HOPE
The little red cobbled street had been shoveled and swept clean for the occasion.
The inhabitants had dared a lot in the last few days in this year of all years. A lot more than they had ever imagined might even be possible. They knew they had approached 100 years of perpetual winter and were hoping against hope that the spell might be coming to its ending.
Over the last few years, some people had even begun repeating the old prophecy about the four thrones of Cair Paravel and two daughters of Eve and two sons of Adam, as if it meant something. A few even thought they had seen a son of Adam or daughter of Eve about. But it was probably wishful thinking and they had just spied a dryad or two in one of their less treeish moments on one of the days when there was some warm sun sneaking a look whilst it blazed down on some happier land.
There were even one or two bright decorations coyly festooning some of the frosty windows with the curtains pulled back to give each other a little bit of Narnian courage. This was rather a risk, but somehow it seemed the right thing to do. The old Helenian calendars that a few still kept hidden away told them that it was nearly Christmas time. In some families the novel tradition had been passed down that in the absence of Father Christmas, it was a fine thing to do to exchange gifts with each other!
The dwarf family assisted by their old friend the red satyr had even chopped down a small spruce and had brought it in from the cold, but instead of displaying it where unfriendly eyes might spy their festive mood, it was dragged down the hall and disappeared into the mysterious depths of the dwarfs' rambling warren.
That had been accomplished only one week before now, only a short while after the local police force had loped off in a hurry towards Her House, answering a mysterious summons.
No-one was quite sure of the full truth but there had been witnesses to some steps in the events.
The story went that Giant Rumblebuffin had finally lost his temper about his chilblains and the hopeless jumble of stone slabs he and his family had tried to call home for the last 13 years. For these 13 years, they had been turfed out of their snug old caverns up on the edge of the Northern Moors and set to carving smooth sledge paths. As the Hundred Years Winter was drawing to a close, Jadis, Queen of Narnia, Chatelaine of Cair Paravel and Empress of the Lone Islands, seemed to be feeling less secure in her tenure so she now had a network of smooth sledge highways criss-crossing Narnia so she could get anywhere within the main valley lands in the space of a day.
People's eyes and mouths were wide with delight at the telling that Rumblebuffin had gone right up to Her House with his club, demanding that She accommodate him and his suffering siblings in the warmth and shelter of her enormous castle, or he would knock holes in the roofs of Her towers. It would have been very funny to watch. She didn't just turn him immediately to stone, because he had already managed to clamber up onto a parapet and was looming over her throne-room and the chamber of records. The parapet was already crumbling and thirty tons of grey marble is one of the worst things to have fall onto your seat of power.
For a while, Jadis had been reduced to running about on the ground stamping her feet whilst she called for her Chief servants to rescue the situation by negotiation. In the end she managed to coax him down herself, by making false promises and offering him and his family the huge haunches of steaming roast elephant that she had conjured by pouring a few drops of her magic liquid onto the snow. Rumblebuffin was an honest chap and understood food very well if not much else, so he came down in the hope that she would let him take the food back to his family. But she had won of course and poor Rumblebuffin had become yet another statue in her courtyard. The haunches of meat were fallen on by her own servants. They thought it a fair exchange for their efforts.
But the audacity of his act of defiance had run through Western Narnia like wildfire and given hope to the inhabitants of the cold sorry clusters of caves, warrens and cottages that were dotted here and there across the frozen woodland valleys. And time to get a Christmas Tree in and not be seen… and invite a selection of the neighbourhood to witness it getting dressed.
It was also an opportunity to mount a comfort collection drive for the remaining Buffins, which was no mean feat, with them being giants and all and special treats being in such short supply. But the Narnians whose families had successfully survived 100 years of winter had ways and means of acquiring all manner of things, never fear.
Some used fair means, some used foul and some were in the pay of the Queen herself, but the comforts of the wider world had ways of entering this frozen land that not even its tyrannical ruler could always detect.
One of the intrepid witnesses of the event with the giant and now an invited guest for the evening's anticipated festivities was just now trotting along the cobbled street towards the dwarfs' warren. He was carrying a small bundle of packages, slung over his shoulder with pieces of red bark twine and a thick red woolen scarf wrapped around his neck to protect it from the cold air. His curly black hair was gleaming and his tight little goatee jutted out jauntily from his chin with a little upward curl. He was attending a Christmas party and he was a faun. His name was Tumnus.