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DVD commentary: 'and sometimes you hear the silence speak' 1/2
I've always wanted to do a fic commentary, and and sometimes you hear the silence speak is kind of perfect for it because the length and subject matter lets me talk about a lot of things e.g. stray plot bunnies, sekrit authorial confessions, a reinterpretation of the role of Judas, the names of winds and sandstorms, book recommendations, etc.
The fic is technically gen, but the commentary is kind of not. It's posted in two parts due to space constraints, because sometimes I just don't shut up.
In the language of the desert tribes, the word for ‘magic’ is the same word for ‘wind’. You cannot see the wind; you can only see what it does. You only know it is there when it cools your skin or sends fallen leaves dancing. The tribes name a wind not for what it is, but by the sandstorms it conjures. {{{Another advantage of commentfic is that, since it’s not real fic, you can rip off ideas and phrases to be used in real fic. Most of this paragraph was originally part of a commentfic.}}}
The north wind they call ‘the devourer of the sun’ {{{and I wish I had named it ‘the suneater’ instead ‘cos that would’ve been more straightforward}}} and the southern wind they simply call ‘the fire’. The westerly winds are called ‘the hand of god’ because of how they can reshape the desert completely, relocating dunes and burying oases, rearranging navigable routes. {{{I remember being in the computer lab, alternating between doing my statistics final and researching the names of winds and sandstorms. ‘The devourer of the sun’ is based on the sandstorm called the shamal, which blows up towers of sands that are thousands of meters tall. The shamal hampered desert offenses in WW2. ‘The fire’ is based on the sandstorm called the simoom, which is also called ‘the poison wind’; it kills with heatstroke and suffocation. I forget which sandstorm ‘the hand of god’ is based on, though. Winds have such beautiful names: sirocco (a wind from the Sahara that reaches southern Europe as hurricanes), levantades (gales on the east coast of Spain), mistral (not just a font, it is also a cold wind that blows through France in the winter and spring), &c.}}} Not that it looks very different in the end – it’s still sand as far as the eye can see. The desert never really changes, and this is a comfort in the way that being caught is a comfort after the exertion of fleeing and lying.
{{{I was THIS CLOSE from having Edmund tell Susan about the desert winds in dialogue, but then it was like, do I really want to begin my fic by ripping off 'The English Patient'?}}}
At night the moonlight silvers the dunes into a winter landscape, and Edmund wanders a little ways away from the caravan, his feet sinking into the sand as he goes. His heart remembers and his mind reminds, and his eyelids are heavy but he has no wish to sleep. He lets the chill of the desert night sink into his bones until Susan comes to find him, an extra cloak under one arm.
“This sand,” she says, draping the cloak around Edmund’s shoulders. “It’s getting into everything. My shoes, my hair. Especially my shoes, and it irritates my feet.”
He smiles. “We’ll be there soon, Su.”
“Next time,” says Susan, taking his hand and leading him back to the caravan, “we will travel by sea.” {{{See, Susan may complain about sand, but in the end she’s the one wrapping Edmund up in blankets and leading him back from the solitude of the desert.
Originally this beginning section was, like, five sentences long. With exception of those five sentences, the beginning is the last thing I wrote.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bedlamsbard, my beta, suggested I bring in the insomnia and winter imagery earlier, and it was a good suggestion so I did it.}}}
+
After freshening up, they eat supper with the Tisroc in a gilded hall with images from Calormene folk tales carved into the walls. There is the story of Al Adzin and his magical lamp, there are the seven voyages of Zindebad, and here is a likeness of the treasure caves of the Forty Thieves. {{{Aladdin, Sinbad, and Ali Baba, that’s right. ‘Zindabad’ also means ‘long live’ (I think?) in Urdu. This hints that the Calormenes were once from our world but crossed over like the Telmarines did, bringing their culture and legends with them, but I also like the idea that the stories and myths of that other world have somehow leaked into ours, maybe accidentally, maybe inevitably. So, where are these stories originally from? What ARE the original stories? Does it matter?}}}
They sit on one side of a long table laden with food, and at the clap-clap of the Tisroc’s hands, the dinner entertainment begins: lissome dancing girls, their eyes demure and their bare skins glossy with fragrant oils. A trained bear follows; the smile leaves Susan’s eyes at the sight of the dumb beast, castrated and collared, poked and prodded into tricks. After the bear, a magician dressed in bright colors performs legerdemain. {{{I love this word, ‘legerdemain’. That's a badass word.}}}. Edmund watches him carefully and tries to figure out where the man keeps his coins and sashes, how the doves stay quiet until they are released, how wine can disappear into thin air.
The magician reaches into the air above his head and plucks a bright red apple from an invisible tree and, after asking permission from the Tisroc to approach the table, bows deeply before Susan and offers her the fruit. She blushes in delight, and Edmund takes note of the grin on her face and on the magician’s as she thanks him.
Finely crafted trickery is its own magic, and one can still learn from it. {{{And is the trickery the magician’s legerdemain or Susan flirting? I’m not sure.}}}
Susan would tell Edmund later that her favorite act had been the storytellers. These are two women: one is a hunched and grizzled crone with opalescent cataracts and gold bangles on her arms, and the other is a young woman with kohl-lined eyes. They sit on cushions on the floor, and the old woman waits patiently as the girl prepares a jeweled water pipe.
Susan turns to the chancellor beside her and asks, “Are they grandmother and granddaughter?”
“No,” Edmund hears him reply. “They are more like sunrise and sunset.”
The crone begins to speak in a voice as cracked as history as the girl inhales deeply through the pipe hose. The heavy smoke pours from her lips and curls into images from the story: men, women, and spirits that love and despair; cities that rise and fall; gods who curse and gods who redeem. The smoky figures float towards the table and twine around them all. They breathe in the smoke’s sweet smell, clove and cardamom and cinnamon and something else that Susan can't name but Edmund recognizes. {{{Like the caterpillar scene from Alice in Wonderland, no? This image of storytelling with hookah smoke was totally one of the first images that compelled me to write this fic. It’s like, “Ooh yeah, I can have fun writing about magic.”}}}
He waves the smoke away.
+
They go to Calormen to renegotiate trade agreements. This is what he lets everyone believe because Peter cannot tolerate the idea of witchery, and Lucy hates the thought of Edmund being around all that stuff again. {{{Lucy’s just worried about him sometimes. She knows Edmund’s weaknesses; she knows him well.}}}
“That’s why it must be you,” Edmund had said. Susan watched him with what he suspected was amusement, but he knew she was at least considering it. “Peter would be suspicious and Lucy would just try to stop me.” {{{Possibly because Lucy knew Edmund would bug out.}}}
She raised an eyebrow. “They don’t know about this?”
“They will know when we come back.”
Edmund described the magic he sought to collect: protective runes, illusions, spells that reveal the truth. There are chants that fortify strength, ceremonies that ward off possessions, amulets that bend your enemies’ minds to see what you want them to.
“I know better than any of us what magic can do,” said Edmund, and at his words the expression on his sister’s face softened. Susan reached across the table and covered Edmund’s hands with her own, and he resisted frowning – he didn’t need anyone’s pity.
“I’ll go with you,” she said, as Edmund knew she would. “Narnia will be the stronger for it.”
“Good,” he replied, withdrawing his hands. “I’m glad to hear it.”
And he smiled.
{{{bedlamsbard predicted that people are gonna come down on my manipulative!Edmund characterization the way people came down on her sociopath!Peter characterization.}}}
+
One late afternoon, Edmund rides into the desert for the sheer pleasure of it.
The horse he rides is one from the Calormene stables, a dumb beast that raises no protest when Edmund digs his stirrups into its sides: faster, farther. The sounds of Tashbaan recede behind him and he bids his horse stop when he can no longer hear the city. There is something majestic in the silence, and honesty in such desolation. Edmund urges the horse to the top of a dune and is still, surrounded on all sides by endless things. {{{One of my favorite out-of-context quotes is, “You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” Cesare Pavese listed these as reasons for why he hated traveling, but I love traveling and these are kind of the reasons why. I have paraphrased ‘the eternal or what we imagine of it’ in so many fics, I don’t even know. Or, in some cases, I don’t viz. from my Boondock Saints fic, 'Big Sky Country': “That’s why they find themselves on the roof of Fairview Apartments in San Martinez, surrounded on all sides by endless things.” Incidentally, 'Big Sky Country' is also set in the desert and full of incest. Coincidence!?
While I'm still coming clean, from my Secret Garden fic: "The sky, the winds, the moors, and silence: all things that tend towards infinity, or what Dickon imagines it to be."}}}
“Where were you this afternoon?” Susan asks him before supper.
“Out,” he shrugs.
He likes the heat of Calormen, its yellow light that gilds slow afternoons, so different from the fingers that leave frost across the landscape of his dreams. {{{Dude, how iambic is this paragraph?}}}
+
In the evenings they convene in Susan’s rooms and dismiss their retainers. Susan fills their goblets with wine as Edmund locks the doors and closes the windows. They tell each other what they have learned.
Although Narnians have been using magic since the land was sung, they have in recent years become wary of it, having suffered under the Witch. Aside from Susan’s horn and Lucy’s cordial, the only magic acceptable now is the Deep Magic, something associated with Aslan and the inexplicable powers that move him. Narnian magic is not so much the willful manipulation of forces, but rather an articulation of justice, a description of harmony and the way of nature. Not turning people to stone, but the changing of the seasons. Not crafting sweets from ice, but the paths stars trail through the sky. {{{Narnian magic is kind of New Age-y.}}}
But here in Calormen, how casually such strange wonders are woven into the fabric of everyday life! “There is a potion that will turn you invisible for a day and a night,” says Edmund, and “There is a telescope that will show you whatever you want to see from wherever you are in the world,” says Susan. {{{That telescope is also from 1001 Arabian Nights.}}} They make notes and transcribe instructions, sketch runes and symbols and their meanings. They keep these notes in a lacquered box and cast a spell on it to make it unopenable unless it is Edmund or Susan’s hands that touch it.
“Look at how filthy my fingers are,” says Edmund, displaying ink-stained fingers. Susan makes a face, which is all the invitation Edmund needs to reach out and smear ink on her cheek.
Susan cries out and rears back. “That was uncalled for!”
“You going to send me to bed without my supper, then?” he says, and dips his fingers in the ink well.
They end up chasing each other around the room while Susan says things like, “This is no way for a king and queen to act,” and Edmund comments on how hard it must be to look offended and giggle at the same time.
“This is undignified behavior,” Susan declares breathlessly, trapped between a corner and her brother.
“Nuts to your dignity,” and leaves ink on her nose, her chin, her neck.
“Peter wouldn’t approve of this.”
“Peter,” he responds, “is not here.”
{{{And then they have sex.
Would Peter disapprove because a) they are acting like children, or b) they are being pevencestuous without him? YOU TELL ME.}}}
+
At first he had found it easy to dismiss Susan in Narnia as he had done in England. Her delight in her court and attention to the upkeep of Cair Paravel are tedious, and Edmund wonders how her jaws don’t ache from smiling at grubbing diplomats and suitors she plans to dismiss anyway.
“You have such patience for the games they play,” Edmund commented one time.
Knowing it was not all compliment, she had replied, “Only for the ones that matter.”
Just as Lucy knows intimately the frailties of her own heart, Peter the solitude of his station, and Edmund his past crimes, Susan knows how far she can bend and how not to break for it.
{{{It was definitely interesting writing Golden Age Susan, ‘cos usually I write her post-LWW, all baggaged up. Partway through the writing of this, I was like, “Woah, this is not the Susan I usually write.” But it makes sense that Susan would be different in the Golden Age and especially through Edmund POV (as opposed to Peter POV). I just never thought about it before. I wanted to capture both her sweetness and her imperiousness. As older sister she is maternal, and as queen she is comfortable in preferring luxury. As a beautiful woman and a politician, she is a social butterfly for both business and pleasure, and she keeps her head most of the time. Queen Susan knows about strategic frivolity.}}}
It is a rare thing to see her undone as she is now. {{{It’s all that sex with Edmund.}}} Her pale skin streaked with dark ink, her hair loose and her laugh unpretentious. The magic wafting from the spells and fetishes strewn around the room flickers in the air, and maybe he should’ve known then; he should have remembered. You shouldn’t be careless with magic, especially when you have been so before. It leaves its mark on you, and it calls to its own.
+
The sound of galloping reindeer and the tinkle of sleigh-bells. Edmund remembers this as the very first place he saw the Witch.
The dreams are never the same from night to night, but they always start like this. The world is cold and white beneath his feet, pristine and drained of color and laid bare for her arrival. And oh, the wildness of her! {{{I never use exclamation marks in narration, and this is already twice in one fic. I don’t know what’s up with that.}}} The fierce delight in her eyes when she comes to him with her arms outstretched as if meeting a long-lost lover. When Edmund was a child, it was not her wildness that drew him to her, but her illusion of sympathy. He is grown now, and there are certain tricks that won’t work on him.
He does not fear her.
“I am no longer yours,” he tells her.
The Witch draws herself to her full height, and Edmund can see in her stature a little of her Jinn heritage. But unlike the Jinn there is no fire in her eyes, only a dead black, and still he doesn’t back away from her, won’t let himself do so.
“Oh, my dear boy, don’t you see?” says the Witch. “You carry me in your thoughts and nurture me in your grudges. You keep me in your dreams. It is not you who are mine.” She bends to be face to face with him, and smiles. “I am yours.”
{{{As far as Edmund seeing Jadis in dreams goes, in-between dreams is probably the prequel to this fic. I’m kind of fond of the ‘meeting in dreams’ device. remember me as a time of day, anyone?}}}
+
Susan charms scryers, fortune-tellers, royal scholars, and the fellow who gave her the apple during that first performance. “His name is Farroukh,” she tells Edmund in hushed excited tones, as if he were Lucy, “and he really is rather lovely.” {{{CONFESSION: Farroukh is totally named for the dorky film student I have a dorky crush on.}}} Edmund makes his own investigations, and also hunts down the pair of storytellers from that first day; they seem to know something of magic as well.
“Mama Biguda has little to say to young men looking for information,” says the young woman who smoked the water pipe. There is no kohl around her eyes this time; her dress is simple and she wears no jewels, but she moves with the grace of those who know their own worth. {{{I mentioned this in Author’s Notes, but Mama Biguda is just a rearranging of Mamagubida, which is the name of Tryo’s first album. Tryo are a political folk-reggae band from France, and I love them.}}}
“And you?” asks Edmund. “Do you have anything to say to these young men?”
She laughs and tells him her name is Shativa as Edmund takes her hand and bows to kiss her knuckles. {{{They call him Smoooooth Eddie P*.
* I recruited my boyfriend to help me think of a title for this fic, and we were a few drinks in when I was telling him about how Edmund pretty much gets involved with all the ladies. He replied with something like, “You should call it 'Smooth Eddie P and his Magical Harem'.” My shit cracked the fuck up. But yeah, Susan and Edmund know how to work it.}}}
+
Edmund and Susan go to the marketplace in commoners’ clothes. Their skin color and strange accents don’t stand out as much as Susan had feared; the marketplace is filled with vendors and traders from all over the world, and they have strange skins and accents of their own. By not fitting in at all, Edmund and Susan fit in perfectly. {{{Gotta have the cosmopolitan marketplace.}}}
Susan flits from stall to stall, contentedly mixing business with pleasure as she barters and smiles her way to a lower price. Edmund stays close and makes small talk with passers-by, cross-referencing marketplace rumors with what the Hawks and Foxes have told him before he left Narnia. {{{Edmund is always spymaster in my fics, even if I never articulate it explicitly. It’s become a bit of not using the Z word thing.}}}
“A bracelet for Lucy,” Susan announces, showing him her hard-won gifts as they wander through the hustle and bustle. “A flute for Tumnus.” {{{For the longest time, Susan bought Tumnus a duduk. When Tumnus played Lucy the soporific lullaby in the LWW movie, the sound was actually made by a duduk, which is a type of woodwind instrument from Armenia. But, it’s kind of a gratuituous reference so I dropped it. Less relatedly, the word ‘duduk’ also means ‘sit’ in Bahasa Indonesia.}}}
“Lucy has piles of jewelry that she barely wears,” Edmund says flatly. “She thinks they’re bothersome.”
“Well, if she doesn’t want to appreciate her present, I’ll wear it for her.” {{{...Even her frivolity is practical?}}}
“How very big-hearted of you.”
They pass a stall selling Turkish Delight. Edmund stares until the vendor notices and starts waving a box of it in his face. He shakes his head, smiling weakly, and feels Susan’s arm around his waist, tugging him away.
“They’ll rot your teeth,” she tells him, like he is ten years old all over again, and leads them back into the crowd. {{{Aww, she's condescending even when she's loving you. It’s a protective sort of love, and sort of partly based on how she doesn’t completely trust Edmund.}}}
The Street of the Enchanters is as noisy and crowded as the rest of the market. At first you would not notice anything out of the ordinary, but then you see a man with the eyes of a cat, a dancing slave-girl whose feet never touch the ground, and a woman whose wings peek out when a breeze flutters the dirty cloak she wraps around herself. There is a strange taste to the air that reminds Edmund of the hookah smoke from the first day.
When Susan disappears into an herbalist’s to find the items on their list, Edmund drifts to the stall next-door. Hanging from the tapestries that serve as stall dividers and piled on the tables are a miscellany of objects of every shape and color. There is no theme; it looks as if the vendor had simply wandered in a freewheeling sort of way through the world and collected the things he fancied without rhyme or reason, hoping for the best. {{{Because that’s what the vendor did. Using the subtle knife, he cut through the worlds and collected all sorts of potential merchandise. Oh man, imagine what a business can do with that knife, with infinite worlds of infinite capital and infinite consumers. Sure, you’d be releasing soul-sucking demons with each cut, but you’d also be making mad bank.}}} A number of things look familiar, but further investigation would reveal small details that only emphasize their strangeness. This knife, for example...
It is a double-edged knife, and while one edge is remarkable for its obvious sharpness, the other edge is more peculiar. It seems to be playing optical tricks on him, the way he cannot quite see where the blade ends and the air begins. Edmund doesn’t lift it to investigate, doesn’t touch it. Doing so only encourages vendors, but it is too late: his interest has been noticed. The vendor puts on his winning smile, and he strikes. {{{I hate haggling though. I’m way too non-confrontational, and I’m kind of an open book.}}}
“Sir is interested in this knife?” he says. He has the dark complexion of a Calormene, but Edmund cannot place his accent {{{because Edmund has never been to Citagazze}}}.
“What manner of knife is this?”
With a flourish of his hand, the vendor recites, “It is a magic knife, forged in a world far from here, farther than I’m sure you’ve traveled, good sir.”
“I’m sure,” Edmund replies indulgently.
He displays the knife’s strange blade. “You see how this side extends to a point so fine that even the eye cannot see it?”
Edmund has no intentions of buying this knife, but he takes on the tone of the disinterested interested buyer to amuse himself. “Is that what it’s doing?”
“It’s for cutting the veil between the worlds. Nothing better for those seeking a new beginning, not just in new lands, but in a new universe!” {{{I LOVE 'HIS DARK MATERIALS'. Unlike with a certain set of chronicles, I don’t often go looking for HDM fic because the canon is good enough for me. Wonderful cultural worldbuilding and a look at children’s morality that doesn’t make me want to shrivel inside. Okay, so Pullman is as soapboxy as Lewis, but... it’s kind of a soapbox I can get behind? So yeah.}}}
A familiar voice cuts in disdainfully: “Taking refuge in other worlds is no way to go about your problems.” {{{FORESHADOWING. I love doing this kind of shit when I do write Golden Age Susan, ‘cos in ten years or so, she’ll be saying the same thing to her siblings. In my mind, these are the beliefs that Golden Age Susan and post-LWW Susan share: don't get caught up in other people's lies about yourself, embrace the world thrust upon you, keep your heart open and your mind clear. (And yes I did just quote to know these songs and to sing them, don’t laugh at me.) These two Susans are not so different, and that’s what hurts, because that implies that her downfall has always been inevitable. The same qualities that make her a good queen are also what cause her to leave Narnia behind.
It kind of reminds me of this particular interpretation of Judas’s betrayal. The interpretation goes that Judas never wanted to betray Jesus in the first place, that he wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing, ever. But then Jesus took Judas aside and said that he must. Judas must betray him, because who would die for the sins of humanity otherwise? “Your betrayal is your charge,” Jesus said to him. “Your destiny is to set in motion the salvation of future generations, and to be hated for it.”
...Okay, so not really the same story as Susan’s, but in both stories, betrayal is just the next natural step.
Did I tell you guys I wrote Judas/Jesus fic years ago? YEARS ago. I posted it on ffnet and the internet ate it up when ffnet tried to clean up its act, or something. I don’t have a file of it anymore so it’s gone forever, and all I remember was that Jesus’s lips – much like the lips of many a fic character – tasted sweet with wine, and that I had ripped off a line from ‘Behold the Man’ by Michael Moorcock. YOU GUYS, if you have not yet read ‘Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock, you totally have to. It is about the story of Jesus, sort of, and it is fucked up and awesome.}}}
And it is Susan, her basket heavy with souvenirs and magical paraphernalia, and her expression one of high-minded disapproval. She floats to Edmund’s side, lacing their fingers together and squeezing his hand. “You should be ashamed, selling such tricks,” she says.
“My lady is wise and strong,” the vendor murmurs with a bow. Susan brings this sort of behavior out in people.
The vendor, a businessman through and through, points out topaz earrings that chime fairy music and ribbons that change color as you dance. Edmund hovers nearby as she is drawn into haggling, the knife at the corner of his eye, and weighs out the consequences of decisions he will never make.
+
She leaves no footprints in the snow and her breath does not mist in the air. The Witch beckons, “Walk with me, my king.”
Edmund frowns. “I am not your king. You are not my queen, or anything. We are nothing to each other.” But he falls in step with her anyway, easily like the first time long ago. {{{You never forget your firstlove vaguely pedophilic mindfucking?}}}
A crescent moon hangs in the sky; there are no stars. Like the first time, the trees only watch quietly, holding their own counsel. The Witch asks, “Are you learning much magic, Edmund?”
“That is no concern of yours.”
“Of course it is. Magic is a concern of mine, for they have named me the White Witch and this is what I am. I am of magic. And you are a concern of mine, my boy, for you have eaten of me.” {{{Enter the Eucharist! I was researching transubstantiation to see how much symbolism I can cram into it, and was thrilled to learn that you can only eat the communion wafer and wine if you are a true believer of the faith. PERFECT. Not that that bit of detail made it into the fic though, in the end. But I can tell you now in commentary!}}}
“I am not that same boy who fell for your tricks, Jadis.”
She doesn’t seem to hear him. “I took the winter inside of me so that I may bend it to my will.” The Witch scoops a handful of snow and holds it out to Edmund. The snow doesn’t melt on the palm of her hands, and instead it transubstantiates into a number of things: a jewel, a silver coin, a chalice of wine. All illusions, Edmund knows. A crown, a dagger, and back to snow. “This is my body and my blood, as far as creatures like me can have such things,” she says, and the snow changes again.
The smell of confectionary sugar is familiar and Edmund takes an involuntary step backward. In a rush he remembers being wrapped in furs and her soft body beside him, the sleigh rushing through the winter landscape. The stamp of reindeer hooves on packed snow and the cold biting at his face where the wind lashes, where her fingers touch.
The Witch holds out the box of Turkish Delight. “Won’t you have just one?”
{{{Jadis and her fabulousness is one of the main reasons this fic became as long as it did. When I first started writing this, I envisioned it to be 1500 words of Edmund/Susan and waxing poetic about the desert. HOW WRONG I WAS. Jadis took more and more of starring role -- maybe not in actual stage time but definitely in emotional driving force. Edmund may be exchanging fraught touches with Susan and Shativa, but it’s his relationship with Jadis that’s at the heart of things.}}}
+
Dancing with Susan is nothing like dancing with Lucy, who doesn’t care for knowing the steps and whose feet goes any which way her heart takes her. He usually lets Lucy lead anyway. In the background Peter and Susan would dance together with as much elegance and aplomb as Edmund and Lucy dance through stifled giggles. Lucy brings out the merriment in him {{{if you know what I mean}}} and he finds himself missing her now.
“This is the part Peter always makes a mess of too,” Susan tells him complacently. {{{Susan keeps mentioning Peter. If this story were told from Susan’s POV, we’d probably have more memories and flashbacks of Peter.}}} “We’ll do this until we get it right, don’t worry.”
Edmund says, “It’s not that I’m worried.”
The Tisroc has arranged for a banquet tonight (that is to say, he has announced it, and set his retainers to arranging it) and has asked Susan and Edmund to perform a courtly dance of Narnia. Edmund let his sister answer, knowing she would reply with more enthusiasm and grace than he, and this led to where they are now, practicing in the gilded hall where the banquet is to take place. The palace servants glide to and fro like silent ghosts in the background, decorating and setting up and bringing in tables and chairs; they give the dancing monarchs in the middle of the hall wide berth.
“I almost wish we can enchant my feet so they’d know what to do,” Edmund mutters.
“Oh, hush,” says Susan as Edmund twirls her, though really she twirls herself while holding Edmund’s hand above her head. “We don’t need magic for everything.” {{{FOOOORESHADOWIIIIING.}}}
By the end of an hour, their faces are flushed with exertion and strained patience and when Edmund calls for a rest, Susan does not object. They call for wine and it is brought to them in silver goblets. The servants bow as they are thanked, scuttling backwards and turning around only when they have reached a distance of twenty paces from them. {{{I’m not sure if this is a Middle Eastern custom, ‘cos I think I took this from Far East culture.}}}
“What a curious custom,” Susan comments as they make their way to one of the hall’s large windows overlooking the gardens. “A wonder they don’t bump into anything.”
“Calormen is full of many wonders,” he says absently. The breeze that floats in is cool and soothing as Edmund leans against the windowsill; Susan doesn’t deign to do so for fear of dirtying her sleeves.
“Farroukh told me of a spell,” says Susan, “that lets you climb into other people’s dreams.”
Edmund keeps his voice neutral. “Oh?” {{{Oh shit! The possibility that Jadis is not dead and is actually talking to him through dreams! Possibly Edmund tries not to be secretly pleased.}}}
“They say that, once, a sorceress used the spell to climb into her beloved’s dreams. He was a general in the Tisroc’s army, and far away at the time. Off reclaiming Calormene lands conquered by King Frank XII, I believe. {{{I’m stupidly proud of that sentence, with the nationalist territory quibbles and the King Frank XII. You know, Frank the cabbie from Magician's Nephew and first king of Narnia!}}} Every night she came, and together they would defy the distance between them.”
Edmund rolls his eyes. “That’s a nice bedtime story. Anything ever came of it?”
“Well, they got married of course, when he returned. They were in love, after all.”
“Maybe she used a love spell.”
In Susan’s reply, he hears the words of a queen who has spent the past many years winning the hearts of men and women in the name of her country. “Love is its own magic,” she says. “It needs no other spells.”
He takes in the lushness of the Tisroc’s gardens below them and wonders detachedly how much water must be pumped to keep them in such a verdant state. Water, he notes, that could have been distributed instead to the people living in the dust and squalor of Tashbaan’s ghettos. Calormen has been teetering on the verge of drought for some months now; the rains have not come and the people grow restless. There will be border disputes with Archenland over the Winding Arrow delta (again), and Narnia will officially declare neutrality to preserve her hard-won peace with Calormen. But he and Peter owe Lune certain favors, and Edmund mentally flicks through a growing list of spells and enchantments, and catalogues what may come in particularly useful to Archenland’s impending struggle. {{{Four years of studying international relations and economic development, and this is what I use it for.}}}
“Anyway,” Susan continues, “it was terribly romantic. Calormenes are not so skeptical of sorcery as Narnians.”
“Aslan protect the Narnians from their own skepticism,” Edmund mutters.
“This spell is a good one, I think,” she says. “You can do much with it. I thought perhaps you might use it to implant false prophecies in other people’s dreams, which could be particularly useful in quelling Redhaven. Aren’t they rather superstitious there?” {{{In The Left Hand of Heaven, they refer to troubles in Redhaven also. It’s the same troubles, though I’m not sure at this point exactly what these troubles are.}}}
“Who are we to talk of being superstitious, with what we are doing?” Edmund slips his arm around Susan’s waist. As she shifts closer he plants a kiss on her temple, then covers the hand holding her goblet with his own and drinks from it. {{{Smooooth Eddie P. He is even sneaky when he’s flirting.}}}
Susan laughs. “At least we are doing this for good.”
“We are doing this for Narnia, sister,” he says, “and nothing else.”
{{{I was contemplating writing about the banquet but I got lazy, I dunno. I'm not even sure what would have gone in there. Tipsy flirtation, more magic, and Susan accidentally calling Edmund Peter, maybe. Maybe I'll get around to it at some point. Maybe I'll get around to writing the Susan POV of this fic at some point too, with her charming half the Tisroc's court and trying to figure Edmund (and magic) out. Not any point soon, though.}}}
+
You keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and Edmund mulls over the contrariness of such a statement as the Witch waits, knowing, patient, there at the edge of his mind, and at his fingertips when he practices charms and incantations late into the night long after Susan has gone to sleep. {{{This sentence is one of the first things I wrote of this fic, and is pretty much the only thing that has made it to the final draft unchanged.}}}
+
“Do you ever change an ending to please the audience?” Edmund asks{{{ after another session of hot sex}}}.
“Of course,” Shativa answers. Her long hair tumbles down her back as she sifts through her clothes for a dress to wear. “A pleased audience pays better. Mama Biguda doesn’t like to, but I convince her.”
“How do you do that?”
“I remind her endings are illusions anyway. In a story, there are a thousand endings and a thousand beginnings between the first word spoken and the last word said.”
And later the Witch tells him, “Your storyteller is wise. Things never truly finish, as you know.”
Light is sparse in the winter night, but he can see the Witch as clear as if it were daytime, summer. Her face is unreadable, and he strives to keep his likewise. “Then,” he says in an even tone, “what were you all those years ago when Aslan cast you out? What are you now?”
She tips her head to the side. “For someone whose convictions are so contingent on the existence of absolutes, Edmund, you don’t act like it.”
“Don’t presume you can talk to me about my convictions.”
The Witch says, “Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.”
Edmund frowns. “What spell is that?”
“It is not a spell. It’s advice from your own world.”
“That is not any language I’ve heard of in Narnia.”
“I didn’t say,” says the Witch, “it was from Narnia.” {{{Does she know Latin because she is a Witch who can see across worlds, or is it just Edmund’s subconscious burping up Latin class? (I didn’t write it with this ambiguity in mind; I just thought it would be cool if Jadis spoke Latin. But it worked out, so yay.)}}}
Part 2 of DVD commentary
The fic is technically gen, but the commentary is kind of not. It's posted in two parts due to space constraints, because sometimes I just don't shut up.
In the language of the desert tribes, the word for ‘magic’ is the same word for ‘wind’. You cannot see the wind; you can only see what it does. You only know it is there when it cools your skin or sends fallen leaves dancing. The tribes name a wind not for what it is, but by the sandstorms it conjures. {{{Another advantage of commentfic is that, since it’s not real fic, you can rip off ideas and phrases to be used in real fic. Most of this paragraph was originally part of a commentfic.}}}
The north wind they call ‘the devourer of the sun’ {{{and I wish I had named it ‘the suneater’ instead ‘cos that would’ve been more straightforward}}} and the southern wind they simply call ‘the fire’. The westerly winds are called ‘the hand of god’ because of how they can reshape the desert completely, relocating dunes and burying oases, rearranging navigable routes. {{{I remember being in the computer lab, alternating between doing my statistics final and researching the names of winds and sandstorms. ‘The devourer of the sun’ is based on the sandstorm called the shamal, which blows up towers of sands that are thousands of meters tall. The shamal hampered desert offenses in WW2. ‘The fire’ is based on the sandstorm called the simoom, which is also called ‘the poison wind’; it kills with heatstroke and suffocation. I forget which sandstorm ‘the hand of god’ is based on, though. Winds have such beautiful names: sirocco (a wind from the Sahara that reaches southern Europe as hurricanes), levantades (gales on the east coast of Spain), mistral (not just a font, it is also a cold wind that blows through France in the winter and spring), &c.}}} Not that it looks very different in the end – it’s still sand as far as the eye can see. The desert never really changes, and this is a comfort in the way that being caught is a comfort after the exertion of fleeing and lying.
{{{I was THIS CLOSE from having Edmund tell Susan about the desert winds in dialogue, but then it was like, do I really want to begin my fic by ripping off 'The English Patient'?}}}
At night the moonlight silvers the dunes into a winter landscape, and Edmund wanders a little ways away from the caravan, his feet sinking into the sand as he goes. His heart remembers and his mind reminds, and his eyelids are heavy but he has no wish to sleep. He lets the chill of the desert night sink into his bones until Susan comes to find him, an extra cloak under one arm.
“This sand,” she says, draping the cloak around Edmund’s shoulders. “It’s getting into everything. My shoes, my hair. Especially my shoes, and it irritates my feet.”
He smiles. “We’ll be there soon, Su.”
“Next time,” says Susan, taking his hand and leading him back to the caravan, “we will travel by sea.” {{{See, Susan may complain about sand, but in the end she’s the one wrapping Edmund up in blankets and leading him back from the solitude of the desert.
Originally this beginning section was, like, five sentences long. With exception of those five sentences, the beginning is the last thing I wrote.
bedlamsbard, my beta, suggested I bring in the insomnia and winter imagery earlier, and it was a good suggestion so I did it.}}} +
After freshening up, they eat supper with the Tisroc in a gilded hall with images from Calormene folk tales carved into the walls. There is the story of Al Adzin and his magical lamp, there are the seven voyages of Zindebad, and here is a likeness of the treasure caves of the Forty Thieves. {{{Aladdin, Sinbad, and Ali Baba, that’s right. ‘Zindabad’ also means ‘long live’ (I think?) in Urdu. This hints that the Calormenes were once from our world but crossed over like the Telmarines did, bringing their culture and legends with them, but I also like the idea that the stories and myths of that other world have somehow leaked into ours, maybe accidentally, maybe inevitably. So, where are these stories originally from? What ARE the original stories? Does it matter?}}}
They sit on one side of a long table laden with food, and at the clap-clap of the Tisroc’s hands, the dinner entertainment begins: lissome dancing girls, their eyes demure and their bare skins glossy with fragrant oils. A trained bear follows; the smile leaves Susan’s eyes at the sight of the dumb beast, castrated and collared, poked and prodded into tricks. After the bear, a magician dressed in bright colors performs legerdemain. {{{I love this word, ‘legerdemain’. That's a badass word.}}}. Edmund watches him carefully and tries to figure out where the man keeps his coins and sashes, how the doves stay quiet until they are released, how wine can disappear into thin air.
The magician reaches into the air above his head and plucks a bright red apple from an invisible tree and, after asking permission from the Tisroc to approach the table, bows deeply before Susan and offers her the fruit. She blushes in delight, and Edmund takes note of the grin on her face and on the magician’s as she thanks him.
Finely crafted trickery is its own magic, and one can still learn from it. {{{And is the trickery the magician’s legerdemain or Susan flirting? I’m not sure.}}}
Susan would tell Edmund later that her favorite act had been the storytellers. These are two women: one is a hunched and grizzled crone with opalescent cataracts and gold bangles on her arms, and the other is a young woman with kohl-lined eyes. They sit on cushions on the floor, and the old woman waits patiently as the girl prepares a jeweled water pipe.
Susan turns to the chancellor beside her and asks, “Are they grandmother and granddaughter?”
“No,” Edmund hears him reply. “They are more like sunrise and sunset.”
The crone begins to speak in a voice as cracked as history as the girl inhales deeply through the pipe hose. The heavy smoke pours from her lips and curls into images from the story: men, women, and spirits that love and despair; cities that rise and fall; gods who curse and gods who redeem. The smoky figures float towards the table and twine around them all. They breathe in the smoke’s sweet smell, clove and cardamom and cinnamon and something else that Susan can't name but Edmund recognizes. {{{Like the caterpillar scene from Alice in Wonderland, no? This image of storytelling with hookah smoke was totally one of the first images that compelled me to write this fic. It’s like, “Ooh yeah, I can have fun writing about magic.”}}}
He waves the smoke away.
+
They go to Calormen to renegotiate trade agreements. This is what he lets everyone believe because Peter cannot tolerate the idea of witchery, and Lucy hates the thought of Edmund being around all that stuff again. {{{Lucy’s just worried about him sometimes. She knows Edmund’s weaknesses; she knows him well.}}}
“That’s why it must be you,” Edmund had said. Susan watched him with what he suspected was amusement, but he knew she was at least considering it. “Peter would be suspicious and Lucy would just try to stop me.” {{{Possibly because Lucy knew Edmund would bug out.}}}
She raised an eyebrow. “They don’t know about this?”
“They will know when we come back.”
Edmund described the magic he sought to collect: protective runes, illusions, spells that reveal the truth. There are chants that fortify strength, ceremonies that ward off possessions, amulets that bend your enemies’ minds to see what you want them to.
“I know better than any of us what magic can do,” said Edmund, and at his words the expression on his sister’s face softened. Susan reached across the table and covered Edmund’s hands with her own, and he resisted frowning – he didn’t need anyone’s pity.
“I’ll go with you,” she said, as Edmund knew she would. “Narnia will be the stronger for it.”
“Good,” he replied, withdrawing his hands. “I’m glad to hear it.”
And he smiled.
{{{
bedlamsbard predicted that people are gonna come down on my manipulative!Edmund characterization the way people came down on her sociopath!Peter characterization.}}}+
One late afternoon, Edmund rides into the desert for the sheer pleasure of it.
The horse he rides is one from the Calormene stables, a dumb beast that raises no protest when Edmund digs his stirrups into its sides: faster, farther. The sounds of Tashbaan recede behind him and he bids his horse stop when he can no longer hear the city. There is something majestic in the silence, and honesty in such desolation. Edmund urges the horse to the top of a dune and is still, surrounded on all sides by endless things. {{{One of my favorite out-of-context quotes is, “You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” Cesare Pavese listed these as reasons for why he hated traveling, but I love traveling and these are kind of the reasons why. I have paraphrased ‘the eternal or what we imagine of it’ in so many fics, I don’t even know. Or, in some cases, I don’t viz. from my Boondock Saints fic, 'Big Sky Country': “That’s why they find themselves on the roof of Fairview Apartments in San Martinez, surrounded on all sides by endless things.” Incidentally, 'Big Sky Country' is also set in the desert and full of incest. Coincidence!?
While I'm still coming clean, from my Secret Garden fic: "The sky, the winds, the moors, and silence: all things that tend towards infinity, or what Dickon imagines it to be."}}}
“Where were you this afternoon?” Susan asks him before supper.
“Out,” he shrugs.
He likes the heat of Calormen, its yellow light that gilds slow afternoons, so different from the fingers that leave frost across the landscape of his dreams. {{{Dude, how iambic is this paragraph?}}}
+
In the evenings they convene in Susan’s rooms and dismiss their retainers. Susan fills their goblets with wine as Edmund locks the doors and closes the windows. They tell each other what they have learned.
Although Narnians have been using magic since the land was sung, they have in recent years become wary of it, having suffered under the Witch. Aside from Susan’s horn and Lucy’s cordial, the only magic acceptable now is the Deep Magic, something associated with Aslan and the inexplicable powers that move him. Narnian magic is not so much the willful manipulation of forces, but rather an articulation of justice, a description of harmony and the way of nature. Not turning people to stone, but the changing of the seasons. Not crafting sweets from ice, but the paths stars trail through the sky. {{{Narnian magic is kind of New Age-y.}}}
But here in Calormen, how casually such strange wonders are woven into the fabric of everyday life! “There is a potion that will turn you invisible for a day and a night,” says Edmund, and “There is a telescope that will show you whatever you want to see from wherever you are in the world,” says Susan. {{{That telescope is also from 1001 Arabian Nights.}}} They make notes and transcribe instructions, sketch runes and symbols and their meanings. They keep these notes in a lacquered box and cast a spell on it to make it unopenable unless it is Edmund or Susan’s hands that touch it.
“Look at how filthy my fingers are,” says Edmund, displaying ink-stained fingers. Susan makes a face, which is all the invitation Edmund needs to reach out and smear ink on her cheek.
Susan cries out and rears back. “That was uncalled for!”
“You going to send me to bed without my supper, then?” he says, and dips his fingers in the ink well.
They end up chasing each other around the room while Susan says things like, “This is no way for a king and queen to act,” and Edmund comments on how hard it must be to look offended and giggle at the same time.
“This is undignified behavior,” Susan declares breathlessly, trapped between a corner and her brother.
“Nuts to your dignity,” and leaves ink on her nose, her chin, her neck.
“Peter wouldn’t approve of this.”
“Peter,” he responds, “is not here.”
{{{And then they have sex.
Would Peter disapprove because a) they are acting like children, or b) they are being pevencestuous without him? YOU TELL ME.}}}
+
At first he had found it easy to dismiss Susan in Narnia as he had done in England. Her delight in her court and attention to the upkeep of Cair Paravel are tedious, and Edmund wonders how her jaws don’t ache from smiling at grubbing diplomats and suitors she plans to dismiss anyway.
“You have such patience for the games they play,” Edmund commented one time.
Knowing it was not all compliment, she had replied, “Only for the ones that matter.”
Just as Lucy knows intimately the frailties of her own heart, Peter the solitude of his station, and Edmund his past crimes, Susan knows how far she can bend and how not to break for it.
{{{It was definitely interesting writing Golden Age Susan, ‘cos usually I write her post-LWW, all baggaged up. Partway through the writing of this, I was like, “Woah, this is not the Susan I usually write.” But it makes sense that Susan would be different in the Golden Age and especially through Edmund POV (as opposed to Peter POV). I just never thought about it before. I wanted to capture both her sweetness and her imperiousness. As older sister she is maternal, and as queen she is comfortable in preferring luxury. As a beautiful woman and a politician, she is a social butterfly for both business and pleasure, and she keeps her head most of the time. Queen Susan knows about strategic frivolity.}}}
It is a rare thing to see her undone as she is now. {{{It’s all that sex with Edmund.}}} Her pale skin streaked with dark ink, her hair loose and her laugh unpretentious. The magic wafting from the spells and fetishes strewn around the room flickers in the air, and maybe he should’ve known then; he should have remembered. You shouldn’t be careless with magic, especially when you have been so before. It leaves its mark on you, and it calls to its own.
+
The sound of galloping reindeer and the tinkle of sleigh-bells. Edmund remembers this as the very first place he saw the Witch.
The dreams are never the same from night to night, but they always start like this. The world is cold and white beneath his feet, pristine and drained of color and laid bare for her arrival. And oh, the wildness of her! {{{I never use exclamation marks in narration, and this is already twice in one fic. I don’t know what’s up with that.}}} The fierce delight in her eyes when she comes to him with her arms outstretched as if meeting a long-lost lover. When Edmund was a child, it was not her wildness that drew him to her, but her illusion of sympathy. He is grown now, and there are certain tricks that won’t work on him.
He does not fear her.
“I am no longer yours,” he tells her.
The Witch draws herself to her full height, and Edmund can see in her stature a little of her Jinn heritage. But unlike the Jinn there is no fire in her eyes, only a dead black, and still he doesn’t back away from her, won’t let himself do so.
“Oh, my dear boy, don’t you see?” says the Witch. “You carry me in your thoughts and nurture me in your grudges. You keep me in your dreams. It is not you who are mine.” She bends to be face to face with him, and smiles. “I am yours.”
{{{As far as Edmund seeing Jadis in dreams goes, in-between dreams is probably the prequel to this fic. I’m kind of fond of the ‘meeting in dreams’ device. remember me as a time of day, anyone?}}}
+
Susan charms scryers, fortune-tellers, royal scholars, and the fellow who gave her the apple during that first performance. “His name is Farroukh,” she tells Edmund in hushed excited tones, as if he were Lucy, “and he really is rather lovely.” {{{CONFESSION: Farroukh is totally named for the dorky film student I have a dorky crush on.}}} Edmund makes his own investigations, and also hunts down the pair of storytellers from that first day; they seem to know something of magic as well.
“Mama Biguda has little to say to young men looking for information,” says the young woman who smoked the water pipe. There is no kohl around her eyes this time; her dress is simple and she wears no jewels, but she moves with the grace of those who know their own worth. {{{I mentioned this in Author’s Notes, but Mama Biguda is just a rearranging of Mamagubida, which is the name of Tryo’s first album. Tryo are a political folk-reggae band from France, and I love them.}}}
“And you?” asks Edmund. “Do you have anything to say to these young men?”
She laughs and tells him her name is Shativa as Edmund takes her hand and bows to kiss her knuckles. {{{They call him Smoooooth Eddie P*.
* I recruited my boyfriend to help me think of a title for this fic, and we were a few drinks in when I was telling him about how Edmund pretty much gets involved with all the ladies. He replied with something like, “You should call it 'Smooth Eddie P and his Magical Harem'.” My shit cracked the fuck up. But yeah, Susan and Edmund know how to work it.}}}
+
Edmund and Susan go to the marketplace in commoners’ clothes. Their skin color and strange accents don’t stand out as much as Susan had feared; the marketplace is filled with vendors and traders from all over the world, and they have strange skins and accents of their own. By not fitting in at all, Edmund and Susan fit in perfectly. {{{Gotta have the cosmopolitan marketplace.}}}
Susan flits from stall to stall, contentedly mixing business with pleasure as she barters and smiles her way to a lower price. Edmund stays close and makes small talk with passers-by, cross-referencing marketplace rumors with what the Hawks and Foxes have told him before he left Narnia. {{{Edmund is always spymaster in my fics, even if I never articulate it explicitly. It’s become a bit of not using the Z word thing.}}}
“A bracelet for Lucy,” Susan announces, showing him her hard-won gifts as they wander through the hustle and bustle. “A flute for Tumnus.” {{{For the longest time, Susan bought Tumnus a duduk. When Tumnus played Lucy the soporific lullaby in the LWW movie, the sound was actually made by a duduk, which is a type of woodwind instrument from Armenia. But, it’s kind of a gratuituous reference so I dropped it. Less relatedly, the word ‘duduk’ also means ‘sit’ in Bahasa Indonesia.}}}
“Lucy has piles of jewelry that she barely wears,” Edmund says flatly. “She thinks they’re bothersome.”
“Well, if she doesn’t want to appreciate her present, I’ll wear it for her.” {{{...Even her frivolity is practical?}}}
“How very big-hearted of you.”
They pass a stall selling Turkish Delight. Edmund stares until the vendor notices and starts waving a box of it in his face. He shakes his head, smiling weakly, and feels Susan’s arm around his waist, tugging him away.
“They’ll rot your teeth,” she tells him, like he is ten years old all over again, and leads them back into the crowd. {{{Aww, she's condescending even when she's loving you. It’s a protective sort of love, and sort of partly based on how she doesn’t completely trust Edmund.}}}
The Street of the Enchanters is as noisy and crowded as the rest of the market. At first you would not notice anything out of the ordinary, but then you see a man with the eyes of a cat, a dancing slave-girl whose feet never touch the ground, and a woman whose wings peek out when a breeze flutters the dirty cloak she wraps around herself. There is a strange taste to the air that reminds Edmund of the hookah smoke from the first day.
When Susan disappears into an herbalist’s to find the items on their list, Edmund drifts to the stall next-door. Hanging from the tapestries that serve as stall dividers and piled on the tables are a miscellany of objects of every shape and color. There is no theme; it looks as if the vendor had simply wandered in a freewheeling sort of way through the world and collected the things he fancied without rhyme or reason, hoping for the best. {{{Because that’s what the vendor did. Using the subtle knife, he cut through the worlds and collected all sorts of potential merchandise. Oh man, imagine what a business can do with that knife, with infinite worlds of infinite capital and infinite consumers. Sure, you’d be releasing soul-sucking demons with each cut, but you’d also be making mad bank.}}} A number of things look familiar, but further investigation would reveal small details that only emphasize their strangeness. This knife, for example...
It is a double-edged knife, and while one edge is remarkable for its obvious sharpness, the other edge is more peculiar. It seems to be playing optical tricks on him, the way he cannot quite see where the blade ends and the air begins. Edmund doesn’t lift it to investigate, doesn’t touch it. Doing so only encourages vendors, but it is too late: his interest has been noticed. The vendor puts on his winning smile, and he strikes. {{{I hate haggling though. I’m way too non-confrontational, and I’m kind of an open book.}}}
“Sir is interested in this knife?” he says. He has the dark complexion of a Calormene, but Edmund cannot place his accent {{{because Edmund has never been to Citagazze}}}.
“What manner of knife is this?”
With a flourish of his hand, the vendor recites, “It is a magic knife, forged in a world far from here, farther than I’m sure you’ve traveled, good sir.”
“I’m sure,” Edmund replies indulgently.
He displays the knife’s strange blade. “You see how this side extends to a point so fine that even the eye cannot see it?”
Edmund has no intentions of buying this knife, but he takes on the tone of the disinterested interested buyer to amuse himself. “Is that what it’s doing?”
“It’s for cutting the veil between the worlds. Nothing better for those seeking a new beginning, not just in new lands, but in a new universe!” {{{I LOVE 'HIS DARK MATERIALS'. Unlike with a certain set of chronicles, I don’t often go looking for HDM fic because the canon is good enough for me. Wonderful cultural worldbuilding and a look at children’s morality that doesn’t make me want to shrivel inside. Okay, so Pullman is as soapboxy as Lewis, but... it’s kind of a soapbox I can get behind? So yeah.}}}
A familiar voice cuts in disdainfully: “Taking refuge in other worlds is no way to go about your problems.” {{{FORESHADOWING. I love doing this kind of shit when I do write Golden Age Susan, ‘cos in ten years or so, she’ll be saying the same thing to her siblings. In my mind, these are the beliefs that Golden Age Susan and post-LWW Susan share: don't get caught up in other people's lies about yourself, embrace the world thrust upon you, keep your heart open and your mind clear. (And yes I did just quote to know these songs and to sing them, don’t laugh at me.) These two Susans are not so different, and that’s what hurts, because that implies that her downfall has always been inevitable. The same qualities that make her a good queen are also what cause her to leave Narnia behind.
It kind of reminds me of this particular interpretation of Judas’s betrayal. The interpretation goes that Judas never wanted to betray Jesus in the first place, that he wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing, ever. But then Jesus took Judas aside and said that he must. Judas must betray him, because who would die for the sins of humanity otherwise? “Your betrayal is your charge,” Jesus said to him. “Your destiny is to set in motion the salvation of future generations, and to be hated for it.”
...Okay, so not really the same story as Susan’s, but in both stories, betrayal is just the next natural step.
Did I tell you guys I wrote Judas/Jesus fic years ago? YEARS ago. I posted it on ffnet and the internet ate it up when ffnet tried to clean up its act, or something. I don’t have a file of it anymore so it’s gone forever, and all I remember was that Jesus’s lips – much like the lips of many a fic character – tasted sweet with wine, and that I had ripped off a line from ‘Behold the Man’ by Michael Moorcock. YOU GUYS, if you have not yet read ‘Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock, you totally have to. It is about the story of Jesus, sort of, and it is fucked up and awesome.}}}
And it is Susan, her basket heavy with souvenirs and magical paraphernalia, and her expression one of high-minded disapproval. She floats to Edmund’s side, lacing their fingers together and squeezing his hand. “You should be ashamed, selling such tricks,” she says.
“My lady is wise and strong,” the vendor murmurs with a bow. Susan brings this sort of behavior out in people.
The vendor, a businessman through and through, points out topaz earrings that chime fairy music and ribbons that change color as you dance. Edmund hovers nearby as she is drawn into haggling, the knife at the corner of his eye, and weighs out the consequences of decisions he will never make.
+
She leaves no footprints in the snow and her breath does not mist in the air. The Witch beckons, “Walk with me, my king.”
Edmund frowns. “I am not your king. You are not my queen, or anything. We are nothing to each other.” But he falls in step with her anyway, easily like the first time long ago. {{{You never forget your first
A crescent moon hangs in the sky; there are no stars. Like the first time, the trees only watch quietly, holding their own counsel. The Witch asks, “Are you learning much magic, Edmund?”
“That is no concern of yours.”
“Of course it is. Magic is a concern of mine, for they have named me the White Witch and this is what I am. I am of magic. And you are a concern of mine, my boy, for you have eaten of me.” {{{Enter the Eucharist! I was researching transubstantiation to see how much symbolism I can cram into it, and was thrilled to learn that you can only eat the communion wafer and wine if you are a true believer of the faith. PERFECT. Not that that bit of detail made it into the fic though, in the end. But I can tell you now in commentary!}}}
“I am not that same boy who fell for your tricks, Jadis.”
She doesn’t seem to hear him. “I took the winter inside of me so that I may bend it to my will.” The Witch scoops a handful of snow and holds it out to Edmund. The snow doesn’t melt on the palm of her hands, and instead it transubstantiates into a number of things: a jewel, a silver coin, a chalice of wine. All illusions, Edmund knows. A crown, a dagger, and back to snow. “This is my body and my blood, as far as creatures like me can have such things,” she says, and the snow changes again.
The smell of confectionary sugar is familiar and Edmund takes an involuntary step backward. In a rush he remembers being wrapped in furs and her soft body beside him, the sleigh rushing through the winter landscape. The stamp of reindeer hooves on packed snow and the cold biting at his face where the wind lashes, where her fingers touch.
The Witch holds out the box of Turkish Delight. “Won’t you have just one?”
{{{Jadis and her fabulousness is one of the main reasons this fic became as long as it did. When I first started writing this, I envisioned it to be 1500 words of Edmund/Susan and waxing poetic about the desert. HOW WRONG I WAS. Jadis took more and more of starring role -- maybe not in actual stage time but definitely in emotional driving force. Edmund may be exchanging fraught touches with Susan and Shativa, but it’s his relationship with Jadis that’s at the heart of things.}}}
+
Dancing with Susan is nothing like dancing with Lucy, who doesn’t care for knowing the steps and whose feet goes any which way her heart takes her. He usually lets Lucy lead anyway. In the background Peter and Susan would dance together with as much elegance and aplomb as Edmund and Lucy dance through stifled giggles. Lucy brings out the merriment in him {{{if you know what I mean}}} and he finds himself missing her now.
“This is the part Peter always makes a mess of too,” Susan tells him complacently. {{{Susan keeps mentioning Peter. If this story were told from Susan’s POV, we’d probably have more memories and flashbacks of Peter.}}} “We’ll do this until we get it right, don’t worry.”
Edmund says, “It’s not that I’m worried.”
The Tisroc has arranged for a banquet tonight (that is to say, he has announced it, and set his retainers to arranging it) and has asked Susan and Edmund to perform a courtly dance of Narnia. Edmund let his sister answer, knowing she would reply with more enthusiasm and grace than he, and this led to where they are now, practicing in the gilded hall where the banquet is to take place. The palace servants glide to and fro like silent ghosts in the background, decorating and setting up and bringing in tables and chairs; they give the dancing monarchs in the middle of the hall wide berth.
“I almost wish we can enchant my feet so they’d know what to do,” Edmund mutters.
“Oh, hush,” says Susan as Edmund twirls her, though really she twirls herself while holding Edmund’s hand above her head. “We don’t need magic for everything.” {{{FOOOORESHADOWIIIIING.}}}
By the end of an hour, their faces are flushed with exertion and strained patience and when Edmund calls for a rest, Susan does not object. They call for wine and it is brought to them in silver goblets. The servants bow as they are thanked, scuttling backwards and turning around only when they have reached a distance of twenty paces from them. {{{I’m not sure if this is a Middle Eastern custom, ‘cos I think I took this from Far East culture.}}}
“What a curious custom,” Susan comments as they make their way to one of the hall’s large windows overlooking the gardens. “A wonder they don’t bump into anything.”
“Calormen is full of many wonders,” he says absently. The breeze that floats in is cool and soothing as Edmund leans against the windowsill; Susan doesn’t deign to do so for fear of dirtying her sleeves.
“Farroukh told me of a spell,” says Susan, “that lets you climb into other people’s dreams.”
Edmund keeps his voice neutral. “Oh?” {{{Oh shit! The possibility that Jadis is not dead and is actually talking to him through dreams! Possibly Edmund tries not to be secretly pleased.}}}
“They say that, once, a sorceress used the spell to climb into her beloved’s dreams. He was a general in the Tisroc’s army, and far away at the time. Off reclaiming Calormene lands conquered by King Frank XII, I believe. {{{I’m stupidly proud of that sentence, with the nationalist territory quibbles and the King Frank XII. You know, Frank the cabbie from Magician's Nephew and first king of Narnia!}}} Every night she came, and together they would defy the distance between them.”
Edmund rolls his eyes. “That’s a nice bedtime story. Anything ever came of it?”
“Well, they got married of course, when he returned. They were in love, after all.”
“Maybe she used a love spell.”
In Susan’s reply, he hears the words of a queen who has spent the past many years winning the hearts of men and women in the name of her country. “Love is its own magic,” she says. “It needs no other spells.”
He takes in the lushness of the Tisroc’s gardens below them and wonders detachedly how much water must be pumped to keep them in such a verdant state. Water, he notes, that could have been distributed instead to the people living in the dust and squalor of Tashbaan’s ghettos. Calormen has been teetering on the verge of drought for some months now; the rains have not come and the people grow restless. There will be border disputes with Archenland over the Winding Arrow delta (again), and Narnia will officially declare neutrality to preserve her hard-won peace with Calormen. But he and Peter owe Lune certain favors, and Edmund mentally flicks through a growing list of spells and enchantments, and catalogues what may come in particularly useful to Archenland’s impending struggle. {{{Four years of studying international relations and economic development, and this is what I use it for.}}}
“Anyway,” Susan continues, “it was terribly romantic. Calormenes are not so skeptical of sorcery as Narnians.”
“Aslan protect the Narnians from their own skepticism,” Edmund mutters.
“This spell is a good one, I think,” she says. “You can do much with it. I thought perhaps you might use it to implant false prophecies in other people’s dreams, which could be particularly useful in quelling Redhaven. Aren’t they rather superstitious there?” {{{In The Left Hand of Heaven, they refer to troubles in Redhaven also. It’s the same troubles, though I’m not sure at this point exactly what these troubles are.}}}
“Who are we to talk of being superstitious, with what we are doing?” Edmund slips his arm around Susan’s waist. As she shifts closer he plants a kiss on her temple, then covers the hand holding her goblet with his own and drinks from it. {{{Smooooth Eddie P. He is even sneaky when he’s flirting.}}}
Susan laughs. “At least we are doing this for good.”
“We are doing this for Narnia, sister,” he says, “and nothing else.”
{{{I was contemplating writing about the banquet but I got lazy, I dunno. I'm not even sure what would have gone in there. Tipsy flirtation, more magic, and Susan accidentally calling Edmund Peter, maybe. Maybe I'll get around to it at some point. Maybe I'll get around to writing the Susan POV of this fic at some point too, with her charming half the Tisroc's court and trying to figure Edmund (and magic) out. Not any point soon, though.}}}
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You keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and Edmund mulls over the contrariness of such a statement as the Witch waits, knowing, patient, there at the edge of his mind, and at his fingertips when he practices charms and incantations late into the night long after Susan has gone to sleep. {{{This sentence is one of the first things I wrote of this fic, and is pretty much the only thing that has made it to the final draft unchanged.}}}
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“Do you ever change an ending to please the audience?” Edmund asks{{{ after another session of hot sex}}}.
“Of course,” Shativa answers. Her long hair tumbles down her back as she sifts through her clothes for a dress to wear. “A pleased audience pays better. Mama Biguda doesn’t like to, but I convince her.”
“How do you do that?”
“I remind her endings are illusions anyway. In a story, there are a thousand endings and a thousand beginnings between the first word spoken and the last word said.”
And later the Witch tells him, “Your storyteller is wise. Things never truly finish, as you know.”
Light is sparse in the winter night, but he can see the Witch as clear as if it were daytime, summer. Her face is unreadable, and he strives to keep his likewise. “Then,” he says in an even tone, “what were you all those years ago when Aslan cast you out? What are you now?”
She tips her head to the side. “For someone whose convictions are so contingent on the existence of absolutes, Edmund, you don’t act like it.”
“Don’t presume you can talk to me about my convictions.”
The Witch says, “Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.”
Edmund frowns. “What spell is that?”
“It is not a spell. It’s advice from your own world.”
“That is not any language I’ve heard of in Narnia.”
“I didn’t say,” says the Witch, “it was from Narnia.” {{{Does she know Latin because she is a Witch who can see across worlds, or is it just Edmund’s subconscious burping up Latin class? (I didn’t write it with this ambiguity in mind; I just thought it would be cool if Jadis spoke Latin. But it worked out, so yay.)}}}
Part 2 of DVD commentary