AN: Alright, a rather quick update, to make up for the fact that I am entering exam time and so updates will become infrequent. It's a shame, because we've now entered what I call the meat of the piece. I'd advise you to fasten your seatbelts. Things just became interesting. Cap ;)
Disclaimer: I don't own Narnia, and whilst my pet cat thinks he can talk, he can't.
Dinner was a subdued affair and afterwards Mother took herself off to bed rather quickly. I suspect she needed some time alone to absorb what we had told her. Nevertheless, it afforded me the opportunity to converse with Lucy in privacy. She had been shooting me looks all evening and it was only years of experience that prevented her from squirming in her seat. As it was, she was clearly agitated and knowing my sister as I do, that worried me.
No sooner had we heard the door to Mother's room closing when she said to me, "Come on upstairs, I've got something to show you."
I nodded grimly and turned to Faraz, "Remain here, good my cat. I will call you if you are required."
Or he'd sense that we were in trouble and would come regardless. I felt a stirring in my hair and then Almana crawled over my ear and down onto my shoulder.
I stopped her with a firm, "You may stay with us. Your counsel will be appreciated."
The spider stopped her descent and settled down. I went upstairs to where Lucy was waiting in her room, her hands unclenching and clenching at her sides. She managed a smile of greeting for Almana when I said to her, "I don't suppose you remember Almana, do you?"
Almana, as a spider, only had very limited interaction with my siblings, although that was likely due to inclination, more than anything else.
"Only vaguely, but it is a pleasure to see you again."
Almana snapped her pincers in response.
Pleasantries out the way I said to Lucy, "What do you know?"
In response Lucy hurried over to a toy chest in the corner of her room and opened it. Instead of toys, the chest was lined with papers and magazines. I stared as she knelt next to it and started sifting through the papers, muttering under her breath, until she found what she was looking for, pulling it out with a loud, "ah ha!"
Being a boy at a boy's school, I immediately recognised the item in question.
"Lucy! What are you doing with that- that paper?" I asked, aghast, although I really shouldn't have been. Lucy was always one to do exactly the opposite of what she ought to.
Lucy shrugged not at all contrite and I sighed, resigning myself to the fact that I would never know why she did the things she did.
"It is perfectly respectable."
I wasn't even going to deign to respond to that.
"Anyway, it doesn't matter. Read it."
"You can't trust what this sa..."
"Read it!"
My mouth slammed closed and I raised an eyebrow. It was not often that Lucy became so forceful, and the fact that she had was a clear indication that something in the paper had seriously rattled her.
I picked up the paper and began flicking through, passed all the detailed articles which in other circumstances I would have happily read in all its lurid detail, until I came to about half way through the paper where a tiny report was buried. I almost didn't see it.
On reading it my other eyebrow shot up. I had to read it a second time just to be sure that my eyes were not deceiving me. I slowly and deliberately placed the article down and looked into Lucy's anxious face. She was twisting her hands and chewing her lip. I understood why as a cold fear had snaked its way into my heart.
"This is in Wales?" I questioned.
Lucy went over to the toy chest and pointed at the sides and lids that were lined with papers of varying repute.
"Not just in Wales," she cried. "Norfolk, Birmingham, Devon – For Aslan's sake, even in Scotland. Everywhere but London itself there have been reports. They've been laughed at up until now, but I imagine soon enough with the Portal known about, they'll believe."
"And not just believe," I added in almost a whisper.
No, they'd blame the Narnians. Just out of war they would not be willing to distinguish between friend and foe. I clenched my fist in anger.
"How far back are these dated?" I asked, almost in detachment, my mind was already going through possible solutions, seizing on one idea and then throwing it away almost in the next second.
"I saw the first article a few days ago when I heard about the Narnians. I knew Aslan had a purpose and I imagined that he would want us to do what we could. I started looking for unusual things; something that screamed of Narnia. I stumbled across that article on the bed. The rest are backlogs that I managed to get hold of. Don't ask how. They go back almost two months, Edmund."
Two months! How did we miss this? Two months of just reporting, and I could bet that they would have been around for longer than that.
The question must have been on my face because Lucy with her usual perceptiveness answered the unspoken question.
"We weren't looking. We thought Narnia was closed to us."
No, Narnia was not closed to us. It never had been. Instead it had managed to find its way into the world of our birth. Yet why had the evil managed to make it first? They would have had months to plan, and to scheme; months to fortify themselves for war.
And war would come. I knew that now, and I also knew that no matter what I would like to have been true, we were utterly unprepared for it.
Underneath a large, overhanging rock, a fire cackled merrily as a marsh-wiggle fed it small twigs and leaves. How he managed to even start a fire in the damp showed the high skill of marsh-wiggles, because Peter was quite sure he would not be able to start a fire in similar conditions, without a lot of difficulty.
Peter himself sat, with a thick blanket over his shoulders, right next to the fire.
After he had been pulled to safety and after the boys in his class had been assured by the marsh-wiggle that there was nothing to be afraid of, the marsh-wiggle had led them to a place of shelter. Simon, feeling tremendously guilty, and blaming himself for the incident (which Peter thought was ridiculous as whilst Simon might have been one of the boys stupid enough not to listen to him, Peter had not had to follow them in their stupidity, and anyway, it wasn't like Simon had pushed him!) had bundled him up in blankets, insisted he sat close to the fire, and as soon as it was made, had shoved a bowl of warm soup into his hands. He was, in fact, acting a rather lot like the mother hens who lived around the Cair.
Most of the boys were still wary of the marsh-wiggle and so were sitting a small distance away. The rain had finally stopped, so they did not feel compelled to fight over who got to sit under the limited shelter.
Peter meanwhile was trying to think of a way to introduce himself to the marsh-wiggle and find out just how he had managed to get into Wales. It was quite clear that the marsh-wiggle did not have a clue who he was. He'd implied as much when he had said – after introducing himself as Muddledoun- that he'd been following because he'd known that walking so close to the edge was just asking for something bad to happen and he thought that he should be around to help when it did. Normally, Peter would have put such a remark down to normal marsh-wiggle pessimism, but seeing as the marsh-wiggle was right and he'd been following with the same thought process in mind, he thought that would be uncharitable.
Still, that didn't solve the problem of what he was going to say. The marsh-wiggle seemed quite content to sit there smoking his very odd pipe. Peter found it very difficult to concentrate with the black mist pooling around his feet as it trickled over the bowl. He'd never been much of a smoker, although like all his siblings he'd tried the stuff. It was considered very poor manners to refuse a pipe if a marsh-wiggle offered one to you. Susan had been the only one to enjoy the stuff, although she partook only infrequently. Edmund had wanted to enjoy the stuff, thinking that it fit in with the image he was creating for himself rather well. Unfortunately, it had tickled his throat rather badly and after he'd had a violent coughing fit, the marsh-wiggles had never offered to share again.
Well, he'd been staring in dumb silence for a while now, and his thoughts were not going to become any more ordered. It was best that he started acting like the High King and get to the bottom of the matter.
"Muddledoun," he began to get the marsh-wiggles attention.
He let out a puff of his pipe and looked at him with a rather morose expression on his face.
"Yes?"
"I was wondering how a marsh-wiggle managed to get here. I'd never heard of a marsh-wiggle being anywhere but Narnia."
The marsh-wiggle puffed again and looked suspiciously at him.
"How do you know about Narnia? I never mentioned it."
Peter thought it would be a bad idea to mention his identity until he knew more. Marsh-wiggles had never been traitors before, but then marsh-wiggles had never been in Wales before.
"Would it surprise you to learn that people of this world had been to Narnia before?" A very small number to be sure, but Muddledoun didn't need to know that.
"No," said Muddledoun as a wave of smoke belched over the edge of his pipe. "Anything is possible, and the more impossible something seems, the more likely it is to happen."
Peter thought that such a philosophy really explained marsh-wiggle attitudes.
Peter sat up straight and raised an eyebrow. It was a look he'd given plenty of times before and it had a visible effect, for all that Muddledoun had no idea who he was.
"I don't know how I got here. I was walking through some woods when all of a sudden I didn't recognise where I was, so I thought I'd better turn back, although by then, I knew it was already too late. I thought to myself, 'Well, Old Muddle, what mess have you got yourself into this time?' because the direction I'd been walking from was also unfamiliar."
He took a deep breath, "Well, I thought I'd better ask some people for directions, although I didn't really think I'd have any luck in finding any people, and the trees were strangely silent. I thought that the trees were dead, they were so still, although since then, I've found out that trees here don't talk at all."
"I had to hide, because the only people I came across thought I was some sort of monster, which isn't surprising at all, when you think about it. They shot at me with some weird weapon of fire and smoke."
Peter felt a welling up of rage as the marsh-wiggle recounted how he was attacked with guns. How dare someone attack one of his people? Muddledoun however seemed unconcerned.
"Of course, I'm not the only Narnian around. I haven't met any talking beasts of course, or at least not the good sort, but then, one never runs into allies in strange places do they? Plenty of hags, trolls and giants though. Don't rightly know what they are up to, but I've been doing my bit, little use though it's been."
Peter felt as if someone had punched him in the gut. Hags, giants, trolls, and who knew what manner of other fell beasts and he in the wilderness with a bunch of untrained boys and know weapon to speak of. A decision was made. He needed to know more.
"How many have you seen, Muddledoun?"
Muddledoun looked a bit uncertain, "I don't know if I should tell you. I think I've said enough as it is, and that sort of information isn't right for children to know. Could mess you up something rotten."
Peter sat up and stared authoritatively at him, "You will tell me, marsh-wiggle."
Muddledoun was taken aback by the sudden switch in the boy in front of him. He saw a gleam of something in his eyes which caused him to say with a note of wonder, "Who are you?"
Peter stood up, allowing the blanket to fall from his teenage shoulders. He straightened his back and allowed all his magnificence and regality to shine through. The noise in the background ground to a halt as the boys took note of him. He had eyes only for Muddledoun.
"I am Peter, sometimes called the Magnificent, High King of Narnia, Emperor of the Lone Islands, Lord of Cair Paravel, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Lion, Sir Peter wolf's bane."
He stared down in the silence and Muddledoun stared back in surprise.
"Now tell me everything that you know."