Narnia is of Mr C.S. Lewis' making, not of my own. All the poems in this story are made by Mr Lewis, not myself; Darjeeling, however, is my own creation
I wish to dedicate this story to Petraverd and to Lilprincessofthelion, my fellow unicorns at The Lion's Call.
Foreigner!
Chapter One
I burst in through the door, my legs all but failing me. In the gloom my vision went red, the pounding in my ears throbbing to a roar as my entrance caused a hush. I hobbled forward, buckling, sliding. Don't be sick! I told myself. Don't embarrass yourself, not now! I had run so far to escape so much, I couldn't ruin it now!
The next thing I knew with any kind of clarity, many shadowy forms surrounded me, asking questions, gawking. The wheeling lights spun around my aching head. I wanted peace! I wanted safety! I had thought this was the place to find it, but at that moment panic rose up in my belly, and my last mouthful of grass nearly came, too.
"Hullo!" a voice broke through the hubbub and brought my swirling senses to a halt. I looked wearily round my shoulder to see someone standing in the doorway. He was a two-legger, but not a dark-skinned one. All the same, the two-leggers were the ones that could yolk a person, hobble a person, wrench one's horn clean from one's head. I shied.
The two-legger made no move toward me. He had his hand up, keeping the crowd at bay. I began to tremble as he watched me, partly from exhaustion, partly from fear. The blood was still oozing out from around the base of my horn, making hideously morbid lines on my face like some macabre war-mask. For a few moments we stared at each other, neither speaking. I swallowed.
"Who are you, Unicorn?" the two-legger asked.
My throat was too dry to answer. It took all my will not to collapse in an unstallionly heap from sheer weakness.
The two-legger beckoned to another person. "Fetch a bowl for the weary Beast," he said, and promptly his order was obeyed. I shuddered and rocked on my hooves until a large wooden bowl was brought—it had dark carvings on it with the insides lit up here and there where a curve struck the fire's glow, and it seemed to me, in the dizziness, that the carvings were vine-leaves and very beautiful—then I plunged my muzzle unto the clear, fresh water. Diamond-droplets ran from my face as I drank, dissolving the blood. It soiled the water, but right then I didn't care. I had been too hunted to stop for much water or grass, and my body showed the signs of starvation from the desert-trek. My ribs showed where my flanks had once gleamed; my mane was lank and dry where it had once glowed.
"Here, friend, don't drink too much at once; you'll make yourself ill."
I shied again. The two-legger had come up silently on his soft-soled shoes. But he gently took the bowl away from the black-and-white striped creature who held it and gestured for me to speak. "Where did you come from?" he asked again.
I looked round at the faces. I could see again; the sick sensation in my belly was subsiding and the red haze was diminishing. But the question was one I hardly knew how to answer. "I—" my voice hardly sounded like my own, "I came out of Kashmir," I said thickly.
The faces clouded instantly. Simple confusion swept like a shadow over them all, sparking murmurs in their midst.
"It's in the mountains," I explained. "In the mountains—somewhere—in another place." I hesitated and thought hard. I had to make them understand! "It's cold and clear there, and in the winter there's so much snow. The people, they live below me, and sometimes I go to see them at night, with the tiger, and the boa, and we sing songs. Sometimes…sometimes the wolves come too, in great packs, holding councils on the rocks in the jungle. I came out of Kashmir. There's snow on the mountains."
The two-legger touched my cheek gently. "You've had a hard day," he told me sternly. "You're too tired to think clearly. Come along with me, I'll show you where you can lodge."
I drew up a hoof, starting back. "Is it North?" I asked sharply.
The two-legger frowned. "We are in the North," he told me. "This is North."
I don't know what else could have so relieved me. All these past days I had been running madly for the North, hoping to get away from my nightmare. And now…I was there. All my searching was over. I was safe.
I was free.
And yet…it wasn't as sweet as it should have been. Head lowered, I stumbled after him, his hand never leaving my cheek. We went out of the little building, shutting the door to the firelight and the soft murmurs of the others. The gloom of night wrapped its raven wings about us as we walked together, our feet making no noise on the turf. There were many shapes in the darkness which I had not noticed before: the range of black trees to which we went, the shimmering green swell of grass under the cold, clear round moon, the stars gleaming as they had over Kashmir, only different.
"What is it?" asked the two-legger.
I found I had stopped. "The stars," I whispered. "They're not right."
He looked to the heavens with me, and in the dark I heard him smile. "Oh, they're all right, in their own way. It's not really for us to judge, is it? They're celestial, and we're earth-bound."
"Yes," I nodded, moving on. "Yes, I see that."
We entered the wood and went for a distance into it before coming upon a little knoll on which was set a little lodge. I could see, though first I smelt, the softly illuminated curl of smoke rising from the chimney. There was a light coming from the window.
"There," the two-legger told me, "we will be fed and washed and bedded down as if—as if we were kings."
We went into the house, I last, he first, and I got a brief chance to gaze around in the glow of the fire and the lamps. There was a table and a bed, the windows had cloth hanging over them so that the firelight could only peep out into the wood, and so the wood could only peep in. The cloth, like that bundle folded on the top of the table, was white and red in such an orderly fashion! And there was a fur on the floor, which my sore hooves sunk into with delight. There was a trunk, too, in a corner, and perhaps some other things, but I was too tired to take it all in properly.
"Gunnfus," the two-legger called.
Out of a little back door came a little two-legger with a large auburn beard and sparking black eyes. He took one look at me and his mouth came open.
My two-legger chuckled. "We have a weary, wounded guest," he said gently. Drawing me in, he bade me come near the fire so that he could take a look at my horn. And despite the surprise in Gunnfus' face and the haunting feeling that those who are hunted can never quite recover from, I thought I felt the house reach out its arms to me, beckon me, and beg me to belong.
My two-legger pushed my forelock back. The blood came away in a crusty avalanche down my face, falling in a disreputable pile at his feet. He made a little noise in his throat. "Spirits," he said to Gunnfus. Gunnfus instantly disappeared. "Now," my two-legger told me, looking me directly in the eye. "This will hurt."
"I am ready," I said.
When the shorter version of the two-legger stock returned he had a length of cloth in one hand and a bottle of clear liquid in the other. I gritted my teeth. I think, when I tried to take the breath before the pain, I sobbed. I didn't mean to, but it happened all the same. Bracing on my hooves, I held my head down so that my two-legger could go to work purging my horrid gash.
I haven't ever known a physical pain like that one. It was like plunging a fire the width and breadth of a two-legger's hand into my forehead and keeping it there to rake its cruel claws through my flesh. But I stood fast and let him do it. I could not bear to think of losing my horn: it was as bad as losing one's stallionhood.
After a time the pain subsided a little. "It's not as bad as I thought," my two-legger informed me, having washed out the gash. "The horn is still secure. It will heal. Now," he took a blanket from the bed and draped it carefully over my back. "Now, I think you ought to say how you came here."
"I don't know," I said sadly. "I just—don't know."
He regarded me pensively, rubbing his fingers along his chin. Gunnfus was stroking his beard rhythmically. The fire crackled and with a tinselly sound a log collapsed in a shower of sparks.
"I don't know."
"His mind," Gunnfus remarked suddenly, "is as thick as a fen fog."
"I can see that," replied my two-legged with a slight inflection in his tone. His blue eyes burned deeply under their brows. They shone out of the shadows like the stars I had seen in the curious sky. And while the two looked at me I hardly knew myself. It was as though I were detached for a moment from my own body, didn't have a body, didn't have a self. I was so…so tired. I let out a single moan. It brought the flare up out of the blue eyes and a strong hand to my shoulder. "If you can't think clearly," he told me, "let me do the thinking for you. You will rest, you will sleep, you will get your hooves back under you. And when the time is ripe you will tell us who you are and where you came from."
So I was bedded down there in front of the fire, quite forgetting the little building I had come upon in the night, quite forgetting that I had nearly embarrassed myself by being sick in front of all those creatures. I knew nothing but that someone had taken me in and was putting me to sleep, and sleep was all that mattered. Had I been less despairing I would have realized that sleep was the natural descent of the despairing soul, for even in the North my freedom tasted bitter. It was the look Gunnfus had given me.
I knew I was a foreigner.