Chapter 8
When Caspian awoke the next time he was no longer in complete darkness. A dull orange glow emanated from a lantern on the other side of rusted metal bars. He blinked several times, forcing his eyes to focus on the figure seated beside the lantern, but the flickering shadows didn't make it easy.
"Ah, so you're awake," a familiar voice said with far too much good humor for Caspian to appreciate.
Caspian clenched his teeth and gave the (relatively) older man his most imperious glare. "Crowley."
"I was worried for a bit there – you were out of it quite a bit longer than you should have been. You're not originally from my world, are you?" Crowley asked. "The drugs we used had far too potent an effect on you for you to be native."
"Go to hell."
Crowley chuckled. "I'll take that as an affirmation."
"You can take your affirmation and choke on it." Caspian knew he was being petty. He blamed it on whatever drug Crowley's minions had put on that dart.
"Now, now, Mr. Casp. Is that any way for a king of Narnia to talk?"
Caspian sat up as straight as the cage he was in would allow and took stock of his situation as best as he could. As he'd deduced, he was in a cave. To be more precise, he was in some sort of cell built into a cave passage. Behind him was a wall of solid rock. In front of him were bars like from the cells of his castle's dungeon – only these were in much worse shape. There were actually pools of rust on the floor, frosting over the bolts that held them in place. Caspian wondered if perhaps they were brittle enough to break down. He'd have to try it later, when Crowley wasn't standing right in front of him.
"What do you want?" Caspian asked.
"There are a lot of things that I want, Ian, my friend –"
"Don't call me your friend. I have every intention of killing you when I get out of here."
"Ah." Crowley looked amused, much to Caspian's annoyance. "You might find that more difficult than you expect. As you might have realized by now, I'm not exactly acting alone."
As he spoke two figures moved out of the shadows – hunch backed, hooded figures that moved like predators. Caspian started to reach for his knife but froze when he came up empty. Of course that bastard would have taken it, he thought angrily.
"Remember how we had a discussion about other worlds the night you and I first met?" Crowley asked, smirking as he saw Caspian's expression. "And how I told you that Mr. Wells, author of The Time Machine, was another world traveler, much like you and I? And you wanted to know what proof I had of this? Well Ian, my friend, my proof is right here. Shi'ftla, Menj'ki . . ."
Crowley's minions removed their hoods revealing Neanderthal-like visages, faces that looked half human, half animal.
"A normal person would have recoiled upon getting a glimpse of them," Crowley commented, "but you merely look upon them with cool detachment . . . like you're used to seeing such unsightly creatures."
"They're Morlocks?" Caspian asked, his brain reaching the logical conclusion from the information Crowley had given him.
"That's what they call themselves."
"So . . . we're not in England anymore, are we?"
"We're not." Crowley nodded to his subordinates. "You two can go. You're not needed here now."
Caspian resisted the urge to offer the Morlocks a parting shot – equating them to lap dogs or something equally insulting. But he figured it was best not to provoke them – not at the moment at least.
"Are there creatures like them in Narnia?" Crowley asked once they were gone. "Something similar you've seen that makes their appearance not such a shock to you?"
"They look like a cross between a gnome and a hag," Caspian told him. "But I'm not answering anymore of your questions until you tell me what you want with me."
Crowley's smile was unsettling and there was a nasty glint in his eyes. "Well in that case I'll get straight to the point."
X
"Morlocks? Like from The Time Machine?" Eustace asked enthusiastically. He looked far too happy at this revelation. The grin on his face alone made Edmund want to punch him.
"How do you even know what a Morlock is?" Susan demanded.
"We read The Time Machine at Experiment House," Jill told them. "Just last month actually."
"It's funny . . ." Eustace looked quite pleased with himself, "Pole and I thought it seemed more like the alleged Time Traveler was in fact more of a World Traveler, but that he just didn't know it."
"No, I thought that," Jill corrected him. "All you thought was that Wells had plagiarized Jonathan Swift."
"I agreed with you –"
"No you didn't! You kept on about how the Morlocks were blatantly lifted from Gulliver's Travels and hardly let me get a word in!"
"Well the Morlocks were so similar to the yahoos, you can't blame me for thinking – hey, do you think that maybe Jonathan Swift traveled to other worlds too? That the different islands he visited in Gulliver's Travels were actually other worlds?"
"One headache at a time, please," Edmund said before their conversation could turn into a full scale literary debate. "We need to focus on what's happening now."
"Ed's right," Peter said quickly. "We're not exactly in an ideal situation here."
"We should move," Edmund suggested.
"Right," Peter agreed. "We don't know if those Morlocks –"
"Are we sure they're Morlocks?" Eustace asked.
"We don't know if those creatures, which we will refer to as Morlocks for lack of any better term," Peter rephrased, glaring at Eustace, "were on their way somewhere specific or just passing by, or if they were here specifically for the water." He nodded toward the river. "We also don't know who might come after them or how many more there are. So let's find somewhere else to make camp."
They packed up what little gear they had put down and started walking again.
"You know," Lucy said when they were on their way once more, "if those things were Morlocks and Mr. Wells was right about them existing, do you think he might have been right about those other people as well?"
"The Eloi?" Jill asked.
"It stands to reason," Edmund said.
"Oh God, I hope they're not real," Eustace moaned. "They were even worse than the Morlocks."
"How so?" Susan asked, who hadn't read the entire book. "Were they more dangerous?"
"If you consider ignorance and decadence dangerous," Eustace stated. "Which I do. Imagine the personalities of cows put into human bodies and you've got the Eloi –"
"They're not half so bad as he's trying to make them out to be," Jill interrupted. "It's hardly a bad thing for a species to want to live in peace."
"Wanting to live in peace isn't bad. Wanting to live in peace so bad that you ignore oppressors who pick you off one by one is just plain stupid," Eustace scoffed. "Look where that got our world –"
"You can't compare the actions of a nonaggressive fictional race to the League of Nations –" Jill started to say.
"The hell I can't. We turned a blind eye when Germany started breaking the Treaty of Versailles. We ignored them when they invaded Czechoslovakia, then Poland, then Belgium, then the next thing we knew over seventy-million people were dead! And over half of them civilians!"
Edmund blinked and looked at Peter. His brother's shocked expression mirrored his own. Neither had ever heard Eustace get this worked up before.
"How many of them could have been saved if someone had stepped forward sooner and said 'This is wrong,' huh?"
"And when it's against your nature to fight?" Jill asked. "When it goes against everything you know and believe? Saying that the Eloi have to rise up and kill the Morlocks is like saying that rabbits should rise up to fight off wolves. We're not talking about countries, we're talking about different species."
"According to Wells they were two subspecies of humans. Even if they weren't as intelligent as humans they were capable of human-like reasoning which made them capable of choosing their own nature – and they chose to stand by and allow the weak members of their society to be picked off and devoured and didn't put up any sort of resistance –"
"Enough, you two," Edmund said, before their debate could get out of hand. "We won't be able to hear any enemies approaching if you two keep arguing."
Honestly though, Edmund wished that it wasn't necessary to stop them. He would have liked to have seen their debate through to the end – and he could see that his siblings felt the same way. It wasn't often that Eustace acted and spoke rationally. People tended to forget that beneath his bumbling and careless façade he was actually fairly intelligent – more than intelligent, he was someone who Aslan himself had chosen as a champion.
"Sorry Edmund," Jill said quickly, but then glowered at Eustace. "We'll finish this later, Scrubb."
Edmund smirked. Jill had that inner fire too. Many times she had surprised them all – making it to Narnia in the first place, saving Caspian's son, shooting a Nazi who was trying to kill Susan, and perhaps the greatest feat of all, being able to tolerate Eustace on a daily basis.
"You better believe we will," Eustace said, giving her a challenging glare.
Jill smiled sweetly back at Eustace – and for some reason that Edmund couldn't comprehend, he felt a stab of annoyance at that. Then he realized that her smile was a bit too sweet to be sincere, though Eustace seemed to realize it first.
"What's with that leering grin?" Eustace demanded.
"Nothing, really," Jill said innocently. "I was just thinking that we'd probably have the chance to do a bit more research before concluding our debate."
"Research?" Eustace asked.
"First hand research," Jill said, then raised a finger and pointed toward the canopy.
Lights flickered in the trees – like the sort of light given off by oil lamps, and ropes and platforms were visible overhead even in the falling gloom.
"I think," Jill said, "that we've found an Eloi village."
End of Chapter Eight
AN: Sorry, I lied in my last AN – I originally planned to have our heroes meeting the Eloi in this chapter, but then it occurred to me that I was introducing two races quite quickly, without giving much of a description of each, beyond their physical appearance, at least. So I rewrote this chapter in a way that (I hope) gives some insight into what the two races are like without resorting to long blocks of exposition. In the next chapter, however, the Eloi will be making an appearance and, little by little, our heroes come closer to finding Caspian. As always thank you everyone who reviewed:
Ash1234 and rthstewart: I'm glad you guys like Edmund in this story so far – if I write a third story in this series he'll probably be the main character.
Diva divine: Complications are my specialty! *evil laugh* Yeah, I'll definitely be making up for them getting an easy way in.
merlyn2: You're right about the White Witch's spell – and about the inconsistencies in the books since Lewis didn't have everything planned yet when he started writing the first book. I tried to use that to make things more simple and not waste words, but you caught me, lol. Sorry, that was lazy of me and I'll try to avoid doing that in the future.
Miniver: I'm afraid that my title is a little misleading – there aren't going to be as many worlds in this story as I think people were expecting. The title is actually part of a line/quote that will be used later in a (hopefully) significant conversation. But on the bright side, there will be a scene in Narnia near the end . . . probably not like anyone's imagining now though, but I think some people will manage to figure out what I'm planning before the end.
HeadBangGirl: I'm glad you enjoyed this battle scene – there's another one coming up which I hope you'll enjoy too, but I anticipate it being more difficult to write because a lot more stuff is going to be happening.
Mae-E, Lavendar and garnetred: They'll be finding Caspian soon, don't worry.
Amber Eyed Countess: I hope I did an okay job getting across what Morlocks and Eloi are like. If it's confusing please let me know and I'll try to remedy that.
Maristelle: Come September I will be making every effort possible to update this story twice a week, and I'll be adding some original stories to my website if you want to read more of my work. Right now I think this month is the busiest month of my life so far, but in a good way, (mostly) lol.
