Work Text:
December, 1942
In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
Dusk fell early that December. It was blue…like blue glass. Jill could see the dancing of snowflakes in the yellow light that glowed from the lamp outside the ticket window in the brick wall of the station building. The railway platform already had a dusting…blue…but under the lamp it seemed softly golden. Soft.
A group of carolers was standing in a huddle, looking through their music books, and whispering and laughing. It sounded cold…brittle…vapid. Jill shoved her hands more deeply in her pockets, and beside her, Eustace was holding several of her boxes and trying to read a railway map at the same time, while talking cheerfully about Things: …and you should have seen it…Susan wouldn't take no for an answer…and at that moment, the snowball hit him in the face…
They were leaving the Experiment House for the Christmas Holidays and Eustace had come early to see her off on her train. She was sorry he had come…because it would make it that much harder to say good-bye to him. She didn't want to say good-bye.
"You're awfully excited about Christmas Holls, Eustace," Jill said quietly, breaking the monologue. "I thought your parents didn't celebrate Christmas?"
"They don't," Eustace replied, "But my cousins and their people do. We're planning a daring escapade, which should culminate in Cumbria at the house of an old friend of my Uncle's…that's Professor Kirk. I've told you about him. Everyone's going to be there," Eustace continued, "My aunt and uncle, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, and even Miss Plummer…of course, Peter isn't," he added in soberer tones, "Since he's still in the Med."
Jill closed her eyes and envisioned it. It seemed wonderful to have friends, cousins, who would actually Celebrate Things. And these weren't just any old cousins. They had been There. She had heard Stories.
"What about you, Jill?" Eustace asked, turning to her.
Jill was quiet, then burst out, "My parents are getting a divorce."
The silence that hung between them was as fragile as glass. Eustace reached out and touched it. It shattered in a million pieces and Jill was suddenly crying…not wailing, but silent crying, which is a thousand times more painful.
"Oh Gosh," Eustace said, hesitating; his hand just rested on her shoulder…barely touching, but touching all the same. "I'm sorry Jill. That's rough luck."
"You have no idea," Jill agreed, and found that he had handed her his handkerchief. She took it and buried her face. "The family is all in pieces now…I don't even know if we're going to celebrate Christmas this year. I'm going to stay with an aunt."
Eustace looked at her for a moment longer, then quite suddenly, he put down several of the boxes he had been carrying. "Just a sec," he said, and Jill watched in surprise as he suddenly sprinted off around the corner of the station house.
She stood miserably on in the cold, wondering if Eustace had suddenly gotten sick of her. She, cried too much. Maybe he didn't even like her anymore. What was there to like, anyway? She felt awful, cold. Worse than cold. This was an inside cold that seemed to have started in her heart and was spreading slowly through her like frost spreading over a window. Her family had broken to pieces…she had hated family dinners, and the endless arguments on religion and politics, while she tried to pass the time coloring in the corner. But no matter how miserable, it had still been family.
There was a soft cough, and Jill looked around to see Eustace standing next to her again; he was holding something in his hand, pushing it towards her, and as she took it, tears blurred her eyes so much she couldn't even see it.
"What is it?" she asked unsteadily.
"Railway ticket," Eustace replied matter-of-factly as he picked up the boxes again. "You're coming with me."
"What?"
"Up north." He grinned at her. "You can send a wire from the train to that horrid aunt of yours."
"But…" Jill trailed. "Will they want me?"
"Of course they will," Eustace replied, then more quietly, "I will."
~o*o~
"Honestly, what's the point of even living anymore if all the wonder and marvelousness is gone? He sent us home to wait and wait and wait, dragging ourselves through the dirt of Living, even if there doesn't seem to be a point to living," Jill paused for breath, and threw herself dramatically back against the seat.
They had gotten on the train an hour before, and the steam rushing up from the engine had been bathed yellow by the station lamp. There were soldiers getting off in khaki uniforms, a woman with an ill-mannered dog, a doctor with his bag…and a whole group of students from the Experiment House, pointedly pretending they didn't know each other. The school had that kind of effect.
Eustace had steered Jill down the corridor until he found an empty compartment; they piled boxes in the overhead rack, and said, "Happy Christmas," to the ticket-taker as he punched their tickets. Since then, Eustace had been sitting patiently, listening while she ranted.
She hated her parents (she didn't, really), she hated Christmas (that wasn't true, either)…eventually, she got back on the topic she had been thinking obsessively about ever since it happened. She wanted to Go Back There…Eustace knew she meant Narnia.
"Why did he give us a taste and send us back?" Jill exclaimed again, "He damped our tongues and left us with an insatiable thirst that can never be quenched…he surrounded us with Beauty, and sent us back to this gray, drear place. Why?"
Eustace was silent for a moment, then said, "Have you ever considered what might have been had He never dipped your tongue and left you with a thirst that can never be quenched? Would that have been better?"
"Why did he have to take it away, again?" Jill wailed, turning to look at him with Haunted eyes.
"Why did He give it in the first place?" Eustace replied steadily. "I don't know about you, Jill, but before my tongue was damped, I was a record stinker…I was a festering compost heap of a lies, deception, anger, prejudice, pride and self-pity, that for a long time, I was too ashamed to own...In fact, I couldn't even see it. It was like a pall of smoke that one no longer notices is there. I would have been a hopeless case if He hadn't taken me on."
Jill looked away from him pointedly and stared out the window as the dull blue countryside swept past at a hundred miles an hour. The rhythmic puffing of the engine from up ahead and the swaying, chattering of the carriage seemed to be saying over and over again: what's wrong with you…what's wrong with you…what's wrong with you…
She wanted to feel bitter. She embraced it. She had lost everything.
"You've heard the story of how my dragon-skin was ripped off me, and I've heard the story of how there was only one stream…and you drank from it, because you were too thirsty to do otherwise," Eustace continued. "I feel the same way you do, Jill. We all do. I've talked to Edmund about it frequently; he's listened to me rant for hours. Do you know what he always says?"
Jill refused to turn around, even though she wanted to.
"We can be Narnians here just as well as there," Eustace replied. "Our duty hasn't changed just because our setting has, and neither has His."
Now he was starting to sound like Puddleglum.
"If He really cared about us," Jill fired a Scathing Look at her own reflection in the glass. "He wouldn't have brought us back to this horrid place."
"But it's this horrid place He took us from in the first place," Eustace replied. "We did nothing to deserve going…the least we can do is be thankful that He gave us the opportunity, as brief as it was."
"You're one to talk; you've been there twice!" Jill snapped, whipping around to look at him. For the first time, she could see the expression on his face…and instantly she could feel all the anger draining out of her. She could harp on for hours about everything she had lost…but in the meantime, she had gained Eustace. As unlikely a friend as he had seemed at one time, she loved him now more than anyone in the world. If it hadn't been for their journey together, she would never have looked at Eustace.
"I know," Eustace replied, "I know I've been there twice…but…it wasn't what you're thinking. Going there twice has been twice the pain."
Jill looked down, repentant, "I'm sorry Eustace. I haven't been fair."
"You're just confused," he replied. "I know how that is. I'm confused too…" he trailed off, "And somehow, I'm not certain if Narnia…the real Narnia…is really even the place we've been," Eustace paused, trying to search through himself for the words, "Coming back the first time, I knew the moment I sent foot in this world again that I didn't belong. There was nothing I wanted more than to Go Back…but Jill…somehow, when you and I went back this last time, it wasn't the same. I don't belong there, either."
"What do you mean?" Jill asked, and her insides tightened with fear.
"What if," Eustace began, "What if, Narnia isn't the place we're meant to be? What if we only went there briefly to give us a feeling for what Could Be, but not What Is? What if he damped our tongues with Narnia to give us a longing for Something much greater, and grander, something beyond imagination?"
Jill was silent.
"I think Narnia is only what we could handle at the time, Jill," Eustace said after a moment. "How can we describe something indescribable? We're not ready yet…but somehow, I think we're getting there."
They sat and stared at each other for a long time…wondering…and Jill searched deep inside herself and hoped with every ounce of her being that he was Right…that the Indescribable was Real…and was somehow even more Real than the Describable.
"We can conceive of the Indescribable…we have a longing for it," Eustace said. "It must be Real. I don't believe He would have allowed us to imagine it, only to tell us, 'Sorry chaps, no go.' I don't know how to say this, Jill, but Narnia…the one we've seen and been to, at any rate…isn't enough for me, anymore."
Jill nodded quietly, "All the same, I'd like to go back."
"We probably will, sometime," Eustace said. "He never said we wouldn't…but I'm not holding my breath."
Jill looked at him for a little longer, then reached out and placed her hand over his where it rested on the upholstered seat. "Will you always be my friend?"
"Always," Eustace replied huskily, and with more force than he had intended. "No matter what happens."
~o*o~
Many hours later, after many switches of trains, and several wearisome stops and a rather painful time spent sleeping upright in a station waiting room, they arrived in Cumbria, at a lonely train platform, drifted with snow. Edmund was at the station to collect them. He didn't seem the least bit surprised to see Jill (Eustace explained afterwards that Edmund was never surprised by anything), and, while Eustace was piling their things on a handcart and a porter was wheeling it away, Edmund took her hand and kissed it, as a Narnian gentleman might kiss the hand of a Narnian lady.
That was the first day, and the rest followed in a wonderful blur of preparations, and cooking and laughter. Susan cooked like a fury, Lucy made Christmas crackers, and once Jill tagged along while Lucy, Edmund and Eustace went out with Professor Kirk and Mr. Pevensie and Professor Kirk's bird dog to shoot pheasants for the Christmas feast.
Jill found herself envying them their happy family, and their parents, who somehow knew without being told. But it wasn't a bad sort of envy…just a longing.
Then Christmas Day rolled around, and though it was snowing like mad outdoors, the fires roared on the giant hearths of that magnificent, old house, and gifts that had been shining under the tree were torn open. They weren't splendid gifts…no-one could afford much in those days, but they seemed splendid all the same.
At last came the time for the feast, and all together they trooped down the hallway, and Susan threw open the doors of the dining room, then turned to look at them.
"Do you like it?" she asked with her eyes shining.
Like it? Like wasn't even the word…
It was like something from a fairy tale; indeed, it was like the moment in A Christmas Carol when Ebenezer Scrooge walked into one of his own rooms and saw it so hung about with living green it was like a grove in a forest, with bright holly berries burning in the firelight, and mistletoe hanging, and the glittering glow of candlelight. It was so like it, in fact, that they almost expected there to be a jolly giant towering in the room to beckon them in and say, "Come in! and know me better, man!"
I won't describe much of what happened next, because I'd never do it justice. It was wartime, and there was rationing, but Professor Kirk lived in the countryside, so there were pheasants, and rabbit pie, and Susan had made a Christmas Pudding despite everything, and there was much laughter while Edmund lit a spoonful of brandy and poured it, crackling with blue flames, over the pudding.
Afterwards, because it happened that there was nearly the same number of gentlemen as ladies, they went into the parlor and pushed aside the chairs. Professor Kirk put a record on the turntable, and they danced for hours…and it seemed to Jill as she danced, that somehow, if she half closed her eyes, she couldn't see the plumbing pipes, and the electric outlets, nor their drear wartime clothes, nor their cheap squeaking shoes…and quite suddenly, she was almost There. Just for a moment.
As she danced down the line and looked into their faces and took their hands, she felt closer to them than she had ever felt to her parents, or her school friends, or her many relations. Susan and Lucy were already treating her like a sister, Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie had invited her to visit them over the Summer Holidays, Miss Plummer had spent a long time debating her (cheerfully) about the pros and cons of riding a Flying Horse as opposed to an Owl.
Jill felt a little spring of Joy trickling in her heart. She could live. It was worthwhile. Even if she hadn't known any of these people a few days before…they were family. They weren't bound together by common ancestry, or culture, or tradition…but by a collective longing for Something. Something indescribable. Something more Real than real.
What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man
I would do my part;
Yet what I can, I give Him -
Give my heart.
-Christina Rossetti