This story is one of the most I've done with an original plot line and characters, I hope it will be received well. I base this fanfic off of the first book in the series the Magicians Nephew. I feel that was my favorite one to read when I was young, this is my way of bringing it back to life for myself.
My goal is expand obviously on this great story, but more importantly to honor the many girls & young women whom I know had to exist. In a time where a lady was expected to act & think certain ways, some were different, some did not want conformity & they strove for change in many different ways. Those women who set all women on the path to equality. This is also for the young girls & women who still struggle today in the creation of themselves. Those who are still trapped, judged & ostracized for their gender, the way that they are or how they are different.
May you all find the way!
As the story goes on Beth will ultimately play a large part in the founding of Narnia this is her back-story & how she came to find herself. In many ways Beth is a compilation of my own life experiences & personal issues as well as my best friend's, compiled into one person. I thank her for being an inspiration & in her life pulling light out of the dark & shinning brighter than anyone who said she wouldn't, knew was possible.
This is for you :)
The Forsaken Sister
[The Wood between the Worlds]
It seems as though in any wonderful story, or tale of beauty and wonder, there is always a forsaken character, a forgotten chess piece if you will. One who had every right in the world to have their story told, but it just so happens theirs fell between the cracks of the more illustrious & well known characters. They were given a part that holds its own merit, but it just so happened that their journey was meant to be followed on their own. Only the entities that were the providers of the journey were ever present, or partially, to view the characters as they wrote their own stories. To chuckle in delight as the meaning was grasped. Or with one orchestrator in particular to purr with contentment as he watched one of his daughters find herself. This is the forgotten tale of that daughter in particular.
There are many who believe they know the full story of the fateful day that Digory Kirke & Polly Plummer, through a string of accidental circumstance, fell into, quite literally, the mysterious & magical world of Narnia. But as they were just the beginning of something so powerful & influential in the lives of many, they were not the only ones who unlocked the secrets of that world.
On that fateful morning, Polly explored & skipped around the Plummer's decently sized backyard. She was dressed in one of her many pairs of white Oxford style dresses, along with a set of navy blue stockings. She was now able to wear increasingly more formal & stiff clothing as she aged. Although Polly was young, naive ever idealistic & she was beginning to develop that ever present heir of snootiness, this was still to be expected of someone of her age. This fact was also to be thanked for the environment & figures by which she had been raised. Polly had become the compliant, self-centered & "lovely" model of a young British born & bred girl. Mrs. Plummer, her aunts, & her grandmother were also all properly brought up British women, from which was the source of her demeanor. Polly embodied the prized & lovely daughter, the one that Mrs. Plummer never missed a chance to shine her affection & preference on, around her gaggle of shallow & ditsy women friends. In this way her older sister-Beth was the complete yang to Polly's yin.
As Polly skipped about the backyard & hummed over-sung nursery rhymes, Beth leaned up against the door frame of the back door & rolled her eyes as her little sunshine sister hummed the words of those childish rhymes she was quite literally sick of hearing. It was if this damned country she lived in had no originality or inventiveness at all, save a few philosophers & scholars that she made a priority to keep up to date on.
Beth was 18 & she was without a doubt the black sheep in her family. Although she was without a doubt an ethereal beauty, her closed off nature tended to make people view her as uninteresting & dull. She had insisted on finishing high school, something most girls of her age in that era simply did not do. She knew that her father brought in enough money to afford it, despite her mother's fronts that they did not.
Beth was the devious & secretive child she knew what to make her business for her own survival. She had cracked & memorized the code to her father's safe by the time she was 14, also making it a weekly priority to read & copy both of her parents check ledgers & payments from their many accounts. She knew very well her parents could afford to keep her in school like she wanted.
It was as if her mother simply gave up shaping Beth into the young lady she wanted her to be. A good English girl was not to put off the heir in which Beth did often times people, even those her own age, knew not how to approach her. She put off an attitude of foreboding, brooding & an almost other worldliness that kept most from her, save her few superficial school friend. She was a girl who kept to herself, seeing no need to dabble in this transparent world that she was so unfortunately plopped into. She had made peace with the fact that she did not belong anywhere & settled with fading into the darkness of it, hoping to maybe settle down someday somewhere remote, even a different country.
She had, however, learned to enjoy her uniqueness & treasure it among the cookie cutter British girls of her time. Her father possessed an interesting blend of Scandinavian & possibly Romanian features, it was all slightly misconstrued idea in his side of the family, but she had good reason to believe it was true. With her mother's British & fay like facial features, this lent her an overall definitive crystalline attributes.
That morning as she leaned against the frame of their back door with one foot brought up to rest against it, quite characteristically. She sipped slowly & savoringly at a small cup of her favorite herbal tea. The steam came off the surface in delicate waves caressing her face, delighting her skin & nose with its warmth as she breathed in the mint aroma. The morning sun steadily rose over the many neighboring homes & long apartment like connected houses such as the one her family lived in. The rays of the sun graced the lines of her strong & chiseled jawline in profile, moving along over to her smooth wide & sweeping cheekbones. Across her interestingly shaped nose, that sloped down her face in one consistent width until spanning out to gracefully form the curves of the flare of her nostrils. The ever increasing light making her squint her almond shaped hazel green eyes. Her hair was closest to an dark auburn brown but just like everything else about her, the appearance changed often, with certain conditions & without warning. Beth possessed delicate lips that were topped off by a slightly bowed upper lip. In itself the shape of her lips were nothing extraordinary but the way she used them in speaking & displaying her emotions was.
She remained poised in her position as she observed Polly, Beth had drew her attention away from her younger sister for one moment to look into the sunrise & she was already talking to a stranger from over the wall. She caught snippets of a young boy's voice.
"No doubt the scraggly neighbor boy," she pandered to herself as usual.
Soon he was climbing over to the fence, into their yard to talk to her, Just like a little boy, she thought. Clearly Polly had not thought to look behind her. He had obviously not spotted Beth watching from afar, but at that point enough bushes from their garden & a decently sized tree kept him from seeing her in the doorway, she was free to listen.
She heard portions of Polly's obvious pestering & importune questions that were met with the boy's quick whip answers. Such as a comment to each other that their names were funny or sounded weird, or denying that it was & a reaffirming by the former. His impertinent & outright rudeness towards Polly, still due to his being a child, made Beth chuckle to herself.
"I know the last name of the family next door, I have heard it before, but it escapes me," she whispered.
"Kirke, Digory Kirke, that's his name, still visiting his estranged aunt & uncle, Mister & Misses Ketterley on account of his sick mother I see," she said decisively & acidly to herself.
"Whatever could an adventurous boy such as he have to say to such a dry & uninteresting childlike Polly," she sneered.
If only she could have wished for such a friend when she was young, Digory & Beth could have become great friends if she was still his age. Polly always seemed to conveniently luck out, even being the eldest child she always received the short end of the stick, age had no effect on the matter, favoritism was the currency.
She then caught Digory's laughable statement, "You would cry too if you had been brought to live in a beastly hole like this!"
A beastly hole it was, for that comment she could not agree more. Maybe there were other people who hated their lives just as much as she did, not likely, she reaffirmed herself.
She continued to listen now with a new interest, not as offhandedly as before, she was thoroughly curious.
He continued on with some talk about India, where his father was, how miserable his life was & his Aunt's ridiculous rules about her household. She could already assume Polly was pretending to listen & had already drifted off into her own little world. She did that often, provoking Beth to nearly fume at the happenstance of it. Whenever Beth was made to talk to her she was going to make damn sure she would listen, but Polly was naturally fanciful in that way, also much like their mother.
Soon she heard Polly exclaim, "How exciting, I never knew your house was so interesting!"
She would no doubt begin to tell Digory of her "secret hiding place" a place snugly behind the cistern in their box-room attic, as well as the tunnel that extended beyond that on through the entirety of the vastly long building, above all of the rafters. Of course Polly was stupid enough to assume that no one knew about her secret spot, even if Beth knew about it & had been sneaking up there since before she was born, which she had. This passing on of the secret to someone else made her curious enough to want to follow Polly to discover what she was doing up there, as she clanked around day or night. She was most likely sneaking up extra dessert & ginger beer. Beth having such a adept memory & eye for her surroundings always knew when something went missing.
As she realized Polly would soon be leading Digory inside to their attic, she silently moved back into the kitchen, so the two kids would not see that Beth had been eavesdropping on their conversations of great adventure. She sat down at the small kitchen table to finish her tea, as she heard two sets of shoes clamber by on their wood floors. Thankfully the parents were out on the town that day, it would give Beth plenty of opportunity to gather the information she wanted.
She knew Polly would not ask her permission to bring another young boy in the house with her, in this way she would do her best to avoid Beth's keen eye. This gave her the best chance at following her sneakily, this way she could not know for sure what Polly was doing up in the attic.
Before following the children unseen into the upstairs portion of their house, she retrieved & put on her pair of multi-purpose boots so as to make less noise as opposed to her wedges & to move about easier. She wore them often in situations such as these, were she had to be stealthy & skilled in her movements. Beth just knew this was going to be good.
As she went into the side hall of their house & made her way to the first landing of the stairs, she could hear their laughter & the sound of shoes scraping noisily on the floorboards followed by a quick shush from Polly.
"That little devil girl!" she sneered "She knows she shouldn't be up here to begin with. At least she has enough sense to attempt to be quiet."
Beth secured a few pins in her streaming tendrils of hair, that were escaping her up do before making her way into the musky & stale wood smelling heat of the attic. She knew she was going to stain & dirty her dress but it was no matter, she was determined. Maybe it was just her vain attempt to get precious Polly in trouble for once, but she didn't think that notion through at the time.