swiftly by Eustace and Reepicheep.
“Thank you,” Lucy says, turning to Aslan, tears in her eyes and magic in her every breath. “Thank you.”
“I could not have stopped you if I tried,” Aslan says kindly. “I have no doubt you shall see me again someday, just as you shall see Peter and Susan. They have the same magic as you, after all.”
“Yes,” Lucy says firmly. “They do.”
Aslan nods, turns and walks across the water, back to his own country without further goodbye. The five of them stare after him, for a moment. Then he is gone.
“I suppose,” Lucy says quietly. “We should head back to the ship.”
“Yes,” Edmund says, wrapping an arm around his sister and an arm around Caspian.
“I suppose we should,” Caspian agrees.
There are four things they don’t tell you when it comes to the Pevensies and the deep magic, Edmund thinks as they board the boat. The fourth one is that while the deep magic chose the Pevensies, the Pevensies chose the deep magic right back. It is theirs to use and command, theirs to cherish and love, theirs, theirs, theirs.