A big thanks to everyone who reads and reviews ... one review makes the next chapter all the easier to write! Big thanks especially to unicorn-skydancer08, who's given me lovely support. Also, if you have questions or just want to have a conversation, pop into my forum!
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Chapter 4: Through the Eyes of Statues
In which some discomfort is to be had, and our heroes come to a decision regarding the current state of affairs.
Tumnus barked a nervous laugh. "Lucy, my father visited Cair Paravel once," he said, trying to reassure her. "It isn't a ruin."
"It wasn't when we lived here either," she said softly. She walked up the pitted, lichen-covered steps and placed her hand on the leftmost heap of weathered stone. "We ruled here for fifteen years, before Aslan called us home."
The faun stood silently, gazing slowly around as though trying to see what she saw. "I don't understand," he said finally.
Lucy knelt before the leftmost throne, and whatever strangeness had come over her seemed to vanish in the next breath. She stood up and took Tumnus' hand. "I know," she said. "Come, and I'll show you."
She led him past the dais and through the ruins as though a path had been laid out before her. The sleepy curiosity that had come upon first exploring the place with her had vanished and Tumnus felt a sense of unwelcome apprehension. Whatever this place really was, there was a piece of her here, a memory to which he was not privy, and that unsettled the faun more deeply than the length of time he might have been sleeping in stone.
She stopped before a facade of marble pillars around a small niche. "Help me with this," she told him, pushing against one of the pillars.
Wondering if she might not be slightly mad, the faun added his strength to hers and to his surprise the wall actually began to slide away, revealing a rotted wooden door behind it. Lucy pulled at the handle and it crumbled to dust in her fingers. The wood was so decayed it fell away with little resistance.
Lucy reached into the leather bag she had slung over her shoulder and pulled out a curious silver object that flared at one end. Tumnus let out a yelp when she flicked a switch and soft yellow light shone out of it.
Laughing at the faun's startled reaction, Lucy handed the torch to him. He took it reverently, blinking when he pointed it at his face. He turned it to the dark passage before them, delighted as the light played over the winding staircase within. "Is it ... magic?" he asked in awe.
Lucy smiled at him, her cheek dimpling in amusement. "The closest Spare Oom has to offer. Come," she tugged on his arm and he followed her, dutifully holding the light before him.
The stairs descended only a few turns into the earth before the light was no longer needed. Sunlight fell in cascades through gaps in the stone overhead, illuminating the cavern within.
Lucy let out a gasp of joy. "It's all still here!" she exclaimed, hurrying down the stairs.
"It", Tumnus thought as he looked over the broken railing at the room below, could only be the heaps of glittering treasure that spilled over the floor and lay scattered in every corner. But Lucy ran past all of that without a glance, her attention focussed on something by the far wall. Tumnus quickly hurried after her, pushing past the iron gate at the bottom of the stairs.
"Lucy?"
He followed the prints her bare feet had left in the dust, barely glancing at the piles of dusty relics; such things held little interest for a faun beyond passing curiosity. Lucy had once again enshrouded herself in the mantle of another time. Sunlight turned her hair auburn, ringing her with an ethereal light as she stood before four larger-than-life statues, each set in an enclave behind a stone chest.
Tumnus stepped quietly beside her, his hooves hardly daring to disturb the dust. She raised her arm, indicating the figures before them. The statues were of four humans, two men and two women, in regal clothing with crowns on their heads.
"This was us," she said. "Peter, Susan, Edmund and I. The Four Kings and Queens of Narnia."
The only statues Tumnus had ever seen had been the ugly grey reminders of the White Witch's fury that had dotted the forest around the Lantern Waste. These were of pure white marble, artful and serene. Their faces were kind and solemn, except for the one queen who had a joyous smile across her pretty features. Tumnus couldn't seem to take his eyes off her.
"'When Adam's flesh and Adam's bone ...'" he murmured without quite realizing. The old rhyme had been in his thoughts the day he'd seen Lucy off at the lamppost, but the belief of it ever coming to pass had frozen away after a hundred years of winter.
"'...Sits in Cair Paravel in throne, the evil time will be over and done.'" Lucy went to stand before the statue of the laughing Queen. She smiled and shrugged. "Mr. Beaver told us that, when we all came to Narnia together. We really had no idea about anything, then."
The faun's eyes flew between the girl and the joyfully smiling queen with a moment of supreme revelation. "Then ... this is you?"
Lucy threw back her head and struck a pose. "Queen Lucy the Valiant," she said in a bold, throaty voice. A smile crept over her face, matching that of the marble statue, and she dissolved into giggles.
Tumnus' eyes were locked on the stone face. "You're ... lovely," he whispered without thinking.
Lucy laughed and he blushed for what seemed like the tenth time that day. She paid him no mind for his slip of the tongue and opened the stone chest at the foot of her statue. Pulling out a dress of rosy-gold satin, she held it up to her and laughed again.
"Look! I was so tall!" the hem of the dress bunched on the ground, even with the neckline at eye level. The Lucy who would have worn it would have been inches taller than Tumnus.
The faun shuffled over to sit on a pile of gilded armour, somehow untarnished after its long rest in the vault. He felt lightheaded and wished he hadn't left his apples on the grass by the thrones. The marble statues continued to stare at him, as though wondering why he sat in their presence. Should he stand again? Lucy seemed to have forgotten he was there, intent on what she was finding in the chest. Her statue smiled down on her, as though amused by the antics of her younger self.
Tumnus had recognized the girl under the willow tree as his Lucy, older to be sure, but with the same laughing eyes and sweet freckles and that peculiar little upturned nose. The beautiful statue before him with her flowing robes and delicate crown was in every way a noble woman. And yet she was there, his Lucy, in the eyes and face and something much deeper that left no doubt: the young girl in the drab grey skirt and the beautiful Queen were one and the same.
He shifted in his seat and barely caught a round shield, covered in dust, before it clattered to the floor. He idly blew the dust off it, revealing the roaring face of a lion embossed in gold on the shield's front. He hastily set it aside, face down, and sought to find somewhere else to rest his eyes.
Lucy's hand on his shoulder made him jump to his hooves. Without thinking he tried to bow and lost his balance, and she caught his arm just before he went tumbling backwards into the the pile of armour.
"Let's go," she said, when he'd righted himself. "It doesn't feel right, to be here without the others."
Her small arms were wrapped around a bundle of green and blue fabric, which she was hugging close to her chest. She looked small and sad and not at all queenly, and without thinking he tucked an arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him gratefully, and together they walked back to the iron gate.
Tumnus cast a glance behind him, but instead of the smiling Queen his eyes fell on the proud-shouldered statue of King Peter, whose solemn bearded face regarded him with what the faun thought could only be disapproval.
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Twilight found Tumnus lying on the grass beneath the apple trees, outside the crumbling wall and ruined castle. As happy as he had been with Lucy beneath the trees and on the beach, the day's end left him terribly melancholy, and not without reason.
A day ago he hadn't seen green grass or trees or apples in a hundred years. A day ago Lucy Pevensie had been a child, and they had met but twice. A day ago, he had thought for certain he was going to die.
Caught, held down and beaten, his horns hacked off, and then ... In the warm sunlight, amid the trees and the laughter of his dear Lucy it had seemed but a horrible dream, fast fading and quickly dismissed.
Now, in the blink of an eye, everything had changed. Of course time had passed while he was a statue. Lucy was years older now. This didn't bother him so much; it was to be expected after all, and could hardly be helped. But she had lived a lifetime in Narnia, and Narnia had lived an age while he slept in stone. Everyone he had ever known had to be long dead by now, while to him only a moment had gone by. He no longer knew where he belonged anymore.
Lucy came from around the wall, wearing the green dress she'd taken from the chest beneath her statue. "All done," she announced. She set her drab Spare Oom clothes on the ground and came to sit beside him.
Even in the fading light, the change was remarkable. She looked even older than before, and though the dress was nothing like a queenly robe, she resembled her statue all the more. Tumnus sat up, putting a little space between them. It was only proper, after all.
Lucy looked at him worriedly. "Are you alright, Tumnus?"
He tried to hide his slight flinch, but he was sure his ears betrayed him. She had only ever called him "Mr. Tumnus" before, an epithet that had amused and endeared him to a sweet child. Now she was a Queen, and he was just "Tumnus".
"I'm alright," was all he said.
She smiled and closed the distance, folding her slender arms around his own. "Today has been hard for both of us, dear friend," she said comfortingly, stroking the fur on his elbow. "Tomorrow will likely be no better, but at least we'll leave this place."
"We will?" he turned his head around quickly. "I ... I mean, do we have to?" he stammered, twisting his scarf in his hands. "It's just that ... we've only just arrived. We're safe here ... we have food ..."
Lucy's delicate eyebrows furrowed for a heartbeat before her face softened. "I'd forgotten," she said, squeezing his arm. "You were on the run."
Tumnus looked away and didn't say anything in return. He felt utterly foolish and didn't want to make it any worse. Lucy did not need to be burdened with troubles that were, it seemed clear, ancient history.
The young queen only let go his arm and raised herself up on her knees. She took a bottle of something from a pouch on her belt and pulled out the stopper. A wonderful smell filled the air between them.
"Open your mouth," she ordered.
He stared, dumbfounded. Was that a command? What on earth was in that bottle? He felt nervous fear well up at yet another something that was new and unknown.
Lucy, Queen Lucy, only tilted her head patiently. "You don't trust me?" she asked, amused.
That wasn't true at all. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and tilted his head back. A drop of something fell onto his tongue and the taste of everything wonderful filled his mouth: fresh tea with honey and toast with jam, sugar cakes topped with strawberries and roasted apples. It lasted only a second and he savoured it longingly before opening his eyes.
He saw Lucy peering at him, a secret smile on her lips. For a moment he couldn't imagine why, until he noticed the stiffness in his jaw had vanished. Putting a hand to his cheek, he realized it was no longer swollen and tender, and the bruises half-hidden by the fur on his chest were fading before his eyes. His hands flew of their own own accord to his horns, only to find them still jagged stumps.
Lucy bit her lip in regret. "I don't think it does that."
Lowering his hands quickly, he managed a laugh. "You are a marvel, Lucy Pevensie," he said quietly, then blushed at his forwardness. "I mean ... Queen Lucy, I suppose it is?"
She only shook her head a little and put the bottle away. Sighing deeply, Lucy flopped onto her back in the grass and stretched, digging her fingers into the soft dirt. After a moment he lay back on his elbows and craned his head back, watching the sky as twilight deepened and the stars began to show themselves, one by one.
"Look," Lucy raised a hand to point at the sky. "It's the Leopard. Do you see?"
He smiled, finally a real true smile, and sank down into the grass beside her. Other constellations began to appear, ones he had known all his life from many a summer's evening stretched out on the grass in the Western Woods. "The Ship," he pointed, "and the Spearhead." His hand brushed hers and he quickly let it drop back to the grass.
She moved so that her head touched his shoulder, their bodies making a "L" on the grass together. "I used to lay out here every night it was warm enough," she murmured. "The year before we left, the moles planted this orchard. Pomona herself came to bless the trees for us. I don't doubt that is why they're still here."
"Pomona," Tumnus echoed the familiar name. The Tree Lady had been considered the greatest of all the woods-people, and in his wayward adolescence he'd been utterly besotted with her. It had been quite unrequited, of course, but the memory warmed him nonetheless.
Lucy twined her fingers around his, pulling him quite abruptly back to the present. "We didn't mean to leave," she said quietly, holding his hand where it lay in the grass. "We'd been kings and queens so long we'd forgotten we'd ever been anything else. Then one day ..."
She trailed off, and Tumnus didn't press. He didn't think he could have found his voice to do so if he'd wanted. He stared fixedly at the stars and waving apple boughs overhead and tried to quell the strange and unsettling warmth that seemed to have sprung into his chest. He could feel the wetness of tears where her cheek touched his bare shoulder.
"Time is different in on the other side," she said at last. "Every time I've come and gone, it was as if only a moment passed. When we emerged from the wardrobe, we were children again. And I've waited ... I've waited for so long to come back, and now that I have ..."
She squeezed his fingers, making his heart jump a little. "I have to find out what has happened here," she said firmly. "I must know why I've been called back. Will you help me, Tumnus?"
Tumnus swallowed hard, his mouth very dry. "I will ... your Majesty."
She shook her head, her hair tumbling over his shoulder. "Only Lucy to you, dear friend," she murmured. "Only ever Lucy to you."
The warmth in his chest seemed to spread to the ends of his fingertips, and bravely he curled his own hand around hers. She nestled her head into the crook of his shoulder, pressing her cheek into his red scarf, and was asleep before long.
Tumnus lay there until dawn, the threads of his scarf wafting in the night breeze and Lucy's breath, the cool grass on his back and her warm hand in his, and the face of a marble statue hovering just before his eyes.
Next ... Chapter 5: How They Left the Island
In which our heroes strike out for parts unknown, with many cumbersome items and an infusion of courage.
