The night before Christmas
"Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse..."
A festive one-shot, post LWW.
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'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.'
Mrs Pevensie smiles slightly at the thought of the verse as she opens the sitting room door and slips inside. It is the night before Christmas, and everybody in the house is asleep and not stirring, apart from herself.
She just hadn't been able to sleep. Everybody is home, the war is over, it's Christmas. That should, surely, make anyone happy. But oh, dear … the Christmas...!
She walks across the room and gently fingers the six limp stockings hanging up across the mantelpiece. Little things, mostly. The war is over, but rationing isn't. A pair of mittens each, knitted from a pair of jumpers she'd unravelled; warm stockings for the girls, socks for the boys; a bar of chocolate each...
It's the feel of the last in Edmund's stocking which brings tears to her eyes. They'd never had a fortune to spend on Christmas, not like Harold and Alberta, but they had always had enough to get everybody things that they liked. And now … Edmund has chocolate, not the Turkish Delight he loves.
"Mater?"
She jumps. Edmund is standing in the doorway, snuggled in his made-out-of-two-old-blankets war-time dressing gown, and looking at her with concern. "Mater?" he repeats.
She forces a smile to her face. It is Christmas. And his term of address – well, that was Edmund. He had taken up with it suddenly, along with a whole raft of other "grown-up, tough, don't baby me" attitudes, after his first term at school. She had got used to it; there was nothing else she could do, even if she hadn't been very happy about it. Now, after their long evacuation, it's nice to hear it again. Or is it that Edmund says it slightly differently?
"You should be in bed," she says lightly. "Not up, sneaking about trying to catch a glimpse of Father Christmas."
"Oh, I've met Father Christmas," says Edmund.
That is one of the other things which has changed, definitely changed about Edmund. In fact, changed about both the boys. They have brought home from the country the most utterly dead-pan senses of humour. Not that they're nasty or anything, it just takes a little getting used to. Much easier is the whimsy Lucy has come home with. That is a delight, for she seems so grown-up in so many ways her mother can't actually put a name to at all, and yet she has this almost baby-ish belief in fairy tales. Fauns, dwarves, talking beasts – all and any such things slip forth at any moment. Often, strangely, in response to the boys' jokes, but Edmund isn't picking on her for it. They rally round Lucy, playing along with her, Susan often joining in the tale making.
"Edmund?"
'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, the children were stirring...'
It's Peter.
He is standing in the doorway where Edmund had been a moment before: tall, straight, somehow – though she hesitates to use the word and can't quite put her finger on it anyway – noble. Despite his threadbare red dressing gown.
It's like the moment on the day they came home. Professor Kirke had telegraphed that the children were on the 6:45 in carriage G. The train had drawn in, and as she hurried along looking for them, a young man had jumped down from one of the carriages and held the door open for a young lady who alighted with effortless grace and a slight, elegant touch on the young man's hand. Only when a little girl in pigtails and a beret had hopped down after them and squealed "Mother! Mother!" had she realised it was Lucy and Peter and Susan, with Edmund springing down after them. They were not the grown-up young strangers she had thought – and yet, now and then, for odd moments they seem to be so.
"Ed?" Peter comes in and pushes the door shut after himself. "I woke up and you'd gone – what are you and Mater doing down here in the cold?"
Perhaps that is the difference in Edmund's term of address: that Peter uses it too, now. Not as Edmund had ever used it before, but gravely, respectfully, lovingly. As Edmund uses it now, in fact.
They are so alike, these days, her pair of boys. Same words, same jokes, same – well, they aren't identical, but it's as if they stand shoulder to shoulder with each other.
That feeling there's something she doesn't know, about these two young men she doesn't know, grows stronger, and she seeks to brush it away. "Not another one looking for Father Christmas early," she jokes gently. "Or have you met him before, too, Peter? In the country?"
"More than Ed has," says Peter seriously.
She smiles. There's that new sense of humour again. "Well, you are the oldest."
There is a split second pause, and the two young men from the train are looking at each other.
"Yes," says the older one. "But that's not why."
That doesn't make sense. Like the other odd moments of the jokes and the whimsy and the suddenly indefinably grown-up-ness – something she doesn't understand, something almost frightening. And then Peter smiles, suddenly, and he's only her oldest son again, in a threadbare dressing gown, and whatever it was – she must have imagined it.
She shivers a little: with the cold, probably. "You boys really ought to be in bed! There's not enough for Christmas that we'd have to start on it early!"
They nod, understanding of something that shouldn't have to be understood. Children accepting a world that has been at war is not a thing that should happen, but it has – and she has to warn them. "Boys – the rationing. It's not going to be much of a Christmas. Only chicken for dinner, and I – I haven't even managed to get Turkish Delight, for you, Edmund."
He looks shocked, in fact, there's almost horror in his eyes. And then he puts his head down and mumbles: "I don't like Turkish Delight any more."
"You don't like Turkish Delight?!" Edmund has always liked Turkish Delight! "You don't need to be so chivalrous, darling," she blurts out before remembering his tough-boy stance.
But at the mention of chivalry, Edmund's head comes up again in quite a different fashion to school-boy indignation. "I don't," he says firmly. "I – I had some – in – in – "
"-in the country," Peter fills in with inexplicable speed.
Edmund nods. "I had some … too much … and I got into a lot of trouble with it."
Trouble? That was the first she's heard of any trouble during their evacuation.
"And … and He was very kind about it, and it was all right," Edmund ploughs on in a rush. "But I don't like Turkish Delight any more."
'He' was very kind? Edmund doesn't like Turkish Delight any more? The things she doesn't understand come crowding back yet again. But before she can try and even sort out any questions to ask, Peter puts one hand on her arm.
"Mater, Christmas is about more than presents. It's the start of something altogether greater. And we've had so many splendid Christmases. The special thing about this one is that we are all together."
And before she has time to even try and work out what he means by all of that, Peter first hugs her and then kisses her on both cheeks with rather less embarrassment than she would have expected from a boy his age. "Merry Christmas, Mother!"
And Edmund is here too, one arm to hug her, one arm to hug Peter. "Merry Christmas, Mother! Merry Christmas, Peter!"
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, everyone was stirring, apart from the mouse...
For here are the girls, and Father, to say the same thing.
"Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas, one and all! God bless us, every one!"
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A/N: With love and best wishes for a Very Merry Christmas to all the Old Narnians :)
I'm sorry it's only short; I'm hoping the plot bunnies will feel more inspired after a proper Christmas break from work.
Anything you recognise, of course, belongs to CSL, CC Moore or Charles Dickens.
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