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boogalooed's encouragement and girlgroovy3's firm hand. Unlike CS Lewis, Disney, and Walden Media, I neither own nor have any rights to the Chronicles of Narnia. The title is from the poem 'Two Countries' by Naomi Shihab Nye.
feather lost from the tail/of a bird
Chronicles of Narnia. Ensemble. Caspian/Susan. PG.
The lines tangle between Peter and Caspian. Four missing scenes: archery practice, Lucy left behind at the How, flying to the castle, and the aftermath of Jadis.
The silence is awkward, but their glares are proud.
Around them the Narnians shift and murmur in their place.
Eventually, his upbringing sets in and Caspian hears the little voice that tells him what to do, even when he wants to do something else. Especially when he wants to do something else. He lowers his eyes and nods in deference, and the High King continues his barrage of orders.
This isn’t what Caspian expected at all.
When he brings up his thoughts with Susan during archery practice, she frowns. At her expression Caspian begins to apologize – talking with Susan flows so easily and naturally that he sometimes forgets his place.
“What Peter doesn’t know far exceeds what Peter does know,” she says, cutting him off. She adjusts the angle of his bow. “He’s a High King of the past – raise your elbow – but you are a prince of the present. You’d do well to remember that. Release.”
Caspian releases the arrow: he misses the bull’s eye by a large margin.
The Queen sighs and takes the bow from him. “All right, look at me when I do it. First, set your feet a shoulder-width apart.” She nocks an arrow on her bow. “Do you see?”
Caspian replies, “Yes.”
Watching the Kings and Queens settle into themselves has been strange. Caspian envisioned them to be aloof with a genial omniscience, kindly but composed, more metaphor than mortal. Their apparent disorientation is humanizing. The Old Narnians’ reactions to the Kings and Queens’ fallibility are varied, ranging from benign acceptance to cautious disappointment, but Caspian finds himself drawn to the way Susan blushes and pouts, and to the giddy pride on her face the first few times her arrow finds the bull’s eye, as if she never thought she would do such a thing again.
“The past is important,” says the Queen, “but you should remember that the present is where you are and need to be.”
She releases, and of course her arrow finds its mark.
“Well done, Your Majesty,” says Caspian.
“Go to, Your Highness.”
Susan says nothing when Caspian’s arrow finds the bull’s eye. He glances at her – has she found some other defect in his form? – but her expression is blank in the manner of those lost in memory. “He sees some of himself in you, I think,” she murmurs. “I think that’s what needles him most.”
Before Caspian can ask her what she means, the distance is gone from her eyes and she is every inch the queen instructing her people. “Relax your legs, they’re much too stiff.” The Queen touches his right elbow and raises it slightly. “Concentrate on the target. Keep your left elbow straight.”
He’s aware of how closely she is standing behind him. Her long skirt brushes against his legs and her arms mirror his, like a shadow, as she positions him. Her hair tickles his cheek and smells of earth.
Caspian says, “What does the-”
“I said concentrate.” Susan gently angles Caspian’s bow arm to the right.
He releases the arrow, and misses the bull’s eye by the width of a finger.
“Good enough, for a practice.”
Caspian sighs, but he is smiling. “Well, does Her Majesty perhaps have better advice?”
The blush creeps slowly to her cheeks. “You must call me Susan.”
He turns to face her and she doesn’t pull away. Caspian holds Susan’s face in his hands; her cheeks are petal-soft and he tells her he will do just that.
+
When they were all dressed and ready to leave Cair Paravel, Peter was still looking through his chest in the Treasure Room. A few seconds later he pulled out his prize: his crown.
“Think I should bring it with me?” Peter asked.
Edmund asked, “What on earth for?”
“I don’t know, for safekeeping, I suppose.” He ran his fingers over the rubies, sapphires, and pearls inset in the gold.
“It’s been in here for centuries now,” said Susan, “and I think it’ll be safe here for a few centuries more.”
Peter shrugged. “Maybe we could use it for barter and trade for supplies. Or maybe use it as our insignia.”
Edmund merely raised an eyebrow.
In the end, Peter didn’t bring his crown. Dressed in the clothes of their former lives, they walked back out into the sunlight, giddy from transition. Peter and Edmund pushed the Treasure Room’s stone door back into place, and that had been that.
Now, left behind in Aslan’s How while the others went to take Miraz’s castle, Lucy thinks of how Peter-in-Narnia reminds her more and more of Peter-in-London and she doesn’t know what to make of it. She sees her brother trying to be High King Peter – oh, he does try – but she supposes things really don’t happen the same way twice, after all.
She sits on the Stone Table because it is familiar, and rolls the cordial around in her hands. The place is near empty, and the Narnians who remain give her wide berth. Lucy didn’t ask to be left alone, but she finds the silence comforting.
The last thing Susan did before she left for battle was to hug her, and kiss her forehead and both her cheeks.
The last thing Edmund tried to do before he left for battle was to ruffle her hair, which he knows she hates. Lucy wouldn’t let him go until he bent down so she could kiss the top of his head. “For luck,” she had said. So the last thing Edmund did before he left was bow low before Lucy. She curtsied back.
The last thing Peter did before he left for battle was to tell her not to worry: Narnia would win, just like always.
But Peter would have to find another way.
+
It hurts when the Gryphon closes her talons on his limbs, but Peter declines to say anything for fear of seeming weak and he wonders if he has always been this proud.
The rocky ground drops away beneath his feet. His gaze lingers on a unicorn as he rises, the luminous silver-white of its coat impossible to hide in the darkness. Ahead of him: Miraz’s castle, and his brother receding into the distance. The rest of them would hover far enough away until Edmund gave the signal.
The flight exhilarates him: it is a unique experience, to be surrounded on all sides by nothing, and to be alive still. To feel strong, because of it. To feel strong, despite.
The Gryphon bends her head. The harsh winds at this altitude make it hard to hear the High King. She decreases her speed. “Pardon, Sire?”
“If you don’t mind,” he yells, “if you’d indulge me in a favor, noble Gryphon.”
“What would you ask, Sire?”
“Would you…” The High King’s face is already red from the cold. “If you would be so kind…” His face turns redder still. “Would you mind terribly flying a somersault? I’d just… I’d just like to see what it’s like. If you don’t mind.”
The Gryphon makes a sound in her throat like a chortle, and before he knows it, Peter is rising up and up as if towards heaven, high enough that he thinks he can see the gentle faces of the stars. He thinks they smile at him. He thinks they reach out their hands. But before Peter can reach for them, he is arching backwards, backwards, until he is flying supine beneath the night sky. The sky could’ve been a glittering sea that, instead of reflecting his image on its glassy surface, reflects his soul in the form of constellations. And they arch backwards still, backwards still, until he faces the earth, and Peter learns that sometimes flying is just like falling, and that it’s very easy to confuse the two.
Peter spreads his arms, because he can, and he is free.
The Gryphon eases them back into their original position. Peter hears his heartbeat pounding in his ears and feels as if his body is reverberating with its rhythm. Before he can thank her, before he can even catch his breath, the Gryphon says, with a tone of urgency, “Sire, your brother.”
Peter looks up. On the southeastern tower, Edmund’s torch blinks on and off. The High King draws his sword.
They descend.
Peter slashes at a Telmarine soldier and the feel of metal through flesh is familiar, calling to something in his blood that heats and thrums. Susan and Caspian are beside him, their army waits outside, and together they will plunge into the dark. Every thrust of blade into a man feels like the grandest of finales, but he knows there is more, there is so much more.
He loves the battle (at least at first) not for its gore and blood and death, but for the easy grace with which it comes to him.
He is home.
+
Caspian felt the cry start from somewhere behind his heart and soak up what few memories he has of his father, the calm expression on Miraz’s face even with a crossbow to the neck, and of all the time, all the years, that his professor and most trusted friend has lied to him.
Suddenly his sword was out. The Narnians gasped, Susan’s eyes were desperate and pleading, but the High King did not look at all scared.
Now, with his armor off and his hand bandaged, he shuffles around where the White Witch had been, kicking around bits of melting ice, and is mostly ashamed. Susan has refused to see him. It was Lucy who bandaged his hand and bade him tell her more stories of Old Narnia, which helped to take his mind of things, so he obliged. The young queen laughed at all the right places, and Caspian felt a bit better. Then, off she went, off to make someone else feel a bit better, and Caspian is alone again with the ice, the lingering cold, and the relentless stares of history carved into the walls.
“Your Highness?”
Caspian lifts his head. The High King stands awkwardly in the doorway, looking unsure of how he ought to carry himself.
“Let’s not do that,” sighs Caspian. “I’m tired and I can’t stand for more ceremony.”
Peter is silent and does not move, and Caspian realizes he is waiting for permission to enter. “Come in. I meant to say that you should call me Caspian. I feel like no prince.”
“Then call me Peter,” says Peter. “I don’t feel like much of a king myself.”
Too much has happened in a short time, and neither boy, being of strong will, is quite yet ready to call it water under the bridge. Still, they start to speak at the same time, stop, and stare at each other. They recognize the moment – Caspian smiles a little, and Peter chuckles.
“Anyway, I don’t mean to disturb you,” he says. “I just came to apologize.”
“I must apologize as well,” says Caspian.
But declaring one’s intentions is not the same as following through. They are both quiet and waiting, and Caspian thinks maybe he sees Peter’s eyes harden again.
“If you’ll excuse me,” says Caspian mildly, “I must check on my teacher.”
Instead of finding Doctor Cornelius, Caspian heads outside. He wants the sun suddenly, and he’s but taken two steps from the room when already he can feel the cold dissipating from his bones.
Peter is still there when Caspian peers through the doorway sometime later. He perches on the Stone Table with Susan at his side. Neither notices him. He doesn’t look at Susan when he talks, just rests his arm around her shoulders and tangles his fingers in her hair like an old habit. Peter keeps his gaze on the image of Aslan. Although Caspian cannot hear what they’re saying, he cannot help but feel as if he is intruding.
He wonders what Peter was thinking, what Peter saw or thought he saw, when the White Witch offered him her hand. Caspian wanted to ask him earlier during that mess of apologies and awkward silence, but it felt improper. A truce of sorts has settled between them, but their prides are still too rattled to be friends.
He remembers General Glozelle’s words the very first time he practiced sparring with the man. Caspian was overwhelmed by the speed and silver of the sword, terrified at the dark shape that wielded it.
“Ask not a man what he fears,” Glozelle said, his sword at Caspian’s throat. Caspian’s own sword had somehow ended up in Glozelle’s hand. “If you are patient, he will answer before you ever need to ask the question.”
He wonders if maybe this is what Susan means. That, maybe, when Jadis offered them her hand and mouthed Come, both boys thought of the kingdom they had lost, the home now filled with strangers, the crown so brutally taken from them, whether they could ever come home again.
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boogalooed's encouragement and girlgroovy3's firm hand. Unlike CS Lewis, Disney, and Walden Media, I neither own nor have any rights to the Chronicles of Narnia. The title is from the poem 'Two Countries' by Naomi Shihab Nye.feather lost from the tail/of a bird
Chronicles of Narnia. Ensemble. Caspian/Susan. PG.
The lines tangle between Peter and Caspian. Four missing scenes: archery practice, Lucy left behind at the How, flying to the castle, and the aftermath of Jadis.
The silence is awkward, but their glares are proud.
Around them the Narnians shift and murmur in their place.
Eventually, his upbringing sets in and Caspian hears the little voice that tells him what to do, even when he wants to do something else. Especially when he wants to do something else. He lowers his eyes and nods in deference, and the High King continues his barrage of orders.
This isn’t what Caspian expected at all.
When he brings up his thoughts with Susan during archery practice, she frowns. At her expression Caspian begins to apologize – talking with Susan flows so easily and naturally that he sometimes forgets his place.
“What Peter doesn’t know far exceeds what Peter does know,” she says, cutting him off. She adjusts the angle of his bow. “He’s a High King of the past – raise your elbow – but you are a prince of the present. You’d do well to remember that. Release.”
Caspian releases the arrow: he misses the bull’s eye by a large margin.
The Queen sighs and takes the bow from him. “All right, look at me when I do it. First, set your feet a shoulder-width apart.” She nocks an arrow on her bow. “Do you see?”
Caspian replies, “Yes.”
Watching the Kings and Queens settle into themselves has been strange. Caspian envisioned them to be aloof with a genial omniscience, kindly but composed, more metaphor than mortal. Their apparent disorientation is humanizing. The Old Narnians’ reactions to the Kings and Queens’ fallibility are varied, ranging from benign acceptance to cautious disappointment, but Caspian finds himself drawn to the way Susan blushes and pouts, and to the giddy pride on her face the first few times her arrow finds the bull’s eye, as if she never thought she would do such a thing again.
“The past is important,” says the Queen, “but you should remember that the present is where you are and need to be.”
She releases, and of course her arrow finds its mark.
“Well done, Your Majesty,” says Caspian.
“Go to, Your Highness.”
Susan says nothing when Caspian’s arrow finds the bull’s eye. He glances at her – has she found some other defect in his form? – but her expression is blank in the manner of those lost in memory. “He sees some of himself in you, I think,” she murmurs. “I think that’s what needles him most.”
Before Caspian can ask her what she means, the distance is gone from her eyes and she is every inch the queen instructing her people. “Relax your legs, they’re much too stiff.” The Queen touches his right elbow and raises it slightly. “Concentrate on the target. Keep your left elbow straight.”
He’s aware of how closely she is standing behind him. Her long skirt brushes against his legs and her arms mirror his, like a shadow, as she positions him. Her hair tickles his cheek and smells of earth.
Caspian says, “What does the-”
“I said concentrate.” Susan gently angles Caspian’s bow arm to the right.
He releases the arrow, and misses the bull’s eye by the width of a finger.
“Good enough, for a practice.”
Caspian sighs, but he is smiling. “Well, does Her Majesty perhaps have better advice?”
The blush creeps slowly to her cheeks. “You must call me Susan.”
He turns to face her and she doesn’t pull away. Caspian holds Susan’s face in his hands; her cheeks are petal-soft and he tells her he will do just that.
+
When they were all dressed and ready to leave Cair Paravel, Peter was still looking through his chest in the Treasure Room. A few seconds later he pulled out his prize: his crown.
“Think I should bring it with me?” Peter asked.
Edmund asked, “What on earth for?”
“I don’t know, for safekeeping, I suppose.” He ran his fingers over the rubies, sapphires, and pearls inset in the gold.
“It’s been in here for centuries now,” said Susan, “and I think it’ll be safe here for a few centuries more.”
Peter shrugged. “Maybe we could use it for barter and trade for supplies. Or maybe use it as our insignia.”
Edmund merely raised an eyebrow.
In the end, Peter didn’t bring his crown. Dressed in the clothes of their former lives, they walked back out into the sunlight, giddy from transition. Peter and Edmund pushed the Treasure Room’s stone door back into place, and that had been that.
Now, left behind in Aslan’s How while the others went to take Miraz’s castle, Lucy thinks of how Peter-in-Narnia reminds her more and more of Peter-in-London and she doesn’t know what to make of it. She sees her brother trying to be High King Peter – oh, he does try – but she supposes things really don’t happen the same way twice, after all.
She sits on the Stone Table because it is familiar, and rolls the cordial around in her hands. The place is near empty, and the Narnians who remain give her wide berth. Lucy didn’t ask to be left alone, but she finds the silence comforting.
The last thing Susan did before she left for battle was to hug her, and kiss her forehead and both her cheeks.
The last thing Edmund tried to do before he left for battle was to ruffle her hair, which he knows she hates. Lucy wouldn’t let him go until he bent down so she could kiss the top of his head. “For luck,” she had said. So the last thing Edmund did before he left was bow low before Lucy. She curtsied back.
The last thing Peter did before he left for battle was to tell her not to worry: Narnia would win, just like always.
But Peter would have to find another way.
+
It hurts when the Gryphon closes her talons on his limbs, but Peter declines to say anything for fear of seeming weak and he wonders if he has always been this proud.
The rocky ground drops away beneath his feet. His gaze lingers on a unicorn as he rises, the luminous silver-white of its coat impossible to hide in the darkness. Ahead of him: Miraz’s castle, and his brother receding into the distance. The rest of them would hover far enough away until Edmund gave the signal.
The flight exhilarates him: it is a unique experience, to be surrounded on all sides by nothing, and to be alive still. To feel strong, because of it. To feel strong, despite.
The Gryphon bends her head. The harsh winds at this altitude make it hard to hear the High King. She decreases her speed. “Pardon, Sire?”
“If you don’t mind,” he yells, “if you’d indulge me in a favor, noble Gryphon.”
“What would you ask, Sire?”
“Would you…” The High King’s face is already red from the cold. “If you would be so kind…” His face turns redder still. “Would you mind terribly flying a somersault? I’d just… I’d just like to see what it’s like. If you don’t mind.”
The Gryphon makes a sound in her throat like a chortle, and before he knows it, Peter is rising up and up as if towards heaven, high enough that he thinks he can see the gentle faces of the stars. He thinks they smile at him. He thinks they reach out their hands. But before Peter can reach for them, he is arching backwards, backwards, until he is flying supine beneath the night sky. The sky could’ve been a glittering sea that, instead of reflecting his image on its glassy surface, reflects his soul in the form of constellations. And they arch backwards still, backwards still, until he faces the earth, and Peter learns that sometimes flying is just like falling, and that it’s very easy to confuse the two.
Peter spreads his arms, because he can, and he is free.
The Gryphon eases them back into their original position. Peter hears his heartbeat pounding in his ears and feels as if his body is reverberating with its rhythm. Before he can thank her, before he can even catch his breath, the Gryphon says, with a tone of urgency, “Sire, your brother.”
Peter looks up. On the southeastern tower, Edmund’s torch blinks on and off. The High King draws his sword.
They descend.
Peter slashes at a Telmarine soldier and the feel of metal through flesh is familiar, calling to something in his blood that heats and thrums. Susan and Caspian are beside him, their army waits outside, and together they will plunge into the dark. Every thrust of blade into a man feels like the grandest of finales, but he knows there is more, there is so much more.
He loves the battle (at least at first) not for its gore and blood and death, but for the easy grace with which it comes to him.
He is home.
+
Caspian felt the cry start from somewhere behind his heart and soak up what few memories he has of his father, the calm expression on Miraz’s face even with a crossbow to the neck, and of all the time, all the years, that his professor and most trusted friend has lied to him.
Suddenly his sword was out. The Narnians gasped, Susan’s eyes were desperate and pleading, but the High King did not look at all scared.
Now, with his armor off and his hand bandaged, he shuffles around where the White Witch had been, kicking around bits of melting ice, and is mostly ashamed. Susan has refused to see him. It was Lucy who bandaged his hand and bade him tell her more stories of Old Narnia, which helped to take his mind of things, so he obliged. The young queen laughed at all the right places, and Caspian felt a bit better. Then, off she went, off to make someone else feel a bit better, and Caspian is alone again with the ice, the lingering cold, and the relentless stares of history carved into the walls.
“Your Highness?”
Caspian lifts his head. The High King stands awkwardly in the doorway, looking unsure of how he ought to carry himself.
“Let’s not do that,” sighs Caspian. “I’m tired and I can’t stand for more ceremony.”
Peter is silent and does not move, and Caspian realizes he is waiting for permission to enter. “Come in. I meant to say that you should call me Caspian. I feel like no prince.”
“Then call me Peter,” says Peter. “I don’t feel like much of a king myself.”
Too much has happened in a short time, and neither boy, being of strong will, is quite yet ready to call it water under the bridge. Still, they start to speak at the same time, stop, and stare at each other. They recognize the moment – Caspian smiles a little, and Peter chuckles.
“Anyway, I don’t mean to disturb you,” he says. “I just came to apologize.”
“I must apologize as well,” says Caspian.
But declaring one’s intentions is not the same as following through. They are both quiet and waiting, and Caspian thinks maybe he sees Peter’s eyes harden again.
“If you’ll excuse me,” says Caspian mildly, “I must check on my teacher.”
Instead of finding Doctor Cornelius, Caspian heads outside. He wants the sun suddenly, and he’s but taken two steps from the room when already he can feel the cold dissipating from his bones.
Peter is still there when Caspian peers through the doorway sometime later. He perches on the Stone Table with Susan at his side. Neither notices him. He doesn’t look at Susan when he talks, just rests his arm around her shoulders and tangles his fingers in her hair like an old habit. Peter keeps his gaze on the image of Aslan. Although Caspian cannot hear what they’re saying, he cannot help but feel as if he is intruding.
He wonders what Peter was thinking, what Peter saw or thought he saw, when the White Witch offered him her hand. Caspian wanted to ask him earlier during that mess of apologies and awkward silence, but it felt improper. A truce of sorts has settled between them, but their prides are still too rattled to be friends.
He remembers General Glozelle’s words the very first time he practiced sparring with the man. Caspian was overwhelmed by the speed and silver of the sword, terrified at the dark shape that wielded it.
“Ask not a man what he fears,” Glozelle said, his sword at Caspian’s throat. Caspian’s own sword had somehow ended up in Glozelle’s hand. “If you are patient, he will answer before you ever need to ask the question.”
He wonders if maybe this is what Susan means. That, maybe, when Jadis offered them her hand and mouthed Come, both boys thought of the kingdom they had lost, the home now filled with strangers, the crown so brutally taken from them, whether they could ever come home again.