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“I thought that you were so beautiful, it was love, I guess
And you might never come back home, and I may never sleep at night
But God, I just hope you're doing fine out there, I just pray that you're alright”
– Ethel Cain, A House in Nebraska
“My son,” Aslan says, and he sounds desperately sad.
Caspian stands before him, body hale and healthy, without pain. He has never met Aslan before, and if there was any doubt left in him it is gone now, in his great presence. His mane is the same gold as Peter’s hair. In fact, there are pieces of the Pevensies everywhere in him: his amber eyes hold the throaty warmth of Lucy’s laugh, his deep grace is all Susan, he has that same stern quietness of Edmund.
“You are welcome here,” He says, voice smooth as water over rocks, looking for all the world like this is the last conversation he wishes to have.
It startles Caspian out of his awe, and he drops down to his knees. His hands ache for a sword to rest on. If Aslan’s country is beautiful, Caspian only notices it in a passing way, in the feeling in his chest. It is Aslan he is looking at, only Aslan.
“Sir,” he says, voice low and open as a child. “It was not my wish to meet you like this.”
“Nor mine, Son of Adam.”
“I let everyone down,” he says, and he can hear the tears catch in his throat, tears he doesn’t deserve. “I am not worthy to be here.”
Peter may have forgiven him, and Lucy too, but Aslan is different. He knows that now.
“It is not a matter of worth,” Aslan replies, and it is final. Who is Caspian to argue, now at the end of all things. “Stand.”
“May I ask you a question, Sir?”
“You may.”
“What has happened in Narnia since I died?” It feels strange to say died, standing here healed, chest rising and falling like the tide. It feels final. Once, he might have dreaded what Aslan would say; that his aunt has died but not now. The one thing he wished to avoid, so much so that it brought him to ruin, no longer feels so bad. If his aunt is here, in Aslan’s country, then she will be at peace. What he dreads instead are these newly grown roots in his heart. He dreads, selfishly, that the Pevensies have been sent back to their world. Let Narnia have their golden rulers back.
“You dread, Son of Adam, but what do you wish for me to say?”
He swallows down his fear and answers. Nothing feels wrong here. “I wish to hear that the Pevensies have stayed.”
“Then you will be glad to know that they have.”
It isn’t gladness, but relief. He cannot be glad when he is not there beside them. Perhaps, Aslan does not know all.
“Will they not miss their world?” He asks anyway. Caspian doesn’t want them to be in pain, not even for Narnia.
“There will always be missing, my son. There is no existence without it. But they have chosen your world, and just as I gave them a choice, I offer one to you now.”
“A choice?” Caspian asks, chest singing with hope. Aslan will not send him back; he knows that. But hope lifts its sleeping head anyway.
“You have always wanted a glimpse of their world. For five minutes, you may see that world. Or for five minutes you may return to your own.”
Caspian pauses, and so does his breathing. Where once he might have a thousand rushing thoughts, tripping over the other for his attention, now his mind is only still. This is a peace he has never known in life. “It doesn’t matter what I want. What would be better for them?”
“You cannot want wrong things anymore, now that you have died, my son.” Aslan says, “I am asking you.”
Caspian hangs onto his words for a moment.
“What do you choose?”
“I choose their world.” He wants to choose the right thing, the thing that will be best for everyone. He wants to choose the path to least pain.
There is an apple seed in his palm and when he looks back up, Aslan and his country are gone. He is standing in a large village, divided by a coaching path carved of what looks to be one great piece of grey stone. There is a woman knelt in the garden of the house closest to him, pruning a rosebush. The path is full of coaches, but they reflect the sun as if they have been polished for near a decade.
Caspian is entirely lost. He had not thought about what to do in these five minutes. He had thought Aslan might… but Aslan did not. Does not. He is learning that.
“Are you alright there, dear?” The woman asks, using a gloved hand to shelter her eyes in the sun. Caspian does not need to wonder who she is, because her face says it all. Mrs Pevensie wears a patchwork of her children’s faces. “Are you from Hendon House?” She asks, and when he only looks blankly back at her, she nods to his clothes. Instead of his Telmarine armour, he finds he’s wearing an unbuttoned stiff tunic of deep blue and beneath it, a shirt and a short cropped woven tunic. In his hand where the apple seed had been instead lies a cloak pin, shaped like a shield with the words Hendon House written at the top. Beneath it lies a cross with three stars above it.
“Yes,” He answers warily, knowing he needs to answer and having nothing else to offer. “I missed the… carriage?” He tries, remembering something Peter had told him about their arrival.
“The train carriage? And you came here?” She asks slowly in response, brushing her knees as she stands. The shovel in her hand looks like she might bury him with it.
“It was the only place I knew here.” Caspian responds, suddenly feeling like this was perhaps not a very good idea and could these five minutes be done with now please. “I know your children.”
She looks at him like he might be the answer to something and then inclining her head, beams with a smile that can only be Lucy’s. “Oh. Oh, I see. Well, why don’t you come in for a cup of tea while I ring the station and see what the next train you can get is.”
Inside, the house stands to attention like Peter at his most kingly, each line of the walls perfectly straight. “Shoes off, if you don’t mind dear.” She murmurs, digging around in a drawer for something. It turns out to be a great book that she flicks through while Caspian tentatively unties the stiff leather shoes he wears. Mrs Pevensie starts spinning a circle with a finger along some small oddity, and then picks up what looks like a thickened, overly polished door handle and places it to her ear.
“Hello, I am terribly sorry to bother you, but I am calling about the next train to Canterbury. Right. One of the students of Henden House has missed the last one, will he still be able to board the next train with the same ticket? Right. I see. Thank you.”
Caspian remembers, from more than one conversation, that the Pevensie’s had said no magic existed in their world. But currently their mother has summoned a portal to fling her voice across. She returns the device to itself and tilts her head as she looks at him, a picture of concern.
“Next train to Hendon House is tomorrow I’m afraid, but not to worry. Do you have anywhere to stay the night?” She asks, hand lingering on the device.
“No,” he says stiltedly, wondering again how long a ‘five minutes’ is. Perhaps he should have asked. “I am not from here.”
“Oh yes of course,” she says again, as if she should have known. “Are you an international student? Where are you from?”
“Telmar?” Caspian offers tentatively, uncertain where the word Narnia lies with their mother.
“Telmar,” she repeats, pursing her lips. “Is that in Spain?”
“Yes,” he says, hoping for no questions about this Spain.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Spain. Well, anyway. You can stay here, you must, as a friend of my children. You can sleep in the boy's room.” She says, wandering away, and he wonders if he is meant to follow. Truthfully, he should protest, should leave their space be, but he still has no idea how long five minutes is, and he is. Well. There is a longing to see the Pevensies without armour, swords sheathed. If it is intrusive, he does not care; he is dead. What need for shame as a ghost?
As he follows her into another room, he stops to let his eyes feast upon the new sight. There are curves and straight clean lines, and little is ornamented but the room is brought alive by the colours. Rich brown woods scatter the space, and there are greens as true as any Narnian forest. Yellows and reds and blues fold around cushions, furniture and the books, the books! One wall is almost entirely taken up by a bookcase, and each spine is bright as a bird's wing. Caspian only stops admiring them when he notices their mother looking at him in slight amusement. Consciously, he closes his open mouth.
“I’m sorry, I… you have a beautiful home.”
Mrs Pevensie beams like a flower in bloom, like Lucy. It lands like the arrows did. In his chest, he feels them, sharp as Lucy’s dagger, burying into flesh like they must hibernate there.
“Shall I make you a cup of tea? No, no, let me take you out for lunch. There’s a darling café on the high street.”
Somehow Mrs Pevensie seems more flustered by his appearance than Caspian is. Already she is brushing past him, riffling through a small satchel on the side table.
“Please, Mrs Pevensie…tea would be lovely.” He insists, not wanting to leave. Outside is a world he does not understand, and though he has always dreamed of what lay beyond in the world of the great rulers of legend, he finds now that it is of no interest. Not without them. All that he is here for rests on this small space of land, within this house and within this woman. If he leaves now, he risks the five minutes ending before he can return.
Mrs Pevensie seems somewhat startled at his enthusiasm, her hand on the bag drooping. Caspian smiles gently, as reassuringly as he can, and there is an answering smile in her eyes.
⏱
Mrs Pevensie places a kettle over a flame that produces itself, a small thing that still delights him, but he finds his old curiosity tempered. Once he might have asked how it worked, but now Caspian finds himself pleased with not knowing.
“Milk and sugar? Oh!” She chuckles, almost a little nervously. “I never asked your name.”
“I am called Caspian.”
Peter had not asked his name either, when they met. Their swords had met first, kissed and came away. Only at the sight of the Narnians, he had guessed it.
“Caspian,” she echoes. Her tongue rolls over the sounds the same way that Peter does. Did. “What a delightful name. A bit more exciting than my lot’s.”
Caspian wants to tell her that for over a thousand years, Narnians have named their children after her own. That he had said them over and over to himself as a child, whispered into the night, hoping for their return. Peter, he had told the stars, High King Peter. He opens his mouth to tell her, not that of course, but that he has always loved their names. The names of his friends. But before he can, there is a great wrenching scream through the kitchen and Caspian jumps. It sounds like the dying Narnians trapped in the courtyard.
“Caspian… Caspian.”
Vaguely, he can hear a mother’s voice, tender and reaching for him. Is his time here done? But no, that is the mother of the Pevensies talking. His eyes struggle their way to focus and he sees her, face right in front of his, with both hands bracing his shoulders. Distantly, he realises he is on the floor. The cool of it beneath his hands is welcoming against the warmth coursing through him, the sweat suddenly at each nook and bend of his body. There is a rabbit in his heart, and it is racing, racing, racing.
“Sorry,” he mumbles.
“Gosh, it has been quite the day for you, hasn’t it? Two sugars in that tea and I’ll hear no complaints. Let’s get you to the couch.”
Slowly, she helps him up to his feet, and he staggers his way to the soft elongated chair in the book room. It is soft as goose down, and he sinks into it. Promptly, there is a warm cup of tea placed between his shaking hands, and when he takes a sip, it’s like it brings him back to life. It’s too sweet, with the sugar, but it is the sugar that helps.
Mrs Pevensie sits across from him in the armchair and nurses her own steaming cup. They sit like that, in silence, for a long while. She seems to know that the last thing he wants to do is talk. It is a skill she gave to her children.
⏱
After a while, she stands and fiddles with a decorative box on a high table. Turning a tiny handle, music sparks from it, in jolts and sputters. An instrument, he wonders. But no, as she turns the handle, the music changes, melts into the voices of men. Caspian is too tired to really feel his delight, but it is still there, resting in the marrow of his bones. Mrs Pevensie holds her hand still for a moment, and then, obviously displeased, turns the handle again. This time the music is slow, caught in time like Caspian. Brass instruments dance the same rhythm over and over and never come to a stop. Mrs Pevensie slowly sinks back into her chair and takes her now empty cup back into her hands. She looks as much from a different world as he is. They are both imagining a dance to this with someone else. Caspian wants to offer a hand anyway, like he would for his aunt, but then the song ends. The next is fuller, vibrant and bright in a way he does not feel. Mrs Pevensie blinks away the tears resting in her eyes and kneeling in front of the little metal box flush against the wall, begins to make a fire.
⏱
Once the fire is tending to itself, she stands again, and her smile, though worried, is returned.
“Do you know how to keep a fire going? I need to start on dinner,” she asks, and he nods. This he can do. She leaves him with the box of wood, and the fire poker and the room. He takes his job seriously, but he lets himself enjoy fiddling with the little handles that seem to smother and feed the flames depending on which way he pushes them. Opening the little door, he has a quick peer in to see that it opens vents for air. It makes sense of course, but Caspian didn’t have much cause to make a fire before. He takes note, to bring the idea back to Narnia before he remembers. It hurts, like a new wound touched. He is dead and should not hurt and yet he does. Will it hurt even in Aslan’s country, at the end of it all? But there is nothing to be done about it. He will bear it.
Mrs Pevensie reappears and laughs at him, crouched in the now settling darkness.
“Why didn’t you put a light on, dear?” She asks, reaching over to fiddle with the long rope hanging from a vase with a funny hat on. Light floods the room like Peter arriving at his dying side. Yes, it will always hurt. “Now, look at my carrots. I’m quite proud of them.” She says, holding up her produce by their green hair, grinning.
“You grew them yourself?” Caspian asks, bright eyed. He has never grown anything with his own hands. He thinks of Lucy, with her hands laid against the trees, reaching something further than he can stretch. He thinks of the Pevensie siblings together, replanting fresh seeds of Narnia and watching them grow, before and now. He thinks of Peters hands, gentle over his wounds. He cannot remember how his mind stumbled here.
“Everyone grows their own these days, if they can. Rations and such. I was never much of a gardener but look at me now, I always say to the children. Anyway, this is for dinner. Keep that fire going, would you? I know it’s only September, but I’ve felt terribly cold since this morning.”
⏱
Caspian watches the flames for longer than necessary, looking for answers in the flames. Queen Lucy had told him of the magic of the fire at her faun’s hands, so many years ago. This music box should not coax any out of the flames, but he swears there are shapes in the red blaze regardless. Peter, he sees, young as he knew him but restored to his crown. As he will be now. Caspian reaches out a hand to touch him. The pain of the heat is sharp, but he doesn’t care.
“Dear it’s time for- oh don’t touch that!”
At the sound of her voice, he pulls back from Peter, but the look on Mrs Pevensie’s face is not surprised, no. She looks like she has seen this before.
“It’s time for dinner,” she repeats.
At the table, she presents him with a steaming bowl of stew and a thick slice of bread.
“National loaf, I’m afraid. I used to make wonderful bread. It was a recipe from my grandmother actually; she came over from…”
She seems to falter when she glances up at him. Their eyes meet, and she seems to not expect it, that he had been looking at her at all.
“Please go ahead.” He says, sensing she intends to stop. He had thought at first that she might be like his aunt, but no it is not the best fit. His aunt had never been so warm, so openly mothering. It had not been her way. He loves her, but it had not. Was his own mother like this? Caspian cannot remember. Mrs Pevensie, blushing slightly but also beaming continues.
“Well, my grandmother came over from Ireland, but she was a very hardworking woman, you see. She taught me how to make all kinds of bread, but my favourite was always her Soda bread. Have you ever had it?”
Caspian shakes his head, dipping his bread into the stew and taking a bite. It is not the most delicious meal he has ever had, far from it. But at that moment Caspian is sure it is the best. All the other empty chairs at the table he imagines full of the Pevensies, a day as unremarkable as this where they all sit together and eat a meal their mother had made. He forces a spoonful down his throat to help blink away the tears in his eyes, trying to focus back on what Mrs Pevensie is saying.
“The good thing about Soda bread is that there is no need for yeast or leaving it to rise. A time saver, when you have four exhausting children to look after, I tell you.”
She may not be much like his aunt but she does remind him of someone. His beloved nurse. For a moment, he might think this could be them in a world where she could stay, sharing a meal again and listening to her tell him stories.
“You must be in Peter’s year, is that right?” She asks abruptly, and the look in her eye tells him she has been waiting to talk about them, to ask. “I never asked how you know my children. They never tell me who their friends are these days,” she adds, laughing nervously.
“Yes, I am. But they have all been so kind to me. They helped me more than I can say.” He says, cautious but wanting to tell her the truth. Your children are the stars that I guided my life by, he wants to say.
Mrs Pevensie worries her lip for a moment, before looking down at her bowl, hardly touched.
“You don’t know how much that comforts me to hear; I mean it.” This time, there are tears welling in her eyes. “The war has changed them so far beyond what I ever expected and I-. I hate that I want them back to how they once were. Nobody else’s children have changed so much. I grew up during the first war, it wasn’t… you grew up faster, of course you did but. I sent them away to be safe, but I don’t know what happened to them without me watching. Are they alright, truly?”
Caspian takes her hand, hovering over the table and holds it.
“Your children are the most wonderful people I have ever met.” He says, earnestly. He thinks of Peter and their first few days, where his anger had grown over him like weeds. But he had brought himself out of it, burning back the overgrowth. He had made up for his actions tenfold. “I owe them everything.”
“You must think me ridiculous.” She says, letting out a half sob half laugh. “It’s just the war, I think. But thank you, my dear, truly. I am so glad they have been good to you. I’m so glad they have you for a friend. You seem like a lovely young man.”
There is no pleasure in it. He does not have them anymore, and he will not again, until they themselves pass into Aslan’s country. He has not been good to them, he thinks, Lucy’s terrified face appearing behind his eyes like a spirit.
“You better not tell them I’ve been so silly.” She says, in faux seriousness. “I’ll write to them myself to tell them what a wonderful friend they have made. Maybe when it is summer, they can bring you back for a visit.”
Caspian’s heart goes cold, for a moment. He has forgotten, of course. They will not get her letter, nor will they return. His death has robbed her of this and even now, it is him taking these final moments of her children. Why had Aslan sent him here? Why did every joy have to come with a sharp sting at the back of it?
⏱
They finish eating and quietly clean up together. Caspian has never washed dishes, but he knows how to use a drying cloth, how to clear the table of dishes.
“Well, I think it might be a good idea for you to go straight to bed, after the day you have had.” She tells him, as she takes the cloth back off him. “Are you alright to sleep in Peter’s bed? I changed the sheets when they left this morning.”
Caspian nods, for fear his voice will reveal him. As they walk up the stairs, the room at the end of the hall beckons him over.
“The boys share it, but that bed there is Peter’s. I’ll let you get settled. Do you fancy any hot chocolate?”
“What is hot chocolate?” he asks, looking away from the room quickly so that he can unpick it all unobserved when she has left.
“Delicious is what it is. Warm chocolate and milk. I’ll make you one.”
And with that, she closes the door behind her, leaving him in the brightly lit room. Two beds lie side by side, with only a small piece of wood at their heads. Caspian traces a hand over the covers, blue and not so soft, but they are thick at the very least. Each bed has a stack of books beside them, though Edmund’s looks far neater. There is more furniture, wood again, and more little lights like the one Mrs Pevensie had used, covered in their little hats. But no, it is the wall that he walks towards, as if calls to him as much as the room itself had. On a plain tapestry, there are thousands of miniatures overlaying each other like wildflowers in a field. Some are sketches, some look like pages torn from books.
Others he thinks must be paintings of the siblings, but the closer he peers, the more frighteningly true to life they are. This is no rudimentary drawing in Aslan’s How; this is the Kings and Queens as they are. In one miniature, all of them are stood outside the house he is standing in, though they are years younger. Some show the girls outside a crumbling castle, while others depict Edmund and Lucy on a beach, tossing water at each other and laughing. The last one that he looks at is Peter alone, in the same uniform Caspian is still wearing, cocking his head and smiling. He wants to pretend, for a moment, that it is Caspian who Peter is smiling at. That he might one day have coaxed such a smile from the High King on his own merit.
There is a gentle knock at the door, and he steps away from the photo. Mrs Pevensie appears, with another steaming cup in hand. This is starting to feel familiar, like a life he might have. If only he might stay, to look after their mother and repay his debts to them. But no. It would only pain them both. He must remember the path to less pain.
“Here you are dear, one hot chocolate. Peter makes the best ones but I’m not too shabby myself.”
She places it down on the small table beside Peter’s bed and starts rummaging through the other standing cabinet.
“Pyjamas. They should fit you; you and Peter have a similar build.”
The clothes, which he assumes can only be bed clothes, are a matching set of tunic and trousers in a soft blue fabric.
“Anyway, I should leave you to rest. I’ll be downstairs if you need me, and if you wake up in the night, mine is the bedroom to the right as you walk out. Bathrooms to the left.” She hesitates for a moment and then shyly walks towards him and offers a gentle kiss to his cheek. As she goes to leave, she turns the small light on again and taps the wall, plunging the room in a soft warm light, and casting shadows everywhere.
Caspian slowly undresses, folding the clothing as he remembers the servants doing. There is no chest to place them in, so he opts to leave them on top of the furniture the bed clothes have come from. Peter’s clothes he slips on, and they are well worn; rubbed down on the elbows, and one patch is clearly resewn together with thread. He has never had anything so long that it needed repairing, because they would be handed down to others at court, or sometimes servants. But he imagines Peter’s elbows, resting in the nook of this fabric night after night, and he is grateful for them.
In Peter’s bed, wearing Peter’s clothes, he drinks his hot chocolate, a drink Peter has perfected. He wonders if it is the same for Peter, back in the castle. They will put him in the prince's rooms, as High King. Peter would not force his aunt to move out of her apartments. Here they are, worlds apart, wearing each other’s life. Caspian would give it all back to have him instead. In those last creeping hours, after the witch had broken them down, he had felt… something richer growing between them. As he died, he had known it to be true, for himself at least if not for Peter. But he had wished it. Perhaps so much that he saw something that was not there. If only he had asked, in those final moments, where nothing mattered. Peter would not have been cruel, he knows this. He had given him Rhindon to hold in his last moments. Caspian holds his cup to his chest, echoing the placement, letting the warmth creep into his chest.
He still does not know how long Aslan sent him for, but he is sure now that when he falls asleep, he will not wake up here again. Putting down the half-filled drink, he settles himself into the bed, over to one side as if Peter could lie next to him. Cover wrapped around him like an embrace; he whispers goodbye to this place and closes his eyes.