Narnia fic: "First Impressions"

[bedlamsbard]

autumnia asked for "Jill, England, her first taste of the Pevensies." And you know how much I like outside POV! Jill is growing on me.



“What are you doing for the hols?” Eustace asks, in that awkward sort of way he has, like he still has to take a minute to remind himself how to be a normal human being with things like emotions and feelings and care for other people.

Jill shrugs, kicking her heels against the low stone wall they’re sitting on. It’s cold out, frost settled over the countryside like a moth-bitten white blanket, and both of them are muffled up in coats and mufflers, their hands tucked away in mittens. Come to think of it, it’s not really that cold, not compared to the moors north of Narnia. Puddleglum probably would have called this a warm spring day. Her mind considers this for a moment, then shies away, the way it does whenever her thoughts settle idly on Narnia for more than a few seconds. It’s like she can’t quite think of Narnia seriously in England, as if it’s something too real for this place.

“Go home, I suppose,” she says, with another little shrug of distaste. There’s a ten to one chance that it will be just her banging around in that big house, unless her sister condescends to come home for a few days or her parents can drag themselves away from London. “What about you?”

“Alberta’s unloading me on Helen,” Eustace says. “She says it’s because she and Harold want a quiet Christmas, but it’s probably just payback for having to take in Edmund and Lucy last summer. I’ll probably only see them at Great-Aunt Carol’s party, since even they can’t get out of that.”

“That sounds like fun,” Jill offers.

Eustace rolls his eyes. “Three weeks alone with the Pevensies? I’ll probably be mad by the time I come back to Experiment House. They never listen to Helen anymore; she just lets them run wild. You could –”

“Hmm?”

“Helen probably wouldn’t mind if you came,” he offers, the words quick and graceless, throwing them out before he has time to think through what he’s said. “And you’ve been to Narnia, so the Pevensies probably wouldn’t either –”

“Wouldn’t it be your aunt who decides?” Jill points out. She knows vaguely that Mr. Pevensie is abroad doing something for the war effort, so she supposes that he won’t have a say in the matter, but that leaves it up to his wife.

Eustace shakes his head determinedly. “Definitely Peter. It’s – you’ll see when you get there. They’re just – weird.”

*

That’s how Jill finds herself getting off at the train station with Eustace Scrubb, carrying a slightly battered suitcase in one gloved hand. She doesn’t know who to look for, so she follows Eustace, who’s craning his head around.

“Oi, Scrubb!”

Eustace breathes a sigh of relief and hurries over, shoving his way through the crowd the way he probably wouldn’t have last year. Jill follows in his wake, suddenly aware that one of her bootlaces has come undone.

“You’ve got some color in you,” a tall dark-haired boy observes, looking Eustace over. He has the awkward look of someone who’s grown a great deal in a very short period of time, but it combines oddly with the grace of someone utterly comfortable in their own skin. “Haven’t spent all your time cooped up with your books, have you?”

“Oh, sod off,” Eustace mutters, and the boy laughs and claps him on the shoulder. Eustace looks shocked.

“Pete’s gone off to round up Lu and Su, their train’s coming in on another platform. I got in three days ago, and Peter yesterday – he just started at Cranwell this autumn,” the boy informs Jill, cheerful. “I’m Edmund, by the way. You must be Jill, Scrubb’s written me about you.”

“He’s told me a lot about you,” Jill says after a moment, taking the proffered hand to shake. His grip is firm and dry, with calluses from a cricket bat or a hockey stick, some sport of the sort Experiment House doesn’t bother with.

Edmund grins at her, cheerful. “Nothing good, I’m sure. Probably all stories about being forced to climb the Dawn Treader’s rigging and take the watch in the crow’s nest.” The corner of his mouth quirks up, slightly, mock-friendly; his gaze is cunning and clever and utterly unlike any other teenager Jill’s ever met.

“He said you taught him how to use a sword,” she offers up, aware of Eustace looking between them nervously.

Edmund Pevensie laughs. “I helped,” he says, then looks over their heads and waves. “Hi, Pete, Su, Lu! We’re over here!” His voice carries across the train station without any apparent effort, making the crowd of people coming and leaving for holiday look around at him, bewildered by the burst of sound. A nearby soldier looks impressed.

“Don’t bellow, Ed,” one of his sisters says as they emerge from the crowd. She’s tall as well, all four of them are, or at least they have that quality that makes someone seem bigger than real life; Jill is vaguely aware that if she put them up against her own cousins they’d probably be just about average.

He looks outraged. “I wasn’t!”

“It’s a rail station, not a battlefield,” she sniffs.

“It’s a noisy rail station! And you found us, didn’t you? So there –”

The other two Pevensies watch the interplay with some amusement. Eustace looks awkward, then turns to Jill, his expression turning apologetic. “They’re not usually that bad –”

“They’re just getting started,” the other girl says cheerfully, and juggles her bags until she can thrust her hand out. “Hello! I’m Lucy, and the noisy one is Susan, and Edmund’s not an utter beast, so he must have introduced himself already. And that’s Peter.” She tips her head at her oldest brother, who’s watching with interplay between his siblings with vague amusement, his hands tucked into the pockets of his overcoat.

He looks over at them. “Hallo,” he offers. “It’s Jill, isn’t it? How was the trip?”

It’s so innocuous that Jill blinks and answers automatically, “All right –”

Eustace looks at Peter, shifting a little, nervously. Jill looks at him, then back at Peter, who smiles easily, like one of the prefects at Experiment House, blond and handsome and a bit dim, none too interested in the affairs of the younger students so long as they don’t interfere with his own life.

“How was the term, coz?” he goes on.

“All right,” Eustace says, scraping the toe of one shoe against the scuffed stone floor. He cants a look at Edmund and Susan, who are still arguing about inside voices versus outside voices.

“Stop,” Peter says, so calmly that Jill barely registers it as a command until both of them stop speaking, looking at him in surprise. “You’re making a scene. Let’s go, shall we? Mum will be wondering what’s keeping us.” He puts out a hand for Jill’s bag, gentlemanly, and she surrenders it, unable to think of a protest.

Susan turns a smile on Jill, her dark hair swishing across the shoulders of her wool coat. “We’ll be a bit crowded,” she says. “But that’s part of the fun of it, isn’t it? I suppose we’ll get to know each other quite well.”

She reminds Jill of Adela Pennyfeather and her lot for some reason, and Jill decides that maybe she doesn’t want to get to know Susan Pevensie any better.

“You’re making it sound like a threat,” Lucy teases, and hoists her bag again. “Ed, you can carry this, can’t you?” she wheedles.

He raises an eyebrow at her.

“Well, it was worth a try,” she says, cheerful, and brushes past them. “Let’s go!”

Peter tips his head in a “well, what can you do?” sort of way and makes a gesture with his hand, shuffling them in front of him. Jill takes a breath and tucks her hands into her pockets, then falls into step with Eustace. She feels disconcertingly like they’re being herded to a slaughter, aware of Peter and Edmund behind her, talking softly to each other. Susan strides on ahead, as if slightly unwilling to associate herself with them, and Lucy turns her head to talk to Eustace, her voice bright.

It’s going to be an interesting Christmas.