Narnia fic: "Second Sight"
Jan. 29th, 2011 12:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardMore Jill and the Pevensies, a follow-up to First Impressions. No content advisory.
Jill hadn’t even noticed Susan wasn’t in her bed when she crept out of the room to get a glass of water. Lucy had been snoring softly beneath her covers, but Susan’s bed had been dark, silent, and empty, though Jill doesn’t realize it until she sees a light beneath the kitchen door and pauses at the end of the hall. She’s so startled by the sudden fact that someone else is awake at this hour that she has no idea what to do about it – go on in for her water and apologize for the disturbance, or run back to the bedroom and try to sleep despite her dry mouth, or –
She hears Peter’s voice, accompanied by the quiet click of tea things. “Sister,” he says, the word heavy and odd in his mouth, almost archaic, like some kind of ritual, “I had a strange dream. Will you interpret it for me?”
There’s a moment’s pause, covered by the sound of water being poured into tea cups. “I would rather not,” Susan says finally. “I’m sure you just had a bit too much wine with dinner.”
He’d only had a glass, Jill remembers, and not a particularly big one. She creeps carefully towards the door, curious about the oddity of the conversation. It’s not a good idea, but – well, she’s allowed to have bad ideas sometimes. The last time it had happened she’d ended up trekking across Ettinsmoor with Eustace and Puddleglum, nearly getting eaten by giants and imprisoned by a witch in Underland. In another world.
“Indulge me,” Peter suggests. “Call it an early birthday present, if you like.”
“Does this mean I can keep the stockings I was going to give you?” There’s humor in her voice, and Jill blinks at that. Susan Pevensie hadn’t struck her as being possessed of a sense of humor.
“If you think they’ll fit you,” says Peter. He sounds like he’s grinning. “Actually, they might, you do have pretty big feet –”
“Peter, you cad!”
“Like boats,” he continues happily. “If you were a little lighter you might be able to walk on water −”
Susan shrieks in indignation, chocking the cry off as Peter says, “Careful, you’ll wake someone.”
“You started it, you ass,” she grumbles. “Mum would blame you –”
“Mum thinks I can do no wrong and you’re old enough to know better,” Peter says serenely. “Ed might blame me, though.”
Susan sniffs. “My feet aren’t large, they’re sturdy.”
“Like a minotaur’s –”
“Do you want me to interpret your dream or not?” Susan demands. “Or possibly to pour this tea over you?”
“What, and make a mess?” Jill hears his chair creak as he settles back into it. She wets her mouth with her tongue and swallows; she’s still thirsty.
“In the first dream,” says Peter Pevensie, “I stood upon the hill where the Stone Table used to be and watched two lion cubs fight over a little hillock of land. One cub was pale, with silver spots, and the other was dun with golden spots, and in the daylight the difference between the two was clear. But when the sun went down, both cubs were dark, and I could not tell the one from the other.
“In the second dream, I walked through the halls of Cair Paravel as it burned around me. I stood in the War Room and watched the great map of Narnia and the surrounding lands burn, the edges crisping and vanishing as the fire consumed Narnia from the inside out. Outside, the ocean rose, and drowned Cair Paravel. It was filled with the bodies of creatures dead and drowned.
“In the third dream, I stood inside the Table Room in Aslan’s How and looked inwards upon the Stone Table, where one figure was playing chess with himself. He removed the kings and queens from both sides and replaced them with pawns, and was satisfied.
“In my fourth dream, I looked in upon a dollhouse. The floors had been rent asunder and the dolls were left scattered about, broken. The craftsman sat beside it, trying to glue his toys back together. At last he grew frustrated and walked off, and the toys brought themselves back to life, repairing their home and each other, though the scars remained. When the craftsman returned he brought new toys with him, and did not seem to notice the repairs.
“In my fifth dream, I saw two children sitting at the seashore building a sandcastle. One got up to refill his bucket, while the other built a new tower upon the castle. When the first boy came back and saw it, he knocked the castle down and ran off.
“In my sixth dream I saw only darkness.”
He pauses, deliberate, and in the same dreamlike tone adds, “And Jill Pole is standing outside the door.”
It takes Susan opening the door for Jill to actually realize that his very last sentence had been about the here and now. “I’m sorry,” she apologizes, “I came in for some water and I didn’t think anyone else was up and –”
“It’s all right,” Susan says. Jill can’t tell if she’s just paranoid or if Susan’s smile really does have an edge to it, as if she’s not happy about being interrupted. She’s in a dark purple robe and slippers with embroidery on the toes – some kind of flower, Jill thinks, looking down at them ¬– with her dark hair in a braid over her left shoulder – not exactly the way Jill would expect a dream-interpreter to look. Not that she’d expected anything of the sort from Susan Pevensie.
Susan holds the edge of the door with one hand, smiling evenly down at Jill. “Would you like to come in and have some tea? It’s a chamomile blend. Lu made it over the summer. Or you can just come in and get your water, if you’d rather.”
“We don’t bite,” Peter says from behind her, out of sight and a little ghostly because of it. He sounds friendly – that bored prefect’s voice again, rousing himself to amuse the school’s donors. Not at all the voice he’d been using a few minutes ago.
“Well –” Jill says, her curiosity warring with her good sense. Curiosity finally wins out. “All right. If it’s just one cup, I suppose.”
“Just one cup,” Susan agrees, stepping away from the door so that Jill can sidle in. She goes to the cupboard to get down another mug, her slippers silent on the floor.
Peter, seated at the round kitchen table with his hands around a chipped mug, smiles at her, easy and calm as a rather somnolent lion biding his time in a zoo cage. Jill is not reassured, and is in fact suddenly convinced that this was a terrible idea. It’s too late to run now, though, and she slides into one of the empty chairs at the table, studying the teapot with more concentration than it really deserves, as it’s a rather plain ceramic construction with a pale blue glaze. When Susan lifts it up to pour her tea, Jill finds herself staring at Peter’s hands instead and jerks her head up.
“Did you learn how to use a sword?” Peter inquires, breaking the silence.
Jill stares at him.
“In Narnia,” he adds helpfully, as if she needs the clarification. Susan snorts slightly to herself, retaking her seat.
“I didn’t need to,” Jill makes herself say. “It wasn’t that kind of – of quest,” she adds, suddenly doubtful about her word choice.
“I see,” he says, stares at her steadily, and adds, “What did you think?”
“Oh, Peter, don’t interrogate the poor girl,” Susan sighs, sipping her tea. “What do your parents do, Jill?” she asks, perfectly polite, as if they’re not all here because they all have a common history of being dragged off to a magical land by a giant talking lion.
“My father owns a factory,” Jill says cautiously. “We have a house in London where my parents stay when my father’s doing business in the city.”
“How nice. You told Mother you lived in the country, do you come up to London often?”
Jill looks down at her mug, watching steam purl up from the golden liquid. “Not really. It’s more my parents and my sister, not me.”
“Older or younger?” Peter drawls.
“What?”
“Your sister. Is she older or younger?”
“Clara’s seven years older than me, and the others are all older than her.” Jill is the youngest of five sisters, the afterthought daughter. It’s not that her parents don’t care, but that they’d thought they were over with having children after Clara – and then she’d come.
Peter nods, short, and sips his tea. “We had stories of the World Below,” he says, the change in subject so abrupt that Jill blinks. “I always just thought they were stories. None of our mines ever went that deep.”
Jill shifts awkwardly in her seat. “Well – Golg, he was one of the Earthmen, the gnomes, said that their own land –” She closes her eyes, trying to remember what he’d called it. “Bism,” she says finally, “Bism, that was what it was called. He said it was much deeper than the deepest mines in Narnia, even deeper than Underland, and that was far deeper than any mine could go.”
Susan sighs, very soft, but looks back at Peter calmly when he turns to meet her eyes. “You would never have been able to go there, Peter,” she says, a smile dancing around the corners of her mouth. “You’re claustrophobic, remember?”
“Claustrophobic and prone to sea-sickness,” Peter sighs. “It’s a good thing most of Narnia’s borders were land ones, or we might never have gotten anything done.”
“Well, you might not have,” Susan teases, then shakes herself slightly, a little shiver that Jill barely notices. “Drink your tea.”
Peter obeys, smiling at her over the lip of the mug.
Jill tries the tea herself, trying not to gulp at it out of thirst, since it’s still hot and she’s in polite company. It’s good. When about half the mug is gone, she lowers it, looking between Peter and Susan, and says in a rush, “What did your dreams mean?”
Peter goes very still. “Nothing. Like Su said, I probably just drank too much wine with dinner.”
Jill frowns, but she thinks it would be rude to push further. They drink the rest of the tea in silence, then Peter gets up to clear away the tea things in silence. Susan picks up a towel and goes to dry the dishes as he washes them.
“Thank you for the tea,” Jill says awkwardly, standing up. She feels like she should do something to help, but she doesn’t know what.
“You’re welcome,” Susan says automatically. She turns to smile politely at Jill, holding a mug in one hand and the dishtowel in the other.
Jill smiles back, stiff, and slips out of the kitchen. As she’s gone, she hears Susan say, “Pete –”
“I know,” Peter says. “I was hoping you’d have something more reassuring to say.”
Jill squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them again and walks back to the bedroom as quickly as possible, shedding her slippers and robe before climbing into the bed that’s been made up for her on the floor. She’s asleep before Susan comes back.
Jill hadn’t even noticed Susan wasn’t in her bed when she crept out of the room to get a glass of water. Lucy had been snoring softly beneath her covers, but Susan’s bed had been dark, silent, and empty, though Jill doesn’t realize it until she sees a light beneath the kitchen door and pauses at the end of the hall. She’s so startled by the sudden fact that someone else is awake at this hour that she has no idea what to do about it – go on in for her water and apologize for the disturbance, or run back to the bedroom and try to sleep despite her dry mouth, or –
She hears Peter’s voice, accompanied by the quiet click of tea things. “Sister,” he says, the word heavy and odd in his mouth, almost archaic, like some kind of ritual, “I had a strange dream. Will you interpret it for me?”
There’s a moment’s pause, covered by the sound of water being poured into tea cups. “I would rather not,” Susan says finally. “I’m sure you just had a bit too much wine with dinner.”
He’d only had a glass, Jill remembers, and not a particularly big one. She creeps carefully towards the door, curious about the oddity of the conversation. It’s not a good idea, but – well, she’s allowed to have bad ideas sometimes. The last time it had happened she’d ended up trekking across Ettinsmoor with Eustace and Puddleglum, nearly getting eaten by giants and imprisoned by a witch in Underland. In another world.
“Indulge me,” Peter suggests. “Call it an early birthday present, if you like.”
“Does this mean I can keep the stockings I was going to give you?” There’s humor in her voice, and Jill blinks at that. Susan Pevensie hadn’t struck her as being possessed of a sense of humor.
“If you think they’ll fit you,” says Peter. He sounds like he’s grinning. “Actually, they might, you do have pretty big feet –”
“Peter, you cad!”
“Like boats,” he continues happily. “If you were a little lighter you might be able to walk on water −”
Susan shrieks in indignation, chocking the cry off as Peter says, “Careful, you’ll wake someone.”
“You started it, you ass,” she grumbles. “Mum would blame you –”
“Mum thinks I can do no wrong and you’re old enough to know better,” Peter says serenely. “Ed might blame me, though.”
Susan sniffs. “My feet aren’t large, they’re sturdy.”
“Like a minotaur’s –”
“Do you want me to interpret your dream or not?” Susan demands. “Or possibly to pour this tea over you?”
“What, and make a mess?” Jill hears his chair creak as he settles back into it. She wets her mouth with her tongue and swallows; she’s still thirsty.
“In the first dream,” says Peter Pevensie, “I stood upon the hill where the Stone Table used to be and watched two lion cubs fight over a little hillock of land. One cub was pale, with silver spots, and the other was dun with golden spots, and in the daylight the difference between the two was clear. But when the sun went down, both cubs were dark, and I could not tell the one from the other.
“In the second dream, I walked through the halls of Cair Paravel as it burned around me. I stood in the War Room and watched the great map of Narnia and the surrounding lands burn, the edges crisping and vanishing as the fire consumed Narnia from the inside out. Outside, the ocean rose, and drowned Cair Paravel. It was filled with the bodies of creatures dead and drowned.
“In the third dream, I stood inside the Table Room in Aslan’s How and looked inwards upon the Stone Table, where one figure was playing chess with himself. He removed the kings and queens from both sides and replaced them with pawns, and was satisfied.
“In my fourth dream, I looked in upon a dollhouse. The floors had been rent asunder and the dolls were left scattered about, broken. The craftsman sat beside it, trying to glue his toys back together. At last he grew frustrated and walked off, and the toys brought themselves back to life, repairing their home and each other, though the scars remained. When the craftsman returned he brought new toys with him, and did not seem to notice the repairs.
“In my fifth dream, I saw two children sitting at the seashore building a sandcastle. One got up to refill his bucket, while the other built a new tower upon the castle. When the first boy came back and saw it, he knocked the castle down and ran off.
“In my sixth dream I saw only darkness.”
He pauses, deliberate, and in the same dreamlike tone adds, “And Jill Pole is standing outside the door.”
It takes Susan opening the door for Jill to actually realize that his very last sentence had been about the here and now. “I’m sorry,” she apologizes, “I came in for some water and I didn’t think anyone else was up and –”
“It’s all right,” Susan says. Jill can’t tell if she’s just paranoid or if Susan’s smile really does have an edge to it, as if she’s not happy about being interrupted. She’s in a dark purple robe and slippers with embroidery on the toes – some kind of flower, Jill thinks, looking down at them ¬– with her dark hair in a braid over her left shoulder – not exactly the way Jill would expect a dream-interpreter to look. Not that she’d expected anything of the sort from Susan Pevensie.
Susan holds the edge of the door with one hand, smiling evenly down at Jill. “Would you like to come in and have some tea? It’s a chamomile blend. Lu made it over the summer. Or you can just come in and get your water, if you’d rather.”
“We don’t bite,” Peter says from behind her, out of sight and a little ghostly because of it. He sounds friendly – that bored prefect’s voice again, rousing himself to amuse the school’s donors. Not at all the voice he’d been using a few minutes ago.
“Well –” Jill says, her curiosity warring with her good sense. Curiosity finally wins out. “All right. If it’s just one cup, I suppose.”
“Just one cup,” Susan agrees, stepping away from the door so that Jill can sidle in. She goes to the cupboard to get down another mug, her slippers silent on the floor.
Peter, seated at the round kitchen table with his hands around a chipped mug, smiles at her, easy and calm as a rather somnolent lion biding his time in a zoo cage. Jill is not reassured, and is in fact suddenly convinced that this was a terrible idea. It’s too late to run now, though, and she slides into one of the empty chairs at the table, studying the teapot with more concentration than it really deserves, as it’s a rather plain ceramic construction with a pale blue glaze. When Susan lifts it up to pour her tea, Jill finds herself staring at Peter’s hands instead and jerks her head up.
“Did you learn how to use a sword?” Peter inquires, breaking the silence.
Jill stares at him.
“In Narnia,” he adds helpfully, as if she needs the clarification. Susan snorts slightly to herself, retaking her seat.
“I didn’t need to,” Jill makes herself say. “It wasn’t that kind of – of quest,” she adds, suddenly doubtful about her word choice.
“I see,” he says, stares at her steadily, and adds, “What did you think?”
“Oh, Peter, don’t interrogate the poor girl,” Susan sighs, sipping her tea. “What do your parents do, Jill?” she asks, perfectly polite, as if they’re not all here because they all have a common history of being dragged off to a magical land by a giant talking lion.
“My father owns a factory,” Jill says cautiously. “We have a house in London where my parents stay when my father’s doing business in the city.”
“How nice. You told Mother you lived in the country, do you come up to London often?”
Jill looks down at her mug, watching steam purl up from the golden liquid. “Not really. It’s more my parents and my sister, not me.”
“Older or younger?” Peter drawls.
“What?”
“Your sister. Is she older or younger?”
“Clara’s seven years older than me, and the others are all older than her.” Jill is the youngest of five sisters, the afterthought daughter. It’s not that her parents don’t care, but that they’d thought they were over with having children after Clara – and then she’d come.
Peter nods, short, and sips his tea. “We had stories of the World Below,” he says, the change in subject so abrupt that Jill blinks. “I always just thought they were stories. None of our mines ever went that deep.”
Jill shifts awkwardly in her seat. “Well – Golg, he was one of the Earthmen, the gnomes, said that their own land –” She closes her eyes, trying to remember what he’d called it. “Bism,” she says finally, “Bism, that was what it was called. He said it was much deeper than the deepest mines in Narnia, even deeper than Underland, and that was far deeper than any mine could go.”
Susan sighs, very soft, but looks back at Peter calmly when he turns to meet her eyes. “You would never have been able to go there, Peter,” she says, a smile dancing around the corners of her mouth. “You’re claustrophobic, remember?”
“Claustrophobic and prone to sea-sickness,” Peter sighs. “It’s a good thing most of Narnia’s borders were land ones, or we might never have gotten anything done.”
“Well, you might not have,” Susan teases, then shakes herself slightly, a little shiver that Jill barely notices. “Drink your tea.”
Peter obeys, smiling at her over the lip of the mug.
Jill tries the tea herself, trying not to gulp at it out of thirst, since it’s still hot and she’s in polite company. It’s good. When about half the mug is gone, she lowers it, looking between Peter and Susan, and says in a rush, “What did your dreams mean?”
Peter goes very still. “Nothing. Like Su said, I probably just drank too much wine with dinner.”
Jill frowns, but she thinks it would be rude to push further. They drink the rest of the tea in silence, then Peter gets up to clear away the tea things in silence. Susan picks up a towel and goes to dry the dishes as he washes them.
“Thank you for the tea,” Jill says awkwardly, standing up. She feels like she should do something to help, but she doesn’t know what.
“You’re welcome,” Susan says automatically. She turns to smile politely at Jill, holding a mug in one hand and the dishtowel in the other.
Jill smiles back, stiff, and slips out of the kitchen. As she’s gone, she hears Susan say, “Pete –”
“I know,” Peter says. “I was hoping you’d have something more reassuring to say.”
Jill squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them again and walks back to the bedroom as quickly as possible, shedding her slippers and robe before climbing into the bed that’s been made up for her on the floor. She’s asleep before Susan comes back.