DVD commentary (Narnia): The Land of Silent Seas

[bedlamsbard]

So I wrote about half of this over the summer, hoping to get it out before narniaexchange went live, then went to England, where I forgot about it, then wrote the rest of it -- I think right before reveals? Then sat on it because I wanted to see if I was going to add anything else, then forgot about it. Then remembered it! So I thought I should probably post it before I forgot about it again.

I wanted to do a DVD commentary for The Land of Silent Seas, last year's narniaexchange fic because I had to radically restructure my worldview of Narnia in order to write it, and that ended up informing everything else I wrote in Narnia from there on out.



Title: The Land of Silent Seas
Author: bedlamsbard
Rating: PG-13
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: The Magician’s Nephew, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; includes fantasy violence
Summary: And then the head of the monster came out of the book, growing as it did so until it was at least the size of Polly herself, covered in iridescent green and gray scales. There are more things in heaven and earth, Polly Plummer, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Author’s Notes: Thanks to aella_irene and snacky for beta! Title is from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
Original Prompt that we sent you: What I want (e.g. specific ship or character, England fic, Golden Age fic, AU, set during a ball, someone falls ill, whatever, etc.):
Here is just a list of interesting prompts I would want to read about--feel free to pick and choose whatever you like. In general I like girls more than boys and bookverse forever!
-Susan and Lucy, Lucy can't remember and Susan can't forget, but nothing will stop them from being sisters.
-What did Polly do with her life?? What was her relationship with Digory like, did she ever fall in love with anyone, what other adventures did she have? Did she learn anything more about magic?
-Who painted that picture in the spare room at Eustace's house?
-Susan, after LB: some people never stop adventuring, no matter how hard they try (alone? with people? in England? in another world?). I'd love to see her with a group of good, loyal friends after the crash.
-How does the narrator know these stories?
-What was Ramandu's Daughter like? How did she decide to leave with Caspian? How does she like her new home? (if she talked to Lucy when Lucy was on her island I would LOVE to see that story!)

Prompt words/objects/quotes/whatever: A book and the sea
What I definitely don't want in my fic: Smut and incest; dark fic.

So I’ll start with my prompt. Basically, I looked at everything and immediately threw out some of the options: when it comes to the Pevensies, I primarily write movieverse and not bookverse, and my recipient had asked for bookverse. So out went all the prompts that had to do with the Pevensies. I have a loose rule of always trying to write something I haven’t written before, so it was pretty much Polly or nothing, and the picture from the Scrubb house slotted into that. The book and the sea bit were pure luck; I played around with the idea of what to do for awhile, bitching about having to write characters I’d never ever written before the entire time before I settled into the story.

This would also be a good time to talk about my title, I guess! I did not end up titling my story until after I’d actually written it, which is what I tend to do now – used to be that I couldn’t save a story without an actualfax working title, but now I just tend to title files with things like “NFE fic” or “Rilian artwork.” Anyway, I finished this fic, and I was sending it through beta, along with comments that mostly summed up to, “OH MY GODS I HAVE NO TITLE.” As one does, when one is on a deadline and has no title. So I did my usual default of turning to T.S. Eliot. “The Land of Silent Seas” is a riff on a line from “The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock”: I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. If I’d had more time (I think it was the day before the deadline?), I probably would have tried to find something from The Odyssey, but I do really like the title, though I’m not entirely certain it works with the story. (But then again, do most titles? Heh.)

He told how King Gale, who was ninth in descent from Frank the first of all Kings, had sailed far away into the Eastern seas and delivered the Lone Islanders from a dragon and how, in return, they had given him the Lone Islands to be part of the royal islands of Narnia forever.
− C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

So I have this poster on my wall in my bedroom that I got from a copy of the Seattle – oh, I can’t remember if it was the Post-Intelligencer or the Times; this was back when both were print, in 2004 or so. Anyway, this was when I first found out that they were making a movie out of LWW, and I was super-excited. (And there’s another place this story could go, but that’s not what I’m talking about.) Where I’m going with this is that it was a very early poster, and the tagline on it is one that I’ve never seen on any other movie poster: “There are a thousand stories in the land of Narnia…the first is about to be told.” This is the phrase that has always defined my Narnia writing; I remembered that bit from LB where Tirian remembers his history, and thought, “Huh. I can do something with that.” Stories aren’t always what they seem; they change in the telling.

Polly sneezed. They’d finished the first cutting of hay yesterday, the same hay that she’d spent the past month staring at in fascination, entranced by the seemingly endless waves of green, like a sea, only miles from the seashore and on dry land. She’d been sneezing since they’d starting cutting and the smell had risen up into the air, sweet and rather itchy, making her nose run and her eyes water. Even Digory had looked rather green by the end of the first day. Now, instead of standing upright, the hay was lying in rows in the field, turning golden in the summer sun. She’d asked at the dinner table what was going to happen to it, and got the answer that it was going to lie out for a few days more to dry, and then it was going to be baled and stored away for winter. Some of it might be sold.

I live in hay country, and, yes, I was writing this during haying season.

“I told you you’d like the country,” Digory said from behind her, sounding rather smug, and Polly turned away from the window, choking back another sneeze.

“I never said I wouldn’t,” she protested, and he raised an eyebrow.

Polly sneezed again. It was hard to tell through her stuffed nose, but she thought she smelled something other than hay. She eyed the heavy leatherbound book in Digory’s hands suspiciously. “What’s that?”

“I found it in the library,” Digory said, hefting it. “I finally found the ladder, and this was up at the very top of the shelves, not in any order or anything. Look, there’s no title and no author.” He showed it to her, and Polly opened the cover gingerly, sneezing again as a cloud of dust flew up. The first few pages of the book had been torn out, a ragged line of thick creamy paper showing where they’d been. The first page remaining was the dedication page, but the inscription had been viciously scratched out and a single line scrawled beneath it in thick black letters: caveat viator.

“What does it mean?” Polly asked.

“It’s a warning,” Digory said after a moment. “It means, ‘traveler beware.’” He shifted the book, then carried it over to the desk and put it down, stretching out his arms.

Polly rubbed a hand under her nose and followed him. “What do you think that means?”

“I don’t know,” Digory said. He grinned at her. “It’s a mystery!”

“Not a mystery like last summer, I hope,” Polly said. “Although the rings are still in London, so we should be safe.”

Digory didn’t look as relieved by this as she felt. “Wouldn’t that be fun, though? If we could go back to –” He paused for a moment, then went on in an undertone, “that place?”

“It would,” Polly agreed, “but –” They didn’t talk about it often. It was as if some kind of spell of silence fell over them every time one of them brought it up, as if Narnia and Aslan and all the things that had happened during those mad hours were too sacred to be spoken of lightly, especially in London. But the country felt different somehow, as if it were a shade or two closer to Narnia, and the Wood Between the Worlds. Maybe it was the hay.

This is something I’ll talk about in more detail later, but it’s quite a mental trick to think of a very early Narnia, and, maybe more importantly, to remember that for Polly and Digory, Narnia wasn’t the first of the other worlds they visited. I do have the idea that Narnia, and the other worlds, isn’t something that’s spoken of very much among those that have been there – after all, what if someone overhears you? Which makes the dinner party in LB something quite extraordinary.

Polly looked down, the words dying on her lips, and turned the page. There was more writing scrawled in the space before the first chapter of the book began. My name is − This had been scratched out so violently the tip of the pen had torn through the paper. If you are reading this, then you must be careful, I have tried my best to protect you, but there is no such thing as surety, and you are responsible for your own safety, I cannot do everything and – The next sentence was blotted so badly as to be unreadable, the ink spreading halfway down the page and drowning out the top of the printed text.

Get used to hearing this phrase, because I’m probably going to be saying this a lot: I had no idea what I was doing when I started writing this story, I wasn’t entirely sure where it was going to go, and I just kind of threw stuff onto the page as I thought about it. For the longest time I described this story as “Polly and Digory team up with Santa Claus to fight Calypso and Scylla!” Only with [redacted] in place of all the names.

Polly and Digory both peered at it in fascination. “I wonder what this is all about?” Digory said.

“Some great mystery,” Polly said. “Look, she must have been awfully scared when she was writing this, I wonder if it was the only paper she could find?”

“What makes you think it’s a girl?” Digory said indignantly. “It looks like a boy’s handwriting to me!”

“I think it’s a girl,” Polly said firmly, and turned the page before he could protest. The script began at the bottom of the page, curling up around the margins of the text, which began mid-sentence. Digory reached to turn the book around so that they could both read it. There were no blots this time, and it looked like the writer had been calmer.

The argument between Polly and Digory over whether the writer was a girl or a boy cracks me up. I’m pretty sure the writer was a woman, though.

I will get out of way the assumption that I am mad, because surely if I was not mad before, I have become mad now. However, since you and I are both aware of this, dear Reader, then the fact of the matter can be set aside and we can proceed onwards. I would not like to take away your time by deliberations upon whether or not I am mad when that time could be better spent elsewhere.

Background: what I think, and this is totally up for interpretation, is that the writer was a woman who stumbled through a tear between the worlds sometime in the past and eventually managed to stumble back, very messed up from the experience. I think it’s in PC that Aslan mentions that there were, once upon a time, many different passages between worlds, which is something that carries throughout the entirety of the story. People besides the Telmarines must have stumbled upon these passages – my private headcanon is that the Roanoke settlers did, as well as Amelia Earhart. (I have the seeds of a story where Amelia Earhart ended up in Archenland. Not sure if I’ll ever do anything with it, though.) I think there’s a tear around the Bermuda Triangle, too.

“Definitely mad,” Polly said.

“As mad as Uncle Andrew,” Digory agreed. “All right: I think it’s a girl’s handwriting.”

“What, because she said she was mad?” Polly said, indignant again.

“I thought you said it looked like a girl’s handwriting!”

“No, you were the one who said it looked like a boy’s –

“Hmmph!” Polly said, and sat back, crossing her arms over her chest. “Well, since she – or he – wrote this down in a book, she must have been mad. She certainly sounds mad.”

“She did say she was mad,” Digory pointed out. They looked at the next page, which was blank except for the text of the book itself, which began rather sedately, ἀλλά μοι ἀμφ᾽ Ὀδυσῆι δαΐφρονι δαίεται ἦτορ, δυσμόρῳ, ὃς δὴ δηθὰ φίλων ἄπο πήματα πάσχει νήσῳ ἐν ἀμφιρύτῃ, ὅθι τ᾽ ὀμφαλός ἐστι θαλάσσης.

“It’s from The Odyssey,” Digory said, when Polly frowned at it. “When the goddess Athena is talking to king of the gods about Odysseus, who’s trapped on the island of Calypso. She’s another goddess, a sea-goddess, and she wants to marry him, but he wants to go home to his wife.”

The Odyssey is probably the book that had the most influence on me. I love The Odyssey. Someday I shall be able to read it in the actual Greek. And Odysseus was a traveler between worlds as well, of course.

“Oh,” Polly said thoughtfully, looking at the scribbling on the previous page. A sudden breeze came in through the open window, carrying with it the heady scent of drying hay, and Polly sneezed three times in rapid succession, her eyes watering. She barely heard Digory’s shout of alarm and the sound of pages flipping rapidly as she rubbed at her running nose.

His hand closed around her wrist. “Polly, look!” he said. “The book –”

Polly sneezed again and looked up. The breeze was still running through the room, sending the drapes to flapping and knocking over a candlestick with a sudden burst of wind. It lifted her hair off her shoulders, and the pages of the book were still turning, the Greek letters and the mad writer’s script blurring. She noticed abruptly that there were ink sketches in the corners of the pages, beginning halfway through the book; as the pages turned they appeared to be moving. A six-headed monster lunging at a ship –

This was one of the first images I had of this story. I kind of love it. I am pretty sure this entire scene would be fantastically cinematic.

The spring before I wrote this, I took a class called “Art and Myth in Ancient Greece,” and one of the last pieces we looked at in the class was the Cave of Tiberius at Sperlonga, which features a set of statues that include a monumental Scylla attacking Odysseus’s ship. (Among other things; scroll down for the Scylla assortment.) My Scylla clearly doesn’t look like the Roman one, but it was definitely something I had in mind. And I actually dehumanized Scylla much more than the Romans or the Greeks did; my Scylla doesn’t keep anything of her humanity around her, partially to keep in touch with the dragon bit from LB, and also because I’m not sure it would have worked quite as well in the Narnia universe. So she’s more hydra-like than her classical counterparts.

Abruptly, the smell that the breeze carried changed. Polly sneezed once more, reflexive, but it wasn’t hay she smelled anymore, it was the fresh salty smell of the ocean, familiar from summers spent at the sea, and something else, a sharp, spicy sort of scent.

“Polly, the book!” Digory yelled, his grip tightening on her wrist.

She looked down. The breeze stopped as abruptly as it had begun, the room suddenly silent except for the sound of her and Digory’s harsh breathing, and something else – almost a clanging, and a faint yelling, muffled as if it was coming from a long ways off. The book’s pages had stopped turning, and she looked down at the small ink sketch in the corner. The six-headed monster was looming over the tiny ship, five of its six heads clutching men in their mouths. The sixth head shoved its way down into the ship, scattered the crew amidst shouts, and Polly stared. The pages weren’t moving anymore, there was no reason for –

And then the head of the monster came out of the book, growing as it did so until it was at least the size of Polly herself, covered in iridescent green and gray scales. Its eyes were huge and orb-like, the size of Polly’s fist and the same color as her cat’s, only much madder. It opened its mouth and roared, spattering sea water across Polly and Digory and revealing far too many, far too sharp teeth.

Polly squeaked, then gathered her senses together and knocked Digory aside. The monster’s head came down on the chair she’d been sitting on instead, shattering it into fragments of dark wood, and she grabbed Digory’s hand and dragged him under the table, which groaned under the weight of the monster and the book. Surely someone else would hear the sound and come running – she knew Mr. Kirke kept a rifle for bird-hunting, and she’d seen the swords over the mantle in the study –

The monster’s teeth closed fruitlessly on empty air, a sharp snapping sound, and it roared again, making the table creak. Polly resisted the urge to curl up and whimper, which wouldn’t do anyone any good, and instead took a deep breath and tried to think. The monster had come out of the book. That had to have happened by magic, somehow, so – so the monster was from another world, like the Witch, and didn’t really belong in England. They must have called it out of another world somehow through the book, and that meant they’d have to send it back. But the rings were in London.

In some ways this scene is an odd parallel to Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace falling through the portrait in VotDT. I think that the first VotDT trailer had already come out when I first started writing this (actually, it must have, because my pinch-hit prompt referenced the trailer) and one of the really beautiful moments in that trailer is where the two worlds meet and meld, the Great Eastern Ocean spilling over into Lucy’s bedroom in England. So this scene is a nod to that.

What’s also present here is Polly’s automatic assumption that Scylla coming out of the book is something they did, the idea that passage between the worlds is always something deliberate. As well as Polly taking responsibility for bringing Scylla into England the same way she and Digory took responsibility for bringing Jadis from Charn into England, and then into the newly-formed Narnia. I think Polly and Digory tend to feel responsibility in a different way than the Pevensies, Eustace, and Jill do – after all, they’ve had a very different experience.

Digory swore and tugged at her hand. “Polly, look –” he said, and Polly looked up from her knees, staring at the enormous clawed foot that had just scratched five deep marks into the wooden floor. A second foot thudded down, making the room shake and the table jump. The monster was coming out of the book.

“We’ve got to send it back!” Polly said. “Maybe Uncle Andrew –”

“He’ll just run away,” Digory pointed out, shuddering as the monster roared. There was another creak, and the monster twisted down, forcing its head down beneath the table to snap at them.

Polly shrieked, scrambling backwards and dragging Digory with her. There was barely enough room for the monster to open its mouth, but it gnashed its teeth anyway, its hot breath panting in their faces.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Digory said. “Before any more of it comes out –” He turned towards the other end of the table. “If we can make it to –” His words trailed off and he finished in a small voice, “…the door.”

“What –” Polly began, looking over her shoulder, but the words died in her mouth.

There was no way out of the table, just a seemingly endless wall of gray stone darkened with seawater, moss sprouting out of it at odd angles. For a moment, Polly was too astonished to do anything more than stare, then the monster roared again. Polly could feel it in her bones, a deep thudding and pounding like a train going past, and it left her breathless. She scrambled back up against the stone wall, peering up at the ceiling, which joined the wall seamlessly – it looked like they were in a small sea-cave, like the ones she’d explored the last time she’d gone to the shore. Only the last time she’d gone to the sea, there hadn’t been a monster trying to eat her, and she hadn’t accidentally ended up in another world.

Another scene I adore. I mean, it’s still a continuation of the previous scene, but I love that idea of being somewhere familiar, and then turning around and being somewhere completely unfamiliar. And yet familiar at the same time. So in some ways like the first passage from the Wardrobe into Narnia in LWW! Turning around and finding yourself somewhere impossible.

There was a sound from outside the cave, another roar, and the monster’s head thudded into the side of the cave as if it had been pushed. It withdrew, and Polly had only a heartbeat to draw a breath of relief before it shoved back inside, making her and Digory both scream. Only – she realized belatedly – this wasn’t the same head. It was a different head, a little narrower, with one front tooth broken in two.

The monster in the book had had six heads, she remembered, and firmly instructed herself not to cry, that wouldn’t help anyone.

I reread MN before I started writing this, and I got out of it really impressed at how strong a character Polly was; I hadn’t really remembered her that way. (Although let me point out that I don’t remember characters as well, necessarily. Also, the last time I read MN was not at all recently – I haven’t read the series the whole way through since before I started writing in the fandom.)

She heard Digory’s voice in her ear. “Here,” he said, and shoved a rock into her hand, rounded from years on the shore. He pressed his shoulder against hers, reassuring. Polly took a deep breath, then another. They could wait for it to go away or they could try and make it go away. Neither option was a particularly attractive one; small chips of rock were beginning to cascade down from the entrance of the sea-cave where the monster was trying to press its head further inside, scraping its skull against the top and sides of the cave. Polly had an unpleasant feeling that it wouldn’t take very long for the monster to enlarge the entrance enough that it get its entire head in, and then it could eat them both in two bites.

“Ho!” The shout came from outside the cave. Polly clutched her rock with renewed fervor, seeing the flash of Digory’s pen-knife in the thin light.

Two of the monster’s other heads roared in bad unison, making the cave shake and sending a fresh flurry of rocks down on their heads. Polly could hear more shouting from outside the cave, along with a horrible sound like metal scraping on rock.

Armor on stone.

“What’s going on?” she said in a small voice, and Digory shook his head nervously.

They both winced as one of the monster’s heads screamed, a terrible sound of pain and anger and fear all mixed up together. Polly pressed her hands against her ears, trying to drown it out. The rock in her right hand was a hard pressure against the side of her skull.

She saw the monster’s head withdraw from the cave, teeth snapping in the air before it struck up, vanishing from her sight. Light spilled in through the entrance. It was a thin, grayish sort of light, the way the sunlight looked on a cloudy day, and Polly thought it might be the most reassuring thing she’d ever seen. She drew in a breath of cold sea air, listening to the shouts outside, then swore and grabbed at Digory’s ankle as he crawled forward.

“Don’t! That thing might come back –”

Digory tugged his foot out of her hand and leaned forward, bracing himself on the floor of the cave. “Poll, you’ve got to see this!” he exclaimed, sounding amazed. “This is – by Jove –”

I can’t remember if I have any swearing that’s stronger than what’s in the actual books. It’s just struck me now that if I’d been doing something completely different, I could have had Jupiter actually show up. *laughs*

He ducked back, but not in time to avoid the splash that sprayed them both with seawater. Polly spat it aside inelegantly, shaking her wet hair out of her face, and said, “What’s going on?”

“It’s gone,” Digory said. His voice sounded slightly strangled.

Polly took a deep breath, tucking her hair behind her ears, and crawled up beside him, putting her head out of the cave to look around. She could see the ocean down below them, almost the height of her house away. The cave was set in a rocky cliff-face; by turning her head from side to side, Polly could see several other sea-caves like this one at varying intervals on the cliff. There were marks in the rock where the monster had climbed up to try and get at them. The ocean stretched out before them, stormy gray and restless; Polly couldn’t see where it made landfall. Most shockingly of all, there was a ship moored beneath them, a fine sailing ship like the ones she saw in her schoolbooks, with miles and miles of rope and billowing green sails. There was a huge tear in one of the sails, and the bow of the ship had been broken off, along with a section of the taffrail. Men were crawling over the ship, shouting at each other as they did so, though Polly couldn’t quite make out the words. She stared at them in delight.

In the books, Narnia’s sigil is a red lion on a green field, at least during the Golden Age. Since I was writing this to still fit in with the Warsverse, which uses the movie canon of Narnia’s sigil being a golden lion on a red field, I gave the bookverse colors and sigil to the original Narnia.

“Blimey,” Digory breathed.

There was a shout from below, and Polly looked down to see a man standing on top of the jagged rocks at the base of the cliff. He waved at them. “Hallo! Is there someone up there?”

“Yes!” she shouted down. “Yes, we’re up here!” She waved at him. He was dressed in what she thought of as the oddest kind of clothes, like something out of a play, weather-beaten green-and-red silks and what looked like chainmail.

In my head, the costuming aesthetic for this story is medieval lite, since the Golden Age and PC tend more towards Renaissance/Early Modern, though both quite distinct. In that vague way that fantasy edges towards real world counterparts, of course.  Actually, I think LWW tends to being described as more directly inspired by Pre-Raphaelite rather than by anything authentically period.

“Can you come down? The beast’s gone away and it’s quite safe now.”

Polly and Digory looked rather dubiously at the cliff-face beneath them. Polly had gone climbing all over the shore the last time she’d gone to the sea, but she’d never ventured more than a few feet up the cliffs, and those had seemed much more approachable than this particular cliff. Digory looked even more dubious.

The man looked up at them, one gauntleted hand raised to shade his eyes, and added, “I can send someone up –”

“No!” Polly shouted down. “We can come down on our own,” she said with more surety than she felt, gave the cliff one more dubious look, and swung herself over the side before she could think better of it, jabbing the toes of her shoes into a niche in the rock. The breeze blew her skirts against her legs.

At the point I started writing this, I said something on Twitter about always writing sea stories and rock-climbing stories around the same time of year. I am not entirely certain that Polly could climb down a sheer rock face without any prior climbing experience! But maybe she does have experience, who knows.

“Polly!” Digory said in alarm.

She looked for a handhold and found one, then another, climbing slowly down. “It’s all right,” she said, turning her head up to look at him. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

Digory squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again and nodded. Polly climbed down a few more feet, feeling the ache begin in her arms and legs, and started to climb faster, vaguely aware that if her arms froze up then she’d fall to her death. She saw Digory climb out of the cave above her and start to clamber down as well.

The rock was cold beneath her fingers, a little slippery from the damp, and Polly clung to it determinedly, becoming a little more reckless the closer she got to the bottom. Her feet slipped more than once, but she managed to jab her toes back into the cracks in the rock, clinging to it for dear life. The tension in her arms was making her shake, her fingers going numb from the cold, and she bit her lip, trying not to panic. Just a little further – just a little further, and then –

Her frozen fingers slipped off the hold she’d found. Polly cried out, feeling herself fall back as she tried to scrabble at the wall, but her hands were crooked into claws, too stiff to move as quickly as she needed them to. She heard Digory shout her name.

My high school had a rock-climbing wall. You’d be surprised at how much strain it is on hands and arms if you’ve never done it before; they can numb up pretty good.

Instead of hitting sharp rocks or cold water, she fell backwards against body-warm silk covering mail, the man who’d yelled up at them catching her with a slight grunt of effort. For a moment all Polly could do was peer up at him in bemusement. He had an open, honest face, familiar for no reason she could put her finger on, with curly blond hair and warm blue eyes.

I wasn’t thinking about this at the time, but that would also be a pretty good description of Peter, wouldn’t it? Aside from the curls. And now I just had the weird idea of what this story would be like if Polly and Digory had ended up in the Golden Age instead. Although I think it probably would have been Edmund, not Peter. But I digress.

“Do you think you can stand?” he asked her.

“I – I think so,” Polly did, and he put her carefully upright, holding her steady until she found her footing on the slippery rock. She looked up and saw Digory up above them, still clinging to the cliff and looking frantically over his shoulder.

“Poll!” he shouted. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine!” she yelled back up, and saw him nod slightly to himself before he started back down again. He made it all the way to the bottom of the cliff, then stopped, turned around, and leaned against it, looking exhausted, then lifted his chin and looked around, judging the distance between the mostly flat rock he was perched on and the rock that Polly and the stranger were standing on, next to which a small boat was rocking in the waves. There was blood in the bottom of it.

Bad shit has been going down. I think a couple people got eaten.

“Are you all right?” the stranger said anxiously.

“Yes,” Digory said. He looked at the man dubiously, then started forward, moving cautiously from rock to rock.

I shall pause now to discuss the language, since autumnia asked, “Is Gale speaking English or Narnian? (Since he's able to communicate with Polly & Digory -- unless it's all magic.) You make a distinction between the different languages in Warsverse, so I'm wondering how much the language has changed since Frank and Helen's time. You do have the Pevensies learning/speaking Narnian when they come to Narnia, but would English have changed dramatically by this point in the story?” The short version is, yes, it’s all magic, since Lewis doesn’t bother with having his characters having to learn a new language every time they show up in Narnia, so I don’t either. The longer version is that it’s probably a variant of English, though Polly and Digory don’t realize it, and language drift continues down on through LB. (And this isn’t relevant to Silent Seas, but by PC the Narnian language is probably heavily Telmarine/Spanish-influenced. I am not a linguist, though, so I will stop making wild claims about it, though, since it never shows up in the text.) But whenever someone from our world shows up, they ~magically speak whatever language is spoken wherever they show up, if there are other people there. It may or may not hold true for written languages, though.

Polly looked up at the stranger. He was younger than she’d thought originally, about the same age as her cousin Albert, who’d caught diamond fever and run off to Africa three years ago. Not that much older than she and Digory were. Behind them, the ship creaked in the ocean, its rigging shuddering in the wind. A flag snapped against the map; Polly turned to peer up at it, making out a red lion on a green field.

The diamond fever line is in here because I’d been doing research on diamond mining in preparation for the diamond mines in Dust II. At this point I was wondering in despair when I’d actually get to write the mines, and it just slipped in.

I cannot remember how old I meant Gale to be. Late teens/early twenties, most likely.

Digory finally made his way over to their rock, and the stranger said politely, “You two must be exhausted. Here, we can take you back to the port, and you can get warm and dry –” He moved to hand Polly down into the small boat that was tethered to the rock, empty except for what appeared to be a cat curled up in the bottom.

“What port?” Polly said curiously.

He looked surprised. “Why, Narrowhaven, of course. Or if you’re from one of the villages, we can take you back there –” He gave them a thoughtful look, frowning at Digory’s Norfolk suit.

I’m sure Victorian/Georgian clothes look so weird to Narnian eyes. It’s something that comes up continuously in the books; I’m really sad they didn’t put that ending bit in PC, where the Pevensies come out in their dirty school uniforms and the Telmarines start to laugh at them. But it really wouldn’t have fit the movie.

“We’re not from one of the villages,” Digory said. “We’re from much further away than that.”

The stranger frowned, then said, “This is no place to discuss that. Come and get warmed up, I can provide hot food and spiced wine, as well as fresh clothes.” He stepped down into the boat, offering Polly his hand.

She took it, the metal of his gauntlets cold and a little slippery beneath her bare fingers, and clambered awkwardly down into the boat, looking around for the cleanest seat before she finally perched on one that was wet with water, but not blood. The stranger reached for Digory as well, but Digory ignored his hand, climbing down awkwardly down and sending the boat rocking as he stepped into it. For a moment he wavered, then got his footing and sat down next to Polly. The cat on the other bench opened one eye and looked at them.

“Who’s this, then?”

“I haven’t had the pleasure of their names,” said the stranger, leaning over to untie the boat. He coiled up the rope neatly, then dipped both paddles into the water. Polly grabbed at the side of the boat as it pulled away from the rock.

“They don’t look like Lone Islanders,” said the cat, standing up and stretching, elegant. She – its voice was undoubtedly feminine – was a slim, pretty cat like a Siamese, with one ragged ear and the tip of her tail missing. She padded over to sniff at Polly’s feet.

“Hello,” Polly told her solemnly. “What’s your name?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” said the cat.

“Rionet,” said the stranger wearily. “Be polite.”

“I shall do nothing of the sort,” the cat said, trotting over to the front of the boat and putting her paws up on the side.

I’m relatively certain when I wrote this scene in the cat was going to play more of a role, since I don’t think she ever shows up again. I think she’s one of Gale’s friends from Narnia. I have a habit of writing really sarcastic cats; I think it’s because that’s how cats always come off to me, or I’ve looked at one too many LOLcat memes.

They bumped against the side of the ship, and Polly looked up and up at it, her mouth suddenly dry. It wasn’t particularly large compared to some of the ships in England, but she wasn’t used to seeing those up close, and this was close enough to touch. The stranger began the business of tying the boat up to the side of the ship as a rope ladder rattled down over the side, followed by a sailor who swarmed down it and landed in the bottom of the boat, barely missing the cat, who spat protest.

“Go on up, your highness,” said the sailor. Polly barely heard his words; she was too busy staring at him. She’d seen fauns the last time, of course, but she hadn’t been paying much attention then, and Aslan had overshadowed everything around him.

“Ladies first,” said the stranger courteously, gesturing at the ladder.

Polly climbed up, her arms spasming again at the effort, and grabbed the railing to haul herself onto the deck. Her hands came away sticky with blood, and she scrubbed them furiously on her skirts, trying to get it off. She stepped quickly away from the rail, looking around at the ship. The huge sails spread out above her, the thin sunlight filtering down green through them, while sailors walked on the masts and lines as calmly as though they were walking on solid ground. Some of them didn’t look human.

I’m pretty sure none of them are human – I doubt that after nine generations Frank’s people are the only humans in Narnia; other tears in the worlds have brought humans stumbling in. But Narnia, specifically, has a minority of humans for the majority of its history.

She turned around as Digory came over the side, opening her mouth to warn him about the blood. He put his hand in it before she could speak.

“Ugh, what –”

“Scylla took seven of my sailors,” said the stranger, clambering onto the deck. He avoided the blood, Polly noticed, but what she’d taken for water-stains on his tunic and rust on his mail turned out to be splashes of blood. She took a cautious step away, hoping he wouldn’t notice. “She’s never taken so many before.”

“Scylla?” Digory repeated. “Like – from The Odyssey?”

“What is The Odyssey?” said the stranger, curious, then shook his head and said, “I’m sorry – I’ve been discourteous. My name is Gale. And you are –”

“I’m Digory and this is Polly,” Digory said swiftly, then grinned. “I can’t believe we’re in Narnia again!”

“You must certainly are not!” an aggrieved female voice exclaimed, and Polly turned to see a tall dark woman standing on the ship’s poop deck. She swallowed; she didn’t think the woman had been there before.

Another of the original scenes! I had the image of Digory or Polly saying, “I can’t believe we’re in Narnia again!” and one of the other Great Powers saying in affront, “You must certainly are not!” Because Digory and Polly never stop to think that there might be other gods, other powers, in the Narnian world, while we, who’ve read the rest of the series, know that there are – Tash and Bacchus at least, as well as the river god and people like the Lady of the Green Kirtle and the White Witch. Again – I’ll talk about this a bit later.

The woman came quickly down the steps to the waist. She was even taller than Polly had thought originally, nearly as tall as she remembered the Witch being, and with something of the same air around her, though while the Witch had been cold and dark, somehow sickening, this woman seemed different somehow. As if she brought life rather than death. Her hair fell loose over her bare shoulder, thick and black, with strands of what looked like seaweed caught in it. She was wearing a chiton like the statues Polly saw in her schoolbooks, only this one, instead of being the plain white that the marble statues wore, was all the colors of the sea, from stormy gray to deep blue to tranquil green, seeming to shift as Polly looked at it. The woman’s bare feet left pools of water on the deck as she approached them.

At some point I wondered if I should make her look like Calypso from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and decided against it, since I’d already written this description. Actually, I don’t think there’s anything that specifically says she can’t look like Naomie Harris, so maybe I didn’t decide against it. I don’t like doing much character description, so it’s vague enough it could be a more Tia Dalma-like Calypso than a Homeric one.

“Ignore the prince,” she said, her voice reverberating slightly, the way someone’s did when they stood in a small room and spoke. It hurt Polly’s head. “The fool doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

The funny thing is that Gale hasn’t even said anything yet – it’s a hint that there’s been conflict for sometime already.

“Calypso –” said Gale, raising his gauntleted hands in a placating sort of way.

“Be quiet!” she spat, turning on him. “Already you trespass upon my lands and my waters, and you think that gives you allowance to dictate your law here? You forget that you are nothing more than a visitor, here upon my sufferance!”

There’s been a lot of tension between Aslan, the creator of the world, and the other gods/greater powers that have crept through. I – hmm, yeah, I guess I’ll talk about this here.

Writing Silent Seas was brain-breaking for me in several ways. Not only had I never written MN fic before, up until now I’d actually disengaged from MN as part of my Narnia headcanon, dismissing it as a creation myth and nothing more. (Yeah, don’t ask me how I worked Digory and Polly into Warsverse canon; I pretty much didn’t write them and pretended they didn’t exist.) But I wanted Silent Seas to be part of the Warsverse, since I prefer to keep everything in the same continuity, which meant that I had to revise my entire conception of the Narnia world. Now that was brain-breaking, but ultimately in a way that enriched both my understanding of the ‘verse and the ‘verse itself. Now whether anyone else feels that way is another question entirely.

I was working with several difficult books from the series when I wrote Silent Seas: The Magician’s Nephew for the characters and some of the etiology, The Last Battle for the Lone Islands reference, and most notably The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and, to a lesser extent, The Silver Chair, for the setting and the understanding of the wildest parts of the Narnian world. We’ve seen or heard of the civilized and settled lands of the Narnian world – Narnia, Archenland, Calormen, Telmar, Galma, Seven Isles, Terebinthia, and the Lone Islands. I started Silent Seas with a wild theory that the further away you got from Narnia proper – the center of the world, literally – the more wild and less civilized the world got. Still in development, one might say, which is why in VotDT you have odd places like Deathwater Island and Dragon Island and the independent lands of Coriakin and Ramandu. Aslan is less prominent out there, though in some ways he’s connected to the entire world because he created it; the land is being squabbled over by other powers that have traveled into the world. Every one of them wants to carve out a piece of land and influence for themselves. Calypso is one of them.

Gale opened his mouth to reply, but Calypso – if that was her name – was already turning away from him, leaping up onto the ship’s rail and into a long clean dive. Polly let out a cry and raced to the side of the ship, expecting to see the woman battered on the rocks beside them, but the water was still and calm except for the waves that lapped at the stained wood of the ship’s side. There weren’t even ripples. She realized abruptly that she didn’t think she’d even heard a splash.

“Don’t take offense, I beg you,” Gale said swiftly, his boots clicking softly on the deck as he crossed to her side. He looked shaken. “Calypso is – my purpose here is not what she thinks.”

“What is it?” Digory asked. “Why are you here? You – are Narnian, aren’t you? You’re King Frank’s son?”

“I am the ninth in descent from King Frank,” Gale said. “And I believe I know who you are, as well. The stories speak of the two children who came from the same world that the King and the Queen did at the beginning of Narnia, who went into the Western Wild to fetch the seed of the Warden Tree that grows on the banks of the Great River.”

The Warden Tree! Which shows up in canon a grand total of once! I believe canon speaks of a storm that finally destroyed it just before the White Witch showed up, though I could be wrong and I just made that up. But presumably it lasted for a very long time, giving Narnia a continuity of rulers right down until the White Witch shows up.

“That was us,” Digory said. “But that was only last year –”

Gale frowned slightly. “The books say that travel between worlds is a chancy thing, and that time bends strangely in the space between my world and the others – our worlds are only two of many.”

“Have there been others?” Polly said eagerly. “Are there many travelers?”

“Not that I will speak of,” Gale said, his gaze suddenly shadowed. “As I said: you must be weary, and ready for hot food and drink, and fresh clothes. We are somewhat short on women’s clothes at the moment, milady Polly, but my manservant will find something that will suffice, never fear.” He gave their clothes a dubious look. “What you wear now seems uncomfortable. Is it necessary for travel between worlds?”

This line cracks me up. But think about it! Everyone who shows up in the Narnia-world must look very different than what the natives look like, right? Or at least dress differently.

And now I’m curious about why Gale is looking grim about the travelers between worlds. I think there were a lot more passages early on than there are now – although it doesn’t come up in here, because I was writing this to be readable (a) anonymous and (b) bookverse, presumably the inhabitants of Narnia’s neighboring countries in the Warsverse all came from different lands in our world. (Or other worlds, who knows. For quite a long time I wanted to write a Narnia/Chrestomanci crossover, but I’m digressing again.)

Digory blinked. “No,” he said, “this is just what we wear –” He trailed off as a faun came hurrying up, hooves clicking gently on the deck.

“Your highness?” said the faun. Its – his, Polly reminded herself firmly – hairy legs were the color of fresh-churned cream, the same as his curly hair and the line of hair down the straight line of his spine. A pair of short horns stuck up out of his hair, above pointed ears that stuck out at right angles to his head, like a – well, like a goat’s.

“Icarion, this is the Lord Digory and the Lady Polly,” said Gale. “Take them to –” He paused briefly. “Well, I suppose Ivar won’t be returning to his cabin. Take them there, and see that they are given fresh clothes and some hot drink to warm them up. They will join me for dinner.”

“Very well, your highness,” said the faun, dipping a short bow to Polly and Digory.

They’re a bit more formal in Frankian Narnia than they are in the Golden Age; they’ve had more time to get used to having proper kings. *hands* I think.

The cabin where Icarion left them was even smaller than Polly had pictured, barely wide enough for Digory to stand with his arms out to either side, his fingertips just brushing the walls of canvas that blocked it off from the cabins on either side of them. There was a hammock for sleeping in, long enough for a much taller person than either of them, and a small sea chest tucked discreetly against the wooden wall of the ship, which curved in slightly. After a moment of looking around, Polly sat down on top of it, rather gingerly, while Digory stood by the hammock, rubbing the fabric between his fingers. Icarion had told them that he was going to find them proper clothing and flitted off, his hooves clicking on the wooden floor.

“Does this all seem rather odd to you?” Polly said finally.

Digory looked up from the hammock. “What do you mean?”

“Well – we didn’t have any rings this time. So do you think – maybe the book was like the rings?” She said this last slightly dubiously; it certainly hadn’t felt anything like the rings had. Travel with the rings had been slow and dream-like, like swimming in a dream, but this had been so quick that she hadn’t even noticed it. And there had been the monster – Scylla, Gale had called it.

Different ways of traveling between worlds – organic versus artificial might be one way to put it, though I’m not sure that’s correct. But there’s a difference in that the rings are manmade and the book, well – sometimes doors just slip open, the way the Wardrobe does in LWW.

“The book didn’t come with us,” Digory pointed out. He sat down on the edge of the hammock and leapt up almost immediately as it threatened to tip him over. Polly laughed slightly, relieved by it, and Digory grinned sheepishly at her.

“And Scylla came out of the book,” he added. “She was in our world –” He stiffened suddenly. “What will Dad think if he comes up to get us for dinner? Or Mother – or the servants – or Uncle Andrew!”

“Mr. Ketterley will probably be able to guess,” Polly said dryly. “Unless – do you think he did it?”

Digory considered this, then shook his head. “It’s not really his style, is it? And he did say he was going to give up magic and take up drinking.”

“‘Take up’?” Polly said dryly, and he laughed.

“Right,” he allowed. “So probably not Uncle Andrew. It must have been the book, though – do you think that was what the mad woman was going on about?”

“But that was written a long time ago,” Polly protested, then stopped as Icarion pushed back one sheet of canvas.

“Clothes, milord, milady,” he said, as Digory went over to take them from him. “His Highness will see you for dinner at eight bells.”

“When is –”

“I will send someone to fetch you,” said Icarion, and left.

Digory looked down at the clothes he was holding, then at Polly, and blushed. “I –”

“We can just turn our backs,” she told him firmly. His ears were scarlet.

He dropped the clothes hastily on the hammock and started sorting through them. “I think these are for you,” he said, holding them out to her.

Polly took it from him, holding the gown by the shoulders and watching the skirts fell down. She had to struggle not to smile – the fabric was soft against her hands, like wool but softer, and a beautiful pale blue color with embroidery picked out on the sleeves and hem in a darker blue, with a panel of embroidery over the bosom. It looked like flowers, and Polly stroked it gently with one finger

“Poll,” Digory said anxiously, clutching his clothes to himself, and Polly turned around, putting the dress down on the chest while she undressed. She could hear Digory behind her doing the same.

She kept her underthings on, then shimmied into the blue dress. It laced up the back, which she tried to tug at rather awkwardly before giving up. The hem of the dress dragged on the floor; she thought it had been made for someone much taller than her. Polly thought it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever worn in her life, and resisted the urge to twirl; she’d probably just trip over the hem.

I suddenly find myself wondering why Prince Gale has women’s clothes on his ship, since we never see any women there.

When you put on a pretty dress, isn’t it your first urge to twirl, a lot of the time? Apparently that’s what Anna Popplewell did the first time she put on Susan’s coronation gown, which I didn’t know at the time I was writing.

“Poll?” Digory said. He sounded cautious. “Are you done?”

“Mostly – can you lace me up?” she asked.

“Er, yes,” he said, sounding a little worried, and came over to do so. His hands were light through the fabric, a little cautious. “Is that tight enough?”

“That’s fine,” Polly said, and he tied it off and stood back. She turned around and looked at him.

He was wearing the sort of clothes that she usually saw on play-actors, a long, loose green shirt and brown hose, which looked awkward over his Oxford shoes. “I look ridiculous,” he grumbled.

“You probably look like everyone else,” Polly pointed out, folding up her frock and putting it aside.

Digory sighed and buckled the belt he’d been given on over the shirt, which managed to make him look marginally more serious, instead of like a boy playing dress up. “So this is a little odd,” he said.

“I’ve been saying that all along,” Polly said, sitting down on the chest. She tugged her skirts out of the way to keep them from bunching up. “Do you think Aslan brought us here?”

“Well, we didn’t come here with the rings.” He sighed. “We’re retracing our steps. Maybe we should just wait.”

“For what? For Scylla to eat us?”

“Well, Aslan didn’t let the Witch kill us,” Digory pointed out, awkward. “So maybe not –”

“What do you think happened to the woman who wrote in the book?” Polly asked. “She was mad. Whatever happened to her made her mad – and Mr. Ketterley, too!”

“I think Uncle Andrew was mad before he got all mixed up in magic.”

Polly considered this. The Ketterleys had bought the house next door to hers when she’d been only a little girl – she had a very vague memory of the family that had lived there before them, a very nice couple, or so her mother liked to say. They’d kept chickens in the garden, and brought over eggs and the odd fryer. But they’d moved away under mysterious circumstances – illness, maybe – and then Mr. and Miss Ketterley had arrived, to her mother’s everlasting distress. She liked to claim that they’d lowered the standards of the entire neighborhood. The rumors about Mr. Ketterley had started soon after that, when the Smiths’ cat had gone missing.

“I wouldn’t know,” she told Digory, instead of any of that, and he shrugged doubtfully.

“We should go up,” he decided. “Have a look around. If this is really Narnia or – or some version of it, I don’t know – then we need to get our bearings. Find out what’s going on, you know. I have the feeling that if we’re here, we must be here for a reason.”

“What kind of reason?”

“I don’t know. An important one.”

As it happens, they’re not. Sometimes these things just happen. But you don’t think that when you’re stumbling around between worlds, you know?

“Do you think it had to do with her?” Polly asked.

Digory raised his head. “Did she remind you of her – the other her – too?”

Polly nodded. “She did. And then – she didn’t, too. I think they’re the same, but – not the same, I don’t think she came from that place. Charn,” she added, and shuddered.

Digory looked grim. “Let’s go up,” he said again, and held out his hand. Polly clutched it, and felt a little better.

When they got up top, the ship seemed to have recovered from its former damage. The gaping hole in the railing was still there, but the crew seemed to be going cheerfully about their business, at least so far as Polly could tell in her decided limited experience of such things. To one side of the ship was the open sea, gray and choppy. To the other was an island, gray and rocky, with patches of snow clinging stubbornly to the small rolling hills of the inland.

“Winter,” she said in surprise. “It’s winter!”

“Is it not winter where you come from?” said Prince Gale curiously, coming towards them. He had two cloaks slung over his arm, and he passed one to Polly and the other to Digory. Polly put it on slowly, fastening the pin at the neck with quickly numbing fingers.

“It’s not,” Digory said. “It’s high summer.”

“Indeed.” The prince sounded intrigued by this.

“Please,” Polly said, wrapping the folds of the cloak around her hands, “if we’re not in Narnia, then where are we?”

“We are rounding the cape of the island of Felimath, the westernmost of the Lone Islands,” said the prince. “Some month’s sail from Narnia. We have had trade with the Lone Islands for some time now and our relations have always been friendly; I hope that you do not believe what Calypso believes. My intentions here are only good. I hope to beg indulgence of Duke Garin and winter upon the Islands, then venture further east when spring comes.”

“What’s east of here?” Digory asked.

Gale’s eyes lit up. “No one knows,” he said. “Some of our legends say that the world gets younger the further east one goes, that Galma and Terebinthia are younger than the Narnia and the Lone Islands younger still. Perhaps east of the Lone Islands, there are younger lands yet, lands that have been untouched and unshaped by the hands of either men or other powers. In the furthest east – the home of the Emperor-over-the-Sea, if the stories are true. Or perhaps nothing. Perhaps the world ends entirely.” He looked at the island they were passing and sighed, sounding deeply aggrieved. “To venture so far beyond the boundary of our maps would be something, would it not? A way to make my name.”

So basically he’s Caspian before Caspian was Caspian. I mentioned the “younger lands” thing above – I think if Gale kept sailing east (which he doesn’t), then there’s a strong possibility that a lot of the islands the Dawn Treader ran into wouldn’t be there yet, and maybe the edge of the world/Aslan’s Country would come earlier than it does in VotDT.

“I suppose,” Polly said, leaning on a section of undamaged rail. “I know all these questions must seem terribly irritating, but do you mind if I ask another?”

“Ask away, and I shall do my best to answer,” Gale said. “As my tutor is fond of saying, there is no such thing as a stupid question.”

“It’s about –” Polly began, and then broke off at a cry from the lookout in the crow’s nest.

I don’t remember what Polly was going to ask. I think it might have been about Calypso.

“She comes! Scylla comes! There, on the land!”

The prince snatched a looking glass from his belt and extended it, putting it to his eye. “She means no harm to us, Evrard,” he called up to the lookout. “The beast hunts other prey this hour.”

“Aye, your highness,” said the lookout doubtfully.

Polly looked around. The air on the ship was tense, every sailor suspended in the action they’d been previously engaged in, each one of them waiting. She took a breath, and looked back at the island.

Scylla was a tiny dark shape on one of the further hills, each of her six heads focused on the herd of sheep fleeing before her – small fluff balls of gray and brown from this distance. One of the heads snapped forward, snatching up a sheep whose legs churned briefly in the air before stopping abruptly.

“Scylla is Calypso’s creature,” Gale said quietly, passing the looking glass to Digory. “The protector of the Lone Islands – the six-headed dragon is the Duke’s sign. To her the Duke has given the island of Felimath, for Felimath is the point that all travelers from the east must pass to come upon Doorn or Avra. She is not supposed to harm any traveler but those who mean harm to the Lone Islands.”

“But she attacked you,” Digory said. He handed the looking glass to Polly.

“Yes,” said Gale wearily. “I do not know if it is because she knows something I do not, or because she has slipped Calypso’s bonds, or some other, even more obscure reason. I swear to you, I did not leave Narnia and come upon this voyage to harm the Lone Islands! My father would never have countenanced such a thing, and see, if I had, I would have brought more men, soldiers rather than sailors, and more ships, and siegecraft. I want to make my name, but not that way.”

It’s option A. There’s a cosmic war going on while Calypso and Aslan struggle for power, and Gale doesn’t realize he’s one of Aslan’s pawns. Hi, lion conspiracy theory. You could probably read it as Calypso just being really paranoid, too.

Polly raised the looking glass to her eye, watching Scylla spring into clarity. Four of the heads had sheep now, the fifth was trying to steal from another head, and the sixth appeared to be trying to propel the body forward as the remnant of the herd fled, its teeth snapping futilely at mid-air. She lowered the glass quickly and handed it back to Gale, not wanting to see anymore.

“Who’s Calypso?” she asked.

“A sea-goddess, patron of the Lone Islands,” Gale said, absent.

“Is she from – another world?”

“All gods are, I suppose,” said the prince. “She, and Aslan, and all the others. The stories say that the home of the gods is another world entirely, one utterly different from all that we know here.”

Essentially true, but a vast oversimplification in my cosmology. Some of them – the greater powers, I guess you could say – come from the same world, but others are from many, many different worlds. Asgard, Mount Olympus, our world, Charn, countless others.

Polly and Digory looked at each other, and this time neither of them said anything.

“Come!” said the prince, bright with forced cheer. “We shall dine together, and in the morning, if Scylla lets us round Felimath, we shall arrive at Narrowhaven and meet the Duke.”

*

This is where the break was when it was originally posted on narniaexchange. It broke LJ's entry limits, so I was asked to split it in two.

Polly passed a sleepless night in the cabin she was sharing with Digory; someone had come in while she’d been at dinner and slung a second hammock in the tiny room, making the space even less than it had been. She’d fallen out of it the first time she’d tried to climb in, making Digory laugh, but she’d made it the second time. It wasn’t nearly as comfortable as she would have liked, and the rocking of the hammock and the ship had kept her awake, her eyes fluttering open at every little creak of the boards or the splash of waves against the side of the ship. She kept imagining Scylla sneaking up on them in the night, or some other, as yet unknown terror with a taste for girls arriving. Digory, on the other hand, fell asleep immediately.

Polly got up eventually and put her shoes back on – she’d slept in the dress, which was a little crumpled from the night in the hammock, but not otherwise the worse for wear – and crept out into the hall and up the stairs to the deck. The sky was gray and overcast, so that dawn came with a gradual lightening instead of the sun breaking over the horizon as she’d seen on that first morning in Narnia. She wrapped her cloak around herself and looked out at the island, which at some point in the night had turned from rocky cliffs to stony beach. There was a fine dusting of snow across everything, including the ship, and the deck was slippery with frost.

“Who are you, little girl?” said Calypso softly.

Polly hadn’t seen her approach. One moment she was alone except for the sailors on the watch, and the next moment Calypso was there, barefoot and bare-armed despite the cold. Polly looked around at the sailors – two more fauns, something she thought might be a satyr, three humans, and a dwarf – but none of them seemed to have noticed Calypso’s sudden appearance.

She gathered up her courage. “I’m Polly Plummer, of London.”

“London,” Calypso said slowly. She smiled, abrupt and with far too many teeth. “I haven’t heard that name in a very long time. You have come a long way, haven’t you, girl?”

Because she’s been in and out of our world. Who was she hanging out with in London? I don’t know. Francis Drake, maybe.

“No further than you,” Polly said bravely.

“Not by a long ways,” she said agreeably. “And what are you doing here, you and the other human child?”

“I don’t know,” Polly said, then took a breath. “But I think – you brought us.”

“I never toy with humans anymore,” Calypso said. There was a touch of sadness to the words. “It’s a poor thing for one of us to shed tears, and I have shed far too many in my long years. Most of them for mortals like you.”

Odysseus.

Polly looked at her. Her dress was shifting colors again, restless, from the stormy gray it had been a moment ago to a deep dark blue, like the endless ocean far from shore, and looking at it hurt Polly’s eyes. She dragged her gaze up to Calypso’s face, to her black eyes.

“What are you doing here?”

“Brave little girl, to ask me such questions,” Calypso said absently.

“Prince Gale said that he isn’t here to conquer the Lone Islands, or – what you said, yesterday.”

Calypso shook her head. “He wants to kill my pet.”

“That’s not a pet,” Polly said defiantly. “It kills people!”

Calypso’s hair rose suddenly from her shoulders, the skirts of her chiton swirling in a wind that Polly didn’t feel and that didn’t stir the sails above her. “I know who you are, girl!” she snapped, voice rising. “You think that Scylla is any different from the tree that stands upon the banks of the Great River in Aslan’s precious Narnia? You brought the seed of that tree into this world, but I brought an egg, a single precious egg. We are no different, you and I, and at least I understand what I have done. You and the boy and the prince, all those that are yet to come in the years that follow, you are all Aslan’s creatures, all puppets that dance to his calling, and I will not have it so! I will not allow it!”

Okay, so maybe Calypso’s a little paranoid.

There was a howl of wind and Polly threw her arms out for balance as the ocean shivered beneath the ship, the sails filling with wind and the flags and pennants flapping against the maps. Above her, the sky darkened, storm clouds gathering. Thunder boomed in the distance, lightning crackling across the heavens. She heard the sailors shouting to each other, someone shoving past her as he raced across the deck to ring the big ship’s bell by the mast. He passed Calypso without looking at her.

“What are you doing!” Polly screamed at her over the roar of the storm.

“I’ll see you all at the bottom of the ocean before I see you on my lands!” Calypso said, and laughed, sounding half-mad and drunk on power. A blast of cold air brought snow swirling down on the ship, ice crackling across the sails and lines; a sailor screamed and slipped, falling from the rigging to vanish into the churning sea. He didn’t reappear.

You know, I’m rereading this for the first time in months while writing this, and I’m picking up on all sorts of things I didn’t see when I was actually writing it. Shades of the White Witch and the Long Winter here, maybe.

“Don’t!” Polly yelled. “Please –”

Calypso threw her arms up and tilted her head back, drinking in the lightning that crackled down through her. The force of it threw Polly back onto the deck; she scrambled the heels of her hands against the icy deck to try and get back on her feet and staggered away from Calypso.

“You can’t do this!”

The sea-goddess didn’t hear her, or if she did, she didn’t listen. The lightning seemed to linger within her, lighting her up, so that shreds of it leaked out from her eyes, her mouth when she spoke, the space beneath her fingernails. She glowed faintly, and Polly stared.

“Charybdis!” she bellowed. “Come to me, from the depths of the world, where you have slumbered, come and join your sister! I call you, I, Calypso, daughter of Okeanos and Tethys, the old gods of the sea, I, who sheltered you when the Emperor-over-the-Sea would have had you killed and cast out, doomed to wander between the worlds for all eternity! Come and return your favor!”

I do actually have a working knowledge of Greek mythology. I just decided to ignore it all when I was writing this, apparently. *laughs*

The ship shuddered again, tossed violently upon the waves as the sea rose up. Polly clung to the rail, staring overboard with a sick feeling in her stomach as the sea churned, then – emptied. She stared down into black nothing, a hole that had opened in the surface of the ocean, water spilling down the sides of it. The ship slid inexorably towards it, and Calypso laughed.

“Calypso!”

Prince Gale scrambled out of his cabin, his sword in his hand, and Calypso turned towards him. She smiled.

“Fight her, Son of Adam,” she breathed, and vanished.

Gale stared at her for a moment, then shoved his sword into its sheath and ran for the quarterdeck, shouting orders to the sailors boiling out of their quarters. Digory came tumbling out of the cabin, looking around in panic until he saw Polly and came towards her, slipping and sliding on the icy deck.

“Your highness!” he shouted. “Prince Gale –”

“Not now!” Gale yelled back, shoving aside the seaman who’d been wrestling with the ship’s wheel, trying to keep them away from the whirlpool. “Closer to the island! Better to be smashed upon the rocks than lose the ship and our lives entirely!”

“No!” Digory shouted, dragging on Polly’s arm. She couldn’t take her eyes off the whirlpool. “Prince Gale, Scylla, on the shore –”

As if he’d summoned it, all six of Scylla’s heads roared at once. One of the masts went crashing to the deck as two heads seized a sailor between them, his screams seeming to go on and on as they ripped him in two; a third head snatched up a leopard and crunched it between its teeth. Blood spattered wetly across Polly’s cheek and froze there.

She could see, crystal-clear, the panic in Gale’s eyes as he stood at the wheel, his gloved hands clenched on it. The ship slid another few feet towards the edge of the whirlpool, whose edges surged up towards them, as if trying to seize them and drag them down into eternity.

“Your highness!” someone shouted. “We have to –”

Gale stood still too long. With a sound like a woman’s scream, the whirlpool dragged them in, the ship tipping over onto its side and lingering for a moment. Digory threw himself over Polly and she folded her fingers into his shirt, hanging onto him as he grabbed at the ship’s rail. Men fell past them, screaming. She could see Gale, still clinging to the wheel, and saw his mouth open as he shouted.

Then the ship fell.

*

Polly was aware, later, of falling.

She fell endlessly through space, or seemed to, down and down and down again. She was screaming, or thought she was screaming, and Digory said later that he had been screaming as well, but the only sounds she’d heard had been those of falling water and a woman singing to herself, soft and absent, a little mad. After enough time spent in motion, it ceased to be terrifying and became peaceful, as if the water was pillowing her, coasting her gently down. There was no need to hold her breath or to concentrate on the action of breathing; Polly simply existed, the water moving around her in slow circles, snatching at the sleeves of her gown, at the strands of her hair, with a pain so slight she was barely aware of it at all. She let go.

And then, like a stab to the heart, she heard a lion roar, and the water surged up around her again, angry and mad and dangerous, so dangerous, with no intent whatsoever to be kind or gentle. It yanked at her, poured into her mouth and nose, and Polly roused herself to fight it, pressing at it, trying to push it away, try and drag her way upwards to a surface she vaguely remembered existing once upon a time. She fought the water, and the water fought her.

In my cynical lion conspiracy theory view, this is Aslan going, “Oh, hey, I might need them again sometime. Maybe I should keep them alive.” Usually it’s a bad sign in my fic when Aslan shows up, but not this time.

Charybdis spat her out onto frost-covered rocks, sucking at her legs and feet as Polly worked her fingers into the thin moss clinging to the stones, dragging her way up out of the ocean. She hurt, every part of her hurt, seawater clawing at her throat as she coughed helplessly. Digory and Gale grabbed her wrists and pulled her the rest of the way up, and both of them collapsed on the stony shore, watching the sea churn restlessly before them, fingers of water snaking their way up past the high-tide mark to claw at them, falling short and only wetting her bare toes. She couldn’t seem to remember where her shoes had gone.

It was less about Charybdis eating her and more about taking Polly apart at, mmm, something like the atomic level. Clothes, skin, flesh, organs, bones in more or less that order. Fortunately it didn’t get that far.

“W-where –”

“Felimath,” Gale said, and coughed, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Scylla’s land. My ship –” He stared out at the water, his gaze going blank. “She took her. Took her apart, and my men with her, my father’s men –” He started to shake, and Polly dragged herself up enough to hug him, clumsily.

“’m sorry,” she said. It wasn’t much, but it was the only thing she could think of.

Digory was huddled a little ways away from them, staring at the ocean as it snatched futilely at them. “She’s mad,” he said in surprise. “Polly –”

“She is mad!” Polly agreed. “Look at this, we weren’t going to do anything, and she just – Calypso just –”

He shook his head. “Not Calypso. I mean – she’s, she has her reasons, I suppose, I don’t – but Charybdis, she’s utterly mad, Polly, I think – I think she used to be human.”

Polly blinked at him. “It’s a whirlpool,” she said.

Digory shook his head furiously. “No, I – she used to be a human, or a woman, at least, but something happened and it drove her mad. She used to be a woman, and now she’s – this.”

Polly and Gale both stared at him.

“Didn’t you hear her?” Digory said impatiently.

I’ve gotten some interesting comments in response to this exchange, including people asking if Polly becomes Charybdis. (Actually, I thought I’d gotten more, but maybe not.) This is actually one of the parts where I kind of contradict myself (at least in my head, I don’t think it’s actually on the page) because at this point I was rushing to finish the fic for the deadline. Originally I’d thought that the woman who was writing in the book at the very beginning of the story eventually became Charybdis (thus her being mad), but then later we have Calypso calling Charybdis up out of the depths of the world(s?). They probably cannot both be true – but actually, I guess they could be. Anyway, by the time I submitted this I knew the two points contradicted each other, but since it wasn’t actually on the page I let it go and figured it could be another one of those mysteries that doesn’t get answered because, well – it’s not Polly and Digory’s concern.

Gale shook his head and stumbled upright. “Come,” he said wearily. “We must find shelter, and wood for a fire, or we’ll die out here. The islands are not far apart; perhaps in the morning we can find a way to cross to Avra or Doorn.”

“But Scylla,” Polly protested.

“Pray to Aslan,” Gale suggested, and reached down to help her up. His sheathed sword banged against her leg as she pulled herself up, and she closed her eyes. She just wanted to go to sleep, close her eyes and let all this pass away, all these impossible things –

“If you lie down here, you’ll die,” Gale said quietly, and she opened her eyes again. Digory was standing too, wavering uncertainly from foot to foot.

“Inland,” said Gale. “Into the land of the monster.”

They found a copse of small trees clustered around the opening of a cave a half mile from the shore, though it felt like much further away. The trees were heavy with snow; they’d crunched through it on their way inland, all of them bare-footed. By the time they reached the trees, Polly couldn’t feel her feet, and wasn’t entirely certain she wanted to. She stumbled into the cave and sat down, staring at the trees. All of them had lost their cloaks as well as their shoes; she couldn’t think why Charybdis might have wanted to undress them before eating them, or taking them apart, or – whatever it had wanted to do. It. She. Polly didn’t know which, and she couldn’t think that she cared.

Gale went into the copse to gather fallen branches from the ground, muttering under his breath; Polly wasn’t sure of his ability to start a fire with wet wood, but he was the only one with energy to do so. Digory sat a little ways away from Polly, his lips moving silently. She spared the energy to wonder if he’d gone mad as well.

Gale came back eventually, carrying an armful of wet branches before him, and dumped them on the floor of the cave. Polly watched him fumble a flint and steel out of his belt-pouch and strike them together, managing a few feeble sparks, but nothing that lit the wood.

Polly closed her eyes. Just for a moment, she told herself. She’d just close her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again, the fire would be lit, and they’d warm up, and maybe Gale would go off and find something on the island to eat, and in the morning they’d find a boat on the shore, or perhaps a fisherman, and then they would be on Doorn or Avra, where they’d be put to bed and fussed over and washed and fed. She’d just close her eyes for a moment.

When she opened them again, it was dark out and Polly was warm. There was something heavy and soft laid over her and Polly touched it with her fingers, which protested the movement. It felt like fur, like the bearskin rug in Mr. Kirke’s study, only lined with soft fabric. She rubbed her cheek against it, absent, and smiled.

“Poll,” Digory whispered.

She raised her chin to look at him. There was a fire flickering at the front of the cave, throwing firelight up over the walls and illuminating Digory’s solemn face. There was a scratch on his cheek, the blood clotted around it. Gale was curled up in a tight knot on her other side, his sword clutched in his hands.

“We’re still in the cave,” she said slowly. “Why – how –”

“I don’t know. I woke up and it was like this.” He was wearing a heavy fur coat, something browned that looked soft enough to stroke. It was too big for him and it hung on his shoulders awkwardly. Polly sat up, slow, clutching the fur – another coat – to herself. It seemed like an eternity since the last time she’d been warm.

Yes, these are totally the cloaks that the Pevensies wear in LWW – or at least are meant to bring them to mind.

“Come over by the fire,” Digory said after a moment. “There’s food – I mean, it’s some kind of stew, but it’s hot, and that’s what’s important. It’s good,” he added as an afterthought.

Polly shifted a little so that she could put the coat on, her body protesting the brief instant of cold before she slipped it on and did up the toggles with mostly-thawed fingers, and crawled over to the fire on hands and knees; the cave was too small to stand up in. Digory handed her a wooden bowl and a spoon that looked like it was carved out of ivory; it warmed to her hand as she touched the faint carvings on the handle curiously, too tired and hungry to try and make them out by the firelight.

She spooned up the stew eagerly. There were chunks of fish in it, something unfamiliar she couldn’t recognize just from the taste, and potatoes and onion and tomatoes, along with a handful of herbs she couldn’t recognize. Polly decided then and there that it was very possibly the best thing she’d ever tasted in her life.

Okay. So. When I wrote this I had a specific kind of fish stew in mind. I cannot remember what it was now. It wasn’t bouillabaisse and it wasn’t gumbo, though it might have been chowder. It might be Moqueca. ANYWAY. I like writing food sequences.

“Did Scylla come back?” she asked after she’d cleaned the entire bowl and was looking at the pot on the fire thoughtfully.

“No,” Digory said. “I think I heard her outside a few hours ago, but – no. Do you think we should wake Gale up?”

“I’m awake,” Gale said tiredly, sitting up slowly. He blinked down at the coat, then shrugged and put it on. Polly ladled him up a bowl of stew, which he accepted with murmured thanks.

“There’s no one else here?” he said after he’d made his way through about half the bowl.

“I haven’t seen anyone,” Digory said, “and I’ve been awake for a few hours now.” He moved his spoon in slow circles around his bowl, rubbing his thumb over the curved end of it. Polly ladled herself up more stew. “It did snow, though,” he added.

“Of course it did,” she murmured to herself.

Gale stirred a little, mouth moving silently as if he was counting. “It’s Christmas,” he said after a moment, sounding surprised.

“You have Christmas in Narnia?” Digory blurted out.

He nodded. “Why? Do you not have it your own world?”

“We do. I just – I thought you wouldn’t have it here in Narnia.”

Gale shrugged. “Perhaps King Frank brought the tradition from his own world, then,” he suggested, and went back to eating.

Polly ate her second bowl of stew more slowly, trying not to sneak looks at the shadowed entrance of the cave. There could be anything out there: Scylla, Calypso, whoever had made the fire and the stew, unknown monsters. She wondered how Aslan could let this happen. This was his world, wasn’t it? He’d made it, and he’d made it so that nothing evil could get in.

Except the Witch had come in, because she and Digory had brought her, and maybe by doing so they’d opened the door to more evils. What if they’d made it possible for Calypso, whatever she was, to come into Narnia? If they were responsible for this – maybe that was why they’d been brought here, because they were responsible for it and they had to fix it.

In this cosmology, they did make it possible for Calypso to enter the world by being in Narnia before it had been created. Not on purpose – we know they didn’t do it on purpose. It’s like, oh, walking into a house that’s still being built, before the doors and the locks have been put on, and accidentally leaving a trail. Actually, this metaphor doesn’t work. If you think of passage between the worlds occurring because of a door, several doors, whatever, then Polly, Digory, Uncle Andrew, and Co. did two things: one, they made the existence of that world known by traveling there, and, two, by traveling there, they blocked the door open, so that no one can properly close it and lock it. Anyone can walk in, deliberately or not. Does that make sense?

Also, as an aside, I don’t think Jadis/the White Witch is evil. Evil’s only relative, after all.

Polly turned towards Digory to say as much, but before she could speak, he caught at her arm, his fingers digging into her wrist. “Listen!” he said sharply. “Do you hear that?”

Polly closed her eyes, concentrating. There was the muffled, faintly whispery sound of falling snow, but besides that – “Those are bells,” she said in surprise. “There’s someone out there!”

Shades of LWW!

Gale put his empty bowl aside, drawing his sword. “Get behind me,” he ordered, and Polly and Digory scrambled backwards hastily.

The sound of bells was coming closer. Polly huddled next to Digory in the narrow cave, Gale crouching in front of them. There was a sound outside and the sound of bells stopped; she heard footsteps, heavy in the snow, and resisted the urge to close her eyes and weep. She clutched at the ivory spoon instead; it wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was better than nothing.

“Put your blade away, your highness,” boomed a man’s voice, warm and comforting. Polly felt herself relax almost immediately, starting to smile.

Gale did, startled. “It’s you!”

Has Gale met Father Christmas before? It’s a question. He’s probably certainly seen illustrations, although his reaction seems to imply that they’ve met previously.

“It is indeed.” The entrance to the cave was briefly filled, and Polly looked up to see a tall, large man, with red cheeks and a white beard. His coat was made of reddish-brown fur and a sword-belt stretched over his broad stomach, the hilt of the sword peeking out from beneath the folds of his cloak. He slipped off his leather gloves and held his hands out to the fire. “You were in a bad state when I found you,” he told them. “It’s good to see you looking better.”

One of those times when I freaked the fuck out trying to find screencaps of Father Christmas from LWW – I was writing this at my university library and didn’t have my DVD to hand. Also, I was freezing to death because it was really cold where I was, and also, I was pretty much the only person there because it was the third day of class or something and I was whiling away the time until I had to go preside over an event. Also, it was raining outside.

“You’re,” Polly began, uncertain, “you’re – who are you?”

“I have many names,” he said. “And you know a few of them, I believe. I hadn’t expected to see you so early, Polly Plummer, Digory Kirke.”

Digory had gone pale. “Father Christmas!” he exclaimed.

“Indeed,” the man said cheerfully. “And a few months early for England, though just on time for the Lone Islands and Narnia.” His face crinkled in a smile. “And I believe I have a few gifts for you.”

“Do you know why we’re here?” Digory asked.

Father Christmas paused briefly, one hand going idly to his sword hilt. “The fabric of the universe is thin,” he said slowly. “There are many pathways between worlds, many doors. Some people would have you think that they are few and hard to open, and indeed, some of them are. Some worlds you may only enter with an invitation, though this is not one of them. It was meant to be, when it was made, but the Emperor-over-the-Sea had other ideas for it, and so you and the Witch and the old King entered it, and created new passageways. Some worlds are no more, but echoes of them still remain, and they may serve as roads in and of themselves, allowing travel from one world to another through the shadow of a dead world. I think, though I am not certain, that you came through one such, and if you did, then it was with no purpose, but by mere chance.” His mouth twisted slightly. “There are some who would have mortals believe that there is no such thing as mere chance.”

Reiterating what I was saying earlier. starlady asked what I meant when I said that Narnia was originally meant to be invitation-only. What we definitely know from canon is that it isn’t invitation-only – ignoring all our mains, what we definitely have are the Telmarines accidentally wandering through from the South Seas into Telmar, and wreaking a lot of destruction because of it. It’s arguable whether or not the Pevensies were deliberately brought into Narnia by Aslan on any occasion (well, if you’re me; lion conspiracy theory). I like to think of Aslan as a bit of a control freak, so what he originally wanted was to control who entered Narnia and why. Unfortunately, because of Polly and Digory’s original intercession (which I mentioned above), it didn’t end up that way. This time their entrance was accidental (OR WAS IT?), although what shows up in here is the greater powers allowing that the Emperor-over-the-Sea might have had a hand in it. As for dead worlds serving as passageways – man, I just had no idea what was going on with that book, I was leaving my options open. But I don’t think the mad annotator was in Narnia; she was in another world, but not this one.

“This was all an accident?” Polly said, blinking.

“Not necessarily,” said Father Christmas. “Some things that seem like accidents are done on purpose, the whimsies of my kin or of the Emperor-over-the-Sea. But there is little way to tell, and such things are not in my realm. If you can stir yourselves, come outside! I have presents for you.”

starlady also asked about Father Christmas’s relation to Aslan – I think they’re cousins of some sort? I have the vague idea that all the greater powers (Aslan, Tash, Father Christmas, etc.) are all related, sort of, in the sense that they’re related to/descended from the Emperor-over-the-Sea. But they’re all working towards their own purposes, and the Emperor-over-the-Sea probably has his own purposes too. Father Christmas doesn’t want to be the kind of god Aslan or Tash is, though – he’s more the Hermes messenger type. But they’re probably more or less equal in terms of power.

He backed out of the cave, slowly, and Gale followed him, frowning to himself. Polly shoved her hands into warm sleeves of her coat and ventured out after him, Digory behind him. Despite the cold and the falling snow, she smiled to see the reindeer under the shadows of the trees, the decorated sleigh she’d seen hundreds of times in her picture books and the heavy sack inside it. Father Christmas heaved it out of the sleigh and onto the snow, tugging at the opening until it opened, and Polly leaned forward to see what was inside. There were all the usual things that she thought of as belonging to Father Christmas – stuffed animals, dolls, toy soldiers – but she could also see a sword with a golden lion’s head for a hilt, an unstrung bow tipped with ivory, and a silver shield with a red lion on it. Father Christmas pushed these aside, muttering, “Not yet,” to himself, and leaned down to pick up what looked like a small vial wrapped in red leather as it fell out of the sack.

Because some things are destined. I love this, though. The Gifts! I played a bit with having whatever Edmund’s Gift would have been if he’d been with his siblings be there, but at this point it wouldn’t have meant anything and I didn’t know what it be. Besides – maybe he was meant to betray them the entire time, and there never was a Gift for him. Who knows?

Who was it who was rewatching LWW and getting a kick out of, you know, “Teddy bear, doll, sword of destiny, more teddy bears…” snacky, maybe? It was a while ago, anyway.

He found what he was looking for eventually and turned around, smiling at them. “The young lady first,” he invited, and Polly took an uncertain step forward, taking what he passed into her hands. It was round, wrapped in red silk, and she pulled the silk off curiously. It looked like an over-large marble, clear glass shot through with threads of green and gold. It sat heavy in the palm of her hand.

“Thank you,” she said. “But – what is it?”

“A memory,” said Father Christmas. “Things are not always what they seem to be when one travels between worlds, and not everything can travel. Travel can be dangerous, something that both of you would do well to heed.”

NO IDEA, GUYS. NO IDEA. This was, like, the most frequent question I got asked in feedback. What the fuck was up with that marble, Bed? I said this in response: “I think my vague idea about Polly's gift is that memory is this vague, intangible, fragile thing that can be easily disrupted by travel across worlds, and what happened in Narnia, this time and the first time, is something she should remember no matter what.” If you’ve read my other fic, you’ll remember that it’s a running theme that memory doesn’t really work normally when it comes to Narnia once you’re back in England, so that’s what I was thinking of at the time. Or something. Not sure if the gift is coming from Father Christmas or if he’s just the messenger.

“We will,” Polly said, wrapping the silk back around the marble. She slipped it into her pocket, where it banged comfortably against her hip. She started to step back, but Father Christmas said solemnly, “There is one thing more that I would ask you to do for me, a favor.”

“I – of course,” Polly said, blinking in surprise. Why would Father Christmas need anyone to do favors for him, especially someone like her? “What is it?”

He produced a long flat object from the sack, pulling back the silk covering it so that she could see it was a painting of a ship on an ocean – fairly innocuous, she thought, before he pulled the cover back over it. “I must ask you to keep this for some time,” he told her. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you how long, but you will know when it must leave your hands. Can you do that for me?”

“I can,” she said, and took it when he gave it to her. It was big enough that she had to hold it with both hands.

I don’t know if giving this origin to the painting of the Dawn Treader is a cop-out or not (no painter, no origin story – that we know of), but it’s not like we know anything else about it. Just that it was given to Alberta Scrubb by someone she can’t afford to offend by getting rid of it. And you don’t fuck with Polly Plummer, man. Er, I think Polly is probably some kind of relative of Alberta and Helen Pevensie (I could be wrong – I can’t remember if Alberta is Helen’s sister or Papa Pevensie’s sister).

“And Digory Kirke,” said Father Christmas. Digory stepped forward, looking rather nervous.

“Sir?”

His present was wrapped in silk as well. Polly craned her head to see as Digory unlocked it, looking down at the big iron key in his hand uncertainly. “What is it for?” he asked.

This is the part where I say the gifts in this piece were simultaneously my biggest cop-out and one of the successes of the piece, because I was mostly going, “Shit shit shit Father Christmas has to give them something um um um – I’ll give Digory the key to the room in the house where the Wardrobe ends up!” but a lot of readers interpreted it as the key that Peter has in LB, which he uses to shut the door to Narnia after Aslan ends the world. I actually never thought of this, because I tend to pretend that LB doesn’t exist. This is why intelligent readers are the best thing ever.

“You’ll know when the time comes,” said Father Christmas. He looked suddenly very old. “Your position is not one to be envied, and for that I am deeply sorry. There are those that have destinies, and those who have a world that they were not meant to enter forced upon them. Still, you have a part in it now, and that is no small thing.”

“I see,” Digory said after a moment. He didn’t look happy at being told he had no destiny.

Digory & Polly v. Pevensies. I tend to think that destiny/fate and free will are connected – the choices that are made lead inevitably to what was meant to be. Or something, anyway. Once Digory and Polly did what they did in MN, it set into motion the events that followed. But it might have happened another way – it didn’t have to happen that way. But it did. Or maybe someone else out there has a Plan. (Hint: it ain’t Aslan.) And once you’re in, you’re in. Can’t back out.

Someone pointed out that it seemed very sad that Digory (and probably by extension Polly) has no destiny. I didn’t think it at the time? But I can see it. (This is pretty much the recurring theme of this commentary, isn’t it?)

“And you, prince,” Father Christmas said. Gale straightened up.

“My lord.”

“No lord,” Father Christmas rebuked him softly. “Come. We will talk alone.”

Gale stepped forward. They went together into the trees, still in sight, but far enough away that Polly and Digory couldn’t hear them talking. The lead reindeer shook its head slightly, its tack jingling, and Polly smiled slowly at it.

“Do you want to go home?” it asked, and she almost dropped the painting.

HI RUDOLPH. *cough* I think at one point I wanted to give him a red nose, but I forgot. Also…that might have been silly. Or maybe not! Anyway, it didn’t happen, alas.

“Yes,” Digory said. “Yes, if we can –”

“If Himself will take you, then you can,” said the reindeer. “He said you’re not supposed to be here, didn’t he? So you shouldn’t be here.”

“I suppose,” Polly said after a moment. “Unless we are supposed to be here. Unless –”

“Well, we’ll see then, shan’t we?” the reindeer said.

Polly and Digory looked at each other.

“I think,” Digory said slowly, “I think Father Christmas is right. I think we’re not supposed to be here. I feel like we were never supposed to come back, that we were only supposed to come here once – if at all. And if we changed things from how they were supposed to be, or made them worse somehow, then we should go as soon as possible, before we do something even worse.”

At some point “supposed to” becomes a moot point.

Polly hung onto the painting. “I suppose,” she said, though she didn’t feel as sure now. “But we are here, so maybe –”

“Just because we’re here doesn’t mean we’re supposed to be,” Digory said firmly. “You heard Father Christmas.”

“Yes, but,” Polly said, and then stopped. She wanted to go home, back to the manor where it was warm, and summer, and six-headed monsters weren’t trying to eat her. “Do you think we did this?” she asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “And I think – if we did, I don’t think we can do anything about it, so we should stop wondering if we did. There’s nothing we can do to fix it, if there’s even anything wrong.”

Polly nodded, looking into the trees, where Gale and Father Christmas were still talking. She saw Gale straighten up slightly, looking surer of himself than he had before, and the two of them came back. Gale was holding something in his hand; Polly couldn’t see what it was.

“I think,” he said to them, “that it is time to say farewell to you both. I am glad I met you, though I can only wish that the circumstances might have been better.”

“What are you going to do?” Digory asked. “Are you going to get off the island, or –”

“I will go and speak to the Duke of the Lone Islands,” Gale said. He raised his chin. “And then I shall kill Scylla and give the Lone Islands to my father the king for a Christmas present.”

Polly blinked. So did Digory. “Er, good luck?” he offered.

“No luck,” Gale said. He sounded suddenly weary. “Father Christmas has told me that my older brother died in a fall two days ago: I am heir to the throne of Narnia.”

Gale: pretty badass. Pretty good-looking. Not as smart as one might hope. Although I guess it worked out okay for him and for Aslan, not so well for the Lone Islands. At one point Polly and Digory were going to be with him the whole time, but, er, remember when I said I was working on a deadline? This was about one day before it.

“I’m so sorry,” Polly said automatically, and he shrugged, looking uncomfortable.

“I am glad I met you,” he said again.

Father Christmas picked his bag of presents up and put it back into the sleigh. “Come,” he said, patting the seat in the back. “I think that perhaps Aslan does not want you here, not when he wars with Calypso. I have no interest in being here when the gods of men fight each other over territory and if you are wise, you will not either.”

autumnia asked whether Calypso ever shows up again in Narnia or the Lone Islands, since canon suggests that Aslan beat her in this particular contest (or that Gale beat Scylla, more likely). I don’t know about Narnia or the Lone Islands, but in the Warsverse she’s one of Terebinthia’s patron gods. The volcano at the center of the island in The Coastwise Lights and The White Harvest is called Calypso’s Heart; I think the story on the throne room doors that Osumare sees is her story.

“No,” Polly said firmly, and Digory nodded. Meeting the Witch had been bad enough for both of them. She handed Digory the painting to hold, then turned to hug Gale, quick and impulsive. “I’m glad to have met you,” she said firmly, then climbed into the sleigh and took the painting back. Digory shook Gale’s hand.

When they were settled in the back of the sleigh, Father Christmas climbed into the front, picking up the reins. Polly waved at Gale, and he raised a hand to them, his face grim. In the distance, Scylla roared, and the reindeer leapt forward without a word from Father Christmas.

The wind was cold against Polly’s chapped cheeks, and she huddled down into her fur coat, shivering. She could see the trees flying by on either side of them, then the rocky shores of the island, and then, with a shock like lightning, she realized that they were over the ocean, Charybdis swirling hungrily beneath them before they passed over her.

“Close your eyes!” Father Christmas warned, laughing. “This is not for mortals to see.”

Polly squeezed her eyes shut, clutching the painting grimly in front of her with both hands. The wind slapped at her cheeks, pulling her hair back from her face. She could hear something that seemed like humming, first faint and distant, then louder and louder, like a fly trapped in a bottle that was trying to get free. It thrummed in her bones, in her blood, in her pulse, and she felt herself gasping for air. Digory’s breathing was harsh in her ear.

“Don’t open your eyes,” said Father Christmas.

Polly gritted her teeth, feeling them grind together. The pressure seemed to be building and building, no way to break through. She felt like a balloon filled past capacity, like she was going to burst –

There are many ways of traveling between worlds; this isn’t one mortals are meant to take.

And then it was over, so abruptly that she almost didn’t realize it; the absence appearing between one heartbeat and the next. She clutched at the wooden frame of the painting in front of her as if there was nothing else in the world.

“Remember the painting,” Father Christmas breathed in her ear. In the distance, she heard the faint sound of bells.

She opened her eyes. She and Digory were sitting under the table in her bedroom, and the smell of fresh-cut hay filled the air. Polly sneezed.

“Poll,” said Digory slowly and opened his palm. She looked at the key there, then up at him. “I just remembered,” he said, “there’s a room upstairs that’s been locked as long as Father remembers – he said the key was lost a long time ago. Do you think –”

The room that the Wardrobe is later placed in.

“Maybe your destiny’s to unlock the door,” Polly suggested, and sneezed again. She climbed out from under the table, dragging the painting with her, and looked around. The book that had started all this was open on the table, with the little ink drawing in the corner of the page, but the room looked untouched. It was as if nothing had ever happened, as if the past day had all been a dream. Only Polly had never had dreams like that.

She looked down at the painting. The silk covering had fallen away, and when she looked back under the table it was nowhere to be seen; maybe it had been left on Father Christmas’s sleigh. Here, in the England, it looked innocuous, not really of the quality of a Van Gogh or a Michelangelo, the sort of thing she might study in school. It was just a painting of a ship with a dragon’s head, like a Viking longship, running before the waves. It was almost absurd in its ordinariness.

Digory was looking down at the key. “Something’s going to happen,” he said softly, turning it over in his hands. It caught the light from the setting sun, playing it briefly over the painting before he turned it again. “And it’s not going to be to us, but –”

“We started it,” Polly said, and sneezed.

Beginnings. Strange things, aren’t they? Hmm, to wrap up the last question I was asked, about whether Digory and Polly ever tell this story to the Pevensies, Eustace, and Jill – I think they do, at one of those dinner meetings Tirian interrupts in LB. But in a lot of ways, this Narnia, these Lone Islands, are so different that they’re almost impossible to recognize – there’s very little in common with the Narnia of the Golden Age or of Caspian’s time. But that’s the joy of it, isn’t it?

Comments

[autumnia]

Awesome, awesome. Thanks so much for putting this up and letting us see a bit of your thought/writing process at work here. I think I need to re-read the story again to get all this; I love how readers can see so many different things from what the author originally intended. :-)

[bedlamsbard]

Hey, I'm just glad the readers are as smart as they are, because a lot of the time I never intended anything. As you can see, my writing process is pretty much, "Hey, what would be really cool to put right here?" It is a very refined process, obvs. Very elegant. :)

[snacky]

I enjoyed this! I especially remember discussing the title with you during beta and being all, HERE IS SOMETHING FROM THE ODYSSEY! but too late because you had already chosen Eliot. :D

[bedlamsbard]

WHEN IN DOUBT CHOOSE ELIOT. It is my rule of thumb when it comes to Narnia. :)

[starlady]

This was fascinating. Thank you for posting, I really enjoyed reading it!

[bedlamsbard]

I'm glad you enjoyed it! I had Thoughts on this one.