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Chapter Text

Lucy kept noticing, in the hours of that long, grimy, miserable morning, beginning on the slave ship, then shuffling in shackles from ship to boat, from boat to shore, up the road to Narrowhaven Market, where the captives would be sold, that all the other imprisoned people around her were human.

It startled her every time she became aware of it. Strange, since it wouldn’t have been exceptionable in England. She’d lived many years of her life surrounded by only human people, in a world where only humans were people. But they were in Narnia now, and, in Narnia, it seemed deeply wrong and out of the ordinary.

At least, it would have been out of the ordinary in the Narnia she’d reigned over long ago. Had things changed so much since then?

She’d known, of course, that the peoples of Narnia had suffered great setbacks in the centuries since she’d ruled the land in freedom and amity with her brothers and sisters. The last time they’d been brought back, she’d had first-hand sight of how Caspian’s ancestors had taken possession of the lands she thought of as the property of Talking Beasts and creatures of myth and legend, pushing the Old Narnians back into the forests and peopling the towns and villages with human men and women to the exclusion of all others.

But, that last time in Narnia, the Pevensie siblings had met with the Old Narnians in the forest, and stood with them at Aslan’s How, and she had only really seen the Telmarine domination fleetingly, glimpsed from Aslan’s back as he progressed through the land, trailing renewal and liberation behind him. Yes, Cair Paravel was laid ruin, and Caspian X would have to begin his reign from Telmarine fastnesses, but Old Narnia remained, vital and present as the air and the earth. Had they not been greeted, first, by a dwarf?

It hadn’t prepared her for what it would be like, to be returned to Narnia and still find herself immured with only other human beings, under the power of more humans still. Even on the Dawn Treader, Reepicheep’s mouse’s heart leavened the tedium of the company of the human men. Here, there were only men and women, boys and girls. All human.

And she couldn’t seem to manage to connect with any of them. She’d kept trying, over the course of the night and the morning. If only she could kindle some rebellious heart that might make a stand with her and Reep and Edmund, it might be enough. But the girls dodged her gaze, and the boys bit their tongues when she talked of freedom, escape. The adult captives seemed to think it not worth their while to listen to the exhortations of a little girl. None took her bait. Perhaps they were right not to; they knew this present world better than she did, for all that she’d been its queen once upon a time.

As they left the shore behind them, all driven together in chains and shackles, Reep caught her eye and gave her a wink. She did her best to wink back. The courage of his mousey heart lifted hers, in turn.

Lucy Pevensie had experienced life as a stubborn English schoolgirl, and as a priestess-queen of a magical empire. Neither experience made for the qualities needed to stay safely under the radar in a situation such as being enslaved by pirates and held for sale at market. So, it was perhaps unsurprising that she was not able to do so.

The long, low squatting form of the auction-house loomed before them, rising up out of the bustle of the harborfront town, and Lucy had to to dig in her heels. It might have been bravery, or blind panic, driving her. How could you really tell, in the heat of the moment, between the two?

She wanted to get back to the Dawn Treader, back to Caspian, to stay with Edmund and Eustace and Reepicheep. But, also, she knew that she did not want to die a slave.

If only she had a knife, or if she could be a lioness in form, with sharp talons at her fingertips … but it was only her vial of healing cordial that Caspian had brought aboard the Dawn Treader, and who knew what had become of her little dagger?

If only she’d had an army of Talking Beasts at her back, a squadron of centaurs, or winged harpies to rain down Greek Fire on her enemies, they would not dare to treat her so. Where were the Old Narnians, her people?

If she was all that was left of Old Narnia, could she do less than fight?

When they briefly unshackled her, with the rest of the prisoners they meant to herd into pens at the sides of the auction building and then lead forward, one lot at a time to the auction block, she struck out.

She went first for the knees of the man who made to lead her. She knocked him down, and seized on the opening created by his fall; but the chains still present around her wrists threw her off balance, and she didn’t make it far from the line before being tackled down.

It hurt abominably when she hit the ground, but the shame, fear, and frustration of the failure were worse than the physical pain.

Now that the slavers knew she was more likely to crouch for an attack than to stand patiently at the auction-block, they took more care to ensure that she wasn’t going to have another opportunity to assert herself. She wasn’t going to be left loose in the pen with the others. “Too much of a risk,” Pug grunted, and waved to have her fastened to the horse-ring at the front of the room, used for the auctioning of livestock.

Shackled at wrists and ankles, dangling painfully from her upraised arms, Lucy could do nothing more than furiously witness the foul proceedings taking place before her.

Her eyes found Edmund in the crowd within the right-hand pen. Her brother, she saw, had kept his temper, and was tensed for whatever opening for action might appear. She was proud of him, and tried to tell him so with her eyes alone. Though it might soon be too late, he still had an opportunity to turn the tables on their captors. She knew he would take it if it came.

His eyes, in turn, conveyed to her his anguish at her vulnerable present position. She tried to look reassuringly resolute and grim, and broke the eye contact when she feared she might not be succeeding.

Would it have been better for her to have kept her head down, stayed compliant a little longer, perhaps even let them show her off as desirable goods for sale? She shuddered at the thought. Whether it would have been better or not, she couldn’t do it. There was no good in wishing otherwise.

In that way, at least, she was like Peter, not like Edmund or Susan. Brash brave rushers-in, not clever diplomatic wait-and-seers. Susan might have done a better job of getting through this adventure than she herself seemed likely to manage.

Would she ever see Peter and Susan again? This might even be, horrible to think, her last sight of Edmund, of even stupid cousin Eustace.

As the true danger of her situation fully hit home, she wondered, with an edge of despair, if Caspian was lost to her now forever, when she didn’t even really know what it might mean to her to have found him in the first place.

She prayed, silent, looking up, out. O, Aslan, let it not have all been for this. Don’t let this be the end. Without power to act, she had only hard fate left.

Then, appallingly, Edmund was sold. He looked tense and miserable as they tugged him away and to one side, controlling him by a rope looped through his shackled wrists. But he was not taken away, not quite yet. Hope wasn’t yet completely extinguished.

When it was her turn at the block, they didn’t try to move her from where she was secured and bound, but simply gestured to her where she hung and started the bidding. It didn’t take long. Once she’d been purchased and paid for, she was left bound and hanging, now at the convenience of her buyer.

Not the same buyer as the one who had taken Edmund. Reepicheep was bundled off separately, as well.

There was poor Eustace, nearing the block now, looking mulish and sulky. He was a bore, her cousin Scrubb, but he didn’t deserve what was happening to him.

No one deserved this. It shouldn’t be happening This was the sort of thing they’d fought to chase out of Old Narnia, when they’d broken the Witch’s cold fascistic rule. All should be free, to pursue life in their own fashion, and none should own another.

As Queen Lucy, she had owned very little, her life supported as a sacrament by a dizzying array of freed peoples. It had been her task to learn all the different ways of their lives, and to understand how they, too, created meaning through daily exercise of free will and choice.

Now, she had been sold as a slave. So would all those men, women, and beasts co-captured with her. And she hung, powerless, twisting, from the chains around her wrists. It was not to be borne!

Her heart, which had despaired after her failed escape before the slave market, re-kindled within her, burning rage as fuel when hope was sparse. Eyes blazing, she raised her head from where she had let it drop – and saw light breaking at the far end of the auction house, like dawn at the end of night.

The doors had been thrown open wide, with a great booming sound, and gold was entering in: the glint of the gold of the sun, the noonday dazzle reflecting off of Caspian’s gleaming armor, echoed again in his sun-blazoned banner. From outside the doors came the jingle and stamp of horses. Armed men, with Caspian at their head, came harrowing in to the slave market.

Lucy nearly swooned as she understood in a flash that she would not have to face the utmost extremity, not at the present time. They were rescued. Reunited. It would be all right. Her wrists hurt more than she could have dreamed possible, and she ached where the slavers had thrown her down as she’d tried to escape.

Then Caspian and Edmund were both there at her side, supporting her body as they released her bonds, her manacles falling before a swing of Caspian’s sword. She opened her eyes, and saw Caspian’s face, serious as a storm of thunder, ready to rain down lightning bolts on any who would oppose him.

He clasped her freed hands tightly in his own, and then bent a little to press a brief kiss to her forehead. She shivered as a chill ran through her, and then found that she could breathe easier.

She should not have doubted. Of course a true King of Narnia would have defeated the corruption of this dreadful commerce, and come piercing through with cleansing power. If she was one of Aslan’s chosen monarchs, Caspian was the same, bearing the same oaths, buoyed by the same faith.

There was work yet to do, and so the past and present monarchs did not delay long. They still had to find the others, collect Eustace and Reepicheep, and manage the final closing-down of the market and its terrible trade.

Chapter Text

There was a great deal to do yet in the Lone Islands, especially when it came to finding safe harbor for all the recently freed people who had been enslaved, many of whom were far from their homes and families.

“Let it be clear that we personally advocate for these victims of the slave trade,” Edmund argued to Caspian and Lord Bern. “It was in Narnian dominions that the trade was allowed to proliferate, and we must make reparations to all those who suffered. The Duke must support repatriation for those who desire it, and settlement for those who wish to begin a new life here in the Lone Islands.”

“Agreed,” Caspian said. “Fully agreed. Queen Lucy, could you and King Edmund draft a Royal Writ establishing all to which Pug’s past and present victims are entitled, from Our Government? I’d only ask you to review anything I put together, or the work of anyone else here. You’ve the most experience as rulers of any of us, and are worthy of both our deep trust and high faith.”

That clever phrasing won him a smile from Lucy, which was in turn returned, brightened, back to her.

It was late morning, the same morning as the one that had dawned over Lucy, Edmund, Eustace, and Reepicheep in the dank hold of the slavers’ ship. But how the day had turned!

All had reassembled for a breakfast-cum-luncheon at the newly-christened Ducal residence. Since leaving the Narrowhaven slave market, all had had the chance to bathe and dress in clean, albeit borrowed, clothes. And Lucy’s hair had been washed, brushed, and braided.

As she’d dressed, Lucy had marveled anew at just how comfortable the loveliest Narnian garments looked, when one put them on. Wearing the long gown of blue belted with a golden braided cord reminded her of a woman she’d been, once long ago, when she’d grown up before. She’d been starting to see that face again in the mirror, and the Narnian garments, and perhaps the Narnian air, made her past self very real to her.

Lucy’s wrists still hurt, but salve and soft bandages were soothing them. Balm covered bruises beneath the soft clothes.

Edmund, too, was clean, and clad in fresh, clean, Narnian-style clothes. Seeing the well-laden table, he’d fallen to, and ate ravenously; and, as Lucy well knew, a hungry Edmund had taken no deep harm.

To all of their evident relief, Eustace had opted to retire for the morning, and try to have a sleep. None seemed to mind a bit of peace from that quarter, it had to be admitted.

Caspian – to Lucy, Caspian still looked radiant. He’d found the first of his father’s loyal men, and been recognized as his father’s true son, and had saved his friends and the other victims of the slave trade present in Narrowhaven, putting rest to all human trafficking in the Lone Islands. Confidence beamed from his bright face.

“Allow me to assist you with this task, sir, my lady,” Reepicheep said with a flourishing bow. “Draft a document? My penmanship is exquisite, all agree. I am your scribe!”

Warm, fed, amongst her companions, Lucy’s self-doubt flickered and went out. She did have some readily-actionable ideas. Caspian was right – she and Edmund did know rather a lot about this sort of thing.

One truth, above all, it was most important that all understand.

Nodding acceptance to Reepicheep, Lucy then smiled sweetly at kind Lord Bern, who smiled back. She told him, “You must believe in the good, the richness, of gaining people for your islands. Believe in it with your heart, as you believe in Aslan himself. People who know suffering and injustice. People who live differently from yourself. I remember the Lone Islands being more diversely peopled, when first my brothers and sister and I added them to the Narnian empire. This could be a first step at reclaiming the place’s true nature. It is my wish and hope, Lord Duke.”

Bern looked a little taken aback at the steel that rang behind her honey-toned words. Her conviction was passionate, her mien regal. The kindly Telmarine man had not expected such an aura of power from the fair young girl, though he had heard of her before in legends.

Caspian, leaning nearer, reminded him of those very tales, saying, “She comes from an older kingdom than mine.”

“Much older,” Edmund added dryly, clowning in his sardonic way to lighten the suddenly laden atmosphere. “So old ….”

“Well,” Lucy said, reaching for more gleaming toast with jam, “I don’t feel old.”

*

She didn’t feel old, it was true. She never really had felt old, although she’d been many ages, some of them quite a bit older than her current adolescing form.

If anything could have left her feeling old, the violence and trauma of enslavement might have done it. Certainly the spirit that had awoken in her in the moment of danger was, Lucy knew, part of her former life, her life before she’d been back to being a schoolgirl again. Not stuck visiting family, or bored and dreaming during lessons, but striking out with knife, claws, and faith for freedom, for justice, for her people, for what was right.

Coming back to Narnia meant taking on a mantle of majesty. She felt, not old, not young, but Queen again.

Once they’d had their fill to eat, vellum (more common than parchment in the sheep-keeping islands) was sent for, with pens and ink as well, and the Governor’s – now the Ducal – Seal; and Lucy set to the task of composing a writ for the rights and establishment of peoples in Narnian domains dispossessed through enslavement, troubleshooting her emerging plans with Edmund as she worked, just as they’d used to do in the “old days”; and Reepicheep, in accordance with his offer, produced the final document with all the required and proper flourishes.

*

Duke Bern and his wife hosted King Caspian and his party that night for feasting. Before the festivities began, the Duchess in private gave Lucy another gown to wear, this one of sea-green silk, more finely sewn and embellished than the soft blue woolen, saying that it had been made over for Lucy from a garment she’d worn herself as a young bride.

The Duchess also shyly offered Lucy her family tiara to wear that evening. It had been given to her as a wedding gift by Bern, who had had it created from gems and gold from the Narnian treasury that he had brought with him into exile.

Lucy accepted with gratitude, but gasped when she saw the coronet in its velvet box. She recognized the square-cut aquamarine stone at its center immediately. How could she not? Susan had so often worn it as a brooch. It had been a gift from the river-nymphs, who found many rare stones in the rich alluvial soils along the banks. She had used to marvel at how it had shone at her sister the Queen’s throat.

“It’s beautiful,” she told the Duchess. “And this stone comes from a high history in the royal treasury of Narnia.”

“I mean to pass the tiara on to my oldest daughter, when she’s wed,” the Duchess said. “We’d be honored if you’d wear it tonight, Your Majesty.”

*

Caspian knew that he was yet a younger man than his authority. At sixteen, barely more than a boy, he posed as a confident king of twice his years. It was satisfying, often. It had delighted his spirit to turn the tables on Governor Gumpas and repay patronization with a show of real power. He had so disliked the lying, patronizing ways of adults when he’d been small: Miraz and the court that had known terrible secrets about his family’s past, but bullied him as a child anyway, so that his ideas and loyalties had been twisted over on themselves, grown self-betraying and self-blaming by the time he was at the threshold of manhood.

When the ancient kings and queens had first come to his aid in reclaiming the rule of Narnia, the boy he had been had looked at those other children with worship and admiration. They were then as he aspired to be: still a child, but a king in deed as well as in name, as well.

In the years when he’d ruled alone, without a queen at his side, his thoughts had strayed sometimes to those other children who had also been rulers, the young Queens in particular.

Caspian could not, although he did his best, entirely disguise his response to Queen Lucy appearing in the Duke of the Long Island’s dining room, if not in her own royal regalia, clad yet as a Narnian lady of wealth and rank. She entered on her brother the king’s arm, her gown and jewels matching the glow of the dusky sea, visible yet through the room’s large windows, and Caspian’s heart beat faster in response.

Attired this in Narnian fashion, crowned with a gemmed coronet, Lucy, as he saw her, was beautiful in the way of a wave on the sea, or a star in the heavens: confident and rooted in the precepts of her power. The majesty and true wisdom, the other face of the merry, wild creature who sailed adventuring at a fellow’s side like any other compatriot, showed clear.

Caspian wished he had her mastery of those paradoxes. In truth, since Edmund and Lucy had returned to Narnia, joining him on his voyage of exploration, thoughts of Lucy enthroned as Queen once more in the rebuilt hall of Cair Paravel had come to haunt his dreams more than once.

“Your Majesties,” he managed to say, standing and bowing before pulling out the chair beside his own for Lucy.

“Here, safe and sound, thanks to Your Majesty,” Lucy said, and Caspian’s heart was gratified.

*

Duke Bern watched his old friend’s son knowingly, well aware of the feeling that stirred the heart of the young King. And, the Duke saw, King Edmund also observed the immediate re-orientation of his sister and King Caspian, the one toward the other and the other toward the one.

Bern had no difficulty in understanding the lady’s appeal to his master’s son. She was lovely and brave, youthful and yet ageless. An unripe romance, perhaps, for a time. Both were young still. But a bud was there, waiting, perchance, to open into a rare and regal blossom.

At the end of the night, when all present were well-victualed and had drunk both wine and the earthy distilled spirits characteristic of the islands, Bern saw the fair-haired young King and the fair-haired young Queen linger over their good-nights, hands touching longer than need be for a single night’s farewell. When they went their respective ways, he saw each, in turn, glance back to where the other had gone, although not at the same time, so that, although Bern perceived them both, neither perceived the other.

In the days that followed, Duke Bern would observe with continued favor how deftly the lady navigated the work of advocating for the former slaves, partnering with both her brother King Edmund and the mouse Reepicheep to put together effective, well-reasoned proposals that she then ruthlessly advanced, arguing fiercely for what she thought was right.

The pile of drawn-up, signed and sealed decrees grew apace. Bern could well understand, then, how the kings and queens of old had been reckoned formidable, seeing the proof of how adroitly the youngest two alone were able to manage the tricky business at hand. And, he saw that King Caspian was not surprised at the lady’s competence.

What a pairing, he came think, the girl might make to his old friend’s son, if such a thing might come to pass. The twain could rule a land well between them.

*

As the crew of the Dawn Treader prepared to set sail once more, it was time for Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace to provision themselves better in the Narnian fashion. As Caspian ruefully admitted, it was not entirely desirable for them to keep encroaching on the sailors’ and Caspian’s own stores of clothing and weaponry.

Lucy sought for herself Narnian-style fine-woven linens to wear beneath her woolen gown, comfortable and loose-fitting enough so that she might run, fight, climb, or ride with ease. Edmund and Eustace also needed linens, and tunics and surcoats to put on over them, and Edmund would have to have a sword in proportion to his height.

Lucy took a pass on spending any more time in breeches and tunics herself, but did pack away a Calormene-style pair of loose trousers and a high-cut chemise bodice she’d been able to purchase in Narrowhaven Port, thinking that, if the climes they sailed into were to grow much warmer, it might be good to get out from under all those layers of wool. She’d often worn similar styles in the Narnian high summer, before, and in the times when she’d traveled in Calormen.

Too, Lucy looked for a knife. She had keenly felt the lack of a dagger at her side in Pug’s dank hold, and she didn’t want to be caught out without a weapon again. In the Duke’s armory, she found a small, sharp stiletto with a pearl handle that balanced well in her hand, and a well-fitted sheath that she could wear around her waist or her thigh as circumstances required.

She debated the idea of another knife as a gift for Eustace. Might it help him feel less helpless, and be braver instead of always sulking? She decided against it. She wasn’t entirely sure that he wouldn’t get into some horrid trouble by tormenting someone smaller, but more valorous (such as Reepicheep), with any weapon she might give him.

And, at any rate, it was no good having a knife if you didn’t know how to use it.

Chapter Text

The adventure of the Lone Islands was nobly survived by all the voyagers of the Dawn Treader, but none of them, time and distance showed, was wholly unchanged by the experience.

The further they sailed out into open waters, the more stark the human and social dangers of their encounters became. All the young royals had nearly been sold at the slave market. Caspian had been sold, in truth, and it was only through the grace of Aslan that Lord Bern, and not some worser man, had been his purchaser.

For herself, Lucy had been violently separated from her brother and cousin, unwillingly transferred into the custody of her new master, and been forced to begin to reckon with the fate awaiting her. And, even back aboard the dragon-headed ship, she found that she could not shake a sense of deep foreboding, even as the Lone Islands receded to a speck, and then nothing, behind their stern.

The encounter had left her deeply troubled. She utterly abhorred to think that such practices as slave-taking and slave-selling took place within the ancient reach of their Narnian Empire. It had not been supposed to be like that, after the fall of the Witch and the end of the Winter. How had things gone so wrong in her best-beloved world, which once had seemed so set-to-rights? Internally, she could not rest.

The others were little better. Eustace was whining and intolerable, Caspian diligent and focused, Edmund serious and supervisory. Drinian and his crew hovered around their passengers more than usual after the stress and relief of losing and then regaining the young royals – although, admittedly, few aboard were fond of Eustace in his own person. But losing him would have been a grief, all the same, and the spectre of loss was a hard haunt to shake.

*

In the open sea, they started to find the rhythm of life again. A ship at sea has her periods of intense activity, but you also find yourself possessor of much time for respite and leisure, and, away from land, you don’t measure that time in hours.

More and more of the time, when the ship’s work lulled, Caspian could be found in Lucy’s company. They often sat together at the rail on the ship’s foredeck, where they were out of the way, and could watch the horizon in its neverending approach, as well as look down into the waters passing alongside.

And, in time, Lucy opened her mind to Caspian, telling him about what she’d seen in the Lone Islands, and what had troubled her so about it.

“Before,” she said, “The islands were very different. There were all the islanders: merfolk, Talking Gulls, Herons, and local giants, visiting Seals, and other creatures, so the islands’ governance was filled with vigorous challenges. Narnia’s strength is in her Beasts and creatures. In the trees, the rivers, the centaurs, the giants. The mermaids. I do not believe that the state of affairs we found there, with the slave trade become a rotten center to the whole government, would have come to pass back then.”

“Alas, lady,” Caspian answered solemnly, “I fear you are right, and that Narnia is not yet restored to her former glory, as I would have her be.”

“It really was glorious.” Lucy’s voice was dreamy, remembering the past. “All the festivals, and learning the different ways and governments of the creatures and beings. Coming to Narnia – well, you remember that, in the world where Peter and Susan and Edmund and I were born, there are no other creatures that can speak in words that humans understand, none at all? Narnia was so full of speech! Everyone spoke to us; and that meant that we listened to all. It was what we were there for, I always thought. Because we came from England, we saw what a miracle Narnia was, and championed her the better for it.”

Caspian smiled, to hear her speak with such joy. And he told her, “I think, in that, Queen Lucy, that your experience and my own are much alike, though I was born in this world, and have never traveled to any other. But yet, in my boyhood, I knew men who had lived whole lives in Narnia and spoken to none but men and women. My father, I reflect, lived in that way, and was a king of men alone.vIndeed, as a child, I was mocked and upbraided by my elders for believing such children’s fancies. Talking Beasts, and you yourself, and your royal brothers and sister, were beings of myth, not taken seriously by men of power.”

“In England, you know,” Lucy told him, “It’s terrible, so silent and so lonely. And then, too, we’re terrible even to other human beings who only speak a different language, or have other gods or festivals or ways of doing things. I would never want that for Narnia. Narnia should always be full of joyful noise, and the speech of many beings.”

“Since Aslan and your brother Peter made me King of Narnia, I’ve seen more marvels than I ever could have dreamed of. Yet, many Narnians have grown used to silence from the King, and I cannot order them to speak to me – though I dearly wish they would.”

She listened seriously, with her whole attention, and Caspian found himself growing voluble in response, words thronging to his lips to tell her of his thoughts, his fears. “Even my court is, as yet, a very human one,” he confessed. “The Old Peoples today are still fewer in number than human beings, and many yet dwell apart in their own enclaves, having no concourse with the wider world. It is difficult to learn their ways, and some are loath to accept Telmarine rule, even if sanctioned by Aslan.

“I have to say, I see their point. For, though I myself am a great and steadfast lover of Old Narnia, and have been even before I knew the truth of the old tales, and though I have myself stood defiant as Narnia’s champion even against my own people, yet still, as I know all too well, I am of Telmarine blood, heir first of Telmarine royalty, only granted rightful kinghood of Narnia by Aslan’s grace.”

“It’s not as simple as humans on the one side, and Talking Beasts on the other. We came to learn, my brothers and sister and I, that there had been humans in Narnia since the beginning. Many had died during the Witch’s Winter, but some had fled to other realms, and were waiting it out in Archenland or Calormen. Perhaps more of Old Narnia thrives in hiding than you realize,” Lucy suggested.

“Just so,” Caspian agreed. “By leaving your old friend the dwarf Trumpkin at Cair Paravel as regent, I mean to make an opening through which some of the hidden folk that are still thought to live in the forests and inaccessible shores might emerge to make themselves known. In my own person, I seem to impede those efforts, or at least to make little help or headway forward. Hence, my journey on the Dawn Treader to mend the wrongs done my father’s men; redress the past, when the present is beyond your grasp. It is not always best for a King to seek to actively command. Trust must be earned with patience and time, that much I know.”

He sighed, leaning back on his palms to look up at the sky, where the sun setting behind them was turning the clouds all to pink and golden candy floss.

“What do I truly know of the rich, strange world that you mourn, lady? I fear that I only nurture a shadow of your former realm, and I am still fighting uphill to understand and serve all the needs of my Narnians. Is there yet enough of Old Narnia left to be brought back to full bloom? I can only hope.”

Talking of hopes and fears together, in sympathy and comradeship, truly did help to ease both hearts.

*

In addition to time spent talking with Queen Lucy, Caspian was making a conscious effort to cultivate the friendship of King Edmund. If Caspian had been starstruck with the High King Peter, when first they’d met, he’d learned since their recent adventures not to devalue Edmund, either as a monarch, warrior, strategist, or ally. Edmund was perceptive, and you wanted him on your side. And, as Caspian’s interest in Lucy waxed and grew, he though how much he wanted to avoid Edmund’s opposition or personal disfavor.

Away from sight of land, the open sea was chancy, and the weather could not always make for good sailing. When a great storm blew up, followed by a long and dreadful becalming, all were tested. As Caspian discovered once again, to his benefit and great relief, both Edmund and Lucy knew a thing or two about hopeless situations and tricky pinches. It was good to have Pevensies on your side when things were going wrong.

In the worst of it, suffering terribly from thirst and struggling against despair, Caspian yet found cause for pride in how well he and Edmund were working together to lead them all through the crisis, working together as smoothly as though they’d been a team for many years.

The awful thing of it was, Caspian saw quite clearly how his next blunder arose from his own fatuous self-satisfaction and self-absorption. They’d none of them been paying nearly enough attention to Eustace Clarence Scrubb. Caspian himself had hardly wanted to think about the wretched fellow, after the appalling incident in the ship’s small watches with the attempted theft of water rations.

Once they managed to limp their way to landfall, Caspian and Edmund had partnered on the logistics of the ship’s refitting. Lucy and Reepicheep were to manage the layout, creation, and operation of the beachside encampment. And, as if he hadn’t already made himself enough of a bother, Eustace seemed to have gotten himself lost as soon as they’d come ashore.

They didn’t realize it until Lucy missed him at the meal call on the first night ashore.

For some hours, torches bobbed along the beach, and calls for Eustace echoed without reply.

They would all have mourned a man lost, even such an unwelcome comrade as Eustace. But, Caspian had to admit, the thing that really ate at him was the way that Edmund and Lucy both went paler and quieter with tension as each of the hours of the evening went by with no sign of their cousin.

Brother and sister sat apart, and spoke to each other in hushed voices about Harold and Alberta, and what on earth they’d say if they managed to get bloody Scrubb killed or lost forever, when they eventually got back home again.

Their other world and its concerns pulled the Pevensies away from the Narnians, Caspian included. Caspian felt it quite keenly, and felt himself a fool for his feelings. Of course their first thought was for home and kinsmen. If Eustace couldn’t be found, would it mean the end of their adventuring together?

It would take time to accomplish all that needed doing for the Dawn Treader to be ready to set sail once more, and so they had a little while before decisions needed to be made. It was a sort of suspended period, each evening hanging more heavily, the minutes seeming to come more and more slowly, but without any immediate or apparent threat. Caspian tried not to fret, and not to share his fretting with Edmund or Lucy, who at least had good cause for such emotions.

*

When, miraculously, improbably, Eustace appeared in the form of a massive dragon at the sea’s edge it was like a sign from Aslan himself. And, when Scrubb appeared on the dawn-lit beach, human and humbled, he told them the tale of how Aslan had intervened directly in the disenchantment.

It buoyed them up, to a man, a mouse, and Lucy, to receive such clear proof that Aslan was at their side, and that they had his continued blessing on their voyage. Into the bargain, they had clear evidence of the end of another of the seven missing Narnian lords – a sad end, evidently, but it was known, now, and the Lord Octesian's honorable memory could be told and celebrated. Caspian was very nearly elated, when they set sail again from Dragon Island. The following weeks would be a golden era in his memory ever afterward.

They had now come through dangers and trials, surviving the cruelty of both man and the sea. Too, the Dawn Treader was in good repair and thoroughly re-provisioned with plenty of fresh water and new-caught fish, to make no mention of the meat and fruit stores that were presently drying in the galley.

And there was delightful free-tongued and open speech and camaraderie uniting Caspian with both the Pevensies, who he was gladder than ever to have aboard. Caspian was quite sure now he could count on Edmund, esteeming him the brother-king he’d always wanted and never had; his wide-ranging conversations and shared patient watching by the beachside with Lucy had deepened the bond between them, as well.

Now, as the ship reached away on the brisk wind further and further away from known lands and out into strange seas, her course due easterly, Lucy’s spirits seemed to lift, rising to meet the unknown wave. The ship bounded forward hummingly, joyfully, going without hesitation toward the horizon.

Indeed, even sad or distressing escapades like the discovery of the lone surviving coracle at Burnt Island, or their brief harrowing danger in the coils of the Sea Serpent, could clearly be seen to charge and energize Lucy and Edmund, and even, increasingly, Eustace. You could very nearly see the adventures working on them, helping them grow and stretch, and become themselves, and change for the better.

Scrubb, it was certain, was a far more pleasant shipmate than he’d been previously. It was more and more common to find Eustace and Reepicheep in one another’s company, as the two became fast friends. Reep was teaching Eustace how to handle a sword, to the others’ amusement and Edmund’s somewhat-feigned dismay.

“He’ll kill us all, just you wait,” Edmund said, observing the instruction as it progressed apace across the foredeck. But there was not much bite in his voice, and it was clear enough that he saw the transformation taking place in his cousin.

Indeed, when Caspian questioned Edmund one day, as they sat baling unused ropes into clean and usable coils, about how wholly he seemed willing to embrace the rehabilitated Eustace, Edmund said to him, very seriously, “You don’t really understand, perhaps, just how bad I was before meeting Aslan myself.”

Caspian indicated that he should go on, and Edmund explained, “You must know that I tried to betray my sisters and brother to the White Witch. You likely don’t know that, when Lucy and I had first found a way into Narnia, I betrayed her by lying to Peter and Susan, pretending that she was crazy, and just making it all up for attention. I thank heaven now that they believed her more than me. If not, I would not be the person I am today. Who knows what could have happened to Lucy, if she kept insisting on such an impossible-sounding tale? In comparison to that, Scrubb’s not been so bad. And I’m the living proof that even a traitor can mend.”

Caspian knew, all too well, what could happen to children who spoke too freely of the true tales they believed in. And, too, he remembered how he had, all unwillingly, betrayed his nurse to Miraz.

He had not understood, when Lucy had spoken to him of her first coming to Narnia, that she had been under that terrible adult pressure of disbelief. In truth, they had been more deeply alike in those experiences than he’d realized.

After that, it was easier for him to approach Eustace with an open mind, accepting the English boy as a comrade and potential friend in his own right, not just as the claimed family of the friends he already knew were his to keep.

Caspian could not very well be much kinder or more attentive to Lucy than was already his wont; but understanding how she’d stood up to scorn and doubt, even from her own family, made him value her valiant spirit all the more, and listen to her the more intently when she spoke.

If only, Caspian thought to himself sometimes as he fell asleep to the small sounds of Edmund and Eustace shifting about in their hammocks, he might keep them all as his companions in the flesh, as well as in spirit. It was good to have true kindred about him, something that he’d always lacked in his life before. He hated to think that they would all go home to that other place sometime sooner or later, and leave him behind to struggle on alone.

Chapter Text

It all nearly fell apart on the place they came, later on, to call by the name of Deathwater Island.

Caspian wanted to hide his face in his hands when he thought of it. How he could have –

Well. To begin at the beginning.

It had been a fine day when they’d anchored near the island, and their Majesties had decided to go exploring ashore. All had been in high spirits, enjoying the sun and the breeze off the sea. And adventure had found them quickly enough, in the form of a mysteriously abandoned suit of Narnian armor, alone and empty under the open sky.

Clouds started gathering as they spotted the statue submerged in a nearby rocky pool, shifting rays of dappled light showing golden through the water. Edmund had been the first to realize the transmutative properties of the water. Like the tonic sought by alchemists, it would turn anything placed in it to purest, solid gold.

With inward horror, Caspian felt the ghost of his forefathers’ hands reached up to grab his throat, their voices commandeering his voice. He was like a sleepwalker, or a drunken man, not in control of his own actions, but still terribly culpable for them, all the same. Alas for his better self!

Peremptorily, swaggeringly, he laid absolute personal claim to the newly-discovered, otherworldly source of infinite riches. He watched himself inwardly in horror as he tried to exercise command over Edmund and Lucy, who he knew to be higher royalty than himself.

He’d lost his mind, or so it felt to him once they were gone from that terrible place, and the insanity cleared.

Caspian might have known that he couldn’t be trusted in that kind of position. Speaking, he sounded to himself just like Miraz, or like one of Miraz’s plotting, grasping lords. It was everything he had hoped never to be, when he’d discovered that he could be king of the Old Narnians, instead of heir to his own grasping and avaricious ancestors.

Edmund flared up then, asserting dominance against the attempt to dominate. Later, Caspian thought it only fair. But, at the time, it was unfortunate flame added to oil, with the of result sad conflagration.

“You’ve no claim over me, Pretender. I was King of Narnia before you. To think I’ve been tolerating your closeness with the Queen my sister. You’re nothing but a turncoat Telmarine, and she’s well rid of you, or will be soon, when we get back to England.”

Caspian had thought himself ready for the conflict, but he had not, he realized, been prepared. Caught off guard, scarcely thinking, he found his hand at the hilt of his sword, an instinctive response to a perceived violent attack.

He was losing his grip on everything that mattered, and he knew it was all his own fault, but he couldn’t seem to stop his own awful forward momentum.

It felt like this moment could very well come to the end of his friendship with these last remaining members of the kings and queens of old, the end of their favoring him and his rule, and perhaps end it forever. Lucy might turn against him; indeed was already turning against him as soon as he put pressure on her to support him and his aims. How could he forgive her? How could she ever forgive him?

*

Lucy had been thinking, on the cliff by the sea, how lovely Caspian was, coming out of youth and into young manhood. Fair of face he was, and fair of body, with golden curls atop a lithe figure; tall but not over-tall, possessed of a regal confidence of bearing that suited him greatly, but also with a tempting humor visible at the corners of his eyes and mouth.

As she looked at that mouth, dappled in the filtered sunlight of an island afternoon, she found herself nearly imagining what it might be like to kiss it. Not quite thinking it, but with the idea hovering persistently at the periphery of her mind, just waiting for an opening.

He was such a Narnian young man, and had been such a Narnian boy-king when first she’d met him, at least in her eyes. He had told her of his very Telmarine childhood, raised in denial of Narnia and her history, her Beasts and her creatures, when first they’d met, and had filled in the picture with details here and there in their continued acquaintance. But, she was aware, she still saw him as ineluctably Narnian, not Telmarine at all. Which, to some degree, was not inaccurate. It was what Aslan had seen in the then-Prince Caspian, that had led him to elevate the child from Telmarine pretender heir to rightful ruler of Narnia.

She valued Aslan’s valuation highly, and was used to looking at the world through the great Lion’s eyes when in search of what was right. It had not often failed her before.

But, standing over the deadly pool on this island, which he had just claimed with the name of “Goldwater Island,” Caspian’s handsome face twisted and grew ugly, heavy, ignoble. He looked like an unpleasant rich boy who might lord it over you on the high street in London, blocking your way maliciously as you did your best to only get by and get clearly away.

He jibed at Edmund, and Edmund grew remote, kingly, in a decidedly unpleasant way, in response. That was horrible, too, Lucy thought: Edmund in his most snide diplomatic aspect. He’d used that tone against her, more than once, in Narnia and in England both. It was the voice he used when he meant to bully his way to victory, if his rhetoric didn’t get him there fast enough. Edmund really had been a great deal worse than Eustace, and could be, still.

She heard her own voice come shrill and shrieking, accusing both boys, but without grace or persuasiveness. She was only ranting childishly, and it wasn’t going to be good enough to snap either her brother or their friend out of whatever it was that had gripped them all.

She laughed, then, understanding fully at last that she, too, was affected by the curse of the island.

They were all going mad, tearing pieces off of each other instead of cohering together as leaders and teammates. And, if she couldn’t regain control over herself, what hope was there for Edmund or Caspian, who she knew to both be possessed of deep streaks of temper?

The only hope, in the end, was to be found in Aslan. When all saw the great Lion pacing the far grey hilltop, the downward spiral was broken.

Feeling profound relief at finding a foothold to stop her slide down into blame and rage, Lucy shrank inwardly with shame at how far she’d gone off the handle. She could see shame in Edmund’s face, too.

But Caspian’s head was turned away, his face concealed. Lucy could only try to read the tension in the taut curve of his twisting shoulders, and guess that he was having just as hard of a time coming to terms with what had nearly happened, and what had been needed to avert worser possibilities, as she and her brother were.

*

They did not linger long, after that, on Deathwater Island. Through the merciful enchantment of Aslan, the memory of what had occurred at the side of the golden pool was fading fast from the minds of all present, Lucy’s included. But though she could no longer remember why, Lucy was quite sure that some terrible fissure had split Caspian from her, Caspian from Edmund, and herself from Edmund. The nauseous aftermath of deep conflict appeared on all three faces.

Once the Dawn Treader was out in the open sea again, it was time to see what repairs might be made.

It was easy enough for Lucy to make up with Edmund. Their bond had been shaken much more fundamentally, and rebounded. Sheepish mutual acknowledgement of having been an ass, of not having helped matters ranting on like that, was enough, and the siblings could move forward, bolstered by mutual forgiveness.

Making up with Caspian was more challenging. Edmund couldn’t seem to manage it, and he and Caspian stalked long-legged like competing cocks around each other, dodging outright conflict but not able to settle into the old camaraderie.

And, even after leaving Deathwater Island far behind them, Caspian still wouldn’t meet Lucy’s eyes. They had been disillusioned with each other for the first time.

There were so many ways in which they were similar, she and Caspian. Both had been children open to belief, sure of Aslan and Old Narnia when others had doubted, burdened by that doubt and the impotence of being young.

And Aslan had set them both free to do their work. Lucy had known, when Aslan made her a Queen of Narnia, that it was the thing she had most wanted to do, and be, all her life, without ever knowing it before. When they had first met Caspian, hiding in Aslan’s How, she’d thought she heard that same surety in his childish voice, and had taken him seriously as an equal from that moment forward.

Had she been wrong, in that time before? Years had gone by since they’d last met, for both of them. Caspian had enjoyed the freedom given a king, and she’d been shut up in boarding school. That bitter thought made her pull a face. She disliked her school, where she was sure the other girls gossiped about her behind her back.

If she’d been immured in England, Caspian had been greatly empowered in Narnia. She’d seen the beneficent face of that, when he had swept into Narrowhaven in a dazzle of splendor and glory and, with only a few men at his back, purged the Lone Islands of patronizing, smooth-talking adults. It had reminded her of the time when she and Susan had ridden on Aslan’s back, and seen his liberation of Narnia from oppressive Telmarine ways.

Perhaps there was a more malevolent face to King Caspian, tenth of his name, scion of Telmar.

Lucy had always felt very strongly that Narnia and her people ought to be as free as possible, liberated in every way she could bring to pass, unyoked from unwanted burden or enforced bondage. It was Aslan’s way, as she had learned it from him: to break all bonds and fetters. She followed devotedly in that path.

Was Caspian as truly dedicated to that same cause? Perhaps he only didn’t wish to be subject to the yoke himself, but was happy enough to drive others.

Too, as the days and the waves passed by, Lucy found herself haunted by fears of returning to England. Had it comes up, somehow, while they were on Deathwater? The knowledge that it might happen at any time made a lump come to her throat. What if they were transported away from Narnia while she and Caspian were on the outs? Horrible thought. And, now that she came to think about it, it was going to be awfully sad and hard to leave. Like losing Tumnus all over again. In some ways, perhaps, worse.

The worst of it all was that, as she knew too well, she might not end up having much, or any, of a say in the matter.

Chapter Text

All aboard the Dawn Treader could see the uneasiness between Their Majesties. But, as Drinian comforted Eustace, “They’re likely to work things out, in time.”

*

Caspian’s days felt, to him, balanced on a paper-thin edge ‘twixt hope and despair, and ever leading him further and further out to sea.

He had set sail from Narnia to seek his father’s friends, and honorable adventure, and, at first, fortune had been with him in those ends. He knew not why the English children had come to him again, when Narnia did not seem imperiled; but he had been joy-filled to see them, and their presence had considerably brightened and enriched his voyage.

Edmund had become one of the greatest friends he’d ever had in his life. He’d watched Eustace start to come into his own. And Lucy … Lucy was, by now, all wrapped around his heart, his love for her a great growing vine that filled him up and pushed him out toward he knew not what.

Since Deathwater Island, she had been withdrawn more and more into her own thoughts, and it troubled him dearly.

*

Lucy was quite sure, when Caspian asked deferentially, at a time when she was sitting there alone, if he might enter the cabin to retrieve his woolen overtunic, which he thought might be stored there, that the pretext was a ruse.

The daytime temperature had been getting warmer and warmer each day, becoming quite balmy of late, so none were likely to be in need of heavier garb. Indeed, only that morning she had herself put aside her woolen gown to don the summerweight shirt and blousing trousers she’d brought from the Lone Islands.

A few short days ago, she reflected, her heart would have leapt at a chance to be alone with Caspian. Indeed, it still did so; but now there was anxiety, as well as pleasure, in her anticipation. Still, she granted his request, and braced herself.

He came in, and she saw his face for only a moment before he was bent-headed on his knees in front of her. The ship rocked and moved steadily beneath them.

“My Queen,” he said, voice muffled, “I come to beg your pardon.”

“Yes,” she said, not yet making any motion to raise him up or move to him.

“My memory is unwontedly vague,” he admitted, “but I feel sure that I have erred in trying to command where I ought rather to have obeyed.”

Still kneeling, he bowed to her, more deeply and more abjectly than was his wont. “Please, My Queen. Through the grace of Aslan I serve you, and the High King your brother. I do not command you. I do not wish to command you. Know that I do not think you subject to my authority.”

“I don’t want to make too much of an error,” Lucy said, holding out against his abjection as best she could, “but I won’t stand for that sort of thing, and I need you to know it. Your people are used to ordering women around, even queens.”

“It’s difficult, charting the right course when so many wrong choices are more familiar. That’s an explanation, but not an excuse.” He looked up at her, then, and his eyes tore at her heart. “Do you forgive me?” he asked, with a genuine break in his voice.

She stood, and, taking his hands, drew her friend up to his feet. So raised, he was very near. He pressed her hands between his own, entwining them and then clasping them close to his heart.

Lucy suddenly felt rather dizzy, for all the world as though she did not have excellent sea legs. “I forgive you,” she said.

He sighed, and, through the places where their bodies were connected, she felt the tension leave him.

“Sometimes it makes me afraid,” he said, confessing, “how little I can command you, dear Lucy. Any other, I could request – or entreat – or – ”

As he spoke, his voice grew progressively lower, hoarser.

She reached up one hand to touch his face. He leaned into her palm, closing his eyes, and swallowed hard.

“It’s better, I think,” he rasped out, “to give up command, with those you – love. Not the way of my forefathers, but – better.”

Lucy understood well enough what it was that charged the air between them. She had been letting it happen. She’d encouraged it, when she’d caressed him in more than friendly fashion. She could encourage it even more.

If she leaned closer and kissed him, it would not be her first kiss. Nor her second, nor her third. Lucy had grown up once already before, fully and as a Narnian Queen; had experienced wild nights with fauns and naiads, and knew the ways of the Talking Beasts, who approached the physical act of love with more earthy practicality than her mother or mother’s mother had even done.

It wasn’t ignorance that made her hesitate and hang back, ultimately, but knowledge, and doubt.

It was one thing to forgive Caspian, as a friend. Becoming entangled with him as more than a friend was more serious. That was the sort of thing that could change the whole path of a life, and she oughtn’t to let that happen lightly.

Not only was Lucy not a little girl; she was also not a heedless youth, inexperienced and willing to be swept away by the first deep tides of adult passions. She was brave, yes, but she’d also learned some wisdom.

She had to be very sure of things, before she fully let herself think of Caspian as a lover. And, while he seemed to know the words of the lesson of humility well enough, she had seen too much evidence to the contrary that the practice was still a work in progress for him.

She wasn’t sure enough. And she had no surety to give him, either. It might yet be that she wouldn’t be able to stay much longer. It might not be worth the harm to both their hearts.

“Yes,” she said. “I think that’s better, too.” She stepped back, putting more distance between them.

To his lasting credit, Caspian, sensitive to the shift in her, let go her hands and made his excuses with courtesy and grace. He left with nothing more than he’d come in with, and a last, deep, unsarcastic bow.

*

Drinian, watching the young king pacing the foredeck alone in the twilight that night, thought to himself that things weren’t mended yet. It was a pity for the young king, though perhaps it was a boon, as well.

Better, perhaps, for the lad to take a lady as his queen that he couldn’t shift about with his every will and whim, despite his winning ways.

*

When next the Dawn Treader made landfall, all their majesties were much occupied with inward thoughts, and spoke little as they left the ship.

Caspian was on his best behavior. He wanted, more than anything, to show himself worthy of the forgiveness he’d been granted. He feared, indeed, that over-eagerness might betray him into failure. He knew that he must go on with care. When he offered Lucy his arm, walking up the beach, and she took it, he tried not to show how deeply it thrilled him.

Edmund saw it, though, and remembered what it had been like, growing up the first time, as they’d taken lovers, pursued individual pasttimes, and shed the inseparable bond of childhood for something looser, more elastic and resilient, sustainable in the face of distance and silences.

Really, he thought, one of them was bound to end up in love with Caspian, if not Lucy than Susan, or even he himself ….

But he was wretched about it, all the same. He’d checked his own interest in Caspian, when he’d felt stirrings toward his fellow king in their companionship. He’d judged it not worth the heartache.

It wasn’t like the first time, or at least, he didn’t think it was. Somehow, it was clear deep down inside that they weren’t here to stay. He and Lucy and Eustace were not going to grow up, or grow old, in Narnia this time. They would be sent back to England, sooner or later, and then there would be broken hearts and bitterness. Was it worth any present sweetness? He feared not.

He thought he knew the decision his sister was thinking about making. He only hoped Lucy knew what she was doing. Then again, it had never paid to doubt her, and she’d always gone her own way.

No word from him, Edmund knew, would sway her from a course once she was decided on it.

For her part, Lucy was taking in as much of the island they’d landed on as possible. It was a pretty place, wild but not impenetrable, and sometimes had more of a look of a field, or of a garden. Sometimes, indeed, it reminded her more of her home than of other places she’d seen since returning to Narnia, and that gave her very queer mixed feelings.

She was aware, too, of the places where her fingers and palm touched Caspian’s, and the way his hand was warm and dry in hers, there in the morning sunlight.

But a large part of her mind was entirely elsewhere. She seemed to understand, at that landfall, with a terrible sort of starkness, that it would all have to be a memory, and no more, when the adventure was over.

*

They might have done better, indeed, to have thought less and observed more. Though they noted signs of inhabitation, and even machinery, on the island, the sudden intrusion of loud but not visible creatures fully caught them by surprise. The unexpected loud voices made Lucy give a little shriek, which she regretted when Caspian pushed her behind himself protectively.

She was no delicate creature that needed protection. Aslan had called her a lioness, and she had been known by the sobriquet “the Valiant. She didn’t want Caspian to see her, or to treat her, as if she was something fine and fragile.

She put her hand to her knife, where she wore it under her skirts, determined to show herself brave.

As the adventure became clearer to the Narnian voyagers, she understood more just how much the occasion now presented itself for her to prove her bravery. The absurd creatures who had produced the voices weren’t themselves dangerous, but they needed someone to go into danger for them. It could only be a girl, “a maiden,” as they said, to enter the Magician’s House, find his Book, and recite the spell that would restore the island’s inhabitants to visibility. And she was “maiden” enough to count.

Their plight was their own ridiculous fault – they’d enspelled themselves with invisibility in the first place – but they needed her, and no other hero could serve in her stead. It was to be her adventure, hers and none other’s. How could she do otherwise than meet it with her full face, fearlessly?

She looked at the others.

Edmund at that moment made no motion, either to hold her back or to intervene. His evident respect warmed her inwardly; her brother, at least, knew what she was made of, and wouldn’t need any convincing to let her manage her sort of work when it came to her hands.

Caspian, once more, turned his body to cover hers, so that no one else would see her secret deliberation, or, if it came, her fear. She loved him for the consideration, unneeded though it was.

“You’re sure?” he said.

She could see that he feared for her; but he wasn’t trying to prevent her, or even discourage her, just giving her a way out if she needed it.

The feeling she’d been drifting in, of detachment and a sort of preemptive grief and nostalgia, left her completely. She was no longer suspended between worlds, but fully present in this one, at none but the present time. Her heart started to pick up its beat.

“I’m sure,” she said.

Caspian nodded, and stepped back, and took his hand from his sword hilt. “Then, lady, I wish you well.”

He saluted her, and Edmund and the rest followed suit.

As Lucy followed invisible guides on a strange path, up to a set of stone stairs that led to the great doors of the Magician’s House, her pride and confidence was a blaze within her. It was more than enough to sustain her as she went up the staircase, and entered the door, behind which she must find a spell-book and recite a spell. She went alone, but she was not alone, and that made all the difference.

Chapter Text

The Magician’s House, standing solid and alone as it did on its small island in the distant sea, was eerie, but in a nice sort of way. At least, Lucy thought so.

Indeed, entering the dim front hall, where she could see stairs and hallways branching off, she was reminded of nothing so much as those first days of stealing through Professor Kirke’s big house in the country, when it had seemed so huge and full of shadows. That had been many years ago; but it felt just the same, now, as she pushed herself past her anxieties to explore.

It was the kind of house that contained wonders that would change your life, or change you. She’d always liked such things, turning her face into the coming wave with joy, not hanging back. Softly, she crept up the stairs, wending her way to the turret where, she knew, the book would be.

She had been corresponding with the Professor – Uncle Diggory, as she called him since they’d grown close as Friends of Narnia – before she’d been pulled back through the painting into the Narnian sea; and one of the things she had been thinking about lately was what she would tell him about it all, the next time they wrote to each other, or met.

Her friendship with Aunt Polly and Uncle Diggory had given her a different perspective on Narnia than she’d had on earlier journeys between worlds. She knew lots more than she had even when she’d reigned before as Queen: all about how Narnia had come to be, and what it had been like at its dawn and inception. Hearing about the beginning of Narnia from people who had really been there had helped her to understand, deep down inside, just how much it had always been a world meant for Beasts and walking trees, nature gods and magical creatures, with human beings figuring as interlopers, though interlopers closely bound to the land’s core, in the end, by Aslan’s design.

She thought, as she moved through the warm-dark wooden panelling, that she’d never met anyone who lived in a place like this who was very horrible, only exciting, like Uncle Diggory. It helped her to fear the adventure less and less. She ought to tell him so. She would have to describe this house to him, his own home’s Narnian mirror.

*

In days to come, Lucy would remember her encounter with the Magician’s Book as one of the pivotal moments in her biography.

If not fearful, it was, at the least, awesome.

She found the book just where she’d thought it must be, lying open and inviting on a great, scrolled wooden stand in a niche by the glass-paned window in the upper storey of the great house. As she stepped nearer, she saw that the book was a creation of great age and beauty, the margins scrolled with colored inks, with great illuminated capitals in the headers at the top of each new spell.

She turned a few pages. Lucy read: a spell for curing warts. A spell against venomous beasts. A spell to let you know what your friends thought of you. She snorted at that, and flipped the page that held that cantrip over; there was no temptation there for her.

Once, she had been the sort of child who was close with other girls. But as they’d got old enough to notice things, they’d fallen away from her, one by one, finding her a socially awkward compatriot who did not know the rules to the right sorts of games. Lucy understood well enough, at least, by this point in her school career, that even those who might call her “friend” thought her moon-brained at best, and a freak to be pitied, but not closely included, at worst. She needed no spell to tell her that.

She had fully turned the offending page over when she stilled at the thought that the Narnians on the Dawn Treader were her friends, too, as much if not moreso than Marjorie Preston at school ever had been. Could she find out what Caspian thought of her? If she used the spell she could know for sure without having to actually ask him in so many words ….

She might have turned the page back. But, on second thought, she found that she didn’t want to use the eavesdropping spell after all. In her heart, she wanted to ask Caspian those delicate and delightful questions herself, when they were face-to-face. It was a bit frightening to do, to be sure, but it was the kind of risk you were supposed to take for yourself, and the kind of risk that only richened the reward. It would be denying herself, and Caspian, to use magic to skip out on the serious and scary parts of learning what there was between them, no matter what the answer.

Lucy felt satisfied with her own insight, and virtuous for having renounced the spell’s temptation. But, when she saw the next spell, it brought her up hard, perhaps all the more so for how little she’d been braced.

It was a spell to make her that uttereth it more beautiful than the lot of mortals. Lucy stood transfixed, motionless, leaning on her hands, looking as if in a dream, or a trance, at the beautiful illustrated drop-capitals on the page. They moved as she watched, coming to life, and she knew that they were playing out prophecies of what would come to pass if she said this spell.

She saw herself in the drawing: aesthetically perfected, a paragon of womanly grace, Caspian’s equal for beauty as they took their thrones together. Even she outshone him, and his worship for her was apparent in his every look and lineament. She saw herself renowned across Narnia and the surrounding lands as the fairest of the fair, with war coming to Cair Paravel as a result of her famed face; herself, still beautiful, ruling Narnia, and England, and many lands, for years and years, all the while never fading; outliving Caspian by means of sorcerous travel between worlds, a witch most potent and supreme to the last.

She shuddered. That wasn’t who she wanted to be. That wasn’t what she was meant to be. She’d made her peace with her looks. She clutched at the phial of her healing cordial, carried with her knife at her side, and took a deep, determined breath.

Steeling herself, she pushed past the beautification spell, feeling as though she was giving up her only chance of – something. Being a beauty, like a queen would be in a fairy story.

Had she known it, in Caspian’s eyes, she was more lovely than the beautiful Lucy in the pictures. To him, she was made unique and vivid by her asymmetries. He thought most often and most fondly of precisely the features that she might otherwise wish to magic away. It’s often so, when someone truly cares about the person you really are.

*

She remembered her then of the task that had been given her. She had not come to the Magician’s Book to please her fancy, but to rescue the voices from their curse of invisibility. She had to keep searching the book for the spell they needed. She was shaken by what the book had shown her, but she could not stop now. She breathed deeply to steady her nerves, and pressed on.

After a few pages, a heading caught her notice; it seemed, at first glance, like she might have found the spell she sought. “‘A spell to see what may happen,’” she read aloud, puzzling at the vague language. Her eyes narrowed. “‘What may happen’” ….

And then she was reading out the words of the spell, and it was taking hold of her, drawing her in to show her a might-have-been. It definitely wasn’t the spell to restore visibility to the invisible. This was something else, a force of on-rushing vision that she could not resist or deny, but had to take in, will or nil.

The first thing Lucy saw was the castle of Cair Paravel – she knew it by its white stones – gleaming at the mouth of the Great River on the shores of the sea. She saw Caspian, looking no older than his present self, returning there in triumph, with a beautiful woman, a stranger to her, on his arm as his queen; a child, a prince, a serpent, a great loss, and then another, the worse for following on the heels of the first. She saw Rillian, Caspian’s son, stolen away from him by a green-clad witch-woman who could shift into a snake, saw the prince held underground and forced to serve his mother’s murderer. She saw Caspian grown old alone, bent and greyed with grief, reunited with his son only at the very end of his life when he had worn out his hopes in waiting.

And then – so short a time, just seven generations, and Rillian’s descendant Tirian became the last King of Narnia. The last King of Narnia! How could such a thing have been imagined? But Lucy saw it all come to pass, painted in miniature there in the Magician’s book: Tirian and his boon companion the fair unicorn Jewel, the cunning ape and the silly donkey in the lion’s skin disguise, Aslan’s final doorway on the world of Narnia’s end.

Watching the illustration of the end of Narnia, Lucy felt her breath, her very heart, being crushed within her. Everything she had done, and her brothers and sister, and their friends, and their allies, to protect Narnia, come to naught. Aslan’s sacrifice at the Stone Table, Edmund’s suffering at the hands of the White Witch, Peter’s nearly deadly duel with Caspian’s usurping uncle Miraz, all for nothing. And Cair Paravel, the Dancing Lawn, the Ford of Beruna, the harbors, the Great River, the Beaver’s Dam, even the Lamp-post, were brought to emptiness and dust.

That would have been grief enough to have cost Lucy her peace of mind for many years to come. But one last thing the book showed her, at the end of the foresight granted her by the spell, the cost of which was several of her possible futures, though she did not realize the impact at the time. It is hard to understand, when one is very young, how each choice made contains the deaths of a thousand might-have-beens.

The image of Aslan and the end of Narnia grew smaller, showing her more of the crowd around that last stark doorway. Visible at the door, which soon would be closed forever, were she herself, and Edmund, and Peter, and Uncle Diggory and Aunt Polly, and Caspian, and Tirian, and Eustace, and another girl about Eustace’s age that she didn’t know. She didn’t look much older in the image than she did in the mirror, these days, so the end must be soon. Edmund and Peter looked themselves, too, not fully grown the manhood, still the great boys she knew in the present moment.

The book showed her how the Englishmen and -women had all come to be there, a series of sooty sketched scenes depicting an English railway station, herself and her friends boarding the train, excited, anticipatory. They were swallowed in screaming metal and general conflagration. A railway accident. Her parents had been on the train, too, in a different car, and had not been spared. Only Susan wasn’t there, and so hadn’t died, and come in death to Aslan’s side to witness the end of the world that had once been theirs to rule and care for.

*

How ghastly! How utterly ghastly! Only bad outcomes, from top to bottom. It would be one thing to die young, and know that Narnia endured, free and filled with marvels. And, if Narnia had to come to an end, one might at least live a long and happy ordinary life in England, even if it was doomed to never be as rich and real as life in Narnia. But, Lucy thought, gaping at the enormity of it, what she’d seen was just awful. A long, tragic life for Caspian; early death for herself and her family; total, existential collapse for the entire Narnian world. That was what they were all headed for?

She shook herself, setting her teeth. She had seen it, and she was in Narnia. It might yet be changed.

Why else was she there, and not in her aunt’s house doing chores? She had thought, at first, that they had been brought to Narnia through the painting in the bedroom for Eustace’s sake, that he might be mended; but he was changed, thriving, kind as he had never been before, and still they were in Narnia.

Aslan had brought her back to Narnia, and in her adventure she had learned of these dread fates in time to avert them.

It was time to finish the work at hand and get back to the crew. She needed to think, and to talk with Edmund. She’d thought the waters smooth and the sailing clear ahead, with only the complexities of her feelings for Caspian, and his for her, for obstacles. That afternoon, in her time with the Magician’s Book, she had learned otherwise.

Straightening her back and squaring her shoulders, she turned further into the book, shifting its great spine so that it would let her access the latter pages.

There. There is was, the spell she needed: a spell to make invisible things visible. In this matter, at least, she knew how best to proceed. She spoke the spell aloud and looked about her.

She didn’t know if it had worked on the Voices, whatever they might really look like; but there in the room with her, the Magician and the great Lion, Aslan, both appeared, as if at her summons. And both were looking at her.

Chapter Text

“Oh, Aslan!” she cried out, and embraced him, and he breathed on her face and neck and hands, and her spirit was restored, and she knew for sure that all might yet be well.

“But you don’t look as if you’re happy with me,” she said, pulling back after a moment.

“You have seen far into might-have-beens, child,” the Lion said to her. “All the way to the end of the world. It can be bewildering. Has it made you wild?”

“I saw such awful things. For Narnia to come to an end so soon, after all that we have done, and fought for. I don’t think it’s made me mad, Aslan, but it has made me want to fight against that fate.”

“Daughter,” Aslan told her, “always it has been my wish that you be spared from fighting.”

The Magician, whose name he gave as Coriakin, told her, “Many thousands of years I trod the heavens in the Great Dance, in my past life as a star, and watched many worlds live and die. All life comes to its natural end, sooner or later, and it’s often a grievous ill to resist it.”

“It was right to save Narnia, though, when we were brought here before,” said Lucy, stubborn.

“Yes,” said Aslan, “but it may not be right the next time. You must not lose the core of yourself. You cannot gain your heart’s desire through betrayal of what you hold dear. Take heed. This is my warning to you.”

Lucy looked long at him, and bit her lip, and then gave a great sigh. “Yes,” she said. “It’s like a thing I thought a little bit ago, when I was reading your book, Mr. Coriakin. That it’s no good dodging the difficult bits, or the moments that really matter, even though the pressure is terrific, and makes one want to squirm. But those are the parts that define you. And, really, you can’t ever truly be yourself, if you hide too hard from who you are. All the same, I wish this did not all rest on me.”

Then Aslan laughed, rumbling. “Dear one, it would give you yet greater grief if it did not. It is not your way to let work pass through your hands. Your heart is in the mending. I give you a warning, but not, yet, a prohibition. You have made many things visible, including me, and this old retired star, and what may come to pass. Now all must confront what they see; and I must leave you. The others will not see me, not today.”

*

When the Lion was gone, Lucy went down from the Magician’s House on Coriakin’s arm. Aslan’s breath and blessing still hung about her, but so did his words of warning. Those last she felt in her bones.

She felt as though she was walking beside herself as they found Edmund, Caspian and the rest waiting on the beach. Not even the funny appearance of the monopods could wholly engage her.

Caspian saw it, and feared that her evident disturbance was his fault.

Edmund saw it, and knew that he needed to have some serious talks with his little sister, and soon. But, at least for the present moment, Lucy evaded his searching gaze.

The Magician was all gentility and kindness in his invitation to break bread and discuss with him their voyage. Before the end of the day, he had given them much: restoring the ship, provisioning the adventurers, and feeding them all a most lovely luncheon. He even created a magical map of the seas and islands they’d explored in their voyage. But even the old star could tell them little about the Last Sea that lay ahead of them, or the World’s End.

The World’s End … there was more than one way to understand the meaning of those words, and they rang in Lucy’s inner ears, louder than the sounds of her friends’ speech. She had been deeply shaken during her solitary sojourn in the upper storey of the Magician’s House. Her eyes had gained new inward horrors, and the memory of them would revisit her many times in future days.

*

For some days to come after the adventure of the Island of the Voices, Lucy couldn’t think how to broach the terrible matter that burdened her mind. She’d meant to share her experience with Edmund, and seek his advice and counsel; but somehow she couldn’t. The crew was in a happy mood after being wined and dined so well by Coriakin, and inclined to cheer her as the heroine of the whole adventure.

Lucy didn’t feel heroic. She wanted it not to have happened; she wanted to forget it. She spent much of her time sitting with Reepicheep, who, seeming to sense her strange mood, spoke little, but indulged her in game after game of chess.

Still, her unspeaking mind was working away, deep down inside, on everything she’d seen in the Magician’s Book: Narnia’s fate, and Caspian’s, and her family’s, and her own. Indeed, so frantic were her inward thoughts that she struggled for several nights to sleep, and, when she could sleep, it was only to dream, over and over again, herself struggling to stop the events of her visions, with whatever tools she could command; and of Narnia’s end, in darkness and cold, when she failed, and of the stars falling one by one from the finally-darkening Narnian sky.

As the only woman aboard, Lucy slept alone in the royal cabin. None witnessed her midnight hours. It was not until she fell asleep one day beside the dragon’s tail on the poop deck, and then shouted herself awake shortly thereafter, that anyone, even Edmund, started to get a grasp on the matter.

“I can’t tell you,” she said, panting, when he asked her what she’d dreamed of. She was shaking; he could feel it in his hands where they clasped her shoulders. “I can’t. You should know – oh, you should know – I should tell you – I mean to, I need to – but I can’t bear it. I can’t make myself say it. I’m a coward, a coward.”

Edmund clasped her closer, rocking gently, and tried to breathe slowly and steadily, setting a good example. “You’ll tell me when you’re ready,” he said. “All here know that you’re no coward.”

That night, Edmund strung up his hammock beside Lucy’s berth, making sure that she wouldn’t risk waking alone. Reepicheep, who had seen Lucy’s frantic waking on deck, betook himself to watch at the door, naked sword at the ready beside him, and Lucy kissed his head before passing within to try and sleep. When she woke in the night, weeping, she couldn’t speak, but gratefully let her brother stroke her hair until she could calm down enough to rest again.

*

Caspian, unsure of himself, outside of the family circle of the siblings, held himself apart, and burned with anxiety and self-loathing where he hoped that none could see. He wanted to guard Lucy, and be her confidant; and he feared that it was not his place, that he might dishonor her, or be unwelcome in her more intimate environs. It was not for him to wait with her in the dark hours of the night, or share her bedroom – though, it having been his cabin, previously, he could imagine the scene there all too well.

Drinian marked well the young King’s troubled state of mind, but knew no way to mend matters, save time and grace. He kept his watch, and kept the Dawn Treader moving forward toward the east, both day and night.

All saw how brave, bright Queen Lucy grew wan and worn, with dark smudges beneath her eyes and secrets weighting her light limbs. To none was it clear what might be done to aid her, or give her ease. Even the sighting of whales, spouting far in the blue distance off the port bow, only seemed to brighten her visage for a moment before the shadows returned to her face.

*

First, they thought they’d spotted land, and headed toward the seeming dark mountain rising at the horizon. Then, they understood that it was a whole island of darkness, or Darkness, gathered into materiality like some kind of time-bending fog. It was as though the sun had died in that place only, so that only Darkness remained visible.

When Reepicheep called out against the men’s cowardice, spurring them to sail on despite fear, Lucy heard it, and believed in it; but she felt overwhelmed by her own fear, as well. Reep was a great comfort, until you needed to hide from doing something uncomfortable.

The light was bleeding away from around them, now. Caspian called for the lamps to be lit.

Lucy braced up against the fighting-top as the Dawn Treader moved, inch by inch, into the Stygian blackness. She felt cold and self-critical. She hadn’t accounted enough for her own ability to be haunted, or how deeply her own fears of the future would be able to shake her. She had been over-confident, pot-brave. Foolish. As though she was above such things as nightmares, dreams, the dark, just because she was one of Aslan’s chosen queens, his dearly-loved one. But Aslan had, last time he spoke to her, given her a warning, and perhaps she hadn’t heeded it enough. She still wanted to save Narnia, in her heart of hearts. She wanted to be brave.

“Mercy! Mercy!” It was a terrible voice, harsh and cracking, cutting through the dark. Lucy could not have answered it; but Reepicheep did, and she silently blessed him for his lion’s share of courage.

The voice proved to belong to an emaciated, trembling man. When the men came together in the dark to help him aboard, he wept, and kissed the deck, and told them that he was the Lord Rhoop, and that the Dark Island was the place where dreams came true.

That was a terrible thing to hear, when they understood that he did not mean idle daydreams, but the real dreams that took hold of you at night, away from the shelter of your cushioning conscious mind. Lucy thought back to her recent dreams, and shuddered. But there was nothing for it but to go on. Caspian and Drinian would do their best to get them out again. She could not go down to them; what if they turned into monsters, or horrible versions of themselves, or skeletons, as soon as she came near?

She swallowed hard, breathing deep, and thought she had controlled her fear, when a vivid dream-memory came up over her like a great wave, swamping her utterly.

When she screamed, high and piercing a wail of keening grief, she didn’t realize, at first, that it was her throat that had given voice to the sound.

“Lucy! Lucy!” That was Edmund’s voice, and Eustace’s. She opened her eyes, and saw their pale faces below her, coming nearer as they climbed the rigging. She screamed again, frightened nearly out of her wits, but then Edmund had reached her, and he clasped her close, so that she knew he was real, and safe.

“The Magician’s Book showed me the future,” Lucy whispered through the dark, haggard, miserable. “It’s terrible. Aslan himself confirmed it to me. It’s real. It’s what’s going to happen.”

She felt Edmund’s arms convulse around her.

Overwhelmed by the force of her own sense of doom, Lucy heard shouting from the ship’s cockpit. “You are all traitors and false friends,” Caspian yelled hoarsely. She peered down, but could not see what might be happening. “None of you can be trusted not to knife me when I’m not looking. You think I’m a ruined dog, that ought to be put down. Miraz’s byblow! And now, what course have you commanded, to usurp and supplant me when we are all far from home? Murder in the dark, that’s what this is! Give me the helm!”

Lucy heard the note of ranting madness in his voice, and closed her eyes in the darkness against her horror. “Oh Aslan,” she moaned. “Help us now.”

Edmund let go her hand, making as if to descend to the deck again, and he muttered, “I’m going to have to do something about that.” What dire “something” he had in mind was something that they never discovered.

Reepicheep, brave and stalwart as ever, cried out into the breach. “Comrades! Fear no dreams! Dreams are unreal, and all fears may be faced!” And, as if in answer to the Mouse’s call, light seemed to be opening into their darkened world: not the light of broad daylight, not yet, but a piercing beam that illuminated the ship alone, showing them all the white faces and staring eyes of their comrades.

From her high perch, Lucy looked down at where Caspian stood amazed. She saw the mask of anger and fear distorting his handsome features, and she saw it dissipate, as the albatross came to them. A look of sweetness and deep rest came over Caspian, and then, in her own ear, she heard Aslan’s quiet whisper: “Courage, dear heart.” Had Aslan spoken to Caspian, as well?

Drinian said, trying to sound steady and sure, “We need to get away from this Dark Island. The albatross leads us a little to starboard. With your permission?”

Turning to his old friend, Caspian bent his head, swallowed heavily, and nodded. “Get us out of here, Captain. You have my full faith and trust – and my sincerest apology. No man should have to face his dreams.”

“With Aslan’s grace,” Lucy said.

*

They followed the albatross out of the darkness to where the sea still stretched out gleaming and glittering in the late afternoon sun. At last, the Dark Island dwindled almost to nothing behind them. Many looked shamefaced after the harrowing experience, Caspian not the least, and the young King was very quiet for the rest of that day, working beside Drinian with a ready will.

“Lucy,” Edmund said, coming to lean with studied casualness beside his sister at the ship’s rail, where she was tending to the unfortunate Rhoop, “I need to know more about what you saw in the Magician’s Book. And – you saw Aslan? And this is what you’ve been having all the dreams about?”

“Yes,” she answered, not meeting her brother’s eyes, Rhoop providing a convenient pretext for avoidance. “I’ll tell you. But not now. Not today. In the morning?”

“All right,” Edmund agreed, sounding a little grim. “First thing in the morning. No more holding out on me, Lu. Time to confess.”

Chapter Text

First thing in the morning, as far east as the Dawn Treader had now sailed, came early, and bright. The sun was beginning to look larger when it rose from the glimmering sea, out there on the eastern horizon that stretched before them. It wasn’t difficult for all aboard to wake at dawn.

Up by the lookout’s nest in the dragon’s mouth at the ship’s prow, Lucy felt the great warm strength of the sun at her back, many times greater and warmer than the sun had ever been in England, even on the finest days when skies had been clear of rain or fog. You began to realize how powerful the sun really was, drawing near to it as they were.

With that strength to buoy her up, she made to face her fears, and her friends. She’d asked Edmund to bring Caspian, Eustace, Reepicheep, and Drinian to join their counsel.

“It’s mostly you I want to tell, Ed,” she’d said to him in the darkness, her voice tight and pinched-off. “You’ll understand it all the most, and it’s your advice I really need. But I don’t know if I can get through it more than once, and I do want the others to know.”

Now, with the sun to keep her grounded, she took a deep breath. It was time to speak with less constraint.

“You must all hear tell of a thing that happened to me when I went to disenchant the Dufflepuds,” she said. “The Magician’s Book showed me a sign of what might come to pass in the future. And Aslan himself confirmed to me that it was a true sight. It – it wasn’t terribly upbeat. Not all good,” she clarified, at the questioning looks from the Narnians.

“I would never name myself a wise man,” said sage Drinian slowly, “but I have heard tell of folk who, in bending this way and that to prevent a prophesied and unwanted fate, only manage to bring it to pass. It is a heavy burden, to hear tell over much about the future. My Queen, cannot you forget the sights you saw? Will yourself to do so. Act as you would if you had never seen that accursed Book.”

“It’s good advice,” Lucy admitted. “But Queens must bear heavy burdens of the fates of worlds. I’ve known that for a long time. I don’t know that there’s any escaping this knowledge, for me. Caring for Narnia, that’s what I know most how to do. I have to do what’s right for Narnia, whatever that may be.”

Edmund nodded at this, confirming his sister in her correctness. He didn’t look best pleased by what Lucy had revealed so far, but neither was he in any danger of withdrawing.

Lucy said, “I would share the knowledge of what I saw with, at least my brother King. If any wish to depart without hearing more of this dread fate, now is the time.”

“None shall hold it against – anyone,” Caspian affirmed, himself making no move to rise; was he not also a King of Narnia? Could he turn away from the burden Lucy seemingly carried? Not, he vowed inwardly, for worlds.

But loyal Drinian did choose to stand and take his leave, retreating with signs of his deep respect for the royal lady, and gentlemen.

Eustace and Reepicheep remained, the former on family grounds, the latter because his heart stirred to hear any and all accounts of adventure; and besides, he would not leave the side of the lady in such an hour of trial and turmoil.

Lucy found, when it came to it, that she couldn’t look at them and tell them of it. So, it was with her eyes turned toward the deck, her back to the sun, that she at last spoke. “In the world I saw, Caspian, your wife died young, and your heir was stolen from you. In the youth and kingship of his seventh descendant, Narnia itself came to an end. Ed, Aslan brought us all there to witness Narnia’s end. And, I think, we all of us, except Susan, died in England. Maybe even Mother and Father. We looked very young, all of us, as though we never quite got to grow up.”

“I say,” Edmund whistled. “That’s a bundle. We all die soon? And why would Narnia end? Why wouldn’t Aslan bring us back to mend things?”

“He told me,” she reported in a schoolgirl’s dull tones, “that all things have to come to an end someday.”

Caspian reached out a hand to her, speechless, but helpless, too, in the face of her distress. Lucy sought her refuge by hiding her eyes; Caspian, by swallowing his words; and so might even the truest of lovers miss one another.

“Wise are the words of Aslan,” peeped Reepicheep, as was his wont, finding words when all were dumb: “And yet, it is hard not to seek to avert the end of our entire and beloved world.”

“That’s true, O Mouse,” Edmund said, sounding as if he himself was still only just taking it all in. “I can only imagine how hot Peter would be over this. He’d never be on board with just letting Narnia perish, not if there were anything he could do to save it. Come to that, I can’t say as I’m all right with that, whatever Aslan told you, Lu.”

“I don’t know that I am myself,” Lucy admitted shakily. “But I wouldn’t want to say so, if no one else did. And what on earth was I to say to Aslan?”

Caspian still did not speak. His mind was working furiously; his heart was nearly stunned, beating in starts and stutters.

Much of Lucy’s prophecy concerned him, his fate, and that of his spouse and progeny; and, in her recounting, all looked very bleak. It is hard, at golden sixteen, with love and ambition beating strong in your breast, to here that your fate is one of loss and ruin. He was to be one of the last Kings of Narnia, and would not get to know and raise his own son.

“We must think on this,” Edmund said. “I do not yet perceive what may be done; but something must be done, of that I have no doubt. And – thank you, Lucy, for passing on what you learned. You’ve been terrifically brave. How terrifying, to know all of that alone, and have to answer to Aslan alone, too.”

“I don’t blame Aslan,” Lucy said, and raised her eyes again, less burdened, at last.

*

Confession was good for the soul, and so was life on the Dawn Treader. Nightmares and kingdoms, Narnia and London, all seemed unreal in comparison to the cycle of the sun and the night, the partnership of the winds with the sail, and always the rocking of the ship and the slap of the waves, and the halyard ropes vibrating with the tension and harnessed speed of the air.

The beauty of the sea, and the insistent rhythm of shipboard life, soothed Lucy after her days of visions and dreams. The weather was warm, and she wore her trousers and blouse more often than anything else. Her skin was brown with sun, her hair thick and wild with salt spray, and she breathed, and worked, and marveled.

Sitting with the recovering Lord Rhoop helped her gain a grip on her troublesome fears. They spoke much of fear, and faith, and how to heal hearts that had come to harm. And her sleep was less troubled, her rest restored, as he told her his was, too.

Indeed, after surviving passage through the Dark Island, they all started to notice that they needed a great deal less sleep. Many stayed awake on the deck the night after the escape from the darkness, watching the naturally-lit canvas of the night sky, rich with strange new stars and constellations.

In those parts, the stars, like the sun, appeared larger and more brilliant than any of their eyes had previously beheld them: great milky pearls and glittering diamonds, double sapphires and rubies, glowing with impossible fires there in the heavens.

Every night was more and more mild, the wind gentler and more balmy, and at length the ship was veritably gliding through the mirror-like seas without wake or wave to disturb her passage. It was like being inside a dream, or like the truest waking from a dream that ever there had been.

In the wake of the rumor of grim days to come that had lately been shared with them, the young Kings both felt themselves quite foolish and unworthy, having been, each knew, tempestuous, self-concerned, prideful, and reactive.

Here were serious matters at hand. Edmund feared that he might need Caspian as an ally, ere this voyage was ended, or ended for the Pevensies, at least. Lucy’s mood was fey, and he wasn’t sure what to expect of her.

Caspian, remembering his fears and actions, knew that he must surrender and clear away the self-doubt that had been stirring in his spleen of late. It had come to a head in the nightmare moments of passage through the Dark Island. Recollecting it, he was ashamed. None had given him insult, but he had still taken harsh words to himself, and the lashed out in retaliation at those around him. That needed to end, if he was to be a good King, or good friend, or – someday – father.

And, his mind fixed on the fact that Lucy had spoken of his wife, giving her a sad fate. Lucy had not said, he noted well, who it was he had married. Was there any chance he’d been affianced to the lady herself? Would becoming his Queen spell her incipient death? If so, how could he ask her to move forward on such a path, no matter the ardency of his feeling for her?

Lucy’s vision of his own personal future had struck deep fear into his heart, teaching him to understand that it mattered to him a great deal that he be a good King, and someday a good husband and father. He gave heed to Drinian’s warning about men who brought prophecies to pass in the attempt to prevent them, but – happy, too, the man who can hear of future failings while still young enough to reform himself.

*

The setting sun, flaring for the last time before night, colored Lucy with molten-seeming gold, and Caspian couldn’t keep his eyes away from her, no matter how much he tried. As soon as he was at liberty that evening, he sought her out where she stood at the stern rail, looking back over the dark waters trailing behind them.

When Lucy looked up to greet him, she seemed to see stars caught and gleaming in his yellow curls, silvering in the starlight, and her breath caught, her heart stuttering.

“Lucy,” he said, grave and solemn. “I don’t mean to intrude. I have a question I would ask you, a question about your vision of the Magician’s Book. If you’d rather not talk of such things on a lovely night like this, I shouldn’t blame you a bit. You ought to know that.”

The gathering dark hid them, a little, from one another, making confidence and easy speech so much freer between them.

“I would know your mind, your true mind,” Lucy said, “even if that means that we sometimes talk about less than light or joyous news.”

“That’s like you,” Caspian said. “Valiant lady. Well, then. You spoke of sad happenings in my own life to come, even within the sphere of my near family. My wife dying young, victim of a vengeful sorceress. Our son being lost to us for so long. Lucy, I must know. Was it – were you that Queen? Was that your fate?”

“Oh. Oh, no,” she said, breathing easier. “No, I was not. I was with my brothers at the end of Narnia. And your Queen was a beauty, far more beautiful than me.

(She had not mentioned, and never did speak of, that other vision from the Magician’s Book; but, in truth, the woman she’d seen was the equal in beauty to the Lucy who’d spoken the spell.)

Lucy went on, telling Caspian, “She was no one whose face I recognized. I don’t think I’ve met her, or at least, not yet. Her hair was fair, but yellower than mine, and she was tall and willowy. She didn’t look like me at all. Seeing her, there was little mystery how you’d come to marry her.”

She bit her lip, and looked searchingly at him, though it was increasingly difficult to see fine detail through the oncoming night. “Why would it have been me?”

In the intimate darkness, his voice came out low and rough, gravelly with – what deep feeling? “Shall I tell you? Is it time, now, to say this thing aloud? Are you ready? If you need more time, say so, and I’ll speak no more on this for the present.”

“We’ve come a long way East,” she said. “I think it must be a time for truths. Everything seems more itself, here. Even the light is brighter, sun and stars both.”

“Then, lady, under this strange starlight, I will confess earnestly to you that you are just exactly the sort of person that I could see myself wanting to marry. You’re brave, and kind, and your heart seeks to do what’s right. And, which perhaps should come first, you’re one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever known. I admire you, inside and out.”

“Oh.”

Caspian felt very young, and very old, at the same time.

Fumblingly, he babbled, “I don’t want to – to ask you for any vow. You’ve been irked with me, and then gone through great stress and danger. I don’t feel that I have the right to ask much of you right now. But I hope to be worthy of it, someday.”

Steadying himself for her sake, he said, in a more level-headed tone than he’d used before, “I’m glad I’ve told you. I hope you’ll think on it, perhaps. It pleases me to think that you may think of me. But – I do want to tell you, before the sun rises again – do I love you, Lucy Pevensie, most dearly and most ardently.”

Between the light of the stars in the sky and the light reflected in the waters of the bright sea, there was just enough illumination for their hands to find each others’ hands. Caspian brought up his palms to frame Lucy’s half-seen face, and, leaning down with his back to the rail, kissed her with all the fervor he could bring to bear.

When she kissed him back with no less ardor, it was like the sun rising in the depths of the night.

Chapter Text

Emerging together from the cabin that had been his, and then hers, Lucy and Caspian seemed like the first lovers in all the world. None needed to be told of what had passed between them; it shone out of their faces like the light of a pair of young stars.

Drinian saw it, and the crew as well, and all were glad for their King. Reepicheep may have exaggerated his habitual swagger and swashing even more than usual, in light of the occasion.

To his surprise, Eustace found himself feeling a bit intimidated, for the first time ever in his life, in the face of this version of his younger cousin. Lucy, who had used to cry and fume when he taunted her, now seemed like a remote and impressive personage, transfigured by love and Narnia into someone quite out of his reach. He wanted to seem good, or brave, in her eyes, and feared that he would fail to do so. It was novel, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

Edmund saw it, and said nothing at all. Lucy had to be left to make her own choices; he didn’t own her, and couldn’t prevent her.

As for Lucy and Caspian, their world was enchanted, from the secret warmth of their shared berth to the span of the sea and the horizons ahead of them. When land loomed ahead on the starboard bow, and then drew nearer as the ship approached, both Caspian and Lucy were charmed to find themselves in agreement that the new island had a sort of purple scent, very delightful and mysterious, when none other aboard noted any particular smell.

Lucy had forgotten how delicious the first days of new love discovered and shared could be; or, not forgotten, but displaced the knowledge, along with so many of her former adult experiences.

She and Caspian could talk, and act, so freely, when they were alone together. There was true companionship of hearts between them, not physical attraction alone, and that double discovery gave the entire world a new sense of hopeful possibility.

At least for a time, Lucy had been able to put dread visions of future calamity from her thoughts. Somewhere, she knew, in the back of her mind, some part of her was very busy looking for possible solutions. But there was no reason to live in daily distress until the time when some came to the surface – especially not when life at the present offered her such a lovely cup of honeyed joy.

The sunset behind them was now gilding the island’s low hills with apparent flame. Before they lost the light, Caspian gave the order to find anchorage and, if possible, send a party ashore. No better harbor presented itself than the wide scoop of a sandy crescent bay, but it would do well enough in the light seas that rocked them back and forth.

The company made to make landfall in the ship’s boats, and had a wet and tumbling time clambering out through the surf to the sandy shore. But Caspian and Lucy were both laughing, the white crowns of the rolling waves covering them in reflected pink and golden light.

“Before it’s fully dark,” Caspian said, “let’s see if we can learn aught of the adventure offered us by this place.” Between the orange-purple of the sunset and his confident excitement, he was lit up within and without.

Caspian, Lucy, Edmund, Eustace, Rhince, and Reepicheep went up into the low valley that opened at the head of the bay, leaving guardians behind with the boat against the roll and tow of the shifting sea. When they saw looming tall straight structures ahead, Reepicheep grew excited, too, urging them on to where whatever it was stood.

As the ruin opened before them, pillars framing a wide oblong space flagged with smooth stones, bare to the strange bright stars of that eastern reach, Lucy felt a wave of emotion – nostalgia, homesickness, with a strong enough undertow to make her stagger. “It reminds me of coming back to the ruins of Cair Paravel,” she said, and Edmund nodded in shared recognition.

“I see what you mean,” Caspian said. “I journeyed to Cair Paravel not long after you returned to your own world, to commence with the rebuilding of the proper royal seat. It took some doing, I can tell you. And it’s beautiful, now, restored to grace and strength; but it was beautiful in a different way when I first beheld it, all choked with vines, cut off on that isolated island thick with its ancient forest, fair, desolate, sad, strange.”

“I say,” Edmund said, gesturing them onward into the ruined hall, “do come and see! Even at Cair Paravel, we never had such a banquet as this.”

At the far end stretched a great and lordly table, covered with a rich red cloth and laden with kingly fare. Stone and silver platters displayed peacocks with the feathers put back on, and boars’ heads and great haunches of venison; silvery fish and blush-pink lobster; heaps of fruits glowing like jewels; and confections shaped like fanciful creatures. Pitchers, flagons, and bottles of gold and glass held wine and water and oil, and you could smell all the delicious scents of the food, and something more, like the promise of happiness, on the air.

Seats of stone lined each side of the table, richly carved and padded with silken cushions. “Oh!” Lucy exclaimed, startled, “Look at the sleeping men!”

An otherworldly tableau presented itself, like to some interrupted ceremony or rite. Seated near one another around one end of the long table, three hunched figures were slumped in evident deep slumber, and all were thickly overgrown with what, on closer examination, proved to be their own hair. Eustace shuddered, thinking how nasty it would feel to be in that sort of condition.

They tried to rouse them, but got only muttered words, including the name of Narnia. When Caspian looked at the men’s rings, he saw by their devices that they had indeed found the lords Revilian, Argoz, and Mavramorn, the last of the seven they had sought. But they would not wake.

Lying lengthwise on the table near the sleepers was a cruel-looking and ancient knife of stone, as sharp as steel. Lucy leaned closer to look at the blade, and then caught her breath. She knew it by sight, she was sure she did. No matter how many lifetimes you lived, you remembered knives like the one that had spilled Aslan’s blood on the Stone Table, clutched in the claws of the White Witch.

The last light of the day was going, and soon there would only be starlight. There was some debate as to what to do. Eating the food was proposed, and then decided against; but Reepicheep insisted that it was only right to hold vigil in the hall through the night, and see the adventure to its end. They sent Rhince back to the boat to rest, and then took up seats at the long, heavily-draped table, near but not too near to the hairy, heavily slumbering figures of the lost lords.

It was frightening, and magical, and they drifted in fits of sleep as the unfamiliar stars wheeled above them, until the smallest seed of faint grey light appeared at the edge of the sky in the east. Lucy shivered, feeling damp and cold.

In the slope of the gentle hill that rose beyond the pillars of the ruined hall, a door that none had noticed before swung open, and a clear, small, focused light came shining through.

A tall girl approached, carrying a lit candle in a tall silver candlestick, clad in a sleeveless shift of pale blue, bareheaded, with loose yellow hair hanging down her back.

Lucy recognized her at once; this was the woman who had returned to Narnia with Caspian in her vision of the Magician’s Book, Rillian’s mother, who had died while still young, the serpent’s victim.

“Welcome to Aslan’s Table,” the tall girl said. She seemed so friendly and straightforward that it was impossible not to approach her in a spirit of reciprocal friendship. Answering their questions, she told them that eating the food was not the cause of the lords’ enchantment, and that the food was replenished there every day at the command of Aslan, until the ending of the world; and, too, she old that the Narnian lords had come under enchantment when they had quarreled, and one had reached for the Stone Knife, which was forbidden.

As the girl named it, the Stone Knife seemed to wake, and whispered to Lucy in a voice like a blade against a sharpening stone, calling her.

When Lucy raised her own hand to reach for the dire knife, Edmund slapped it back. “Stop that,” he snapped. “Don’t you hear that’s what got those fellows into this mess? Do you want to join them, and play Sleeping Beauty until the world’s end?”

“I think it has been waiting here for me,” Lucy said. “I think I’m meant to take up this knife.”

“Aslan prohibits that any take it up. That is a knife for a witch,” the tall girl said.

“I’ve been trying to find a power to avert the ending of the world. Well, if I must be a witch to do it, let me be a witch. Really, what’s a witch? And what’s the difference, if there is any, between and witch and a priestess? You’re a priestess of Aslan, here in this daily rite. I have been Aslan’s priestess, too, so I can tell.”

“Yes,” the other said, gentle and mild. “As a priestess, I believe that is given us to obey Aslan’s commands, even if we see no sense in them. How, then, if a witch is simply a woman, or priestess, who disobeys Aslan?”

“Perhaps that is so,” Lucy conceded. “And yet – how might it be that any free being could truly disobey Aslan’s plan? Isn’t disobedience itself one of the qualities given creatures by his grace? In disobeying, a witch could be yet following Aslan’s teachings, if not his commands. The witch could be the priestess, one and the same.”

“Perhaps it is so,” the girl echoed, her voice soft and slight as a summer breeze through reeds at a river’s edge.

“All right. I will take the knife. I have faith that I will not fall asleep. If I do – Edmund – Caspian – ”

She looked to them, and held out a hand as if in supplication, momentarily mute, but not giving any ground for attempted dissuasion. Then, in a single fluid motion, she dropped her hand to grasp the knife’s hilt where it lay on the long table.

Caspian was ready to catch her if she fell, enchanted – but she did not.

Her hand closed on the knife, and she raised it, and stood, breathing hard, her back turned to them. It was as if she mastered a great ordeal when she wheeled about, and she bared her teeth in a savage smile. “There,” she panted. “I have it, now. No more nightmares about the night when the White Witch – . No more. It’s mine, and so is its power.”

Was she fearsome, Lucy, with the Stone Knife, turning? Caspian could not have truthfully said otherwise.

Edmund drew in his breath a little, and muttered, “By Jove!” And he flinched as Lucy raised the knife.

Only the tall yellow-haired girl seemed unmoved and fear-free at the sight. As Lucy switched her dagger for the Stone Knife, strapping the mystic blade to her side in the sheath and leaving the other on the table as tribute to Aslan, the other girl smiled and seemed to breathe more easily.

“You relieve me of a weighty charge,” she said to Lucy. “I thank you. Will you not enjoy food and drink, now you know that all is well? You have fasted through the night. My father will come to us soon.”

The first draught of clear, cold water was like the strongest cordial in their mouths, and the fruits they enjoyed at that breakfast were like none that Lucy was ever able to find again, no matter how she scoured the lost orchards of the wild places of the world.

As the light grew stronger in the eastern sky, the door in the hill opened once more, and another tall figure, not carrying light but seeming to embody it, came towards them. They all rose as the old man approached, but he spoken not, but went to stand across the table from the tall girl, his daughter.

Their morning ritual was something to witness. Arms raised together, father and daughter sang as the sun rose, singing high and cold, and the sun was larger, and brighter, than any sunrise that the English children or Narnians had ever beheld before. A beam of light gleamed off of the blade that Lucy had left in replacement for the Stone Knife.

And great white birds swooped down from the heavens in the hundreds and thousands, scouring the table bare of its feast, so that it looked as though a heavy snow had fallen. Then, Lucy saw one of the white birds bring to the old man a little bright object, like a live coal, which went right into his mouth.

When the birds departed in a flurry of white wings like billowing ships’ sails, back into the brightness of the risen sun, the shining old man turned to the adventurers. He was, he told them, the former star Ramandu, and he had lived on the island alone with his daughter, until the lords had fallen under the spell of the Knife. They had come so far, but gone no further.

“They call this place the beginning of the World’s End,” the Star’s Daughter said.

The World’s End … there was more than one way to understand the meaning of those words, and they rang in Lucy’s inner ears, as loud as the warnings of Aslan. The Stone Knife hung heavy at her waist beside the crystal bottle of the fire-berry juice cordial that could cure all ills; the juice of same berry that the white bird had brought to the old star’s mouth.

The star Ramandu had told them that, when he was as young as the child that was born yesterday, he would tread the skies again in the great dance. Lucy only wanted to make it so that he could, and keep the Narnian stars from having to descend en masse as the skies went dark forever.

From the Star and his Daughter they learned what would have to be done to wake the sleepers: sail to the end of the world, and one go alone beyond it to redeem the others.

Led by Caspian’s enthusiasm, exhorted by him to remember how honorable it was to seek this ultimate adventure of exploration, all committed themselves to seek the Utter East, and then return for the sleeping lords. Save one – they left the Lord Rhoop to sleep dreamlessly with his friends in the keeping of the Stars before they raised anchor and set sail once more.

Chapter Text

The seas beyond Ramandu’s Island proved more and more wondrous each day the ship made further headway to the east. Each morning, flights of great white birds passed over them, headed to Aslan’s Table, and the water was a clear as the most brilliant diamond.

It seemed to Lucy that they had sailed straight out of anything at all ordinary as they’d gone eastward. The people of the Lone Islands weren’t really so different from people in London; but the denizens of this Eastern Sea were unlike anyone she’d known, even in her years as one of Narnia’s Queens.

More intensely than ever before, Caspian was enjoying watching the world through Lucy’s eyes. It was all so rich to her, and she glowed with inner excitement and radiant joy when she found yet another doorway into delight.

He watched, spellbound, as she communed, wordlessly but completely, with a mermaid herding sheep deep beneath the impossibly clear waves, the two girls’ faces mirroring sympathy and friendship back and forth through the boundary of the surface.

When the waves grew sweet, he held her out a cup of the delicious water, almost humming with satisfaction at sharing such a moment of miracle and wonder with her. She sipped, and met his eyes above the cup’s rim, and her eyes were sparkling. And after that drink, they could all bear a deal more light than they’d ever been able to withstand before.

Awash in impossible whiteness, Caspian smiled to see Lucy sitting on the poop deck, clad in a short shirt and lightweight cotton breeches, with buckets of silvery-white waterlilies pooling around her, a bud drooping down from where it was tucked behind her ear.

And, in the light-filled and sweet-scented nights, when none seemed to have much need for sleep, they spent long hours bare and entwined together in their bunk below. The pleasure was too strong, too exquisite, too clear in every intoxicating and sense-filling detail. They felt that they couldn’t stand much more of this, yet didn’t want it to stop, and told each other so in frantic whispers as their bodies joined in a dance as old as that of the stars.

“I wish you could stay with me like this always,” Caspian husked after their coupling. Lucy said nothing, but kissed him, and held him close.

*

The sea’s waves had grown sweet, and, although the wind had died away to the gentlest zephyr, the ship was yet driven on as fast as though a gale was blowing behind her. They were caught in a strong current. They must, they said to each other in awed whispers, be drawing very near indeed to the World’s End.

The voyage of the Dawn Treader, it was clear, was coming to its endpoint. Decisions would have to be made, and soon, and lastingly. It was nearly time for the ship to turn back westward. And, for at least one member of the crew, if only to break the curse on the sleepers at Aslan’s Table, to go on to the east alone.

Awash in the brilliant light of the Last Sea, freed from human needs for sleep or food, Lucy had been living on love alone; but now she could see a great divide laid before her clearly. Soon, she was sure, it would been time for her to return, alongside Edmund and Eustace, to the life she’d been born to, the life she’d been building, with her friends and family, in England. She knew the rhythms of Aslan’s time.

But could she submit to leave Narnia, leave Caspian, when she also knew the bleak fate ahead for both?

She might not, she knew, have a choice in the matter; she hadn’t, the first time, when she and her siblings had accidentally blundered out of Narnia as adult Kings and Queens, only to find themselves English schoolchildren again.

She’d been so sad to leave Narnia, the last time. She’d had faith, and done her best to hope. She’d tried to find joy and purpose in the place she’d been returned to, the place where she’d been born. But, in the years that had gone by while she’d been in England, she’d not found the task of getting on getting any less difficult, only more and more disheartening.

Coming back to Narnia had been like coming back to full life; she’d barely realized how grey and grim she’d been until all the color and drama returned. Her heart beat strong and fast at the thought of living again in Narnia, with that world’s dizzying magic and potential.

And, as she’d seen, Narnia needed her.

It would mean giving up her mother and father. That was something she’d done before. She knew she could survive it. It would hurt, but it could be done.

It would also mean giving up Edmund, and Susan, and Peter. That felt harder. How could she rule as Queen in Narnia without them? She was the youngest, and had always been part of a set. Now, if she stayed in Narnia, she would be the only Pevensie, and would live divided in time from her siblings.

It wasn’t even like going to live in America, as Susan had said she might do someday. You could come back from America. But all the Pevensies knew how fickle the flow of time was between England and Narnia; they might all be dead of old age, back there in England, by the time she and Caspian completed the return voyage to the harbor of Cair Paravel.

She’d relied so much on her brothers and sister, at home, and when they’d grown up in Narnia. Peter always knew what was right; Susan could be relied on to take care of important little details; Edmund knew when to warn you to change your path, or to stay steady on the right track.

Without them, would she fail to be a good steward for Narnia? She’d always been the wild one, the rebel, the one least in tune with her humanity. Was she enough of a Daughter of Eve to still fulfill Narnia’s need?

There would be Caspian. He was so human, radiant with it, bursting with human belief and passion and courage and stubbornness. With him, she thought, she might do very well. Being with him, perhaps in the sweet little cabin of the Dawn Treader, bodies pressed close together by the gravity of the rocking swell – her cheeks flushed to think of it. Such a love might recompense one for much.

She’d be giving up penicillin, and automobiles, and aeroplanes, and graduating from school, and ever traveling herself to America. Would love be enough?

*

Caspian grew quieter, in the strange extended final days near the World’s End. It had been long, in truth, since he’d known such a quiet; it was the feeling of having everything needed, and not having anything to prove, nor any struggle to survive. His life had been brighter, since becoming King of Narnia, but it had been very busy, and often full of risk and strife, toil and deprivation. Before that, as Miraz’s ward, nothing had been assured, and every shadow had held real, not imagined, threats for the lone boy-prince. Once, he knew, he’d had parents, who presumably had loved him; as the king’s infant son, with a mother and a father, he must have enjoyed such endless, rocking, sunlit peace.

The voyage had made deep changes in the young King. Through self-doubt and lashing out, anger and suspicion, he’d found himself in a clear, still, certainty of self. He knew himself, in all his worth and failings. He had Edmund’s friendship, Eustace’s esteem, Lucy’s love, and Aslan’s charge. Even if it was his lot to return to Narnia with only his crew, and the rescued Lords, he knew deep down inside that he was equal to, fitted for, and ready to start the work laid out before him. He took seriously Lucy’s prophecy of Narnia’s, and his line’s, downfall. He would have to do whatever he could to strengthen, shore up, and knit together what he could in that face of that fate.

It would break his heart to part from Lucy; but he belonged to Narnia, as much as to any private love, and knew it, and was resigned.

Edmund, in contrast, seemed to grow more tense and grim as the perceptible end of the voyage drew nearer. He’d been angry with Caspian, and now was not, but trusted him dearly as a brother King. He’d been worried about Lucy, and was still, although her nightmares were resolved and her face shone now with happiness and not with tears. He didn’t speak to her of his fears, but watched her closely, warily.

*

The Silver Sea around them was growing shallow, and soon the ship had to be rowed, and then, one day, could go no further. The Dawn Treader had journeyed as far east as she could. Any person, or persons, continuing onward would have to take one of the ship’s boats, and leave the rest behind.

Reepicheep, certainly, would go on, in his coracle alone if with no other.

Edmund said, his voice brusque with emotion, “This is the end of our time here, I can feel it. Aslan will want us to go home. This is how it’ll be. We’ll go.”

Eustace nodded, looking solemn, a bit sad, accepting.

At Lucy’s waist, the Stone Knife began to vibrate, shaking, humming in her hand as she reached for it. She said, aloud, holding the knife for courage, “I can’t. You go, Ed, and take Eustace home, and cover for me. But I can’t go back with you. I’m going to stay, and go back to Narnia with Caspian, and save it.”

She might as well have dropped a bomb. Edmund looked just about as shattered. He said, in a voice that fought to remain low and level, “Caspian, you’re going to let her do this?”

In the wake of Lucy’s pronouncement, Caspian was near faint with the coursing of his heart’s hopes. He ought, he knew, to take Edmund’s concerns, and the possibility of a rupture between Lucy and her family, more seriously. He felt his face breaking into a foolish, beaming smile, and tried to suppress it for a more politic expression.

“If she wants to, yes. She outranks me as a senior Queen. I’d not try to stop her.”

“Well, as her co-ruler, and brother, I want to make sure she fully understands my concerns. I have too much direct experiences with the ways of witches, and what happens when you put yourself outside of Aslan’s grace through willful arrogance.”

“I understand what you mean,” Lucy said, cutting through the pretense that he was not speaking to her directly. “But I don’t believe that I’m stepping outside of Aslan’s grace in giving my life back to Narnia. He’s not a tame Lion, and he doesn’t expect us to be tame, either. And, at any rate, you’ve never been in the right about the will of Aslan, any time we’ve disagreed about it in the past.”

“What am I supposed to tell everyone back home, Lu? That you’ve stayed in Narnia to get married?!”

“Yes, that’s exactly what you should tell them. Peter and Susan will understand. That is, Caspian, if you’ll have me.”

Caspian nodded, dumb, beaming.

“I shall deny my consent, as your senior King.”

“I don’t acknowledge any power of yours in the matter.”

Then, they witnessed a marvel. The banner of the Lion at the ship’s stern seemed to grow animate, and moved, and breathed, and became for a moment as massive as Aslan in the flesh, and all heard and were shaken by his roar.

“Oh, Aslan,” Lucy choked out, and fled to the cabin she shared with Caspian, closing the door on Edmund’s thundercloud face, Caspian’s trusting joy, the sea and the lilies and the Lion banner. But Aslan was within, as well as without, and she found herself face to face with him again as soon as the door was barred, in the form of the gold Lion’s head that adorned the wall.

At first, it seemed to be only an image of the Lion, not moving as the image on the banner had done; but Lucy spoke aloud to it as if the real Aslan were there in truth. She was beset with fears, searching for her courage.

“Of course I understand what it is you want for me, dear Aslan. You want me to go home, and live my life there, and grow in age and faith in England. You want the best for me. But, oh, Aslan, I want to sacrifice those things. It’s not that I don’t understand that they’re good. It’s that I know they are. I hope it’s enough of a sacrifice to save Narnia, at least for awhile longer. I can’t bear the thought that it will end in just a few generations. You let me love it too well.”

The Lion remained silent, but, moving, breathed on her, a golden breath that soothed the pain in her heart.

“I cannot stop you from making the sacrifice,” Aslan’s voice said at last. “I cannot tell you what will come. Joy and pain both come, in measure, in a life. All must make choices. This choice is yours.”

“I know my will,” she said, and her voice rang strong and clear with the force of its solitary truth.

Chapter Text

Aslan was gone from the room as soon as Lucy’s words were finished reverberating on the air.

She breathed in, long and slow and deep, still feeling the lasting traces of the Lion’s breath. Clutching hard to the Stone Knife at her side, she steadied herself.

Aslan wasn’t going to stop her. If not his blessing, he had given her her right of choice.

In that knowledge, she could face up to Edmund easily enough.

Her poor brother. He had only been trying to protect her. Oh, how she was going to miss him! She would have to work on opening windows between the worlds, when she was back in mainland Narnia.

Connections between the worlds might be exactly what would be needed to save Narnia from destruction. And, it would mean that she wouldn’t be losing her blood family so completely and utterly. She knew that Peter and Susan would just love a glimpse of Cair Paravel restored.

She would also, in just a moment, have to face up to Caspian.

She had just about insisted that he was going to marry her. She hadn’t asked; she’d assumed, out loud, in front of everyone. She intended to wrest co-command of his kingdom from him, married or not. She very much wanted them to be married, and stay lovers for years and years, and rule together. She wanted not to be left alone without any family at all.

And she did love him, she knew, in the sort of way that might last forever. Their bodies fit together, their minds worked together, and their hearts shared deepest values. Caspian would never, she was confident, now, exert power to control her. He believed in adventure, freedom, and the importance of strange, wild, and numinous things, as she did, as no one she’d ever known in England had seemed to, not deep down inside. She believed in him.

It wasn’t that she was afraid he might reject her. She knew that he wouldn’t. He had told her as much, obliquely and delicately, in their shared berth. But she felt naked, and new, and older, and for a moment her courage quailed before the coming wave.

Consciously drawing up the golden cloak of Aslan’s breath to carry her on, she drew herself up, too, and went back out onto deck, back to the others: her brother, her cousin, her lover, and their people.

*

It had not been long since she had left them, but the mood abovedeck had changed as soon as she’d gone. Edmund looked hangdog, down and despairing, the fight gone out of him. Caspian remained near him, hovering, as if desirous, but hesitant, of offering some support or help. He had also been shooting surreptitious glances toward the companionway, where Lucy had vanished below, and visibly started when she reappeared.

Reepicheep had packed his coracle in the ship’s boat, and waited with politely concealed impatience by the gunwale to launch.

Lucy stood tall and fair, barefoot on the deck, bathed in the warmth of the end of the world, straight-backed and smiling, with her hands outstretched to her dear ones.

“It’s no good, Edmund,” she said gently. “I’m not going back. Don’t let’s have a horrid fight about it, but part friends. Aslan told me it was my choice to make. Won’t you give me your blessing, and be friends?”

A sigh seemed to pass through the ship’s company, all together, like a wave.

Edmund straightened, walked to his sister, and took both her hands in his. “Of course,” he said. “Of course I will. And I’m sorry for trying to pull rank. It was a rotten thing to do. What you’re planning scares me, and I fear for you – and, I suspect, I know how much I’ll miss you. We all will.”

Caspian came to them, then. In a graceful, wordless gesture, Edmund let go of Lucy’s hands, which he had still held in his own, and then brought the lovers’ hands together, briefly holding them encircled in his two palms. Caspian held stock-still, as still as stone.

“You may be married again in ceremony, when you get back to Cair Paravel,” Edmund said gruffly, “but in this moment, I, Edmund, King of Narnia, use the power given me by Aslan the Great Lion to unite you both in wedlock.

‘And now, the Valiant Queen will return to her kingdom. You were the first to break through, Lu, and there’s a way that I always knew you’d find some way to break through again.”

“You’re going to have to help me make doors between the worlds, Ed. We’ll meet again.”

Edmund nodded, and, stepping back, told Caspian, “Take good care of my sister, my sworn brother. Be a full family to each other. Aslan willing, may we meet again.”

“Aslan willing,” Reepicheep echoed. “My congratulations to your Majesties, and best wishes for your long and glorious reigns. The lady has chosen boldly, and I applaud her for it. But now, we must away. To the Utter East!”

*

So Edmund and Eustace went to get back into their English clothes, leaving Lucy by the rail with her new-trothed husband, still hand-in-hand.

“You’ve said little,” she said, peering up at him and squinting, a little, in the dazzle of the high day’s light. “You look a bit poleaxed. Everything’s all right, isn’t it?”

“More than all right,” Caspian said, almost growling, pulling her close and kissing her brow, her nose, the space of skin beside her eyes, and at last her mouth. “I am so happy, Lucy. I couldn’t have asked this choice of you, but it gives me great joy.”

“It won’t always be easy,” she said, reaching down to brush her knife with her fingertips, speaking from the vantage of her previous life as a growing, and then grown-up, Queen of Narnia. She knew, from experience, what sorts of things the future might hold. And Narnia had always exceeded every expectation she’d formed, both the good and the bad. “Yet,” she murmured, leaning against him, “yet, it truly might be very great.”

When her brother and cousin appeared, it was time for embraces and tears. No Narnian man, or Narnian beast, need be ashamed of weeping at a time of high emotion. All knew the truth of the love contained in the crying. Lucy’s farewell with Reepicheep was particularly touching, and full, on Lucy’s end, of tears.

“Tell Peter and Susan the truth,” Lucy instructed Edmund, at the last chance reluctant to let him go. “I think it might wash if you tell mother something like truth, and say that I ran off to get married to a fellow you’d met a few times, and can vouch for, at least a little bit. Perhaps we’ve gone to … I don’t know, Patagonia. Somewhere far away, to live at sea, where I shan’t have any address. She’ll still be sad, but it’s the best I can do.”

Edmund nodded, wordless, and embraced her, and climbed behind Eustace and Reepicheep into the boat where it hung from its davits.

Caspian had, at last, to give the command. “Lower the boat!” he called, and clasped Lucy closer as her kindred sank from sight in the slight silver boat, winched down from the side of the Dawn Treader to slip through the lily-laden sea.

“Farewell!” Edmund called, Eustace and Reepicheep caroling additions.

Lucy lost sight them for a moment behind the ship’s shadow, and then watched while they rowed toward the place where the sun rose.

When they were very nearly out of sight, Reepicheep stood, silhouetted against the horizon, looked back, and saluted them with a flourish of his flashing blade. Then the boat was gone.

*

The sailors feted the newlyweds that night under the huge and brilliant stars. They drank nothing stronger than water, but all felt drunk and intoxicated with the light and the sense of wonders beyond compare, near but not quite seen.

With feet tired from dancing and mouths aching from smiling, Caspian and Lucy curled together in the sanctuary, now sanctified by this the beginning of their love, of the bunk in their lovely little cabin. Weary, spirits fatigued with much experience and the stretching that comes with growth, they tumbled down, stripped of all gauds and garments, into one another. The easiest thing to do, and the most natural, was to come together into one flesh, one body, and so find rest of body and spirit both.

*

When, the next morning, the sun rose great and golden beside them, the crew of the Dawn Treader lifted oars, and, putting the dawn at their backs, began the return journey westward, to Narnia, to the harbor at the mouth of the Great River, at Cair Paravel.

Queen Lucy the Valiant, and King Caspian X, brought back with them together a new age of Narnia, combining love of the old with anticipation of the new. But that must be told of in another tale; for this one is now ended.