Title: Sanguis
Disclaimer: Neither C.S. Lewis nor any of his brilliant writings are mine.
Note: I'm not quite sure how I feel about this one. The idea popped into my head, based on something I was thinking about during a reread of both The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Last Battle. Anyway, hope you enjoy! Reviews and constructive criticism are always highly appreciated!
Edmund remembers a summer afternoon, when he ran to meet Daddy on chubby toddler legs, and found a brand-new, gloriously red teddy bear waiting just for him. He has loved red ever since. He remembers a red blanket, choosing a red sweater when his siblings wore blue, and crayon pictures for Mum, all fierce steeds and him in shining armor with a banner of knightly, joyous scarlet.
He remembers clutching a battered red bear in his hands, staring out at a sky filled with bomber planes and fire and no daddy, as the rain swept over the windowpane like the tears he cried inside.
He remembers, on a night at this new, dreadful school, where everything is black and blue and he cannot find any red. His back is against the wall, and the taunts echo like laughter in his ears. You're nothing. You're nothing. We win. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Edmund's vision turns bloody and the blind, angry hurt swings out in a punch. For the first time, he feels the crunch of skin colliding with bone and something in him snaps. And although the world is more terribly unfair than it has ever been, the agonizing friction between him and it is somehow gone. It is a sickening, red-tinged triumph, but it is the only victory to be had in this hell and he'll take it.
It becomes addictive. He finds it stretching out creeping fingers and wrapping around his life, every moment, every word. It leaves a trail, a quietly breaking scar of Peter's anger and Susan's clumsy mothering and Lucy's grieved eyes when he won't hug her anymore. He is spinning in a whirlpool he desperately wants to drown in, yet unable to escape the fact that he is meant to breathe. Sometimes he thinks he will fly into pieces.
And so he finds himself in a snowbound land that shouldn't exist, its pure, cool beauty mocking his fragile control, the rules he has set . And he finds her. She glistens white-pale, wrapped in fur and icicles, and she offers him everything. A kingdom in a candy box.
He fingers a piece, sugar like powdered snow and sticky, rosewater-sweet filling. The rich red of the center soars, warm and shining against the white winter day. It beckons him, pulls at him. It whispers promises, that every blow will be his to give or to keep, that he will no longer answer to his brother for everything wrong with the world, and that there will be no more hollow nights and rain-streaked windows. He bites, and the red stains his lips.
The warmth floods his mouth and his body, and he does not notice his heart freezing.
Red is Susan's favorite color now. Once, a lifetime ago, she loved gold, rich, fiery, warm with life. But now, gold reminds her of silly things, like crowns and battle standards and dances in autumn forests under a rain of falling leaves. And it reminds her of terrible things, like the grave, golden, wonderful eyes of a Lion—but when that thought comes, Susan shivers and shuts it carefully away. It hardly ever comes now.
Red is sensuous and striking and daringly bold. Red leaps out to make a statement and leaves no room for the rest of the story. Red is not gentle. And red is opaque. There is nothing behind it, one cannot see through it. It covers green and gold and ashy white without leaving a hint of their existence.
So Susan drowns her lips and her memory in bright crimson, and pretends it makes her feel beautiful. She whirls away with red on her mouth and winter in her eyes, and she defies the bleak three AMs when she comes home after a long night away among people who will never ask her to remember. Because even this emptiness is better than waking up each morning and knowing she has lost…everything…all over again.
Crimson mingles with wet, shorn gold and splashes over the hard grey letters of the Deep Magic, as a Lion dies for a traitor.