Disclaimer: I do not own the Chronicles of Narnia.
A/N: This story takes place in our world after Silver Chair, and probably the year before Last Battle, because Lucy turns 17. I've been waiting to post this one until it felt right. It's a little depressing...I wrote it when I was semi-depressed, which would account for it. And I'd probably been reading Peter Pan. Anyway, this one is a bit more drabblish than any of the others I've written. An experimental fic. Trying out new styles keeps readers on their toes. ;D And yes I wrote it in present tense on purpose. It may sound a bit strained at parts, but it brings out the overall effect I wanted.
Reviewers will receive a grateful reply. Unless they are anonymous, in which case you can imagine my reply as being grateful. ;D
Unmagic
Lucy dislikes England almost as much as she loves Narnia.
It's not England in particular; she's as patriotic as British girls come, especially since her father is gone to fight for its freedom. But there's something missing, something so obscurely obvious that she hates it with all that's within her.
She hates the un-magic of it all. The others don't understand—Edmund understands better than Peter or Susan because he was saved by the Deep Magic, but even he doesn't feel the absence like she does.
It's not a magic like the stuff in Arabian Nights that she misses; the magic of Jinns and fantastic lamps, of spells and enchantments. That isn't the magic of Narnia.
No, the magic of Narnia is a simpler, purer, more innocent kind of magic. No spells or weird words bind Narnia's magic to anything. There are other kinds of magic, of course. The Witch's magic. The Calormenes' gods. Even some of the Narnian creatures have become twisted by dark magic. But those kinds of magic are purely evil—they give Lucy a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach because she knows they aren't natural and right.
But Narnia's magic, the Deep Magic that Aslan wove into her beautiful land the day it was made, is natural and right. In reality, it's the fact that it's His magic that makes it so wonderful. He is the one who gave speech to the animals and voices to the trees. From the first moment Lucy passed through the wardrobe and into Narnia, the magic became a part of her. He meant it to be that way.
But in England, there isn't any magic. The animals don't talk, the trees are still and silent, and the wind doesn't bring the warmth of Aslan's breath. Sometimes she gets the feeling that the others don't understand because she was the only one who lived the magic of Narnia. The trees were hers to dance with, the animals hers to speak to, and Aslan's breath the thing that gave her the courage to go on.
But Lucy needs Narnia's magic. It is her air, her water, more important than every breath she takes. And now, in England, it's like she's dying slowly without actually dying in the end. An agonizing longing that grows in her heart as she stares out over the still, still water and imagines she can hear the song of a mermaid echoing from far away. Perhaps even from another world.
She stares up at the trees, rubbing the smooth or rough bark with her fingers pensively, thinking with all her might in the hopes that thinking might bring them to life. "They are alive," Eustace tells her scientifically, but she frowns and shakes her head. Compared to the Narnian trees, these in England have no more life than a pebble.
On her seventeenth birthday, she cries herself to sleep. Susan is lost to Narnia. Peter has buried it deep inside himself, wanting to forget but knowing that he can't (or won't). Edmund has stuck by her so far, but his optimism is edging on despair because he knows he can't go back.
But Lucy hasn't given up hope. She knows, even if she can't go back, that she can still search for Narnia. Reminders are everywhere (or imagined reminders, anyway), even in our world. The flutter in her heart every time she sees a lamp post. The fleeting glimpse of a dryad in the park; a flash of a tail in the rapid waves on the beach; a Scottish flag that for one instant is the flag of her beloved land as it curls and snaps in the breeze.
She catches glimpses of Narnia in everything—and in nothing. In a line of a poem, a sentence of a story, a word from a person on the street.
At night, she lies for hours in the back lawn, staring up at the glittering night sky. Sometimes, Jill is with her, pointing out the pole star and this planet and that constellation. But Lucy always frowns and shakes her head, pointing at Aravir, the morning star, that Jill has just mistakenly called Venus. For a moment, when she is on her back, staring up at the stars, she can feel Narnia. Some of the constellations are almost the same (she squints her eyes so she can't quite tell the difference). Orion is England's version of Narnia's Olvin. Similar in name as well as in shape. She never can call it Orion, no matter how flustered Jill gets when trying to tell her about it.
Because when she's lying on her back, the cool grass brushing against her face and her hair billowed out beneath her head, she can close her eyes and pretend she's there (pretending is the only thing in England that keeps her from despair). If the wind is blowing it's even better, because then she can imagine she's in Dancing Lawn with Tumnus after a dance with the fauns, and they're lying on the cool turf watching the moon rise and telling story after story about the stars, with the wild west wind caressing their faces. But then Jill says something and Dancing Lawn is gone, along with Tumnus and the wild kiss of the wind on her ivory cheeks.
On sunny, summer afternoons she loves, above all, to sit beneath the trees in the backyard. The grass is green (though not green in the full sense of the word, like it was in Narnia) and the sun shines brightly (if not as goldenly as in Narnia), and everything feels about as right as it can get—in England. And every now and again, when it's almost perfect like that, she feels it: the magic.
The wind blows through her hair (it's always the wind that brings the magic), rustling the leaves on the tree above, and she closes her eyes and feels. She feels the magic as it lifts her, pulls her up and takes her from this world. The magic blows the British Schoolgirl away (that Lucy stays behind in England) and awakens the Narnian Queen in her that's always there, but seems to have been asleep like the trees in England (because there's no magic in England to awaken that Lucy). The magic gives her the feel of Aslan's breath on her face, the fresh Narnian air mingling with her golden locks, and the smell of the buttercups on the meadow.
And then it's gone. Her eyes open, and she's in England again. Gray, un-magical, practical England. But now, as she stares 'round at the trees and wishes for just one more breath of Narnian air, she feels a hope growing inside her heart. She hasn't left Narnia behind. She can't, because the hope of seeing Narnia—and the One who breathed Narnia's magic into existence—just one more time is all she has left.
finis