Written for the 2012 NFE for WingedFlight. Slightly tweaked and rechaptered for reposting.
Dear God, I was utterly lost when the galaxies crossed.
~ Owl City
I.
England
The Fifth Year of King Edward VII
The little boy sat on the bottom step, watching the setting sun color the sky. He knew his colors. Aunt 'Ears'ry had teached him. The clouds were purple and orange, and the sky was blue. Grass was green. His breeches were brown. A black ant crawled across his bare foot and into a crack in the step, carrying a white crumb. He looked up again at the thickening purple clouds and sniffed the air. It would rain later tonight. He hugged Yi, his stuffed yellow lion, closer. Yi was missing one eye and his mane was worn away, but he was Yi.
The little boy was hungry. He looked down at the crack in the step, but no more ants crawled by. Ants were good to eat. There was a green field not far away, but he didn't see any bushes that looked like berries, or any trees with fruit. He wanted someone to come get him and take him home to the burrow, where it was warm and dry and cozy and there was bread and honey to eat. He shouldn't be out all by himself like this. Mrs. 'Winklewacks and Aunt 'Ears'ry and Mr. and Mrs. 'Nuffleroot always said so. He must stay safe, must hide from—from the bad lady with the hard-to-say name, and from her Wolves.
The door opened behind him and the little boy jumped up. What if it was the bad woman? He had to look very far up to see, but it wasn't a Giant. It was a Man. Girl Mans had no fur on their faces; boy Mans had some fur. This was a Man, and his fur was black and white—not striped like Mr. 'Nuffleroot's brother's, but all speckly.
"Hullo!" said the Man. "What have we here?"
The boy suddenly remembered his manners and bowed. Mrs. 'Winklewacks would say he should set Yi down before he bowed, but this was a strange Man, and he mustn't trust strangers—not strange Nanimals and not strange Mans, and not strange Trees, either.
"Well, what's your name, son?" said the Man. His voice didn't sound strange. It sounded kind.
"Fwank."
"How d'you do?" said the Man. He stuck out his hand.
Slowly, Frank reached up and took one of the Man's fingers. "Gweeting, Mr. Man."
Mr. Man laughed and bounced his hand up and down once. "Nowadays they mostly call me Reverend Colin, but you can call me Mr. Man if you want. Nippy out, isn't it? Want to come in my office and have a ginger-beer?"
Frank pulled his hand back and looked at Mr. Man warily. Mrs. 'Winklewacks said, No strange Mans. Was this a strange Man? He smelled like the smoke from Uncle Pewiwig's pipe, and Uncle Pewiwig wasn't strange. He smelled like other things, too, things Frank didn't know—but his voice didn't sound strange, either. And it was cold, and it was going to rain. The bad lady might come and make it snow again. And Frank liked ginger.
"Yes," he lisped at last, and took Mr. Man's hand.
II.
Narnia
The First Year of High King Peter
The morning after their coronation, the children had awoken in a heap of cushions and found themselves with a country on their hands, and though it was not a very big country, neither were they very big children, and there was a great deal to be done. All the seed grain had been eaten during the Winter, the land had been cut off from international politics for a century, and no one remembered which herbs were good for ague. Those were lean days, when the creatures of Narnia were thin and pale, frightened and no longer knowing how to live in summer freedom—but wine was plentiful, there were fish in the sea and fresh greens on the hills, and the Narnians had not forgotten how to dance or tell stories.
Besides, the children weren't facing all the work alone, for a small group of Narnians—some of whom (such as Timeseer, a Centaur who knew just everything) had been statues in the Witch's house since the beginning of the Winter, and some of whom (such as Libruns, their first scribe) were children of the Winter—had elected to come and live at Cair Paravel. Nor was their new life all work and worry. In keeping with an ancient decree of King Frank the First, which Edmund unearthed in the dusty archives and Timeseer confirmed, they scrubbed, trained, and studied six days of the week and rested on the seventh.
On the second Seventhday since the coronation they spent the day down on the beach. The evenings were still coolish, and as the sun swung low, Edmund showed Lucy how to build a driftwood fire on the sand. They were all getting rather tired of fish, but Clearscry the Eagle had caught enough for the whole household, and when Peter had cleaned those the Cats and Dogs didn't want, Susan and Mrs. Twinkletacks the Hedgehog (her help and direction was proving invaluable in that first, overwhelming spring cleaning) roasted the fish over the fire and baked flat oatcakes in the coals, the way Roongrath the Centaur had shown them.
"Can't be healthy, Human children eating Centaur food," said Reedywhistle, an old Marshwiggle who had shown up that morning.
Susan smiled up at him. "We've been eating them for more than a fortnight now, and we've eaten oatmeal porridge for longer than that. How were the marshes?"
Reedywhistle rearranged his usually somber features into a near-sepulchral expression. "Terrible. Shameful, the way the country's been run down."
"How have they come through the winter?" asked Edmund.
"The marshes froze, of course. Now half the wigwams are flooded, and they're eking out what existence they can from stewed eels and boiledfrogs."
Lucy's eyes widened.
"With all the fuss, the old ones haven't bothered to teach the young ones proper manners. The whole lot of them is frolicking like a band of rowdy Fauns merely because the winter's over." He scowled.
Susan wondered if the statues had felt time passing, and if Reedywhistle had any idea how long the winter had really been.
"Disgraceful, it is. Before long they will be kicking up their heels, and lighting off fireworks as a regular thing."
Ocellus the Leopard stretched and rolled so his other side was by the fire. "Hardly think there's any danger of that. What are they singing? Dirges?"
"Where will you live? Up in the marshes?" asked Peter.
"Up in the marshes!" He puffed thick, muddy smoke from his pipe, highly affronted. "With those ruffians? I think not. I shall build myself a wigwam on the other side of the river, far from the carryings-on you lot are bound to have here at the castle. Of course, the damp will likely give me rheumatism, or even pneumonia, but 'twill be just the thing to steady me after all this frippery and celebration, and how you Humans are supposed to get across a flooded river without webbed feet, I'll never know. What you need is a ferry. "
Timeseer had been standing a little ways away, gazing at the sunset, his arms folded across his chest. "Wise advice," he said now.
"Well, that's one more thing done," said Peter. "No roads yet, Edmund, but we'll get there."
Edmund grinned. "I think we need a dance floor first, with all the dancing Susan and Lucy are doing."
"Oh, yes!" said Lucy. "But it's more fun to dance in the grass with the Fauns."
Susan yawned and stretched out on the sand. "I'm too tired to dance tonight. Someone should tell a story."
"Not one of those boring ones from that book Edmund and Libruns are reading, please," said Lucy.
"They're not boring!" said Edmund.
"I have a tale," said Timeseer before they could argue about it. "Shall any listen?"
"What tale have you?" said Peter, as he had learned.
"A tale of Narnia," said the Centaur. "A tale of death and witchery, of love and life, of faith and loyalty, a tale of my time. It is the tale of King Frank the Lost."
"We listen," said Peter. "Tell us your tale."
III.
Narnia and Telmar
The Ninth Year of High King Peter and the Thirty-Fourth Year of Chief Belisan
It was just after midsummer when High King Peter and Queen Lucy visited Telmar. Telmarine ruffians and brigands were making a nuisance of themselves in the Western March, hunting along Narnia's southwest border, and two Narnians, Bristletail the Wolf and Nibbleaf the Rabbit, were accidentally shot and killed. After a flurry of letters to Timeseer, now Chief of the Moongrove Centaurs, Peter and Lucy sent a message ahead and set off for Telmar, accompanied by Clearscry the wise Eagle and twelve Winged Horses, and riding on the back of a not-overly-clever Dragon named Chrysophylax, who normally lived in a cave by Knucker's Mere with a pile of gold cursed by the White Witch.
Flying down on the Dragon was Lucy's idea. She spent a long day riding the twenty-five miles to Knucker's Mere to recruit him, then ten miles down to the plain where the Winged Horses lived (she promised them a bag of sugar cubes) and at last to Paravel. She and Chrysophylax liked each other, and she adored flying. Peter hated every minute of it, but Timeseer had advised impressing Telmar with Narnia's might, and the alternative was marching through the mountains with a large warband. He could, of course, have sent Edmund, who had no trouble with heights, but Lucy insisted that she was going along, and Peter wasn't about to send Lucy off on the first visit to what Timeseer had described as "a motley and warlike people." Even if hints from Timeseer and the other advisors about the Future of Narnia and Heirs to the Thrones were neither subtle or infrequent, and even if the Animals were hoping Susan would marry King Aran of Terebinthia. He didn't want to think about that.
So it was Peter sitting on the Dragon's back behind Lucy, strapped into the Dwarf-engineered harness, his arms wrapped around his sister's waist and his eyes squinched shut; while she went into raptures over the view and then (being tired) leaned back and took a nap on his shoulder. They reached the mountains on the evening of the second day, and that night were joined by Loneruff the Wolf and part of his pack. Bristletail had been Loneruff's lieutenant, his second-in-command, and the Alpha Wolf was angry.
All the next day, they flew through the mountains, but not until evening did they see anyone. While they were unloading and making camp, two men stepped out of the trees, dressed in fringed leather and armed with bows and arrows. All the hackles on Loneruff's neck went up when he caught their scent. He rushed and knocked down the shorter of the men; then stood over him and snarled.
Peter set down the bundle he was holding. "What goes here?"
"I didn't do anything!" said the man on the ground, trying to push the great Wolf off him. The second man reached for his bow, but the other five Wolves were ringed around him, and he stopped.
"This Man killed Bristletail." said Loneruff. "My brother cried out and said, 'Do not shoot me, for I am a Narnian,' but the hunter did not listen. He shot him, stripped him of his skin, and left his body to rot."
The man was whimpering now. "Call off your wolf, call off your wolf!"
Loneruff snarled and snapped, teeth dangerously close to the man's throat.
Peter stepped forward. "Peace, Loneruff." His voice was cold. "Telmarine churl. Didst thou do this thing?"
"I—I didn't mean to! I didn't know he was anything special!"
"You address the High King of Narnia, worm!" snarled Loneruff, and Chrysophylax hissed, mostly because he really was a wyrm, and a very good one.
"Didst thou slay a Talking Beast of Narnia?" said Peter.
"I—I killed a wolf, sir. Biggest wolf I ever saw, sir."
Loneruff snapped his teeth, dangerously close to the man's throat.
"Peter—" said Lucy.
"Hath this other done aught?"
"I do not know, Your Majesty," said Loneruff. "But if one would kill a Narnian, so would the other."
"Telmarine," Peter said to the second man, whose hand was frozen half-way to his bow. "How art thou called?"
"Nothan, sir."
"Beware, Nothan of Telmar. We arrest thee not this day, but stray not again onto Narnian soil, and spill not Narnian blood, else it shall go hardly with thee."
"Aye, sir," said Nothan.
"Release him," said Peter, and the Wolves drew back, growling low in their throats. "We shall take the other to his chief."
Peter and Lucy were the only ones with hands, so they had to do the honors with the rope. Peter tied the man's wrists together and gave him to Chrysophylax to watch. "Flee, and the Dragon shall be after thee," said Peter.
Then the Wolves and the Eagle went hunting, separately, while Peter built a fire, the Winged Horses grazed, and Lucy laid out the bedrolls.
Herding Boanzir, the Telmarine prisoner, slowed the Wolves the next day, and the party didn't come to the last pass until late afternoon. Peter called a halt in a small clearing, just this side of the pass, and all the Horses circled gracefully down out of the sky. They stood with Clearscry, grooming their feathers, while Peter donned his mail shirt and Lucy went behind a clump of trees to change into a fresh dress. Peter was buckling his sword belt when she came out, her bow and quiver slung across her back and her dagger at her side. She had let her hair out of its windblown braid, so that it tumbled in riotous curls to her waist, restrained only by her golden circlet. She handed Peter his, and he put it on.
"Ready?"
He nodded.
Most of the food they were carrying had been eaten, so they made room on Chrysophylax for Boanzir, the captive hunter, leaving the Wolves free to run. Clearscry the Eagle led the way, then Chrysophylax the Dragon, with twelve Winged Horses fanned behind them like a skein of geese. And so they burst through the last mountain pass, a pack of Wolves loping beneath them, and flew down into the valley of Telmar.