The Gryphon, the River and the Wildcat

by Glenstorm63

This story contains no characters you know as it is set between the Magician's Nephew and The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. It explores an attempt by Jadis's minions to stage an attack on Narnia. A young Narnian boy with a unique destiny, and an urbane but anxious wildcat of impeccable character sit at the core of a series of interconnecting story threads. PLEASE comment.

1. Prologue, Notes and Summary

The Gryphon, the River and the Wildcat.

Summary:

A threat seems to be looming over Archenland and Narnia and possibly everywhere else too.

In identifying the sources and purpose of this threat, we meet a series of protagonists, secondary characters and villains. These include a young Narnian boy of Dryad ancestry with a unique destiny and his family, an urbane wildcat of dubious reputation but impeccable character, a raven of formidable powers of inquisition, a Calormene woman and her half Naead son as well as the young ruling Queen of Archenland.

Interlacing storylines and their different protagonists will eventually intersect like ripples in a pond caused by multiple stones. Character back-histories will be included throughout in a rambling series of flashbacks.

This story precedes Jadis' invasion by several hundred years. Nevertheless, if Jadis sits behind this threat, then be prepared, the author has a soft spot for Jadis which will become manifest if she enters the story in later chapters.

Notes:

This is a work that is inspired by a deep love for the works of C.S. Lewis and his tales of Narnia. I do not claim to own the places or peoples he created such rich vision of in his works. I have deliberately avoided writing about characters from within his tales, but have placed my characters and storylines in times that are gaps in his history.

My main purpose is to try to make sense of some of his apparent inconsistencies or which pick up minor themes and expand them to give a fuller picture of what Narnia and its surrounding lands, cultures and peoples could have been.

Some names are borrowed from Alan Garner's works, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Moon of Gomrath and The Owl Service.

Please feel free to send some feedback about individual plot lines, chapters and character development. All welcome, except no flaming please.

Prologue:

This is the story of an adventure that took place in Narnia and Archenland and the lands to the west in the days when King Dale was the ruler of Narnia and Queen Esme was ruler of Archenland.

King Dale of Narnia was an old widowed man with 5 grandchildren and Queen Esme was still a very young woman who had only lately come to her throne. They were 14th and 16th in line respectively from Queen Helen and King Frank.

In those days, the descendants of Frank and Helen's children and their semi-divine consorts had spread across many parts of Narnia and Archenland, farming the land around small hamlets, quarrying the hills in partnership with the dwarves and tending the forests and lands with the guidance of the guardians of the woods, rivers and fields. Many Talking Beasts and fabulous magical creatures such as centaurs, fauns, gryphons, unicorns and flying horses were a part of their communities in those days in both countries and there was much coming and going between them.

It was nothing to see a tumbling mix of faun, human, dryad and centaur children out on a spring romp near Armouthe or Beruna with their fond parents looking on, chatting about the crops coming in, the steps of the stars in the firmament or the rapturous joy and frivolity of the first rites of spring. The largest villages that existed were mostly along the great river, with Beruna and Paravel so far being the only ones in Narnia that could claim to be towns, and Armouthe which was the harbour, fishing port and seat of government in Archenland.

Armouthe sat on a tidal bend of the Winding Arrow, a good 3 miles from the mouth and over 80 winding land miles from Anvard, the summer mountain retreat of the Archen nobility.

But the boy in our story knew little of these details. He knew that Anvard lay high up to the south, on the other side of the pass to Archenland, but he was more familiar with Southern Narnia and Beruna, their market-town which lay a day's journey away on packhorse. To him as a young farm boy, it seemed full of adventure and curiosities at every turn. He yet knew nothing of the wider world or of what was to come.