[fic] On a Transparent Belt of Ether 2/4
Feb. 14th, 2011 02:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keire_keTitle: On a Transparent Belt of Ether
Rating: 14
Pairings: Caspian/Edmund
Genre: Romance, drama
Wordcount: 22k
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Edmund the Just made his kingship telling people the right things at the right time. The night before Caspian’s coronation Edmund tells the anxious prince the right thing. It is only later, on board the Dawn Treader that he realises just what his words achieved.
Author's Note: On the whole the movie is best viewed as “the epic love story of Edmund and Caspian,” otherwise it may not be the most formulaic thing committed to film, but it’s certainly close.
Chapter breaks may seem a little awkward - I never planned for chapters. It was supposed to be ten pages, tops.
Betaed byyami_tai. <3 Thank you so much, hun, for all the hard work!
Edmund woke early, for there were still long shadows underneath the trees. Caspian was still asleep, but not for long. They had some more fruit for breakfast (strangely, it was not half as bothersome as having to feast on apples for two days) and set out again to make their way across the island. It was easier, though not by much -- they still needed to cut through the thickets, but there were fewer of them.
“It’s strange, but this is rather like a road, or a path anyway,” Edmund said. They were moving in more or less a straight line, and on both sides the jungle was so thick, that not even light could penetrate it.
“Let’s hope it will see us through to the other side,” Caspian said.
Around midday they found a clearing, not as comfortable as the one they spent the night in, but one thoroughly covered with lianas. “Should we take some back with us?” Caspian asked, trying to lift one. It came off the ground easily enough, but carrying it would require great strength, especially in the quantities they required.
“Let us go on,” Edmund said. “We must be about halfway across and since we’ve got this far, it would be a shame not to discover what else this island has to offer.”
“I agree. Drinian surely won’t assume us dead for at least a week, perhaps more.”
“Looking at Drinian I imagine he would sooner learn to fly than abandon you for dead.”
“There is that.” Caspian laughed, no doubt imagining, as Edmund was, Drinian attempting such a feat with his usual seriousness. “Onward, then!”
A short while later they were faced with an unexpected obstacle: a wall of stone rose before them. The only way forward was to climb, for the jungle on either side was too thick to allow them to pass. They would have turned back, were it not for a sliver of light Edmund could swear he saw flickering on the floor. He bent to the ground and beckoned Caspian to look as well.
“There’s passage?”
“I think so.” Edmund sat back on his haunches and gazed at Caspian thoughtfully. “The hole’s not too narrow, I reckon we can crawl through it easily and there seems to be light on the other side.”
“We’ve gone this far,” Caspian said, and so they crawled through the tunnel to come up in a cavern wide enough to fit all of the Dawn Treader. It was well-lit too, for the domed ceiling had an oculus that let in plenty of light. Directly beneath it there was an age-old tree, weathered by storms, but still fertile, if the apples on its branches were any indication. Edmund felt a shiver ran through him. This was a very old place, he thought, and the magic was so thick here, it was almost palpable.
“There ought to be another way out,” he said as quietly as he would in a cathedral. “Look along the walls starting from here, I’ll go the other way round.”
Caspian nodded and they parted ways, moving along the walls and checking for drafts and light. “There’s one here!” Edmund heard Caspian call, just as he came upon a tunnel as well, but they both continued, until Edmund came half-circle and found that Caspian wasn’t there to meet him. He straightened and turned, to find the king standing underneath the great tree and reaching out for one of its fruits.
“Caspian!” Edmund cried. The feeling of foreboding welled up in him, and rightly so, because just as Caspian’s hand touched the apple he was dropping to the floor like a stone.
Edmund was at his side in an instant, grateful to find the fall didn’t seem to do any harm, but that gratitude soon gave way to anxiety, as Caspian would not open his eyes, no matter how much he was shaken. With his heart in his throat Edmund bent his head to Caspian’s chest, listening for the beat of his heart, and was relieved to find it.
“He’s alive then,” he said aloud, hoping to reassure himself, and to quell the panic that had his hands shaking and closed his throat. Caspian was alive, it was the truth, but it was only partly reassuring -- Caspian breathed and his heart was beating, but both were slow, slower even than those of sleepers.
Drinian was surely going to kill him, Edmund thought in despair, as he sat heavily next to the sleeping Caspian and hid his face in his hands.
This was not the time to despair, however. Edmund shot his feet, and raced for the nearest cave exit. Shaking and volume had no effect, but perhaps a shock would, he thought as he poured a good-sized pitcher’s worth of cold water onto Caspian’s face.
There was no reaction.
How else to wake a sleeping person, Edmund wondered in desperation, as he watched the faint raise and fall of Caspian’s chest. A fall, perhaps? No, that only worked for the dreamer within the dream.
The tree shook over his head, like there was a wind rustling its branches, even though in the cave there could be none. Edmund rose, all the same. He might be less perceptive than Lucy about these things, but he knew magic when he saw and felt it, and the cavern was overflowing with it. Good or bad, he wasn’t sure; his heart trembled, but then it was trembling before, ever since Caspian had fallen.
The invisible vortex quieted and a figure detached from the tree.
“You are not a hamadryad,” Edmund said, keeping himself between Caspian and the strange apparition. It was quite like one, he supposed, but lacking the tree-like characteristics. Then again, it hardly seemed human, either. It was tall and willowy, but its gender was anybody’s guess.
“Indeed, I am not. I am tasked with guarding this tree.”
“What happened to Caspian?”
“This is a sacred place, son of Adam,” it said. “If you come in good faith, you will be permitted to enter, but not much further.”
“We come in good faith. We mean no harm. We seek a way out, and provisions for our ship, no more.”
“This tree will not be disturbed, by anyone.”
Edmund bit his lip. “He meant no harm.”
“That is not for me to decide.”
“Please, can’t something be done? Caspian is the King of Narnia, he must return, at all cost.”
“Crowns and countries don’t matter. No one is king, nor slave, nor lady or peasant. All are equal here.”
Edmund clenched his hands. “He can be woken, though, can’t he?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
The guardian smiled, or at least Edmund thought it smiled -- he was having a difficult time seeing whether it had a face at all. “In the way all such spells are broken, by a journey and a sacrifice.”
“What must be sacrificed?”
“That is for no one but the one to break the spell to know.”
“There is only me here.”
Again the creature gave a smile, or so Edmund thought. “Then you will do. If you wish to wake your friend, you must first find him.”
Most confusing. Edmund felt quite foolish, and rightly so, when he said, “He’s right here.”
“No, he is not. The spells that protect the tree whisk trespassers into the land of a strange making, where nothing is quite real, where they must wander for all time, unless there is one who can find them again.”
Edmund didn’t much like the sound of that. “What do I do?” he asked all the same, because there wasn’t much of a choice, really. He wouldn’t jolly well return without Caspian.
The guardian stepped to the side. “Come, and put your hand on the tree. Be warned, however: there is much pain and loss awaiting you on this road. Many who travel there find that the land robs them of things they hold most dear, but for you it shall be worse.”
“For me?”
“Because you are Edmund,” the guardian said, and dissolved into thin air.
Edmund froze for a moment, with one hand almost touching the trunk, but not for long, as his mind was already made up. He laid his palm against the tree and he felt himself fall into the great black nothingness.
*****
Edmund woke on a sunlit patch of grass. The sky was blue and there was a sweet smell in the air that he couldn’t identify. “Edmund!” someone called. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Edmund replied. Tom was leaning over him with an anxious expression on his face.
“Thank God! The ball hit you rather hard.”
“Ball?” It was only then that Edmund took in his surroundings. He was in a park, an English park by the looks of it, and by his side there lay a cricket bat. He stared at it. It was an ordinary thing, scuffed and scraped around the bottom, as though it was often kicked and dragged. “What’s going on?”
“We’re playing, don’t you remember?” Tom had that anxious look on his face again, and the few boys behind him seemed equally concerned. “Maybe we ought to see a doctor, you are frightfully pale.”
“No, that can’t be right,” Edmund said as he stood up and his vision swam about him. He had been in Narnia, well, in the world in which Narnia was in, and this was England!
“Tom, did you see Caspian?” he asked, before he could panic in earnest.
“I told you before, the only time I was abroad I was in France,” Tom told him with slight reproach in his voice.
“No, Caspian is a boy, a man… He’s older than us by a few years, dark haired. About this tall.”
“Master Carroll is quite like that, are you sure you are okay? You’ve been acting weird since you got back from that summer vacation. Your cousin’s place in Cambridge, was it?”
“No.” Edmund’s anxiety grew until he was sure his eyes were playing tricks on him. “I don’t think I am,” he said, for there was the fear rising in his gut, cold and slippery like the skin of an eel. Was he in England after all? Narnia could play tricks on you, it may well be that he was sent home and Caspian was left alone, sleeping under that ghastly tree, where no one would ever find him again.
Maybe he was home for good, never to see Caspian again.
“No,” he whispered, and Tom cocked his head in surprise.
“Edmund?”
“I think I need to rest,” he said. “My head hurts.”
“Yes, you’d better. Come, I’ll see you home.”
Edmund barely remembered the walk home, only that his mother was quite surprised when she opened the door. “So early home, Edmund? I wasn’t expecting you for hours.”
“He had a fall, Mrs Pevensie,” Tom said, as Edmund slipped past her and trudged upstairs. “He said he needs to lie down.”
“Oh dear! Is he well? Edmund?”
“I’m fine,” he called before the door to his room closed. He was fine, but for the fact that he couldn’t breathe. He shoved a fairy-tale book off his pillow -- Lucy had taken to reading her stories in his bed, when he wasn’t there to chase her out -- and threw himself across the bed, in the hope of chasing the dark thoughts from his head, when he heard the voice. Less than that -- it was the sound a whisper made against glass, infinitely faint and yet filling the silence with its might.
Edmund sat up and looked around. With his eyes closed he got off the bed and walked, until he thought he could hear the voice the loudest. When he opened his eyes he was standing before the mirror.
“I am going mad,” he told himself, as he reached out to touch the image. It flickered and Edmund could see, for the briefest fraction of a second, Caspian’s face, peering at him anxiously as though through an expanse of water. “I must be going mad,” he said again, as the vision disappeared.
He returned to his bed and slept restlessly for a couple of hours.
The following days were not much better. He would catch glimpses of Caspian’s face in the mirror, or a window, or even on the reflective surfaces of kitchen utensils. More than once he would wake in the middle of the night, breathless from nightmares, calling out Caspian’s name, only to have Peter glare at him with increasing suspicion.
“What is wrong with you, Ed?” he would ask.
“Nothing, just a nightmare,” Edmund would say every time and turn his back.
It wasn’t a dream, he knew that much. Lucy took great pains to speak to him often, but every time she opened her mouth inevitably she would start talking about the Dawn Treader, and Edmund would freeze, because there would be Caspian, beckoning to him from the nearest windowpane, screaming his name or else wallowing in anguish.
“Edmund?” Lucy said, when, during one of such conversations, he shot up and raced out the living room. “Are you well?”
“No, I’m not. I keep seeing Caspian,” he told her quietly, when she found him hidden in his room, though to his misfortune Peter happened to be walking by and heard.
“Him? Why would you be seeing him?”
“I have no idea. Maybe we’re needed in Narnia.”
Peter bit his lip and squeezed Edmund’s shoulder. “I know you worry, but it is beyond our reach now.”
“Well, what if it isn’t?”
“If you have a plan, by all means!”
“People can get to Narnia in all sorts of ways!”
“Name one that doesn’t require Aslan intervening.”
“There has to be something!”
“Look, Ed,” Peter said, forcing his head up. “I know you miss the place, Lord knows I do too. But you have to let it go! We are never going back there.”
“I keep seeing Caspian,” Edmund said desperately. “I know I need to get back there!”
There was a brief moment of silence. “Look, I hate to be the one to say it, but… It’s been months. Caspian may well be dead now. Probably is.”
“He was barely twenty when we were on the ship, tell him, Lu!”
“He was, but Edmund, you know how the time passes in Narnia. I fear Peter may be right.” Lucy was worrying the edge of her book, and had spoken this quietly, as though resenting herself for thinking it in the first place. Edmund knew how she felt, because in that moment he resented her too.
“He is not dead,” he said out load. “Not yet.”
“You don’t know that. You have no way of knowing that, Ed.”
“I know.” The vision of Caspian, lying pale and hurt on a stretcher seemed to flicker across the polished surface of the lamp. There was dried blood smeared across his face, over a scar that Edmund didn’t know. There were lines of age on his face, marks of profound sadness and fear. “I need to go,” he said.
“No, Ed, you need to stay right here.” Peter drew up to his full height. “You will cease this gibbering, I order you.”
“You will not give me orders!” Edmund shook off Lucy’s hand and stood up. “I am going back to Narnia, because I know that it needs me!”
“It needs you? Come on, Ed, at least do us the courtesy of treating us like intelligent people, if you cannot be sane about it.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“It’s not Narnia you really worry about, is it,” Peter said in his best High King voice, equally full of compassion, anger and command. Edmund bristled. He stood it in the old days, in Narnia, when he was king and thus his emotions were to be tightly controlled and not fully his own. Here was another matter entirely. “It is not Narnia that wakes you up and it is not her name that you cry out when you wake.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you need to forget about that Telmarine,” Peter said, “I don’t know what spell he cast on you, Ed, but I’m telling you, it has to end.”
“I will not be ordered. Or told what to do.”
“I am your high king, or have you chosen to forget that?”
“Here you are just my brother,” Edmund said viciously. “Or have you chosen to forget that?”
“I have not, but...”
“You are right though,” Edmund said with a sigh. Behind Peter, through the window, Caspian screamed his throat raw and Edmund felt his heart clench, and become a dead weight in his chest. There was blood, plenty of it, though he couldn’t see anything but Caspian. “This must end.”
When he considered it carefully enough, there was only one way that he was certain -- as certain as he could be -- that would take him to Narnia. His mind would not rest since his return, his heart would not cease its frantic beat, not until he saw Caspian again and saved him from this dreadful fate.
“Ed… I know it haunts you, but it’s going to be fine. I had nightmares too, last year.” Peter laid a hand on his shoulder and Edmund shuddered.
“I know.”
“Trust me. Aslan knows what he’s doing.”
Edmund wasn’t quite so certain. He slept that night, but it was a short sleep, and the nightmare -- the same nightmare that had haunted his nights for months -- woke him at dawn. It was Caspian, it was always Caspian, still and pale as death, growing older by the second, until finally he breathed his last and his face dried, leaving behind a naked skull that grimaced at Edmund until his eyes snapped open to the grey English dawn.
He left home that morning, bright and early, putting up his best smile. He ought to feel sorry, his mind was telling him, for mother was quite worried and Peter gave him a concerned look, whenever father wasn’t interrogating him about the exam, but he was beyond caring.
“Edmund!” Lucy called. “Pick up some bread while you’re out, would you?”
“Certainly,” Edmund said, already on the other side of the road.
He stepped into the bakery on his way back. There was a short line, and it was warm and thoroughly soaked in the smell of fresh bread. On the wall over the door there was a clock.
It was seventeen minutes past ten.
Edmund closed his eyes. The jolly voice of the baker drowned in the hustle and bustle noise of a railway station. Edmund was standing in the middle of a crowd, beneath the great clock. Ten eighteen. He walked through the station, unseeing. People would jostle him as they walked past, but he paid them no mind. He reached the station a few seconds before ten twenty, and the train was already arriving.
The train had slowed some, as it rolled into the platform, but it wouldn’t stop. No, it was the express set to pass Finchley by and keep on speeding all the way to Charing Cross.
Edmund was standing at the edge of the platform as the train sped his way. He closed his eyes when he felt the wind rush towards him and took a step forward.
It hurt a whole lot less than he expected it would.
“What are you doing, my son,” he heard. When he turned, Finchley was long-gone and Aslan was staring at him sternly. There was nothing around him, just the wide expanse of whiteness.
“Sir, I need to go back. Narnia--”
Aslan growled, low in his throat. Edmund lowered his gaze. “Caspian needs me.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I keep seeing him, and he is hurt and screaming for help, I know something has happened. I must return, please, sir.”
“Edmund,” Aslan said gently, “You are wrong.”
“I cannot be.”
“But you are. You never left Narnia; not since you, your sister and your cousin arrived.”
“How can that be,” Edmund started saying, then remembered the tree. It was all crystal-clear in his mind now, though it had been hazy during the time in England, and when he remembered he was there again. Caspian was still asleep on the ground, the light hadn’t changed, and Aslan was still there, staring at him with great indulgence in his wild eyes. “Is that what awaits me upon our return?” For if it was to come true, if it had to come to pass… No, Edmund didn’t fancy himself that weak. Surely, even if it was his destiny to succumb to madness, he would have resisted longer.
“What awaits you? No.”
“Am I to go mad? For this seemed so real!” If nothing else, the fear and pain that raked his heart each time he caught the glimpse of Caspian’s face, that was real. All the rest, well, Edmund could reason with the rest. Aslan waited patiently for him to continue. “I don’t think that’s what I would have chosen,” he said with a great deal more strength than he thought he had. “I know I wouldn’t.”
“I know, my child. I know it will weigh on you, deceive you even. You must be quite brave now, for what the guardian said is true, and this will be painful for you.”
“Sir, please. Am I to go mad? Has this vision been in any way true? Would I have been safer not coming here at all?”
The great lion, for the first time in Edmund’s reckoning, looked abashed, a sight thoroughly strange. “I never speak of what would have been, Edmund. This place, however, has its own purpose, that it must fulfil. Not even I can change the rules that are already written down.”
“But is it true?”
“It is as true as any dream,” Aslan said, and Edmund, who knew a fair deal about dreams through the psychology books he sneaked into his dormitory, stood up straighter.
“What is its purpose then?”
“Haven’t you realised that already?" Aslan said and when Edmund blinked he was gone.
Edmund was left staring at nothing for the longest while. Then, finally he looked to Caspian, pale (though not quite so frightfully pale as he had been in the dream-vision) and motionless. Perhaps this was madness, Edmund thought as he knelt by his side. Perhaps this is how it must begin and I saw how it must end, though I cannot for the life of me have imagined a more different path.
Perhaps, he thought as he leaned further down to touch his lips to Caspian’s, all would be well, in the end.
He didn’t look to see whether the kiss had had any effect, for he was already by the exit to the great cavern, flat on his stomach, looking for a speck of light. He found there was plenty -- the jungle must be a lot thinner on this side.
“Edmund,” he heard Caspian say.
“There is plenty of light here,” he said. “I think we should have an easier time going this way.”
“Edmund,” Caspian said again, grasping the back of his shirt. With some reluctance Edmund rose from the floor to look at the king.
“Yes?”
“You kissed me,” Caspian said, barely containing laughter.
“In the fairy books that is the only thing to try, when there is one of royal blood in an enchanted sleep,” Edmund said.
“I know no such stories.”
“I suppose you might not have Briar Rose here.” Caspian was standing entirely too close for comfort, for Edmund could not shake the visions from his mind, not quite yet.
“I don’t think we do. Would you tell me?”
“I rather think the age for fairy-tales is long past, wouldn’t you say?”
“I should always be glad to hear your stories.”
Edmund laughed, and for at least a moment his heart lightened. “You are quite peculiar, did you know that? All right, I shall tell the tale, I promise. But not here. As we walk.”
He was right in saying that the jungle was thinner. At times Edmund thought that he could almost see the ocean, though that was of course an illusion. Still, it took them less than a day to reach the edge of the island, and the time flew by, as Edmund told Caspian the tales that mothers tell their children in his world.
“So, a prince’s -- or king’s -- kiss awakens the whole castle of sleepers?”
“Yes. Come to think of it, there’s another tale, of a princess and an apple, which really, if you’d known it, would have saved us plenty of heartache.”
“Heartache?”
“It was not quite so pleasant a thing as you imagine,” Edmund said looking straight ahead, and if his voice shook a little, that wasn’t anybody’s business but his own, “to see you fall unconscious all of sudden when there is nothing that could have caused it.”
Caspian was silent for a moment. “I am sorry,” he said. “But… I don’t think I am too sorry.” He waited for a heartbeat and asked, so quietly Edmund had to stop in his tracks to hear him, “Are you?”
“I’m not,” Edmund said, truthfully, even as Caspian’s hand gripped his.
They whiled the dusk away braiding together lianas that grew in great amount in a thicket not far from the edge.
Come morning, Edmund took the bow and set out hunting, as best he could, and Caspian lowered the rope, so that they could reach the Dawn Treader without leaping off the edge. As Edmund departed from the clearing, which opened out to the sea, he heard the joyous roar of the crew, far off in the distance, no doubt as joyous at the prospect of a meal as they were to see their king alive and well.
Edmund hoped he wouldn’t disappoint, but fortunately for him and the crew, the birds of the isle were slow and dumb, and so even he was able to shoot plenty of them without too much trouble.
“I see you’re not half as bad an archer as you make yourself out to be,” Caspian said upon his return to the ledge.
“I am perfectly dreadful, it is the birds they make such excellent targets.” Edmund dropped another couple onto the already substantial pile. “They barely move, and with their colours they are easy to pick out even in the dense growth. I am quite sure Lucy would be able to shoot the berries in their beaks without harming them.”
“Perhaps if you had a better bow -- I don’t think this is quite right for you.”
“I am not quite strong enough to use a bow made for sailors. Though yes, I wish it were a touch stronger.”
The fowl along with the fruit, along with was still on board, had given them provision enough to stock the ship for another three weeks’ worth of voyage. Edmund wondered, for the only map of these parts of the world he’d seen was hardly to scale, whether they’d have enough for the journey.
“It is quite a place,” Caspian told Edmund. He was already standing on a protrusion of rock, so that only his upper body was visible over the edge. “I think I shall miss it.”
“I know,” Edmund said simply. Narnia was no doubt wonderful, but here, in the forest, he felt like a boy again, free of worries and concerns. He was going to miss that carelessness.
Their reception was quite delightful. Lucy hugged Edmund and wouldn’t let go until she was quite certain he was whole, and even Eustace looked vaguely pleased to see them, which was possibly the most shocking of all.
“So what happened up there?” Lucy asked curiously.
“We are not quite sure,” Edmund replied, bending the truth just a little. “There’s a jungle up there, and I swear, it was difficult enough just getting through it. It was better on this side, but where we started -- it took us two days just to get to the middle.”
“No, I mean, what happened?” Lucy lowered her voice, and stared at Edmund like she used to back in the Old Days of Narnia, like she knew all his secrets. “I know something happened. I can see it in both your faces.”
“I saw Aslan,” Edmund said, because it was certain to divert her attention and explaining that he had quite possibly abandoned any happiness England might have had in store for him for the sake of the rest of the journey, that was too much for him right now.
True to form, Lucy brightened enough to rival the sun. “Aslan! What did he say?”
“Not quite sure,” Edmund said, which was true enough. He was nevertheless quite sure what it meant. “You know how the memories here can be.”
“Yes, it is quite dreadful,” Lucy was saying, but in that moment Edmund caught Caspian’s eye over her head and all became background noise.
When he shook himself out of the reverie (it must have been no more than half a minute) Lucy was giving him a knowing look, one that he would much rather never see on her, ever, as it indicated she had posed a question and seen the answer in his face.
“Edmund,” she started saying, but he was already rushing away towards the galley.
“I think they might need help with plucking the birds,” he told her, knowing that this was possibly one task that would put her off following.
Edmund had long ago found that skinning and cleaning animals allowed him peace of mind. The task was thoroughly unpleasant and more than a little disgusting, but at the same time the reality of it was so overwhelming that unwelcome thoughts couldn’t venture close enough to disturb him. What was more, it was sure to keep Lucy (and Eustace, who would have starved if the task of supplying food for himself fell to him) away. Edmund wasn’t so sure about Caspian, but the man was a king, and from what Edmund could ascertain the Telmarine court was more like the courts of Europe, in that the king did not do menial work. Not that he had done this great many times during his own reign, but he had hunted a good number of times, and it had been bad form not to do it yourself then.
On to Part Three
Rating: 14
Pairings: Caspian/Edmund
Genre: Romance, drama
Wordcount: 22k
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Edmund the Just made his kingship telling people the right things at the right time. The night before Caspian’s coronation Edmund tells the anxious prince the right thing. It is only later, on board the Dawn Treader that he realises just what his words achieved.
Author's Note: On the whole the movie is best viewed as “the epic love story of Edmund and Caspian,” otherwise it may not be the most formulaic thing committed to film, but it’s certainly close.
Chapter breaks may seem a little awkward - I never planned for chapters. It was supposed to be ten pages, tops.
Betaed by
yami_tai. <3 Thank you so much, hun, for all the hard work!Edmund woke early, for there were still long shadows underneath the trees. Caspian was still asleep, but not for long. They had some more fruit for breakfast (strangely, it was not half as bothersome as having to feast on apples for two days) and set out again to make their way across the island. It was easier, though not by much -- they still needed to cut through the thickets, but there were fewer of them.
“It’s strange, but this is rather like a road, or a path anyway,” Edmund said. They were moving in more or less a straight line, and on both sides the jungle was so thick, that not even light could penetrate it.
“Let’s hope it will see us through to the other side,” Caspian said.
Around midday they found a clearing, not as comfortable as the one they spent the night in, but one thoroughly covered with lianas. “Should we take some back with us?” Caspian asked, trying to lift one. It came off the ground easily enough, but carrying it would require great strength, especially in the quantities they required.
“Let us go on,” Edmund said. “We must be about halfway across and since we’ve got this far, it would be a shame not to discover what else this island has to offer.”
“I agree. Drinian surely won’t assume us dead for at least a week, perhaps more.”
“Looking at Drinian I imagine he would sooner learn to fly than abandon you for dead.”
“There is that.” Caspian laughed, no doubt imagining, as Edmund was, Drinian attempting such a feat with his usual seriousness. “Onward, then!”
A short while later they were faced with an unexpected obstacle: a wall of stone rose before them. The only way forward was to climb, for the jungle on either side was too thick to allow them to pass. They would have turned back, were it not for a sliver of light Edmund could swear he saw flickering on the floor. He bent to the ground and beckoned Caspian to look as well.
“There’s passage?”
“I think so.” Edmund sat back on his haunches and gazed at Caspian thoughtfully. “The hole’s not too narrow, I reckon we can crawl through it easily and there seems to be light on the other side.”
“We’ve gone this far,” Caspian said, and so they crawled through the tunnel to come up in a cavern wide enough to fit all of the Dawn Treader. It was well-lit too, for the domed ceiling had an oculus that let in plenty of light. Directly beneath it there was an age-old tree, weathered by storms, but still fertile, if the apples on its branches were any indication. Edmund felt a shiver ran through him. This was a very old place, he thought, and the magic was so thick here, it was almost palpable.
“There ought to be another way out,” he said as quietly as he would in a cathedral. “Look along the walls starting from here, I’ll go the other way round.”
Caspian nodded and they parted ways, moving along the walls and checking for drafts and light. “There’s one here!” Edmund heard Caspian call, just as he came upon a tunnel as well, but they both continued, until Edmund came half-circle and found that Caspian wasn’t there to meet him. He straightened and turned, to find the king standing underneath the great tree and reaching out for one of its fruits.
“Caspian!” Edmund cried. The feeling of foreboding welled up in him, and rightly so, because just as Caspian’s hand touched the apple he was dropping to the floor like a stone.
Edmund was at his side in an instant, grateful to find the fall didn’t seem to do any harm, but that gratitude soon gave way to anxiety, as Caspian would not open his eyes, no matter how much he was shaken. With his heart in his throat Edmund bent his head to Caspian’s chest, listening for the beat of his heart, and was relieved to find it.
“He’s alive then,” he said aloud, hoping to reassure himself, and to quell the panic that had his hands shaking and closed his throat. Caspian was alive, it was the truth, but it was only partly reassuring -- Caspian breathed and his heart was beating, but both were slow, slower even than those of sleepers.
Drinian was surely going to kill him, Edmund thought in despair, as he sat heavily next to the sleeping Caspian and hid his face in his hands.
This was not the time to despair, however. Edmund shot his feet, and raced for the nearest cave exit. Shaking and volume had no effect, but perhaps a shock would, he thought as he poured a good-sized pitcher’s worth of cold water onto Caspian’s face.
There was no reaction.
How else to wake a sleeping person, Edmund wondered in desperation, as he watched the faint raise and fall of Caspian’s chest. A fall, perhaps? No, that only worked for the dreamer within the dream.
The tree shook over his head, like there was a wind rustling its branches, even though in the cave there could be none. Edmund rose, all the same. He might be less perceptive than Lucy about these things, but he knew magic when he saw and felt it, and the cavern was overflowing with it. Good or bad, he wasn’t sure; his heart trembled, but then it was trembling before, ever since Caspian had fallen.
The invisible vortex quieted and a figure detached from the tree.
“You are not a hamadryad,” Edmund said, keeping himself between Caspian and the strange apparition. It was quite like one, he supposed, but lacking the tree-like characteristics. Then again, it hardly seemed human, either. It was tall and willowy, but its gender was anybody’s guess.
“Indeed, I am not. I am tasked with guarding this tree.”
“What happened to Caspian?”
“This is a sacred place, son of Adam,” it said. “If you come in good faith, you will be permitted to enter, but not much further.”
“We come in good faith. We mean no harm. We seek a way out, and provisions for our ship, no more.”
“This tree will not be disturbed, by anyone.”
Edmund bit his lip. “He meant no harm.”
“That is not for me to decide.”
“Please, can’t something be done? Caspian is the King of Narnia, he must return, at all cost.”
“Crowns and countries don’t matter. No one is king, nor slave, nor lady or peasant. All are equal here.”
Edmund clenched his hands. “He can be woken, though, can’t he?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
The guardian smiled, or at least Edmund thought it smiled -- he was having a difficult time seeing whether it had a face at all. “In the way all such spells are broken, by a journey and a sacrifice.”
“What must be sacrificed?”
“That is for no one but the one to break the spell to know.”
“There is only me here.”
Again the creature gave a smile, or so Edmund thought. “Then you will do. If you wish to wake your friend, you must first find him.”
Most confusing. Edmund felt quite foolish, and rightly so, when he said, “He’s right here.”
“No, he is not. The spells that protect the tree whisk trespassers into the land of a strange making, where nothing is quite real, where they must wander for all time, unless there is one who can find them again.”
Edmund didn’t much like the sound of that. “What do I do?” he asked all the same, because there wasn’t much of a choice, really. He wouldn’t jolly well return without Caspian.
The guardian stepped to the side. “Come, and put your hand on the tree. Be warned, however: there is much pain and loss awaiting you on this road. Many who travel there find that the land robs them of things they hold most dear, but for you it shall be worse.”
“For me?”
“Because you are Edmund,” the guardian said, and dissolved into thin air.
Edmund froze for a moment, with one hand almost touching the trunk, but not for long, as his mind was already made up. He laid his palm against the tree and he felt himself fall into the great black nothingness.
*****
Edmund woke on a sunlit patch of grass. The sky was blue and there was a sweet smell in the air that he couldn’t identify. “Edmund!” someone called. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Edmund replied. Tom was leaning over him with an anxious expression on his face.
“Thank God! The ball hit you rather hard.”
“Ball?” It was only then that Edmund took in his surroundings. He was in a park, an English park by the looks of it, and by his side there lay a cricket bat. He stared at it. It was an ordinary thing, scuffed and scraped around the bottom, as though it was often kicked and dragged. “What’s going on?”
“We’re playing, don’t you remember?” Tom had that anxious look on his face again, and the few boys behind him seemed equally concerned. “Maybe we ought to see a doctor, you are frightfully pale.”
“No, that can’t be right,” Edmund said as he stood up and his vision swam about him. He had been in Narnia, well, in the world in which Narnia was in, and this was England!
“Tom, did you see Caspian?” he asked, before he could panic in earnest.
“I told you before, the only time I was abroad I was in France,” Tom told him with slight reproach in his voice.
“No, Caspian is a boy, a man… He’s older than us by a few years, dark haired. About this tall.”
“Master Carroll is quite like that, are you sure you are okay? You’ve been acting weird since you got back from that summer vacation. Your cousin’s place in Cambridge, was it?”
“No.” Edmund’s anxiety grew until he was sure his eyes were playing tricks on him. “I don’t think I am,” he said, for there was the fear rising in his gut, cold and slippery like the skin of an eel. Was he in England after all? Narnia could play tricks on you, it may well be that he was sent home and Caspian was left alone, sleeping under that ghastly tree, where no one would ever find him again.
Maybe he was home for good, never to see Caspian again.
“No,” he whispered, and Tom cocked his head in surprise.
“Edmund?”
“I think I need to rest,” he said. “My head hurts.”
“Yes, you’d better. Come, I’ll see you home.”
Edmund barely remembered the walk home, only that his mother was quite surprised when she opened the door. “So early home, Edmund? I wasn’t expecting you for hours.”
“He had a fall, Mrs Pevensie,” Tom said, as Edmund slipped past her and trudged upstairs. “He said he needs to lie down.”
“Oh dear! Is he well? Edmund?”
“I’m fine,” he called before the door to his room closed. He was fine, but for the fact that he couldn’t breathe. He shoved a fairy-tale book off his pillow -- Lucy had taken to reading her stories in his bed, when he wasn’t there to chase her out -- and threw himself across the bed, in the hope of chasing the dark thoughts from his head, when he heard the voice. Less than that -- it was the sound a whisper made against glass, infinitely faint and yet filling the silence with its might.
Edmund sat up and looked around. With his eyes closed he got off the bed and walked, until he thought he could hear the voice the loudest. When he opened his eyes he was standing before the mirror.
“I am going mad,” he told himself, as he reached out to touch the image. It flickered and Edmund could see, for the briefest fraction of a second, Caspian’s face, peering at him anxiously as though through an expanse of water. “I must be going mad,” he said again, as the vision disappeared.
He returned to his bed and slept restlessly for a couple of hours.
The following days were not much better. He would catch glimpses of Caspian’s face in the mirror, or a window, or even on the reflective surfaces of kitchen utensils. More than once he would wake in the middle of the night, breathless from nightmares, calling out Caspian’s name, only to have Peter glare at him with increasing suspicion.
“What is wrong with you, Ed?” he would ask.
“Nothing, just a nightmare,” Edmund would say every time and turn his back.
It wasn’t a dream, he knew that much. Lucy took great pains to speak to him often, but every time she opened her mouth inevitably she would start talking about the Dawn Treader, and Edmund would freeze, because there would be Caspian, beckoning to him from the nearest windowpane, screaming his name or else wallowing in anguish.
“Edmund?” Lucy said, when, during one of such conversations, he shot up and raced out the living room. “Are you well?”
“No, I’m not. I keep seeing Caspian,” he told her quietly, when she found him hidden in his room, though to his misfortune Peter happened to be walking by and heard.
“Him? Why would you be seeing him?”
“I have no idea. Maybe we’re needed in Narnia.”
Peter bit his lip and squeezed Edmund’s shoulder. “I know you worry, but it is beyond our reach now.”
“Well, what if it isn’t?”
“If you have a plan, by all means!”
“People can get to Narnia in all sorts of ways!”
“Name one that doesn’t require Aslan intervening.”
“There has to be something!”
“Look, Ed,” Peter said, forcing his head up. “I know you miss the place, Lord knows I do too. But you have to let it go! We are never going back there.”
“I keep seeing Caspian,” Edmund said desperately. “I know I need to get back there!”
There was a brief moment of silence. “Look, I hate to be the one to say it, but… It’s been months. Caspian may well be dead now. Probably is.”
“He was barely twenty when we were on the ship, tell him, Lu!”
“He was, but Edmund, you know how the time passes in Narnia. I fear Peter may be right.” Lucy was worrying the edge of her book, and had spoken this quietly, as though resenting herself for thinking it in the first place. Edmund knew how she felt, because in that moment he resented her too.
“He is not dead,” he said out load. “Not yet.”
“You don’t know that. You have no way of knowing that, Ed.”
“I know.” The vision of Caspian, lying pale and hurt on a stretcher seemed to flicker across the polished surface of the lamp. There was dried blood smeared across his face, over a scar that Edmund didn’t know. There were lines of age on his face, marks of profound sadness and fear. “I need to go,” he said.
“No, Ed, you need to stay right here.” Peter drew up to his full height. “You will cease this gibbering, I order you.”
“You will not give me orders!” Edmund shook off Lucy’s hand and stood up. “I am going back to Narnia, because I know that it needs me!”
“It needs you? Come on, Ed, at least do us the courtesy of treating us like intelligent people, if you cannot be sane about it.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“It’s not Narnia you really worry about, is it,” Peter said in his best High King voice, equally full of compassion, anger and command. Edmund bristled. He stood it in the old days, in Narnia, when he was king and thus his emotions were to be tightly controlled and not fully his own. Here was another matter entirely. “It is not Narnia that wakes you up and it is not her name that you cry out when you wake.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you need to forget about that Telmarine,” Peter said, “I don’t know what spell he cast on you, Ed, but I’m telling you, it has to end.”
“I will not be ordered. Or told what to do.”
“I am your high king, or have you chosen to forget that?”
“Here you are just my brother,” Edmund said viciously. “Or have you chosen to forget that?”
“I have not, but...”
“You are right though,” Edmund said with a sigh. Behind Peter, through the window, Caspian screamed his throat raw and Edmund felt his heart clench, and become a dead weight in his chest. There was blood, plenty of it, though he couldn’t see anything but Caspian. “This must end.”
When he considered it carefully enough, there was only one way that he was certain -- as certain as he could be -- that would take him to Narnia. His mind would not rest since his return, his heart would not cease its frantic beat, not until he saw Caspian again and saved him from this dreadful fate.
“Ed… I know it haunts you, but it’s going to be fine. I had nightmares too, last year.” Peter laid a hand on his shoulder and Edmund shuddered.
“I know.”
“Trust me. Aslan knows what he’s doing.”
Edmund wasn’t quite so certain. He slept that night, but it was a short sleep, and the nightmare -- the same nightmare that had haunted his nights for months -- woke him at dawn. It was Caspian, it was always Caspian, still and pale as death, growing older by the second, until finally he breathed his last and his face dried, leaving behind a naked skull that grimaced at Edmund until his eyes snapped open to the grey English dawn.
He left home that morning, bright and early, putting up his best smile. He ought to feel sorry, his mind was telling him, for mother was quite worried and Peter gave him a concerned look, whenever father wasn’t interrogating him about the exam, but he was beyond caring.
“Edmund!” Lucy called. “Pick up some bread while you’re out, would you?”
“Certainly,” Edmund said, already on the other side of the road.
He stepped into the bakery on his way back. There was a short line, and it was warm and thoroughly soaked in the smell of fresh bread. On the wall over the door there was a clock.
It was seventeen minutes past ten.
Edmund closed his eyes. The jolly voice of the baker drowned in the hustle and bustle noise of a railway station. Edmund was standing in the middle of a crowd, beneath the great clock. Ten eighteen. He walked through the station, unseeing. People would jostle him as they walked past, but he paid them no mind. He reached the station a few seconds before ten twenty, and the train was already arriving.
The train had slowed some, as it rolled into the platform, but it wouldn’t stop. No, it was the express set to pass Finchley by and keep on speeding all the way to Charing Cross.
Edmund was standing at the edge of the platform as the train sped his way. He closed his eyes when he felt the wind rush towards him and took a step forward.
It hurt a whole lot less than he expected it would.
“What are you doing, my son,” he heard. When he turned, Finchley was long-gone and Aslan was staring at him sternly. There was nothing around him, just the wide expanse of whiteness.
“Sir, I need to go back. Narnia--”
Aslan growled, low in his throat. Edmund lowered his gaze. “Caspian needs me.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I keep seeing him, and he is hurt and screaming for help, I know something has happened. I must return, please, sir.”
“Edmund,” Aslan said gently, “You are wrong.”
“I cannot be.”
“But you are. You never left Narnia; not since you, your sister and your cousin arrived.”
“How can that be,” Edmund started saying, then remembered the tree. It was all crystal-clear in his mind now, though it had been hazy during the time in England, and when he remembered he was there again. Caspian was still asleep on the ground, the light hadn’t changed, and Aslan was still there, staring at him with great indulgence in his wild eyes. “Is that what awaits me upon our return?” For if it was to come true, if it had to come to pass… No, Edmund didn’t fancy himself that weak. Surely, even if it was his destiny to succumb to madness, he would have resisted longer.
“What awaits you? No.”
“Am I to go mad? For this seemed so real!” If nothing else, the fear and pain that raked his heart each time he caught the glimpse of Caspian’s face, that was real. All the rest, well, Edmund could reason with the rest. Aslan waited patiently for him to continue. “I don’t think that’s what I would have chosen,” he said with a great deal more strength than he thought he had. “I know I wouldn’t.”
“I know, my child. I know it will weigh on you, deceive you even. You must be quite brave now, for what the guardian said is true, and this will be painful for you.”
“Sir, please. Am I to go mad? Has this vision been in any way true? Would I have been safer not coming here at all?”
The great lion, for the first time in Edmund’s reckoning, looked abashed, a sight thoroughly strange. “I never speak of what would have been, Edmund. This place, however, has its own purpose, that it must fulfil. Not even I can change the rules that are already written down.”
“But is it true?”
“It is as true as any dream,” Aslan said, and Edmund, who knew a fair deal about dreams through the psychology books he sneaked into his dormitory, stood up straighter.
“What is its purpose then?”
“Haven’t you realised that already?" Aslan said and when Edmund blinked he was gone.
Edmund was left staring at nothing for the longest while. Then, finally he looked to Caspian, pale (though not quite so frightfully pale as he had been in the dream-vision) and motionless. Perhaps this was madness, Edmund thought as he knelt by his side. Perhaps this is how it must begin and I saw how it must end, though I cannot for the life of me have imagined a more different path.
Perhaps, he thought as he leaned further down to touch his lips to Caspian’s, all would be well, in the end.
He didn’t look to see whether the kiss had had any effect, for he was already by the exit to the great cavern, flat on his stomach, looking for a speck of light. He found there was plenty -- the jungle must be a lot thinner on this side.
“Edmund,” he heard Caspian say.
“There is plenty of light here,” he said. “I think we should have an easier time going this way.”
“Edmund,” Caspian said again, grasping the back of his shirt. With some reluctance Edmund rose from the floor to look at the king.
“Yes?”
“You kissed me,” Caspian said, barely containing laughter.
“In the fairy books that is the only thing to try, when there is one of royal blood in an enchanted sleep,” Edmund said.
“I know no such stories.”
“I suppose you might not have Briar Rose here.” Caspian was standing entirely too close for comfort, for Edmund could not shake the visions from his mind, not quite yet.
“I don’t think we do. Would you tell me?”
“I rather think the age for fairy-tales is long past, wouldn’t you say?”
“I should always be glad to hear your stories.”
Edmund laughed, and for at least a moment his heart lightened. “You are quite peculiar, did you know that? All right, I shall tell the tale, I promise. But not here. As we walk.”
He was right in saying that the jungle was thinner. At times Edmund thought that he could almost see the ocean, though that was of course an illusion. Still, it took them less than a day to reach the edge of the island, and the time flew by, as Edmund told Caspian the tales that mothers tell their children in his world.
“So, a prince’s -- or king’s -- kiss awakens the whole castle of sleepers?”
“Yes. Come to think of it, there’s another tale, of a princess and an apple, which really, if you’d known it, would have saved us plenty of heartache.”
“Heartache?”
“It was not quite so pleasant a thing as you imagine,” Edmund said looking straight ahead, and if his voice shook a little, that wasn’t anybody’s business but his own, “to see you fall unconscious all of sudden when there is nothing that could have caused it.”
Caspian was silent for a moment. “I am sorry,” he said. “But… I don’t think I am too sorry.” He waited for a heartbeat and asked, so quietly Edmund had to stop in his tracks to hear him, “Are you?”
“I’m not,” Edmund said, truthfully, even as Caspian’s hand gripped his.
They whiled the dusk away braiding together lianas that grew in great amount in a thicket not far from the edge.
Come morning, Edmund took the bow and set out hunting, as best he could, and Caspian lowered the rope, so that they could reach the Dawn Treader without leaping off the edge. As Edmund departed from the clearing, which opened out to the sea, he heard the joyous roar of the crew, far off in the distance, no doubt as joyous at the prospect of a meal as they were to see their king alive and well.
Edmund hoped he wouldn’t disappoint, but fortunately for him and the crew, the birds of the isle were slow and dumb, and so even he was able to shoot plenty of them without too much trouble.
“I see you’re not half as bad an archer as you make yourself out to be,” Caspian said upon his return to the ledge.
“I am perfectly dreadful, it is the birds they make such excellent targets.” Edmund dropped another couple onto the already substantial pile. “They barely move, and with their colours they are easy to pick out even in the dense growth. I am quite sure Lucy would be able to shoot the berries in their beaks without harming them.”
“Perhaps if you had a better bow -- I don’t think this is quite right for you.”
“I am not quite strong enough to use a bow made for sailors. Though yes, I wish it were a touch stronger.”
The fowl along with the fruit, along with was still on board, had given them provision enough to stock the ship for another three weeks’ worth of voyage. Edmund wondered, for the only map of these parts of the world he’d seen was hardly to scale, whether they’d have enough for the journey.
“It is quite a place,” Caspian told Edmund. He was already standing on a protrusion of rock, so that only his upper body was visible over the edge. “I think I shall miss it.”
“I know,” Edmund said simply. Narnia was no doubt wonderful, but here, in the forest, he felt like a boy again, free of worries and concerns. He was going to miss that carelessness.
Their reception was quite delightful. Lucy hugged Edmund and wouldn’t let go until she was quite certain he was whole, and even Eustace looked vaguely pleased to see them, which was possibly the most shocking of all.
“So what happened up there?” Lucy asked curiously.
“We are not quite sure,” Edmund replied, bending the truth just a little. “There’s a jungle up there, and I swear, it was difficult enough just getting through it. It was better on this side, but where we started -- it took us two days just to get to the middle.”
“No, I mean, what happened?” Lucy lowered her voice, and stared at Edmund like she used to back in the Old Days of Narnia, like she knew all his secrets. “I know something happened. I can see it in both your faces.”
“I saw Aslan,” Edmund said, because it was certain to divert her attention and explaining that he had quite possibly abandoned any happiness England might have had in store for him for the sake of the rest of the journey, that was too much for him right now.
True to form, Lucy brightened enough to rival the sun. “Aslan! What did he say?”
“Not quite sure,” Edmund said, which was true enough. He was nevertheless quite sure what it meant. “You know how the memories here can be.”
“Yes, it is quite dreadful,” Lucy was saying, but in that moment Edmund caught Caspian’s eye over her head and all became background noise.
When he shook himself out of the reverie (it must have been no more than half a minute) Lucy was giving him a knowing look, one that he would much rather never see on her, ever, as it indicated she had posed a question and seen the answer in his face.
“Edmund,” she started saying, but he was already rushing away towards the galley.
“I think they might need help with plucking the birds,” he told her, knowing that this was possibly one task that would put her off following.
Edmund had long ago found that skinning and cleaning animals allowed him peace of mind. The task was thoroughly unpleasant and more than a little disgusting, but at the same time the reality of it was so overwhelming that unwelcome thoughts couldn’t venture close enough to disturb him. What was more, it was sure to keep Lucy (and Eustace, who would have starved if the task of supplying food for himself fell to him) away. Edmund wasn’t so sure about Caspian, but the man was a king, and from what Edmund could ascertain the Telmarine court was more like the courts of Europe, in that the king did not do menial work. Not that he had done this great many times during his own reign, but he had hunted a good number of times, and it had been bad form not to do it yourself then.
On to Part Three
