A/N: This fic was inspired a little by the album Istanbul, by Jordi Savall and Hesperion XXI, but more by Clychau Dibon, an album of harp and kora duets by Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita. Both are excellent.
Warning: Any research done for this was very poor and took place largely on Wikipedia. Calormen is of course fictional, so I had no qualms about making up the Calormene harp.
Disclaimer: You tell me – just how likely is it that C.S. Lewis wrote this? (Also, the beautiful cover image is by aureliebm on deviantART – be sure to check her out!)
"Aravis," a sweet, clear voice said, and Aravis turned to see Queen Susan herself, resplendent in a gown of dark blue-green and gold, calling her name. "Would you walk with me for a while? Cor and Lucy have been taking up so much of your time that I haven't had the chance to get to know you."
Aravis nodded and followed the queen down a corridor hung with green. "That was wonderful storytelling last night," Susan remarked. "I was very much impressed, I must tell you." Aravis felt herself flush and ducked her head in thanks: the queen was referring to the previous evening, when Aravis had let herself be coaxed into showing King Lune and a few members of the Court her skills in storytelling. Admiration from this dignified queen threw her off-balance as Lucy's easy manners and Cor's familiarity did not. "Is the art generally taught in Calormen, or only to a few?"
"It is usually taught only to the children of Tarkhaans," Aravis told her, "but" – she felt compelled to admit – "other castes often pick up the skill as well, though in a less formal mode."
"It is rather formalised, isn't it?" Susan agreed. "But without becoming at all formulaic, if you see what I mean." She continued talking about Calormene literature as she led Aravis through a maze of corridors, up small sets of stairs and through rooms filled with books. The conversation flowed easily, but Aravis wasn't sure if she felt glad of it or not: on the one hand it was a relief to talk about something she knew about in such an unfamiliar place, and yet on the other…
On the other hand, it reminded her painfully of home, and she swallowed the lump in her throat as she walked.
Nothing was right here. The food, while undoubtedly delicious, just wasn't spiced right, and the flavours well-nigh unrecognisable: every time Aravis took a bite she almost felt that she had to swallow down homesickness with it, for each bite brought home the realisation that she was very far from home indeed. And neither Narnia nor Archenland had any great cities like Tashbaan, judging by the maps she had seen. The court here was smaller even than the city nearest to her father's estates, where she had gone with her nurse on market days. The buildings were strange in shape – beautiful, but so blatantly different from what she was used to that it was if the art of building in the two countries had grown from entirely different roots.
She missed the heat which, she was only now realising, had felt like an embrace around her; she missed the familiar food which she could eat heartily instead of looking at it with a little confusion; she missed the bustle of the cities and the familiar curves and shapes of the buildings; she missed the particular style of embroidery on the hangings, which, like everything else, was very different here. She missed the stories and poems her father had read to her when she was little and taught her when she was older. It was all very well for Cor to complain of how boring Calormene poetry was when his foster father had quoted proverbs from it noon and night, but, Aravis wanted to snap at him, if one actually took the trouble to read the poems slowly and appreciate the beauty of expression in them, calling them boring was nothing more than a lie. In fact, she had said as much in an argument the other day. (Cor had replied that his father was a fisherman and had kept him working from dawn till dusk, Aravis had retorted that that made no difference to the objective beauty of Calormene poetry, and the argument had only got worse from there.)
In short, Archenland was a beautiful place with many lovely things and kind people in it, but it was utterly alien. Aravis missed everything familiar, everything she knew and loved, and that missing feeling was in her all the time: it made her feel rather sick. Sometimes she could forget about it for a little while and enjoy the newness of everything here, but Archenland was only easy to like until she remembered that she wasn't just here for a short stay. She would probably never be able to return home. She would never eat Calormene food again, or hear a storyteller declaiming a legend in the way she knew, or move through the noise and bustle of the huge marketplace as easily as a fish through water. She would never again feel the heat pushing against her skin in that comfortingly familiar way, she would never see the kind of buildings whose shapes and layouts she knew by instinct, she would never eat lamb in the particular way their cook at home had prepared it, she would never –
She would never see her father again, nor any of the servants who had raised her. Not ever again. She was a stranger here and she would always be a stranger, and her family was lost to her.
Everyone here thought she'd been lucky to get away, and she had been, but she couldn't be glad of it all the time. There were beautiful things about Calormen too, things worth loving. And it was her home. It was still her home and it always would be, even after she had fled her father, even after she had lost all faith in the Tisroc (and may he die like an ordinary man, she thought privately). No matter how long she remained in Archenland, part of her would always belong to Calormen, and that part ached for home. It was a piercing ache that made her fight back tears sometimes. Missing home felt as if someone had cut a large section out of her middle, and she could always feel the lack, now.
No-one seemed to understand that.
"Ah, here we are," Queen Susan said, opening a door to reveal a room which Aravis now saw was filled with musical instruments. "The music room. I like to come here and spend a little time with my harp when I want some time to myself – that's it over in the corner. What do you think of it?"
It was beautiful, and Aravis said as much: the wooden frame was adorned with delicate, twisting metalwork, slender gold and silver patterns that looked like leaves or flowers or breaking waves. But it had a very different shape from that of the Calormene harp, and more strings to it besides, and Aravis had to look away from it rather quickly.
"Some of the dwarves at home did the metalwork for me. There are no smiths like dwarves," Queen Susan said, and her voice was warm with remembrance. Aravis found there was a lump in her throat again at that sound.
"Does Queen Lucy play too?" she asked, to change the subject a little.
Susan shook her head. "Oh, no, the harp's not her instrument. The little wooden flute is much more to her taste –" And here she did such a comic impression of Lucy merrily playing a wooden flute that Aravis couldn't help but laugh. "But that's not what I brought you here for. Look over in the other corner, and you'll see something you might recognise."
Aravis obeyed, and caught her breath. There in the corner was a Calormene harp, the shape as familiar to her as her own hands. Not just any harp, either, but one decorated with seed pearls and mother-of-pearl and – was that gold? A harp out of ancient tales.
"Do you play?" Queen Susan asked gently.
Aravis fought to find her voice. "A little," she said, understating: at home she had been accounted very good. Queen Lucy knew she played, and she wondered if Lucy had told Susan. "It's – a very beautiful instrument."
"That it is," Susan agreed. "It was a gift from the ambassador, months ago. I haven't the first idea how to play it, but it was one of my favourite gifts anyway, simply because it clearly is so very beautiful – not only as an object but as an instrument. It seems such a shame for it to go without being played." Aravis held her breath. "Would you like to try it out?"
Aravis nodded quickly, and then answered aloud, "Oh, yes, please," so as not to seem disrespectful. Queen Susan smiled, and gestured as if to say, Go ahead.
Some of the calluses had left her fingers, after her time spent without an instrument with which to practise, but the feel of the strings under her fingers was familiar as she tried out an improvisation on one of the traditional scales. She felt a sudden impulse to cry, and fought it down, switching to a simple folksong instead.
All at once Queen Susan took a seat on a stool in the corner and took up her harp. "Go on," she said, "and please, don't pay any attention to what I do: I just want to try something for a moment." A little startled, Aravis nodded and kept playing…
…and Queen Susan began to play.
The sound of the two harps together was a strange and beautiful one. The Calormene harp had a harsher, more metallic sound: it was kin to the tanbur, which was partly why it was shaped so differently. The Narnian harp, when Queen Susan played it, sounded gentler, and the sound was less… less piercing, and more encompassing. Aravis began to realise that Queen Susan was playing folksongs, too, though presumably Narnian ones, and that she was choosing them so that their chords or their melodies would intertwine with the Calormene ones. Every now and then she would change, as Aravis continued playing, to an accompaniment, something delicate in the upper registers of the harp, or an ostinato refrain dancing from the middle to the upper registers, or great ringing spread chords that covered almost the whole range of the harp. Gradually, Aravis started to scatter in moments when she allowed Susan's folksongs to come to the fore, improvising on a scale to accompany them.
Aravis' own harping made her think of the stark beauty of the mountains and the desert sky, the ever-present, sharp, static heat that pressed on you, the richness of the Tisroc's court, the gorgeous fabrics that even the loveliest northern clothing could not surpass, and that same sharp rich heat in the spices of the food she missed so much. Queen Susan's playing, meanwhile, was cool and fresh as the sea air, soft and with a simplicity to it reminiscent of the strange clothing of the northerners, and spacious as the great tall woods and grassy slopes of the north. And every now and then the two would come together in a moment that almost hurt to hear, coalescing into the unexpected beauty of the oasis.
At last, by unspoken consent, the two stopped at the same time. Aravis slowly became aware that her fingers were aching. No matter: they'd soon stop once she was back in practice. She gazed over at Queen Susan, and thought of that quiet dignity which was part of the queen, and the freedom in her harping. If Lucy is a mountain stream, she thought, that must make Susan a very still lake, with clear, cool waters. It was an odd thought.
"That was quite something," Susan said softly. "I don't remember the last time I heard anything that beautiful." She smiled at Aravis. "We must give a concert together soon, you and I."
Aravis smiled tentatively back. "I'd like that," she said, and found she really meant it.