The Noor

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.

~Blaise Pascal

The sky was beginning to cloud over and the first few snowflakes of the day spiraled through the air, settling softly on hair and shoulders as they dragged the tree up the hill and through the gates of Cair Paravel. Laughing, the guards dashed out of the way and presently they were dragging the tree into the Great Hall, trailing clumps of snow and frozen moss across the marble floor.

Lucy looked down at the tree where it lay folded across the floor, filling the air with the fresh, sharp smell of pine and outdoors as it thawed in the heat. Working with the beavers, the centaurs fixed the base of the tree, then fastening ropes near the top of it. Everyone tallied on until the tree shivered, then began to rise, majestic, shaking snow and ice in great showers on the creatures at its base. The squirrels grabbed the ends of the ropes and raced up the walls to fasten them to the hammerbeam roof.

At last, the tree stood tall and silent, the branches darkened by the melting snow. There was something indescribably noble about that tree and there was silence as everyone suddenly stopped to look at it. It seemed a tall gracious lady in a green gown.

"Shall we decorate her?" Lucy asked, at last breaking the silence.

"We'll let the snow melt first," Susan said. "Does anyone want spiced wine?"

~o*o~

That afternoon, they had the task of hauling box upon box of decorations into the great hall. The floor glittered as Lucy laid ornaments out on the flagstones. There were little people, animals, flowers, stars, leaves – all wrought beautifully in gold and silver.

They set to work hanging ornaments, laughing as the little birds swung high in the air streaming gold brocade ribbon and draping it over the arms of the tree. The squirrels swung through the branches, trailing tinsel until it seemed to be snowing with it.

"Lucy, what are you doing?" Edmund asked, as Lucy slipped under the branches of the tree and sat there, staring up through the branches.

"I'm learning the tree," Lucy said, "I always learn it, every year."

"You do?" Edmund asked and a moment later, he joined her, looking up through the layers of braches and glittering ornaments.

"Isn't it simply lovely?" Lucy asked with a sigh.

"Wait until we get the candles on," Edmund said.

Time passed more quickly than Lucy expected. Darkness pressed against the windows of the great hall as she started handing candles up to Edmund where he stood at the top step of a ladder Peter had found in a forgotten closet.

"It's already dark," Lucy said, happy; the lights would be beautiful.

"It's only four o'clock," Susan said. "It's the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and the longest night."

Peter grew suddenly grave, "We'll hear more from the wreckers tonight."

There was silence.

"Isn't there anything we can do?" Lucy asked suddenly. "At all?"

Peter shook his head, "I don't know."

"We need a Noor to glow on that cliff at night," Ahearn, one of the centaurs, said, looking down at them from the candle he was fixing on a branch.

"A Noor?" Lucy asked. "What is a Noor?"

"A fairy stone."

"Are there any fairies?"

"There were once," Ahearn said, trimming the wick of the candle. "At Elphame. Legend has it that King Auberon and Queen Maev had a stone that glowed brighter than the sun."

"Where is Elphame?" Lucy asked.

"East of the sun and west of the moon," he laughed, "No one really knows, your majesty. The last sighting of a fairy was more than a hundred years ago. Legend has it that if you only look for it, you will find it. It never worked for me."

"Maybe you have to want it badly enough," Lucy suggested.

The birds circled the tree, lighted splinters in their beaks. Candle after candle lit in a burst of gold, the glowing shadows of the branches falling on the walls, lighted from a thousand different ways. The tree rose, glittering with myriad flickering lights, reflected perfectly in the puddles of water that lay on the flagstones.

Lucy looked up at everyone, seeing their faces otherworldly in golden light. She looked at Susan, with her long dark hair streaming down her back and with a sudden shock, realized that her sister was beautiful. Edmund's blue eyes were shining as he looked up at the tree and for a moment, Lucy wondered if his expression was more beautiful than the sight before them. Peter looked tired and somehow sad, yet there was a look about his face that made him seem more noble than even the great centaurs that stood around them.

Her heart overflowing, Lucy reached out and grabbed the two closest hands, Edmund's and Susan's, and felt tears trickle down her cheeks as she looked up at the shimmering vision before them.

"Everything is perfect, isn't it?" Peter said quietly, coming to put his hands on Lucy's shoulders and looking up at the light at the top of the tree, gleaming like a star gone astray, "I only wish no more ships would be wrecked."

"So do I," Susan said.

"Now Lucy," Peter said, "aren't you going to look under the tree?"

Lucy looked up at him, eyes shining, then turned and ran to duck under the branches of the tree. The white skirt spread out like a circle of snow and on it, wrapped in gold cloth, was a box. With shaking fingers, she picked it up and turned to look at them. They were smiling.

"Might I open it now?" Lucy asked, hardly daring to hope.

"We thought you'd like to," Peter said, smiling.

Lucy set the box on the floor and untied the blue ribbons that bound it. The cloth fell away, revealing a long, polished wooden box. Carefully, she lifted the lid and saw, nestled in creamy satin, a wooden statue. It was a red coated soldier with rows of gold braid. It was the nutcracker.

"Oh, thank you!" Lucy gasped, gently lifting him from the box and looking into his brightly painted face. Tears ran all anew down her face, one fell golden on the nutcracker's cheek and for a moment, he looked so infinitely sad, she started crying all over again. The others all stood grinning around her.

"We…um…sort of snuck down last night to buy him after Edmund told us how much you liked him," Peter said grinning, "We didn't think that any Christmas was complete without a nutcracker."

"Don't you remember the story of Clara and the Nutcracker?" Susan asked, seeing Lucy's puzzled face.

"Oh yes," Lucy said, laughing, "at least…I think I do…"

"I tell it to you sometime," Susan said smiling.

"I'd like that," Lucy said, "and thank you very, very much. He's beautiful…I mean, handsome. I don't know why I wanted him so much…I just did."

~o*o~

Lucy's imagination had always been vivid and as the afternoon progressed and the tapers were lighted in the hallways, her mind turned to the black cliffs that swept down into the sea that had been raging last night. In her mind's eye, she saw a ship – as vividly as she saw her own hands – rising and falling on the swell, sails torn to tatters, sailors straining on the ropes.

Her heart was heavy and suddenly, the golden lights that flickered in the halls were palled. She tried to shake the feeling, but it would not go. As they ate supper, she only picked at her food.

"Are you all right, Lucy?" Susan asked, worried.

"Oh yes," Lucy said, then paused, "I wonder if I might go to bed early?"

"Of course, if you'd like," Susan said, "are you not feeling well?"

"I'm all right," she said, picking up her nutcracker.

Really, she wasn't feeling well. Day had been all very well, but night had come and things are always darker at night. The hallways were lit and the candle flames flickered and bowed as she passed. A cold draft followed in her wake and she wrapped her arms around herself. Perhaps sleep would help; perhaps her dreams would be free of those visions that filled her head.

As she opened the door of her room, moonlight glowed in a white shaft in the hallway. She could see her window, cold as ice, and the moon riding high across the sky, burning silver with all its might. The stars flanked the moon like handmaidens, arrayed in their finest gowns and as Lucy walked across the floor, she saw the black trees, etchings against the spangled sky. The snow glowed white as the moon, starkly shadowed by the line of trees that encircled the castle.

Presently, she went to bed and was hard asleep with her nutcracker when her brothers and sister crept into her room to kiss her goodnight and bid her sleeping form sweet dreams.

~o*o~

"We need a Noor to glow on that cliff at night,"

"Elphame? But where is it?"

"East of the sun and west of the moon. If you only look for it, you will find it. It never worked for me."

"Maybe you have to want it badly enough."

Lucy woke with a start, staring into the darkness. How long had she slept? Had she even slept at all? She was shaking and it was not from the cold. Her dreams, if they had been dreams, had been so vivid she felt that she had lived them. She had been on a ship, tossing on black water. There had been a tall, golden haired man and a young woman with a beautiful face. There was a little boy, a very little boy with tousled yellow hair and frightened eyes...she had been there.

"We need a Noor to glow on that cliff at night."

The words of the centaur had imprinted themselves on her mind. They needed something bright enough to shine through the night, through the wind and the rain, bright enough to warn a ship away before it ever saw the sparks of light that would lead it onto the rocks. They needed a lighthouse with a powerful beacon…but there wasn't one and every night when the moon was covered or when the sea rose in fury, ships would be wrecked on the rocks and men would die.

Lucy slipped out of bed and walked to the window, putting her fingers against the frozen glass and watching her breath mist against it. The stars seemed to draw her and for a moment, she could almost imagine herself in the sky, lost in a ballet of beautiful lights. East of the sun and west of the moon? Just where was that? Which way was west?

Before she really knew what she was doing, she turned from the window and left her room, creaking over the floorboards. The royal sitting room was dark and her bare feet sank into a deep carpet. The door to Peter's room was just there, on her right and gently, oh so gently, she lifted the latch and put her head inside. Silence met her ears and walking on tiptoe, she stepped inside the room and crept across it, trying not to trip over the sleeping hounds that littered the floor. One woke, but he recognized her scent and only thumped his tail once before he was asleep again.

With hands outstretched, Lucy reached Peter's dresser and felt over it carefully before her fingers closed over something cold and round. Gently she lifted it and the chain shimmered in the moonlight that slipped around the curtains in the window. She glanced furtively at the bed where it stood, shrouded by curtains. She knew Peter always slept armed and if he woke and didn't recognize her, she was in grave danger.

Stealthily, she crept back across the floor and out into the royal sitting room. She went to the window, and let the moonlight fall on the thing in her hands; her brother's gold cased compass. Slowly, the needle swung and settled, pointing towards the northern mountains, black peaks against a black sky. Then of course east would be towards the eastern sea. For a moment, Lucy's ears grew hot and she smiled. Not know which way east was, indeed. West was the other way, then, towards Lantern's Waste and the white caps that crowned the sky.

East of the sun and west of the moon. The sun was not up, but she could go west of the moon well enough. As she stood there, she formed a resolution, feeling more sure than she had ever felt in her life.

Author's note: 'East of the Sun and West of the Moon' is of course a classic fairy tale, a little like the Cupid and Psyche story C. S. Lewis later turned into 'Till We have Faces'. However, it has no relevance with this story, I just borrowed the name.

King Auberon and Queen Maev (Mab) are the traditional rulers of the fairy realm (Elphame). You may recognize them as Oberon and Titania.

Noor is Persian (as is Aslan) meaning 'Light'.

I've never gotten 97 hits on a first chapter before...thanks for the interest! (I thought people would like it, but I didn't expect that much excitement. I hope no one is disappointed!:)