Work Text:
[1]
When Reepicheep was young and Caspian the Ninth still ruled Narnia, the Old Narnians were as strangers in a strange land. Only in stories could Talking Animals and other creatures walk through Narnia openly and unafraid, so they counted these stories among their most cherished possessions. The library at Cair Paravel had long ago turned to dust and centaurs and other learned folk were a rare sight for the dwellers of fields and hedgerows, so Reepicheep learned these tales as a pup snuggled against his mother’s fur, and he dreamed of heroism and glory and of doing deeds great enough to be passed down from generation to generation.
Of the stories, he best loved hearing how his people first became Talking Mice, for his people were a diminished and scattered folk. Yet, at their least, when they were mere dumb animals, they had won Aslan's favor, and Reepicheep's great hope is that through his deeds they might once again. During the days of his careless youth, he would recruit his cousin Peepiceek and run through the fields waving dried stalks of grain around as they fended off the White Witch’s sprites and ogres to reach the Stone Table. They mowed down countless enemies, and if the only bruises they received were from crashing into the trees at the edges of the fields in their enthusiasm, well, in those days, it was said that even some of the trees had been on her side.
His sisters refused to play the Queens, preferring to instead chase each other through the field, shrieking in glee, but Reepicheep imagined that that the Queens would exclaim over his bravery as he fought off the Witch’s minions and freed Aslan and them from their bonds. Aslan, impressed by his valor and skill, would make the mice forever Talking Animals and knight him on the spot and together they would leave to storm the Witch’s castle.
As Reepicheep sat down in the fields, tired after a long day’s play, he stared at the trees and wished that the dryads would awaken. He had been told that when he was born, a wood woman had sung over his cradle, but she had appeared and disappeared as mysteriously as the song that had haunted him all his life, and though he had questioned everyone he knew, no one else had ever met another of her kind.
--
[2]
In the gloom and darkness of Aslan’s How, surrounded by Miraz’s forces after a day of loss and retreat, there seemed to be very little place for glory. There was hope, however, in the form of two Men who had stepped out of legend in answer of Queen Susan’s horn. They bore little resemblance to the great Kings Reepicheep had envisioned in his mind when he first heard tell of them as a pup. Standing beside the centaurs they were undeveloped children, besides the dwarves they were slight and frail, and besides the Talking Beasts they were fangless and clawless. Nevertheless, Reepicheep knew enough about how stature and form misled.
When the war preparations were done and there was little for the Narnians to do but wait anxiously for Miraz's answer to their challenge of single combat, King Peter told them stories. He told them the first story, of King Frank and Queen Helen, Lord Digory and Lady Polly, and the beginning of time. He told them of the building of Cair Paravel shining on the edge of the Eastern Sea (and Reepicheep, who had never seen the sea, felt a stirring in his heart). He told them stories of their own golden age, of driving off the northern giants and of Rabadash the Ridiculous. Finally, King Edmund told a story that began in Spare Oom and War Drobe and the Lantern Waste and ended at the Stone Table, that lay cracked an arm’s breadth from where he stood - and even more importantly, it ended with Aslan, who until this day Reepicheep had met no one who had ever seen.
Reepicheep all the Narnians gathered listened to King Edmund speak, and though the King's speech was quieter and plainer than his brother's, the story itself was powerful enough to spark a hope in the hearts of his countrymen and renew their spirits for the day to come. Yet, Reepicheep wondered what it meant when one's people’s greatest tale of valor was not even an aside in someone else’s story.
Later, when Aslan healed him and made him whole again, Reepicheep learned that it was kindness in the face of hopelessness and love to the point of foolishness that was counted the great glory of his people, and it seemed a mystery to him that it would even be worth a mention.
--
[3]
In the last sea, they told no stories.
As the Dawn Treader was carried by the current towards the edge of the world, Reepicheep felt too full, too overwhelmed to speak. Yet, even in this fullness, he also felt a queer longing, as if everything he had desired all his life was really waiting just beyond.
For the first time in his life, a life that had been filled with daring deeds, he felt instead as if he was in one of the old stories. His younger self would not have understood the glory of it, the glory of drifting off to the edge of the world with the sea and the winds still and quiet around them. (He would have scoffed at pushing a sea serpent instead of fighting it). The final stretch of this voyage was too passive to be heroic. There was no darkness and no hopelessness - there was no room for these things. The light shone through everything, as though it was the reality and everything else an illusion.
And yet, he could not shake the conviction that this was the greatest adventure, that all his life had been a preparation for this.
--
Notes:
[1]
"As high as my spirit," it said. "Though perhaps as small as my stature. Why should we not come to the very eastern end of the world? And what might we find there? I expect to find Aslan's own country. It is always from the east, across the sea, that the great Lion comes to us."
"I say, that is an idea," said Edmund in an awed voice.
"But do you think," said Lucy, "Aslan's country would be that sort of country - I mean, the sort you could ever sail to?"
"I do not know, Madam," said Reepicheep. "But there is this. When I was in my cradle, a wood woman, a Dryad, spoke this verse over me:
"Where sky and water meet, Where the waves grow sweet, Doubt not, Reepicheep, To find all you seek, There is the utter East.
"I do not know what it means. But the spell of it has been on me all my life."
-The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Chapter Two
[2]
"Ah!" roared Aslan. "You have conquered me. You have great hearts. Not for the sake of your dignity, Reepicheep, but for the love that is between you and your people, and still more for the kindness your people showed me long ago when you ate away the cords that bound me on the Stone Table (and it was then, though you have long forgotten it, that you began to be Talking Mice), you shall have your tail again."
-Prince Caspian, Chapter Fifteen
[3]
After that for many days, without wind in her shrouds or foam at her bows, across a waveless sea, the Dawn Treader glided smoothly east. Every day and every hour the light became more brilliant and still they could bear it. No one ate or slept and no one wanted to, but they drew buckets of dazzling water from the sea, stronger than wine and somehow wetter, more liquid, than ordinary water, and pledged one another silently in deep draughts of it. And one or two of the sailors who had been oldish men when the voyage began now grew younger every day. Everyone on board was filled with joy and excitement, but not an excitement that made one talk. The further they sailed the less they spoke, and then almost in a whisper. The stillness of that last sea laid hold on them.
-The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Chapter Sixteen