A/N Okay, the bad news is that I obviously haven't updated in years. Well, that's a slight exaggeration, but it had been a long time. The good news is that I've written up to like, chapter seven. And since Christmas is coming up, there should be a couple more updates on the way. I'm sooooo excited for Christmas! It may be cold, but I love it! Snow, sledging, Christmas trees, presents….*sigh*. And snowball fights! Can't forget about them!
Anyway, review time!
MaskedNarnianQueen-I'm glad you liked it! Thanks so much for reviewing because it means so much!
Kat Shady-Thanks for reviewing! Yeah, I thought the whole Caspian thing would work but it didn't so I changed it in the end…but I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Calyn-Thanks for reviewing and pointing that out for me! I've fixed it, so it's all good! I thought it would've worked, but it clearly didn't
princess emma of narnia-Thank you for reviewing!
Princess of Narnia 1192 – Aw, thank you! It means a lot when people review!
Milk'n'CookiesBookWorm – Yeah I can't wait for Christmas! Nah, he's not a very nice guy at the minute. Grr! And yeahm it shows that I'm not writing to myself and no one's reading it…and it gives me loads of encouragement!
Mr Blobby's Cheesecake – Thanks for reviewing and yeah, I hate Tristan too!
On with the show!
Chapter Three – Safe houses and letters
After a while, I decided that it would be best if I went to sleep, but after a while of looking up at the ceiling, I knew that tonight would be a sleepless night. Tiny flakes of snow drifted down from the sky and the moon was hard to see because of the thick layer of cloud. It was extremely dark outside, and only the castle's flaming torches illuminated the castle's grounds.
The silence was unusual because I would usually hear the trees rustling in the distance, or animals moving around as they settled down for the night, but not tonight. It was as if the snow had brought a silence to Narnia. The scene from my balcony was of that of a ghost story; the woods to my left and right were snow-capped and bare, the courtyard below me and the small meadow that stretched out towards the cliffs above Mermaid Cove were like a blank sheet of paper and the normally dark blue ocean was grey and gloomy like the sky it mirrored.
I lifted my locket up from my chest and blew down the small hole softly. I had worn it to the ball that night, and like always, didn't take it off; it never left my skin. I heard the flapping of strong wings and now perched on my balcony rail, was my loyal companion Ronny.
"You called mistress?" he said, yawning.
"I'm so sorry that I woke you up Ronny, but I have got to get out of here."
"Why are you in such a hurry mistress?"
"I've told you once, I've told you a million times not to call me mistress Ronny," I said exasperatedly, "anyway, it started off when we were waiting for the ball to start…" and I told him about everything that had happened. His keen, golden eyes widened in shock before he hopped down from the railing and turned his back to me. I held on to his shoulder blades as he took off before putting my knees underneath my body and sitting upright on his back. I had gotten so used to flying like this that it was almost natural, although sometimes I came very close to falling off.
I felt the snow hitting against my face and the wind whipping through my hair; I felt free. Flying with Ronny was one of the most relaxing things I have ever done, despite the altitude. It was the way that I got away from things in the castle, but I usually flew during daylight hours, never this late. Or early, it depends of what kind of person you are.
I breathed deeply and felt the cold, yet refreshing air fill my lungs and bring a sense of calm to my body. We flew as a dark silhouette across the dully lit sky, and the forest below us looked like it was in a peaceful sleep apart from some thin, spiralling towers of smoke from dying fires that had been set up by fauns for some late night dancing, or the centaurs so that they may continue an ancient ritual that they always performed every few weeks.
We flew for a long time, watching the rolling hills and the calm waters of lakes beneath us. Finally Ronny started to slow down, and my eyes grew tired. We landed near a twisted, old oak tree and we set up camp underneath it.
"You always know what I need, Ronny," I said to him sleepily.
"Hm…" he replied as he dragged his wings along the ground and using them to clear a patch of ground from snow and dead leaves. He lay down on his side and he held his wing up for me. I smiled at this gesture, and used him as a pillow, with his soft wing wrapped around me as a blanket. After a while, I didn't know whether or not I was awake or just sleeping, and so my brain shut down and left me in a deep sleep.
Light was streaming down onto my face and it caused me to roll over and groan with sleepiness.
"Mistress, you must wake up, the Kings and Queens will be looking for you," said Ronny who was shaking me slightly.
I muttered something that even I didn't understand. After a while, I felt something move under my head and Bam! My head hit the ground unceremoniously. I rubbed it and sat up; it had definitely woken me up. I moaned in annoyance, but I climbed onto his back anyway. He jumped into the air and flapped his wings several times before lifting off from the ground elegantly.
After about half an hour of flying, I saw the towers of Cair. We approached it from the back and then, when we were over the courtyard, I expected Ronny to land there. However, he didn't and I soon found out why; a huge ship with Telmarine flags lay in the water of Mermaid Cove. We flew over the cove before Ronny said to me, "Make sure that no-one can see any part of you as we fly over the Telmarine ship."
"Why?"
"With your permission mistress, I will leave them a little present," he said mischievously.
"Permission granted," I replied, with a hint of bewilderment in my voice.
Edmund's POV
"…Narnia is a beautiful place, King Peter," King Gustavo said.
"Yes it is, and I intend to keep it that way," Pete answered.
"Well, we Telmarines will know that Narnia is our great ally," Gustavo continued.
They had been at this for at least half an hour! They were meant to be gone by now. Besides, Rachel could come back any minute now, and it was hard enough to come up with an excuse to cover-up her absence. Lucy was looking quite tense as well, probably because she was thinking the same thing as me.
I was so lost in my own thoughts that the next thing I knew was that Pete and Gustavo were shaking hands. I knew that Rach had taken Ronny last night and they had disappeared without a trace, but I trusted Rach, along with everybody else; I knew that she would come back.
I heard something fly over me and very quickly at that. I barely caught a glimpse of the creature, but something fell out of the air and onto the sand beside me. I picked it up and saw that it was a heart-shaped piece of wood, with someone's very recognisable Mark on it. I picked it up and stared out across Mermaid Bay. I was looking straight into the midday sun, so I could barely see a thing, but after a while, a small dot that was slowly coming closer and closer to us, but fortunately the Telmarines were on their boat.
The figure was flying over the ship now and something white dropped out of the bird, which was obviously Ronny. I heard cries of disgust emanating from the ship that had barely started sailing away, and a joyful laugh coming from on top of Ronny.
Rachel's POV
Ronny approached the Telmarine ship very quickly, and I was spread-eagled across Ronny hoping that no-one would see me.
"I hope that you appreciate this mistress, for it is not befitting of a knight of Narnia to do such a deed," Ronny said, "look at the ship below."
I looked down, almost sick from the height (sometimes I did get scared of heights), and saw a white bomb heading towards the ship. I heard a splat, a scream and raised voices before it clicked in my mind. I let out a laugh of pure immatureness of what my loyal, respectable Narnian Knight had done to deface the Telmarine ship.
We circled around Cair for a while until the ship was about five hundred metres out to sea before Ronny thought that it would be safe to land. I slid off Ronny's back and onto the sand of the beach beside the Pevensies, letting out a burst of laughter as I did so.
"Oh my grief, that was funny," I said, wiping a tear from my eye. Su rolled her eyes and Pete gave me a puzzled look, but Ed and Lu obviously wanted to know what happened. When the two older ones left the beach and started climbing up a steep set of stairs towards Cair.
We started to follow them, "What happened when Ronny flew over the ship?" Lu asked.
I smiled broadly, "Lu…Ronny just 'deposited' over it," I said, putting air-floats over 'deposited.' It took them a while to understand what I had just said, but when I saw the smiles slowly come across their faces, I knew that they had. We burst out laughing on the stairs up to the castle, with Pete and Su giving us weird looks.
Yep, Ronny had just done a big poo on the deck of a Telmarine ship.
The coming days got colder and colder and the snow that had once been perfect for throwing snowballs with had turned to horrible ice. Su had no parties to plan for, and the army couldn't practice because of the awful conditions. Lucy couldn't talk to the Narnians because sometimes it was minus ten degrees outside and it would take her a day to get into the forest without horses. So, we decided that we would stay around the castle for a couple of days; the only person working was Pete and I had to help him out with that, not that I was complaining though, at least I wasn't being lectured about chess from Ed. Seriously, I don't know what it is with him and that game.
Pete was signing pieces of paperwork while I read through them, "So what does that one from Archenland say?" Pete asked.
"Not much. Just some things about our alliance and everything, so...nothing out of the ordinary," I replied, my mind elsewhere. I saw Pete looking at me weirdly, like he was trying to read my mind, but then his eyes went back to the mountains of documents before him. I sighed loudly and placed my left hand on my cheek before scanning through the next piece of paperwork.
Pete's POV
I kept looking up at her every so often. Lately, I've been noticing that Rachel's looking paler than usual, and her eyes were bloodshot with dark rings around them. She had been eating properly, so nothing was wrong with her appetite. Maybe she was finding it hard to sleep? She certainly looked tired anyway.
"Rach?" I asked her. No reply, "Rach?" once again, no reply, "Rachel?"
She suddenly jolted upright, like she had been electrocuted, "Hm?"
"Are you alright?"
She blinked at me for a minute before saying, "Yeah." She rubbed her hand around her face and sighed again, putting her brown leather boots on the table and crossing them, before taking another document. She was dressed in casual men's-like clothes-a blue shirt, green leggings and her necklace, which she had never taken off. Her hair was up in a messy bun, like she had just rolled out of bed. Now that I think about it, she may have done so…
"Rach, I know when you're lying to me," I said.
She made a sort of alarmed noise before setting down the document and taking her feet off the desk, "Okay, you got me."
"So what's wrong?" I asked, sounding stupid.
"I don't know…I just haven't been sleeping very well lately."
"How come? Are we putting you under stress with you helping us all the time? Because we can manage without you," she turned her head and stared at me, as if she was saying, 'yeah right,' "for a few days at least."
"I don't think it's that Pete. Could we just get on with this? Ed asked me if I wanted to play chess with him again, and Lu wants to explore the castle some more."
"Rach, if you could just tell me what's going on then maybe we could figure put what's wrong."
"Pete I'm fine, could we just drop this please? I want to get this done," she replied with a yawn. Her voice sounded sharp, so I just gave up on trying to find out what was wrong. A while had passed and Rach hadn't given me more documents. I was on the last one that she had read through, and she was still reading the same document, placing it so that it would stay upright on the desk without her support.
"Can I have the next document?" I asked after I had finished. She didn't reply, "Rach?" I looked over the page and saw Rachel with her head lying sideways on her arm, fast asleep. I decided that she had had enough for today, so I gently picked her up, put her on the settee where she had slept a few weeks before and planed my cloak over her. She looked so small and fragile when she was asleep, but anyone that knew her would say that she could be quick-tempered and fierce, especially for a girl. She wasn't like Su or Lu who were very feminine and wore dresses all the time; she was a tom-boy who loved being outdoors and sport, making her quite competitive. She had her faults like the rest of us, a couple of them being that she was quite clumsy, stubborn and hated being wrong.
However, she was my friend, a great one at that, and my siblings very close to her as well. She had helped us all and it was incredibly appreciated, especially by me. I propped her head up against a pillow and walked away, continuing my work as she slept peacefully.
Rachel's POV
It was that dream again…that horrible nightmare that has plagued me for weeks. I dreamt about it once and didn't have it again for a few days, but now I'm dreaming about it every other night. The thing is though, I hardly remember anything about it once I wake up; I just know that it's the same dream over and over again.
Earth, wind, fire, water…bodies are contained within each of these elements, preventing them from moving. I'm standing in the middle, but someone else is here, someone else that…seems to be familiar. Behind that figure are two smaller ones, shadowy and with distorted features.
"The time has come, the time when you shall face me!" A maniacal laugh sounded through the darkness, as I slowly exited the dream, with ears still ringing with the sound of that terrifying sound…
I woke up with a start with beads of cold sweat across my forehead. Instantly, the memories of the nightmare left me and I took in my new, safe surroundings. I saw that I was once again lying on Pete's settee with his cloak draped over me.
"Wow, how long have I been out for?" I mumbled.
"About an hour and a half," Pete said from his desk, making me jump. I was still shaken from the dream, and so I was on edge, "are you alright Rach? You were talking in your sleep and you were breathing really heavily."
"Mmph, I'm…I'm alright. Just a stupid ream, eh?" I replied, with a very forced laugh. He obviously didn't believe me, but he just went back to his work.
"Let's go!" Lu said. I had recently helped Pete complete a couple of documents and he said I was free to go. I had met Ed on the way, so he was coming as well.
We had entered a passageway that lead to the South Tower of Cair. The four main towers of Cair were arranged in a square; the North being at the top left, the East at the top right, the South at the bottom right and the West at the bottom left. Yeah, complicated, I know.
Lu ran up the spiralling staircase, passing small windows that were letting the last few afternoon rays of sun come in. The snow was beginning to thaw slightly, but winter was far from being over. Christmas was in a weeks time, so everyone was getting very excited; especially Lu.
"Slow down Lucy," I said, panting slightly, "Gosh, I need to run more."
"Or you could stop eating all those cakes," he said, passing me with a smirk on his face.
"You can talk marshmallow boy!" I exclaimed after him.
"You said that you'd never bring that up again," he retorted.
"Oh, but I did," I said, shrugging my shoulders. He pushed me a little bit, so I shoved him back and into the inside wall. Hhis shoulder hit off a brick and pushed it into the wall surprisingly, and a section of it opened up, creating a doorway and revealing a passageway.
Ed and I glanced at each other before looking into the dark hole, "You get Lu, I'll get a torch," Ed said as I stepped into the corridor.
"Lu!" I yelled up the staircase.
"What?" came the reply.
"We've found something!" I shouted back. I heard footsteps echoing down the stairs, getting louder with each passing second until Lu was beside me. She saw the hole in the wall and I explained that we were going to see what lay down it when Ed came back with a torch.
Cair had many hidden passageways throughout its structure and many old maps showed these concealed corridors (of which Lu and I had possession of). However, this one had never shown up on any of them, so the question was; what was this corridor hiding? What was so important about it that it had not been written into at least fifty different maps of Cair?
Ed had returned with a flaming torch in his hand. He stepped into the dark hole before saying, "Come on, it seems to be safe." We followed the flame and took little precautionary steps, just in case it had been booby-trapped or something; Lu and I had had a little run in with one of them in a different tunnel, and it involved a heck of a lot of sharp objects.
We walked for what seemed like an eternity, shuffling along the wet ground beneath our feet and hearing the ominous of dripping water echo throughout the tunnel. From what I can tell, this passageway was quite thin, with old and worn bricks covering the walls and floor.
I saw Ed stop a few paces in front of me. The lit torch illuminated a wooden door that took up almost the entire width of the corridor and Ed had just placed his hand on the door handle. He turned the handle, struggling for a minute as the handle was stiff, and opened it with a loud creaking sound. I heard Lucy gasp behind me quietly as it did so, but I didn't turn to comfort her as I was too interested in what was behind the room.
Ed had entered and had found a few extra torches. He started to light them and put them in rusty holders, which I thought would break any minute now. As the light level grew, I saw that we were standing in an oval shaped room with a spiral staircase on one side and another room on the other. Light came from the spiral staircase, so I could assume that it was sunlight. There was green carpet underneath my feet and there was a faded pattern on it, one that was a darker green-blue colour than the main colour of the carpet that was arranged in a circular pattern. The walls were made of old grey-green bricks and they were bare. Dust lay around the room like snow.
"It's a safe house," Ed muttered.
"What's that?" Lu asked.
"We're underneath the castle Lu. It must have been constructed when Cair was being built, but never put on a map or blueprint."
I had wandered off into the other room while they were talking and discovered what lay within it. I looked at its contents and was flicking through one now, "Well done Sherlock, but you forgot one tiny detail; there's a library back there," I said, putting my hand over my shoulder and pointing to it with my thumb. I turned back into the library and placed the heavy book back on a shelf as Ed and Lu came in, Ed carrying a torch. More dust covered the books and shelves.
"Careful! You don't want to put this whole place on fire, do you?" I said to him. He grumbled and found another holder, illuminating the room with light. A more powerful light suddenly shone across the room and I looked to where it was coming from. Lu had found, and opened, a window on the other side of the room. I went over to it and, stupidly, looked down. My stomach immediately left my body and cascaded into the sea below, as we were in a room that was carved into the side of a mountain, sixty feet up from the ground.
I backed away from the window slowly, thinking that something might happen and I'd be sent plummeting towards the ocean. It was very bright in the room now and Ed was flicking through books, while Lu had found one she liked and had sat down on the ground to read it.
"A lot of them are in ancient Narnian, but there are a few that are in our language…" Ed stated.
"This place…it's amazing," Lu said.
"Should we…should we tell the others?" I asked.
"They don't care when we find any other passageway, so why tell them about this?" Ed answered. I nodded in agreement.
Ed walked out of the room and into the oval shaped room, went to the other side and started climbing the narrow spiral staircase. I looked over at Lucy, who put her book down on a nearby shelf and we started to follow her brother. There was light coming from above us and the ground was getting drier. We finally reached the top, where a wooden hatch had been opened. Lu and I squeezed through it and into a circular shaped room with a cone shaped ceiling. It looked like a small version of a turret at Cair, and the roof was being supported by four large pillars that were connected to the floor. There were no windows, just gaps in between each pillar. It was only ten feet of the ground and behind me was a forest, in front was the Eastern Sea.
Ed was already looking out towards the sea and he turned to look at us, "We'd better start to head back. They'll be wondering where we are." We approached the wooden hatch and started to walk down the stairs again and the staircase suddenly became dark; Ed had closed the hatch.
When we reached the bottom of the stairs, we took one of the torches and extinguished the rest, before closing the stiff door behind us and heading back to Cair.
It had been a few hours since we had discovered the chamber and Ed and I were playing chess, with him winning by a mile. I moved my bishop and took his knight, but then he moved his own bishop and took mine.
"So what are we going to do about the secret library?" I asked him.
"Well, I'm going to read a couple of books from it and maybe redecorate it. But I'm not going to tell anybody that I am."
"It'll be our secret then," I said, smiling slightly.
"Yeah, I suppose it will be," he replied, smiling his patented crooked smile.
It was about ten o'clock when we had finished our fourth game, and Ed won every single one. I decided to go to bed early because tomorrow was the first time in a week that Ed and I could work with the army since the snow had begun to melt. I bid Ed goodnight and put my pyjamas on, which consisted of a baggy shirt and leggings. I got ready to go to sleep and picked up a book that I had been reading about Narnian myths and legends when something flew through the balcony doors and dropped something on my bed before exiting out of the other pair of doors. It happened so fast that I couldn't identify what had been carrying the object.
I went over to my bed and saw that it was a white envelope, sealed with red wax and it had a strange symbol imprinted on it. I opened the letter cautiously and began to read it, struggling to decipher the fancy calligraphy.
Dear Princess Elfin,
I am sure that Aslan has already told you about the journey you must make to my island. He informed me before he disappeared that I should be your teacher, and what you must do afterwards…
I read through the letter again and again before finally letting the tears stream down my face as I slumped to the floor.
"Why did you leave me with this burden Aslan? Why me?"
"Give me strength Aslan."
A/N So the whole Caspian thing was confusing so I changed him to Tristan…so yeah, read and review! Reviews help me write and update more and it makes me feel like I'm writing and people are reading, instead of me just writing and updating for no reason…so review!
Xx Elemental Angel xX
