Author's Note: This fanfiction is set in the bookverse, not the movieverse, and so during The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in my head canon, Peter will forever be studying for exams with Professor Kirke at a cottage in the country. The Latin, by the way, appears courtesy to my years of struggling with it in high school…
Lost in Translation
It was one of those rare summer days, more precious than diamonds, when it wasn't raining, the sky was a piercing blue that suggested not so much as a cloud would ever mar it again, the temperature wasn't hot enough to shatter a thermometer, and there was a refreshing, but not overpowering breeze. All in all, it was the sort of day you wanted to preserve forever, because it was perfectly suited for swimming or for lazing around in the sun. What it wasn't ideal for, though, was studying, which was what Peter Pevensie had to do right now.
At least, he thought, he wasn't staying with annoying Aunt Alberta, horrible Uncle Harold, and their odious offspring Eustace. Only Edmund and Lucy, bless their souls, were facing such a miserable summer holiday. He may not have been in America with Susan and his parents, but he was also not stuck with Eustace. Anyway, he told himself, if he were in America, he would not make much progress with his studying…
Studying for exams. Yes, that was what he was supposed to be doing right now. He was also supposed to be taking advantage of the fact that he had a professor and none to stuffy a one at that to personally tutor him.
Of course, it would have been much easier to concentrate if the professor, upon glancing out the window in the morning, hadn't concluded that they would study outside on the beach today. It was impossible to focus on Latin when waves were pounding against the outcropping you were sitting upon and you could taste the salt from the sea. Such things were immensely distracting, which was why exams never occurred under such conditions.
Wrenching his mind back to the task at hand, Peter turned his gaze from the foam-capped waves crashing against the shore to his Latin book and resumed his rocky verbal translation of Caesar's account of the Gallic Wars, "'When Caesar noticed that the enemy was remaining for several days at the camp fortified by a swamp and by the nature of the terrain, he sent a letter to Trebonious instructing him to come as quickly as possible by long forced marches to him with three legions.'"
"That's what, in academic circles, we call a muddy translation, my boy," Professor Kirke informed him wryly. "Don't schools today teach that when you are translating something into English, you must make it sound like it is English? Don't they teach that you need to keep your prepositions near the words they modify so that your sentences don't become jumbles?"
By now, Peter was too accustomed to the professor's complaints about the current abysmal standards of education in England to take offense at the man's comment. Instead, he said only, "It would sound better if I moved 'to him' immediately after 'come' and placed 'with three legions' after 'to him,' wouldn't it, sir?"
"Well, I certainly think so," replied Professor Kirke, smiling slightly.
"At least this time I remembered to include the implied 'instructing him,'" Peter remarked. Sighing, he thought that Caesar, the master of a dead language and a dead empire, was a bane and bore to schoolboys and was far more of a tyrant in boarding schools than he ever had been in Rome. "Translating Latin into English would be much easier if there wasn't so much left unsaid in Latin, Professor. Really, given how difficult it is to read Latin, it's remarkable that the Romans ever had time to conquer so much of the world."
"Yes, and confusion over what other Romans had written in Latin probably caused the downfall of the empire." The professor chuckled softly. "That's why you must study hard so you won't get confused."
Staring out across the aquamarine ocean, Peter murmured, "I used to be High King of Narnia just like Julius Caesar used to be the emperor of Rome. When I was in Narnia, I fought battles like Julius Caesar did. The second time my siblings and I went to Narnia, the Narnians reacted much the same way we would if the Romans somehow landed in modern England to help defeat the Germans. Centuries had passed since Susan, Lucy, Edmund, and I had left Narnia. Cair Paravel was in ruins. Everyone we had been friends with was long dead. Nobody knew if my siblings and I were mere myths or if we had really existed. Nothing we had built or done that first time in Narnia was preserved or remembers exactly as it had been. So much had been lost in translation."
"Traveling to other worlds makes us old before out time even as it keeps us young," the professor observed, and Peter thought that, while Professor Kirke might enjoy pretending to be absent-minded, the man never failed to hit the nail on the head. "The truth is that nothing but Aslan and his counterpart in our world truly endures from age to age."
"Before I left Narnia last time, Aslan told me and Su that we would never return to Narnia again. He said that we needed to come to know him in this world, and I have, Professor. It's just that I liked Narnia better than our world. Everything was better in Narnia, or at least it seemed so to me." Gesturing at the sea, which was blinking merrily at him in the sunlight, Peter concluded, "Even the ocean in Narnia looked bluer. It's hard for me to be happy in this world when I would rather be in Narnia."
"You must learn to be content with remembering your adventures in Narnia while finding pleasure in the life you live in this world," advised Professor Kirke.
"Is that what I must do, sir?" Peter shot the professor a questioning look.
"That is what I just said." The professor shook his head. "I don't know what they are teaching in those schools if they aren't teaching students to listen to their elders."
"Susan doesn't wish to talk about Narnia, though." Here, Peter hesitated, biting his lip. "Whenever Lu, Ed, or I try to speak to her about our past adventures in Narnia, she acts like they were nothing more than pretend, childhood games. She won't discuss with me how much it hurts to know that she and I won't be coming back to Narnia. Instead, she babbles on about nylons and lipstick as if I'm supposed to care about any of that rubbish. I know that focusing on lipstick and nylons is probably just her way of not having to think about the pain of never being able to go on adventures in Narnia again, but I can't help but think that she is doing the right thing and I am not. She, not me, seems the one growing closer to this world like Aslan said we should do, Professor."
"From what you've told me, Aslan actually instructed you and your sister to come to know the shape that Aslan takes in this world and to grow nearer to that form," Professor Kirke corrected him. "Aslan doesn't want you to stop believing in him or Narnia. If you were meant to forget Aslan or Narnia, Aslan would never have brought you or your siblings to Narnia. No, Peter, you were meant to remember Narnia and Aslan every moment of your life, and that is intended to influence your every action."
"Something in Aslan's words must have been lost in translation for Susan, then." His forehead knotting, Peter frowned. "What will happen to Susan now that she has rejected Narnia and Aslan?"
"Nobody can say." Once more, the professor shook his head. "However, you must not lose hope in your sister. As you would realize if they still taught logic in schools, if faith can be lost, it can also be found again. Thus, even though your sister may not believe in Aslan or Narnia now, she may come to believe in them again in the future. At the very least, she may decide to draw close to our world's version of Aslan instead of to nylons and lipstick."
"I wish that I could make her believe in Narnia again," muttered Peter. "I wish I could make her see it again the way Lucy made us all see it the first time we went there through the wardrobe."
"You can't make someone believe, nor can you make them see what they did not wish to," Professor Kirke stated quietly. "Well, shall we take a break for lunch now?"
"A break for lunch?" Peter repeated, wondering if the professor was as senile as he had supposed when he had first met the man upon evacuating London. "Sir, we've hardly translated any of Caesar's account of the Gallic Wars."
"Yes, but we have been conducting a philosophical conversation, and philosophy always makes me hungry," responded the professor, rising to return to the cottage for a meal, and Peter got to his feet as well.