Work Text:
I.
Caspian woke up to his mother crying.
He did not know how old he was, yet, because he didn’t yet think about things like that much. They were not as important as the frog he saw in the garden yesterday, or Mother telling him they will have raspberries with their tea, if he’s good and doesn’t fuss when he’s dressed. (He hadn’t quite figured out when “tea” was, either, but he thought it meant something like “not now”.)
And he wouldn’t have said it that way, besides, “I was so old when I woke up to Mother crying”, because it had always been that way. Perhaps that was how the world worked. Maybe everyone’s Mother let them climb into her bed and sleep happily snuggled up against her, but then went away in the middle of the night, so that when you woke up, you were alone and cold and confused until you looked around and saw Mother sitting in a corner with her face in her hands, crying very very quietly so you didn’t know.
Caspian ran to his mother every time, and climbed on her lap, and put his arms around her as far as they would reach. And Mother would wipe away her tears and smile at him. But after thinking about it a great deal, Caspian had decided that she did not smile the way Uncle smiled, or Soap (his name was not really Soap, but it was too long for Caspian to remember it right), or all the other people he knew. Mother smiled like she was still sad.
“Mama, Mama,” he would say, patting at her wet cheeks, and she would hold him close.
“You are so much like your father,” Mother whispered. “You have a kind heart. Oh, I wish he could see you grow!”
And Caspian did not know what that meant.
II.
When he was four, Caspian woke to find his mother gone.
He knew he was four now, because he had been spending a lot of time with Nurse, and they had been learning numbers. And he was not allowed to run into Mother’s room and climb into her bed because she needed to sleep, but Caspian did not like this. Numbers and colors were very interesting, but they could not make him forget Mother for long, and every time he could get away he would try to run back to her.
“There you are,” Nurse said.
Caspian hid under the covers, pressing his face against his mother’s shoulder. She felt very warm.
“Now, now, come on, sparrow-love,” Nurse said. “You don’t want to bother your mother. And what if you should catch sick, too?”
“Oh,” Mother sighed, “Let him stay. He cannot catch what ails me. And it feels so good to hold him…”
“Then perhaps he might do Your Majesty good. You know the physicians have said it’s naught but a summer fever, quickly shaken off if you will but set your heart to it.”
“And I might do that better if I turn my heart from the stars to what is here with me?” Mother asked.
“Ah, I would never presume to lecture Your Majesty…”
Caspian popped his head back out of the covers, now he did not seem in danger of being taken away from Mother. What she and Nurse were saying did not make any more sense with his ears unmuffled. Mother stroked his hair with a strangely shaky hand.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “How strange all this must seem to you. So much upheaval in such a young life… Whatever else comes, Caspian, remember I love you, and so did your father.”
“Love Mama,” Caspian said happily, hugging her tight. Nurse tucked the covers around them both, and Caspian soon drifted off to sleep.
When he woke, he was alone.
He was back in his own bed; someone must have carried them there. This was not uncommon, as he slept very soundly in those days, but it was rude! He wanted Mother! When he got the door open, though, the hallway was full of bustle. Whispers and strange looks ran everywhere when people saw him, and he had hardly got far at all before Nurse came running up and caught him and told him he could not go see Mother right now.
He could not go see Mother later, either, or the next day, or ever again. Caspian asked over and over, and no one could explain it to him. They said things about the stars, and sleeping, and going far away. No, farther than Mother’s room, farther than the cellars Caspian wasn’t allowed to play in, farther even than the river Nurse and Mother had taken him to see one time, so far away no one could get there, which did not explain how Mother had got there—
In the end, Caspian understood that Mother was gone, and that was all.
III.
When Caspian was six, he woke to find his nurse was gone, and it was his fault.
He had not understood, before, what being a prince meant; in the days to come, now that he was taking an interest in Caspian, his uncle would teach him that it means power. Caspian’s most innocent words held it, and Caspian must learn to wield it or it would work as it willed.
You have a kind heart—hadn’t someone said that to him once? He was very small, and his memory was not long. He had only wanted to share Nurse’s stories with his uncle; they were wonderful stories. After his mother went away, they seemed like the only wonderful things in the world. Nurse said they were not just stories, but had been real, long ago.
“Ah, Aslan willing, they might be again,” she had sighed once. Only once, and when he’d asked her what she meant, she’d distracted him with a story about Queen Lucy and the Faun Tumnus till he’d forgotten to keep asking—she knew caution better than Caspian. But he remembered what she’d said, and he liked it. He liked the idea that lost things might come back.
Maybe his uncle did not. Maybe that was why he sent Nurse away for telling Caspian stories. Caspian asked the castle dogs and cats about it, and a bird that landed quite near him once when he was crying in the castle garden. But they were only ordinary animals, and they could not tell him how to bring back lost things.
IV.
Caspian did not wake alone, that terrible night when he was thirteen. But it felt as though he did.
He woke, first, to Doctor Cornelius shaking him awake. Usually when his tutor woke him in the middle of the night, it meant they were going to the castle’s highest tower for a secret lesson on the old ways; those had been his happiest hours. But that night there was no happiness, no lesson, and, soon, no Doctor Cornelius—only Caspian, fleeing for his life into the night, into a forest he’d been told all his life was full of angry ghosts, into an uncertain future. Doctor Cornelius could not come with him, and Caspian’s only friend was Destrier. And he could talk no more than the kitchen mouser.
Then storm and night and bad luck ripped Caspian from Destrier’s back, and rough unconsciousness swallowed him down.
He woke once more, and it was still the same night. It did not feel so. It felt as though years had passed since Doctor Cornelius had woken him. Caspian had lost his home, his few friends, and his family. The man who had raised him wanted him dead—had always wanted him dead, and out of the way of the throne he’d told Caspian he must be prepared for. He’d killed Caspian’s father. Caspian’s very life was gone, the ground shaken from under his feet and his identity crumbled. He could never visit his mother’s grave again.
Even as Trufflehunter bustled around caring for him, and Trumpkin and Nikabrik debated what to do with him, and their presence filled the small house with warmth, Caspian had never felt so alone.
V.
Caspian woke one morning, and realized he had been reigning one year. He was fourteen now, young and inexperienced, but a good king—so the general opinion went. He made up what he lacked by surrounding himself with good counsel, and those same counsellors were his friends. Caspian wanted nothing more.
Usually. Some days he could not help impossible wishes, any more than he could help talking to the castle dogs, once—how long ago those days seemed! How much difference a year made! And yet, and yet, and yet.
And yet, some days he woke, and realized he still woke alone. His nurse was mere rooms away, and Cornelius, and even Destrier. But his mother and father were still dead, and the Pevensies were still gone. That morning, he realized they had been gone one year, and there were ever so many more ahead in which he would not see them. If they returned, it could not be within Caspian’s lifetime, not if he safeguarded Narnia as he ought. It seemed terribly unfair.
So, some mornings, though he was fourteen—and wasn’t that nearly grown up?—and his uncle had always said men didn’t cry, and his nurse was right there if he wanted to go hug her, Caspian could not help waking up and quietly weeping at his loneliness.
VI.
Caspian woke, and the night was cold.
Perhaps it was only that he was in the underbelly of the Dawn Treader, the sea caressing the porthole with every wave. But he had shared this small cabin with Edmund and Eustace all the way to the end of the world, and it had not seemed so cold then.
He tried to sleep again, but the cold wouldn’t let him, and the sight of Edmund and Eustace’s empty hammocks itched like a scabbing wound. Caspian tossed and turned.
A knock sounded on the cabin door. Opening it, he found Liliandil on the other side, arms wrapped tight about herself.
“My lady! Is ought amiss?”
He had given her Lucy’s cabin, (funny, that it had been his once; he could not think of it that way) and bade her good night before she went into it, some hours earlier, for it seemed even stars, and stars’ daughters, rested at night, once they were human. The waves beyond the porthole were gentle, and he heard no yells from the deck above to indicate serpents or curses…
But she neither nodded nor shook her head.
“It depends how you define ‘amiss’,” she said. “Fear not; the ship is in no danger. But I cannot sleep.”
Caspian heart sank within him.
“Is the cabin not to your liking? Or are you regretting your choice to accompany us to Narnia?”
“Oh, no!” she cried. “I wish very much to see the world beyond my father’s isle. It is only,” she hesitated, the first time Caspian had heard her do so, “colder than I imagined.”
“Well, no wonder. You’re barefoot. Here.”
He hurried back to Edmund’s empty hammock, and his heart only had time to twist within him for a moment before he grabbed the unneeded blanket from it and turned back to Liliandil. He found her right behind him; she had followed him into the cabin, and stood looking down at her feet in surprise. He draped the blanket around her shoulders. She looked up at him, then laughed, soft and earnest.
“I didn’t think to wear shoes. I’ve never worn any. You can teach me to wear them when we get to Narnia.”
She sat on Edmund’s hammock. After a moment of surprise, Caspian sat beside her.
“Only if you wish. The wonder of seeing the world is learning its variety. Sometimes you learn ways you like better than what you grew up with.” He thought about his uncle, and about his nurse. About a faded voice saying You have a kind heart. “But sometimes you learn you like those ways best.” He sucked in a breath, and offered it. “You can always come back, if you don’t like Narnia.”
It came out very quiet, and he could not look at her while saying it. He could not stand losing anyone else, not right now. When they were farther from the edge of the world, further from Lucy and Edmund and Eustace and Reepicheep’s goodbyes—then maybe he could say it loudly.
(Or perhaps not. Perhaps he was not a person who would ever know how to offer a goodbye easily.)
“I will,” she said, “If I don’t like Narnia. But I haven’t even seen Narnia yet, so I don’t know if I like it.”
She leaned her shoulder against Caspian’s, and he was amazed by the warmth of her skin, coming through her dress and the blanket and his tunic and still reaching him hot. He also remembered why she came, though, and his manners.
“True,” he said, “But you’ll never reach Narnia if you freeze to death your first night aboard. Let me just find some more blankets, and then you can get back to your bed.” He stood, and took the blanket from Eustace’s hammock. “Do you know how to get a fire going in your cabin? You shouldn’t leave it lit while you sleep, unfortunately—it’s too dangerous shipboard—but if you wake early and you’re still cold—it’s quite cold just before dawn—”
He realized she was still sitting on Edmund’s hammock. She looked up at him steadily. He wondered if she was taking in his expression; it was too dark in the cabin for his human eyes to read hers.
“Is there something else, my lady?” he asked.
She stood, but kept looking at him without movement toward the door. She was taller than Caspian.
“Is Narnia a land that cares very much about proprieties?” she asked.
“I—well—I don’t know,” Caspian said. “Other countries say we’re very wild, and it is certainly different than under my uncle.”
He didn’t know what to make of her question. With most people (the Duke of Galma, pushing his daughter toward Caspian, sprang to mind), it would have seemed an innuendo. But Liliandil said it so innocently he couldn’t believe she meant it so. She was a very straightforward person.
“My father studied the world below when he was a star,” she said. “He teaches me about it, and I read the books he writes. I know some would think it improper for you to sleep with me in my cabin. That is why you gave it to me, isn’t it? So I might have privacy as the only girl on the ship?”
He thought he managed to nod. He hoped Liliandil couldn’t see in the dark, because he was probably staring horribly.
“I’ve offended you,” she said.
“No, no! It’s just…unexpected.”
“My father is no longer a star,” she said, “but he still burns inside. I’ve never spent a night where I wasn’t curled up against his side.” She looked away for the first time, gaze falling to her bare feet. “It is colder here than I expected.”
Her voice was very sad. And still it asked nothing of Caspian. She was not trying to manipulate him, or even hoping he would change his mind; she accepted her cold solitude utterly. She was only expressing it—honestly, openly, her sorrow laid bare that Caspian’s own wounded heart might recognize it. He walked back to her and smiled. He hoped she could see in the dark.
“Many talking animals still prefer to sleep in packs,” he said. “Why, the night the Pevensies—that is Edmund and Lucy and their brother and sister—and I and the other Narnians defeated my uncle, we had a great feast by the Fords of Beruna; everyone slept together that night. We all simply fell asleep wherever we had been dancing or talking last, with whoever we had been dancing or talking with. I’ll remind the crew of that, if they judge us. I’m king; I can do that.”
Liliandil laughed, and her hand, clutching the cloak of Edmund’s blanket tight to her throat, unclasped so it could take Caspian’s. Her fingers burned even more than her shoulder.
“I don’t know the story about your uncle,” Liliandil said as they left the cabin. “It was after my father came down from the sky. Would you tell me, until we fall asleep? If it isn’t too sad; fighting your uncle must have been hard.”
Perhaps this was improper. But Edmund and Eustace’s hammocks were very empty, and Caspian was cold after days of sailing toward a growing sun. He must turn toward home at some point, and find warmth there. He was sixteen, and his childhood seemed so far away, and yet it did not seem so long ago, sometimes, that he woke every morning wondering who had left him in the night. He had spent months waking to the sight of Edmund and Eustace’s faces; he would like to wake to Liliandil’s. He did not want her to wake to no one’s. He held her hand tight.
“It was,” Caspian said. “But I don’t miss him as much as I expected—as much as I feel I ought, sometimes. And I found joys he wouldn’t understand. Telling Narnian stories to a star, aboard a ship…”
He shook his head with a smile. They were passing the door to the other cabin, where the rest of the crew were sleeping; Caspian pressed his finger to his lips and they tiptoed past like children sneaking out, giggling together.
They unclasped their hands only when they had to climb the ladder to the deck. Caspian nodded to the night watch, and Liliandil smiled and did too. He blushed, but she did not—he could see that, in the starlight of her distant cousins—so he ignored the whispers of his Telmarine morals and took her hand again. They went into the cabin, perhaps Caspian’s cabin after all, and curled up together under all the blankets they could find.
“I’m not a girl, you know,” Liliandil whispered to him.
He stared, a little, so he squeezed her hand tighter to let her know she didn’t have to tell him just so he would feel better about sleeping with her. The only prior visitors to her father’s island were three lords, old and quarreling. Perhaps she’d never spoken of this to any stranger before.
“What are you?”
“I don’t know.” She settled her head in the curve of Caspian’s shoulder, draping herself over his side. She made a noise, a bit like words and a bit like a bird trill and a bit like moonlight. “—maybe. Or—” This word had more moonlight in it, but silver moonlight instead of golden, and several sounds Caspian did not think a human throat could make. “I’m still learning.”
She moved her arms and legs about, trying to get comfortable, and bumped into Caspian’s limbs as he did the same. He laughed, and it caught her so she laughed too.
“We don’t fit like this, do we?” he asked.
“You’re much shorter than my father.”
“Here.” Caspian’s shyness had all gone as he fitted himself inside Liliandil’s arms. His head rested easily on her chest, and she wrapped around him. Her smile was bright in her voice.
“You fit nicely there. I think I like holding someone smaller.”
“Will you be alright now, though I’m not so warm as your father?”
“I shall be happier now,” she said, as simply as if that answered all questions either of them could ask. Maybe it did.
“Me too,” Caspian whispered. “Shall I tell you how I met Edmund and Lucy, and Reepicheep before them?”
“I’d like that.”
They whispered till they drowsed, and murmured till they slept. Pressed into each other’s warm sides, they slept soundly all night.
I.
Caspian didn’t wake, not properly. He came a little awake, dozing lazily, wondering what stirred him, but not truly interested in thinking about it hard enough to wake fully. Oh, mm, was that yelling? Someone yelling, and perhaps they were yelling before, and that roused him, and the warm, comfortable weight draped on his left side was curling a little tighter against him…
A boulder careened into Caspian’s stomach.
“Wake up, wake up, you’re all sleeping forever!”
In between wheezing and coming fully awake, Caspian clutched at the boulder, and realized it was a happy, queen-shaped boulder. Peter groaned and buried his head against Caspian’s side, out of the way of Lucy’s eager limbs.
“Of course, Lu, in the morning,” Susan mumbled, without opening her eyes or moving from where she lay beside Caspian. Liliandil was tucked happily between Caspian and Susan, quite cozy, and when Caspian tried to stretch his legs, they wouldn’t move; Edmund had shifted at some point in the night, and was sprawled over Caspian and Peter’s legs in a way that didn’t look at all comfortable, but was apparently working for him, judging from how soundly he was still sleeping. No great distance away, Caspian’s old nurse was settled into a mound of brightly-colored blankets with her niece and sister and brother-in-law, though all were still fast asleep.
“It is morning,” Lucy insisted, shaking Edmund’s shoulder now. He gave a loud snort and rolled over. “Doesn’t anyone want to go hear the mermaids sing? It’s the equinox and they’re celebrating the dawn.”
“Equinox was yesterday,” Peter said, voice sleepy and muffled.
“Yes, so today’s the start of days getting longer, and the mermaids are going to sing the sun up.”
“If the sun’s not up, then it’s not morning,” a cross voice said. Caspian pushed up on his elbows as much as he could without disturbing everyone who was using him as a pillow, and spotted Eustace lying a little distance away, looking half-awake and as cross as he sounded. And rather furry.
“Eustace!” Caspian said. “I thought you couldn’t make it! When did you arrive?”
“Last night, at the most ridiculous time; it certainly wasn’t that late when I left—anyway, someone said you were out here, and why even bother going up to the castle, because the festival would be going on for days, and I’d want an early start in the morning…” Eustace tried to lift a hand to rub his eyes, and was dragged back by several complaining bundles of fur. He sighed irritably. “And now I’m all damp from sleeping on the grass. This isn’t hygienic, you know.”
“But at least you’re warm,” Caspian teased. Eustace huffed.
Caspian had left Eustace at the end of the world two years ago, but he’d carried tales of his deeds back to Narnia: his bravery on their adventures, his friendship with valiant Reepicheep. When Eustace returned to Narnia, some months back (at least on Caspian’s end), it was to find Peepiceek had declared him an honorary Mouse. And talking mice did so love to sleep piled together.
This spring festival, as most Narnian festivals, truth be told, had started early and lasted long into the night, and had every intention of repeating the act tomorrow. (Or today, if Lucy was to be believed; the sky was still dark, but it was a soft, velvety gray sort of dark instead of full blue-black.) Last night the revelers had feasted, and sung, and danced till they dropped, and then curled up to sleep where they fell. Caspian certainly had. Why the Pevensies were here this sennight, when Narnia faced no ill greater than keeping the Bulgy Bears from drinking all Cair Paravel’s finest mead themselves; why all four were here, when Eustace had been summoned alone last time, and Peter and Susan had not even joined their younger siblings on the Dawn Treader; how long they might be allowed to stay once the equinox had truly passed and how long it would be before they returned—Caspian knew none of these things. But he knew they were here now, and tonight—today—he did not care about the rest.
Time took people away from Caspian. But it also brought them to him.
Caspian had been quite content indeed to dance himself breathless with the Pevensies, and Liliandil, and his old nurse when she could be coaxed into it, and then to fall asleep curled up with them. And now he had woken to find Eustace nearby, too.
“You’re right, Lucy,” Caspian said, laughing when Peter groaned and buried his head under Caspian’s arm, still refusing to open his eyes. “It is morning. And the merfolk do Narnia an honor, singing for our equinox festival. It would be rude for Narnia’s monarchs to miss their performance.”
And with a lot of coaxing and tugging and shoving and sleepy protests and some very underhanded tickling by Lucy, she and Caspian set about getting the others on their feet and stumbling toward the crowd forming on the nearby beach, just in time for sunrise.