AN: This chapter pretty much is completely about Lucy's carriage ride to the inn she and Helen are going to stay at until Helen gets married to Lord Pevensie. I at first intended for that event to be only a few paragraphs in the story but once I started writing out how Lucy was feeling and what she was seeing and what everyone she was passing by was thinking it just got longer and longer until, rather than being a few short paragraphs it was just one chapter! So because of that, they wont arrive at the inn until chapter nine. LOL. Anyway, hope you like it.
Lucy had expected to walk to the inn but Helen knew right from the start that the only steps they would have to take would be three inches from the scholarly swordsmen's house.
Waiting for them outside was a pretty pale-yellow carriage pulled by two slim light-hoofed centaurs who worked as servants in Lord Pevensie's house. The first was dapple-gray on his horse half and white-as-snow on his exposed human face and slightly chunky torso. The other seemed younger than the first, perhaps he was his brother or else his son, with copper-coloured flanks and olive-completion human skin.
"Good day." The eldest centaur said, nodding respectfully at them.
"Hullo." Lucy smiled at him.
Helen muttered something like a formal greeting before a faun footman stepped off the back ledge of the carriage and offered to help them get in.
Because she had been looking back over her shoulder to take one last look at the home and shop they were leaving, Lucy hadn't seen her mother get in and wasn't sure what to do. Was she supposed to give the faun her hand so he could sort of pull her up or was she supposed to let him push up on her elbow? Maybe she was supposed to step with her feet first...no, that didn't seem right. Having only ridden in a carriage once when she was about three or four, this was quite a complex situation for her. She racked her brain to recall if there was anything about this in that dull etiquette book but her mind couldn't seem to pull up any information.
Her mother looked out the window, glancing despairingly at Lucy wondering what on earth was taking her so long. Couldn't she just get in the carriage so they could get away from this place at once? Wasn't she at all eager to leave her servitude behind? Of course if Helen had really understood her daughter at all, the answer would have been candidly obvious but she was far too focused on her own feelings in the matter and wrongly assumed her daughter felt the same way.
Nearly crying from mere frustration at this point, Lucy almost broke down settling on the notion of asking the centaurs if they knew what part of her arm she was supposed to extend to the poor faun who was waiting so patiently for her.
Would everything about being a lady be this difficult from now on? Her mother always made it seem like nobility was the easy life but this certainly didn't prove that theory. Wadding through muddy ponds to go fishing and studying from worn-out books seemed far, far, easier than this. Such a simple thing made so very complicated. And she didn't dare mess it up; what would mother say if she disgraced their ascent into ladyship?
Finally, the faun ended up with the side of her shoulder and awkwardly had to lift her up towards the silver foot-step. Never in all her eleven years of life, had she felt like such a bumpkin. Not even at her most embarrassing of times. Thankfully, no one was around to witness her stumble and her mother was too relieved to finally be leaving to bother with a scolding of any kind. Rather, she simply told her to be more careful in the future because they were sure to be in carriages a lot more often now and it wouldn't do to fall, get injured, and give themselves away.
If the carriage had been pulled by non-talking horses and driven by a driver, they would have heard the flick of a light whip before feeling the engraved wooden wheels rolling far beneath them; in this case however, the centaurs merely started moving as soon as they knew Helen and Lucy were seated.
Helen seemed somewhere between anxious for the ride to be over and proud to be having the ride at all. She held her head high with her proud eye-lids half closed and seemed to take little real notice of anything they passed.
Lucy on the other hand, couldn't get enough of the view. At first she had felt rather sick from the constant motion and thought perhaps her mother had the right idea. She held her own head up a little higher but because her eyes landed on the horizon, her motion sickness ended and she didn't need to close them.
She could look at all the interesting things they passed and think about them. All of Narnia seemed so different when you were this high up rolling along at such a speed. The shops and roads looked smaller, the people and creatures became almost doll-sized from a distance, and the strange shadow the carriage cast rolled along changing the light on the once-familiar roads below.
Some of the more lowly workers took of their caps and lowered their heads as she peered at them through the carriage window. Why on earth would they do that? Just because Helen was marrying Lord Pevensie? Surely he wasn't that important! Not so important that a plain girl with hair that needed to be washed, donning a simple dress of no fine fabrics, could be treated in such a way. Yet, that seemed to be the case.
How strange life is, Lucy thought as one of the carriage wheels rolled over a bump in the road causing her to bounce up and nearly hit her head on the carriage's roof, not so very long ago they didn't like us at all, we were just dirty beggars of no real value. Then, we were just servants to someone who was higher than us. Now we matter. Surely, we're still the same people though; I don't feel any different. And yet, there doesn't seem even to be a line even as thin as an eyelash connecting me or mother to our former selves. It's just too peculiar for words, really.
And there were all the of the little gutter children peering at them through broken bits of glass they found on the streets to play with, casting rainbow lights around their other-wise hopelessly bleak dwellings. They saw little Lucy who they knew couldn't be very much older than they themselves were and all thought the same thing, wasn't she terribly lucky to be going somewhere in a large pretty thing like that instead of pleading for food like them.
Further up the line; servant children, not so poor as their beggarly neighbors, watched the carriage, too. Lucy was something of a mystery to them. Who was this strange little girl who had been lower than their lowest pleaders in Narnia and had suddenly risen to their level and was now to be soaring high above them? She was one of them-sort of and she was going to be the daughter of a lady! Goodness, life was so full of surprises, wasn't it?
"Mama," One little girl only a year younger than Lucy, carrying a basket of eggs back from the marketplace whispered to her mother. "Is she going to be a princess?"
"Close enough." Her mother whispered back. "If not even a little better. She'll have all the luxuries and none of the trouble of ruling over anything."
"She is so lucky." sighed the girl's younger sister. "Will she have lots of pretty dresses, Mama?"
"Hundreds, I reckon." Their mother shrugged. "Now don't stare at her too long, it isn't nice and it's terrible unnerving I'm sure."
"The carriage has already passed." The girl reminded her.
"Fine then."
"If she's a lady, does she still have to clean swords?" their little cousin, Ronnie, who was only four and had seen Lucy working before, asked them.
"Don't be silly!" They laughed. "Of course not!"
"She'll never even have to touch dirt again." The first girl added for emphasis.
"She wont have much fun." Ronnie decided, mournfully. "Poor girl."
And they all laughed at him again for his innocence thinking him quite a silly, ignorant child.
A little while later, they passed Lord Pevensie's house and Lucy looked hard at it, trying to see if she could make herself feel glad that she was going to live there. It was a beautiful house, such a grand place. A king's palace, She reminded herself.
Still, she could stir no emotion in her heart. She couldn't make herself feel anything towards the place that would soon be her home. Not love nor disgust nor even indifference. It was simply there and they were simply rolling passed it. It was like something out of a story book where everything is pretty but the characters aren't well drawn out in the least-they are aloof, so you can't feel anything towards them or the places in the book. Everyone in that house-with the near exception of Peter who she at least knew enough about to be fond of-was very, very aloof.
Speaking of aloof, Lucy caught a glimpse of Susan in the window as they passed and tried to meet her eyes. Strangely enough, unlike the faces of other people she passed, Susan's didn't seem to have changed since the last time they'd seen each other. Her expression still smacked of, 'You aren't supposed to be here'
She's right, Lucy realized now that perhaps Susan's words that day had had more than one meaning. You aren't supposed to be here.
Susan didn't flinch in her window seat or squirm the way Lucy knew she would have done in her place. She just sat there looking hard-but with no real anger, only sadness-at the passing carriage. She knew who was in it and she knew why Lucy's expression was filled with such curiousness.
"Draw the curtains." Helen ordered, leaning her neck back over the cushioned seat.
"But I wont be able to see..." Lucy started to protest.
"Do as I say, child." Helen said shortly. "There's entirely too much sun in here and I fear letting you lean out like that much longer will give you more chance to fall right out the window."
"I wont fall out." Lucy told her, feeling rather insulted. She wasn't that clumsy!
"Lucy!" Her mother said testily.
"Yes, mum." She sighed, reaching for the two-inch thick silk rope that held the crimson curtains in place.
Looking out at the Narnia below her one last time before sliding the drapes shut all the way, she saw Susan close her own window and latch the lion-clasp firmly in place.
Now at last, Lucy felt something towards her soon-to-be-home. A real, non-hidden emotion that words could actually be used to describe. One word anyway, fear.
AN: In the next chapter: Lucy and her mother will arrive at the inn and...well you'll have to wait to find out...LOL! In the meantime, please review!
