The Ivory Merchants
Chapter 14: Convergence
There was a high, half-strangled bellowing scream, and the Elephant's trunk crashed down, just missing their hands—the Elephant himself seemed to grow, to be standing higher, on stiff, tense legs, and with wide-spread ears.
"He's not looking any more... he's not even seeing," Lucy whispered.
"He sees us... he does not want to see, but he sees us," Kirrina breathed in reply.
The Elephant shook his head savagely, as if trying to shake away the sight of the two small figures standing before him. He stretched out his trunk, over and past them, to tear at another thin, spiky-leaved shrub, pulling it up by the roots, and whipping it back, high above. A shower of small pebbles and grit fell on them as it passed overhead.
Lucy glanced anxiously at Kirrina, but the River-god's gaze was fixed only on the Elephant; she was smiling to herself, as if she saw some tangle unfolding to simplicity.
"Do not move, Queen," she said, very softly. "He will drink."
The Elephant was smashing the shrub down on the ground beside them, once, twice, again; he trod one heavy foot on it, and tore it up again. What was left now was only a ragged skeleton of a bush; he raised it high again, lashed it through air, only to crash it down across his own face, his own eyes.
His eyes. With horror Lucy saw that tears were streaming down his face; he would not seem to see anything at all, but his face was wet with his crying. She heard a voice call out, and realised it was her own. Worse, worse than the shackles which had held him was this hurting...
Kirrina's voice pierced through the turmoil of her pity, holding her still.
"Do not move! He fears, he storms... but he will drink."
And the trunk crashed down again, and dusty fragments of the bush flew in the air around them, and the Elephant stood, panting in slow, heaving breaths. The dust settled down, and it seemed to Lucy that the waiting was interminable, but still she held up her hands, and still the water glistened in the sunlight.
And yes, the trunk moved slowly now, dropped the last few twigs and sniffed uncertainly, to and fro across the Queen's cupped hands, pulled back a little, then dropped again, to snuffle at the water, to crawl down to Lucy's wrist, and then again withdraw, and touch, delicately, so delicately! with one pink tip of the two-fingered trunk, the surface of the water—a still surface now, Lucy saw. Somehow, Kirrina was keeping the water still, brimming and rounded, just precisely at the edge, so that the sunlight glanced, gleaming, at the rim. She did not dare move, not even to look at Kirrina or up to the head which hung heavy above her. She saw only that hovering, questing trunk, its mouth flexing open, as large across as the bowl of her own two hands—flexing open, and touching again the surface of the water, and dipping, and then...
...then drawing it up, in one long sucking, startlingly noisy inhalation.
And then, a silence. Lucy stole a glance upward. The Elephant was gazing out and over their heads, as if thinking what came next, his trunk still dropped down into Lucy's hands. Then, very slowly, he drew away his trunk and coiled it up tucking up and under and against and into his mouth, and drank.
o-o-o-o-o
On the road at last, Edmund thought with relief.
He had not been able, for reasons of courtesy, to leave before the household was awake. Good relations—Narnia's good relations—with this near-neighbour country could well pivot on his good relations with these people now. But it had been a long—it had felt like, he corrected himself—a long period of waiting for the household to wake, stifling his impatience as the light of the full moon, sinking between a tangle of forest trees, gave way slowly to the pale early morning sun, and then to full daylight.
And with it the realisation that he was watched—of course he had been being watched! As the sunlight had gradually pierced the shadows, he had realised that Gul was sitting immobile beside one of the tall tree-columns supporting the balcony roof, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on the king seated in the doorway.
Now, striding along the forest path, Edmund felt his lips stretch into a smile, a grin. Whatever Gul had been waiting for had been forestalled. He had managed the leave-taking from the settlement with good will on both sides, later than he would have liked, but well-provisioned for the journey, and accompanied by exactly those he would have chosen, had he been given the choice: Reznar, who stood in some sort as the heir of Rittar, and thus was a potential leader of these people; Wily, as a sturdy and strong companion, known from the trek from Narnia; Mavram, valuable for her keen perceptions and the insights she provided—consciously or not—into Telmarine thinking; and Nem, for his cheerful company. Gul, somewhat to the King's surprise, had chosen to remain at the village settlement—to his surprise and to his relief. Hoom, of course might yet be met on the road, depending on the results of the meeting with the Northerners, but, in the meantime...
In the meantime, it was cheerful journey they were making. Away from Gul's—or Hoom's!—glowering presence, or Hurrdah's tight-wound focus on her bitterness, the four younger Telmarines were noticeably lighter-hearted company. Nem and Wily returned to their old ways of half-teasing, half-challenging each other as they went—each other, and even the King.
"Try this, Mu-majesty!" Nem called now, and ran ten or so paces ahead, leaping to catch at a low-hanging bough and swing himself up into a tree.
Edmund smiled, but Mavram's jeer at his playing was too recent for him to want to endanger his dignity—Narnia's dignity—again. Still, it was a relief to be surrounded by such ease and good nature, he thought.
"Too much of a man to climb, hey, king?" Nem had paused now on his bough, and was eyeing another, a little lower, a little ahead, on another tree.
Too much of a man... It still seemed strange that dealing with plants was so strongly seen as woman's business for these people.
Nem leapt, and triumphantly achieved his target; leaves scattered below and a bird flapped leisurely up from that tree, to settle again, briefly, a little way ahead, and then fly further again.
The King looked quickly at Mavram; she was still walking beside him sedately, apparently uninterested, though Reznar seemed half-inclined to join the sport.
"Will you climb with him, perhaps, Mistress?" he asked, hoping to maybe gain a little time to observe more closely the beckoning flick of flight-patterns against the shadowy green, "since trees are plants, and women have to do with all plants in Telmar."
"Climbing trees is business, not pleasure." she replied, a little sharply. "Men may play at what women do to keep Telmar alive; I will climb when I see what must be climbed for—which is not amusement, King, nor bird-watching."
There was a new hint of impatience, or even indignation, in her tone, and Edmund took warning, and turned his attention to her for the time, with carefully courteous, cheerful conversation with her and her brother as they walked, to warm her tone again.
Nevertheless, he thought keenly as they walked and talked. She had observed more closely than he liked; he had indeed been distracted by that swoop of black wings ahead, and the flickering movements beyond the green. Crimtwing, he thought, or Quick-in-all, judging from the smoothness of the flight—but if Mavram was already half-alert to his watching, the message would have to wait.
o-o-o-o-o
She had had, after all, to go slowly, as Kirrina had said. The draught tinctured with her cordial had calmed the Elephant, and gradually he had allowed himself to see them, though he did not seem to know what they were, or what he was, or to know that communication was possible between them.
"Go gently, Queen." Kirrina had said. "He has not only been cut off from his own kind, but from all recognition that he is more than a device to pull the ferry. He has withdrawn deep into himself, and the return is hard and painful. You have eased the pain somewhat with this gift of the Winterfather, but go slowly, Queen."
And to go slowly had been hard, with the knowledge always pressing on her that the Telmarines would be back, sooner or later, though there had been no word yet from the Ravens that the return was near.
Nevertheless, she had persevered, choking down her own eagerness, and only advancing by infinitesimal degrees, as the Elephant seemed willing to allow her, from stroking the long trunk, to embracing it, and laying her cheek against it. By infinitesimal degrees, and only as he seemed willing to passively allow. It was long and the day had stretched to afternoon before Lucy could feel there was any true response from the Elephant, any recognition that he was a person, and could respond to her as to another person. Even then, it was only a shivering, a flinching away and then hesitantly returning, a quickening of his breath, and a movement of his ears, but the Queen—her eyes closed, and listening with her whole body—knew that they had achieved a new step to freedom for this Narnian, though she could feel, too, how hard it was for him, as if his self was unfolding after long and cramped entombment into the light; he was puzzled and silent and fearful.
"It may be harder yet for those still to come," Kirrina warned her then. "This one has been beside the river, which laps and changes and flows, but those ones who have paced ceaselessly to turn the great wheel have seen nothing but their own dusty tracks..."
"Nothing but," said Lucy, savagely. "Nothing but their own tracks to see, and being nothing but walking useful machines to the Telmarines... I think I hate Telmarines, Kirrina."
"Think on what is here, not on what is not." said Kirrina, practically and dispassionately, and Lucy nodded, and turned again with growing confidence to tenderly stroke down all that she could reach of the Elephant's trembling, leathery trunk.
o-o-o-o-o
The Telmarines, no less than he himself, were eager to use the full moon's light to make a long day's journey of it, Edmund found.
"We shouldn't waste a moon like this," Reznar had said earnestly. " 's bright enough to walk by."
"Bright enough to walk by," the King agreed, and raised his voice a little. "Bright enough to read by."
There was no reply to that, and he had expected none; he had not spoken to be understood, but to be heard by one who flitted noiselessly through the shadows of the trees along the way, and as well—he grinned to himself—to relish speaking with a hidden meaning. The moon was bright, but the message he hoped to read by its light, supposing that they camped eventually in a clearing large enough that he could see the sky, would not be written on parchment, but in the sky.
The clearing where they stopped, a weary time later, was large enough, he found, but to see a black bird against the black sky was no easy task. No quick glancing would suffice this night, he thought. The others had moved to set up camp, but still were too close—and Mavram's observation too keen—to risk his usual exercises.
Well, more than one way to crack an egg! He slumped down, his head thrown back, against a tree; feigned exhaustion could hide the keenness of scanning behind half-closed eyes. He settled himself, and waited; there came the quiet stroke of wings over head, and he began to spell his message, word by word.
Beware.
Beware. The message began as had that of the day before, but this was not a message from Cair Paravel. This warning came, therefore, from the Raven himself—or herself; bright moon notwithstanding, it was too dark to see which of the seven it was. And if so, it was a warning about a near threat, a threat seen and observed by this messenger. The King peered into the night.
A complicated tumbling turn—not a sign he had seen since he had left the Cair. It was a name, but... the King ransacked his memory. A sign they'd agreed, of course, but... Gul! It was the sign for Gul, devised long months ago, but never yet needed, never yet used.
He signalled Understood, thanking Aslan as he did so that that message required only the simplest of movements; even slow-thinking Reznar would surely be moved to suspicion if the Easterner were to leap up now and attempt any more active gymnastics, after a day's march as long as this had been.
Travels.
South-East.
And he did not understand, but he could risk no clear question. Was Gul following him, secretly? Following all of them, south-east to the timber-camp? And why Beware?
And then Nem's voice, indefatigably good-humoured, cut across his thinking.
"King? Ready to eat?"
The Raven had already drifted back into the shadows. Edmund, with what grace he could muster, joined the others around the fire.
o-o-o-o-o
It took longer than he liked for the firelight to leave his eyes again, so that he could again make out the silent swoops and turns of the message. The Raven had wisely chosen to begin again, and so he spelt out more easily the beginning of it.
Gul. Travels. South-East.
And then, with more difficulty, the words that followed.
Unknown. Meeting. From the South. One Man. South. Beware.
And once again, he did not understand, completely, and once again, lacking the means to ask the questions filling his mind, he signalled Understood.
First Susan's warning about a Southerner, and now Gul, travelling, it seemed—though the message had been unsure on this point—to meet a man from the South. The simplest explanation, the obvious explanation, was that these were the same man, and if so he needed to know more precisely what Susan had meant. But the simplest explanation might not be the right one, he thought fretfully, and then—his last thought as he fell asleep—I must find a way to speak with the Ravens soon.
o-o-o-o-o
The sun had been beginning to slip down into the western forest, and one corner of her mind was wondering if they would sleep that night, when the Elephant of his own volition had curled his trunk around her wrist; by the time the huge yellow moon had floated up from the Eastern Sea she could feel that he was at ease—uncomprehending but willing—to pad after her as she walked. And so...
"Can we go by night, do you think?" she asked. "We should have moonlight enough, if it stays clear."
"You hear where is the next? And this one is ready?"
"I... I think I can. It's hard, with him close to me. But I think I do. I think he is."
"And I think," Lucy could hear a quiet amusement bubbling up in her friend's voice, "I think that the Queen's listening for her own can be trusted. Yes, we will go."
It was a strange, dreamlike journey. Lucy focussed all her strength on holding to the thin thread of sound or feeling—she could hardly tell which it was—which called to her away south; she was dimly aware that Kirrina was moving restlessly ahead and then returning, repeatedly, but could not spare attention to ask why; the Elephant trustfully, uncomprehendingly, padded behind.
The day's heat was still in the earth as they set out, but before long they came to the river, drifting inexorably eastwards. Lucy shivered. Mist was rising above the river-surface, and the ceaseless flow seemed to be leaching the warmth from the air above; the waters were dark under the brightness of the moon; they seemed strange and unforgiving. But a river...
"Kirrina?"
"Queen?"
"I need your help!"
"Think you so?"
Kirrina's voice was oddly charged with meaning, as if she were trying to remind Lucy of something she should know already. Once again she slipped past the girl and the Elephant, glanced back with one swift, secret smile, then slid into the water.
Lucy stood in the wide silence of the night, pondering. Kirrina had not said No, and would not, surely, leave her alone to fail here. Perhaps it was up to her now, to brave the river? But if she tried to swim... She had been learning, but she wasn't anything like as good as Su. And would he follow, anyway? He seemed so far to be following her without thinking, which wasn't as good as if he was thinking, of course, but then it might be better than him thinking too much about wading into the dark where you couldn't even see...
She shuddered.
And then as she stood trying to summon courage for the first plunge into unknown water she felt the Elephant drop her wrist, and then felt his trunk curl irresistibly around her waist and she felt herself hoisted high into the air, and then settled—impersonally, automatically, as if she were just one more load of his working life—onto his broad neck.
She gasped and fell forward, pressing down tightly against him, as hard as she could, sure that only the friction of her skin against his rough hide could keep her from sliding off and dropping into cold emptiness. And then she felt in the broad neck-muscles beneath her the heavy shifting roll of his shoulders as he trod forward, to splash with strong and steady feet into the moonlit river.
Half-way across Kirrina surfaced again, laughing, and now river-music was mingling with the constant, distant thrumming of the call, and Lucy, still clinging limpet-like to the Elephant's neck, was able, shakily, to laugh in reply, and everything seemed possible again.
o-o-o-o-o
She stayed on the Elephant's back for most of that seemingly endless, unreal night, pressed against his warm hide, feeling beneath her his swaying, rolling gait, and around her the cool air, washed silver by the moon. It was like being in a story, she thought sleepily, or a long, long song, first the river-song, and then the swoosh of wind in trees, and soft steady padding like muffled drums to mark the rhythm of it, and through it all the deep, throbbing call of that other Elephant's being.
The sky was already light when she woke with a jerk, and only just saved herself from falling. The Elephant had stopped dead. The call was so strong—she wondered how she could ever have been sleeping with that intensity of sound-below-sound.
"Kirrina!" she called. "It's... we are very close now!"
"Then come down, Queen."
"I don't know how!"
Kirrina was silent; she would not tell, Lucy realised, what she thought the Queen should know or find for herself. So... she sat up higher, swung both her legs to one side of the Elephant's neck, took a deep breath and slid to the ground.
Kirrina nodded encouragement as she staggered and recovered, but the Elephant did not seem to notice her. His head was raised, as it had been when he was angry, but Lucy could feel that this was not anger, this was shock... as if something entirely new had broken into his world. She turned her head—but she did not really need to look. She knew already what he must be seeing, and yes, now she saw it herself, not so very far away, lit by the first rays of the sun—another shape, another prisoner to be freed, and meanwhile this first one needing, surely, to be calmed and helped to face so great a change in his world.
She went to his head, and touched his trunk lightly, and the soft searching tip of it wandered, uncertainly, across her forearm, and then hesitatingly returned to coil again, as it had the day before, around her wrist, and then... then she was sprawling on the ground, so suddenly had that tentative, confiding trunk whipped away from her, and the Elephant had left her there, and all his puzzlement and fear had dropped away from him and he was lumbering, thundering across the ground and trumpeting aloud in recognition and amazement that there was... Certainly he knew, thought Lucy, certainly he knew that this was a creature like himself; whatever the clouds still over his long-buried mind, his self saw and recognised this other Elephant as being of his kind, and his whole self had turned to an urgent need to be with that other.
And that other Elephant had seen too, and heard, and now reared up in an equal amazement, his eyes fixed on the form charging now towards him. This one, too, lifted his trunk and trumpeted, and shied back and twisted and plunged from side to side in a fury of eagerness to be free and to meet his fellow, tugging at the chain which held him prisoner... and in the last instant, there was one final wrenching pull and Lucy, breathless, saw the chain snap like a thread, and this new Elephant started forward even as the first strode two paces, and the two huge forms surged together in a bright cloud of dust, jarring the earth.
Lucy felt a choking and a pricking behind her eyes that was nothing to do with the dust, nor with any doubt or fear.
Blindly, she groped behind her, and felt no surprise when Kirrina grasped her hand.
"You are glad, Queen?" she heard, and nodded speechlessly, and for a little while the two were silent, drinking in the sight of the Elephants swaying together and then drawing apart to look again at each other, then rubbing their huge heads together dumbly, nuzzling, their trunks curled and entwined and their whole majestic beings quivering with the newness of their joy.
o-o-o-o-o
His spirits lifted at the first sight—the first sounds!—of the timber-camp. There was the bustle of work in progress—he could see one giant log being split, as Mavram had said, by a wedge-and-hammer technique, and all the stir of a campsite making ready for the evening meal. And there was action, too, which he guessed was not work, but seemed to be some sort of game in progress, away at the far northern end of the site—shouts and whoops from a small knot of men, running and laughing and calling to each other.
The simple hilarity and energy were heartening to see; these Telmarines, it seemed, were of the same boisterous humour as Nem and Wily, who had repeatedly made a game of running and buffeting at each other. He almost thought they might leave to join in this now, but it seemed not; their faces showed, if anything, a curious reluctance to even appear to notice the exuberant rough-and-tumble.
He flashed a grin across to Mavram, thinking of how much more easy his signalling would be in this environment, and saw her puzzled smile in return.
"You like our timber-camp, King?"
"It seems a cheerful place," he returned easily, "and here I will meet my own Narnians, and your people will see they think and feel, and..."
He had begun the sentence as subterfuge, but before the end he felt a real joy sweep through him, at the thought of the great achievement waiting here, the freeing and the triumphant leading back to the Herd of the timber-slaves.
"It is a great day," he finished simply.
"I hope you find it so," she replied, frowning a little. "King, our people want friendship with yours, however this trial of our elephants will end. We want only to be like Narnia, and trade like you, with the gifts the stars have given us."
"With the gifts given you," he shot back, "not with lives stolen from others. But," as he saw her brows draw together in vexation, "we will not waste our time word-chopping, Mistress! Where are my people?"
"Our elephants,"—it was said with a delicate but unmistakeable emphasis—"are kept close by the timber-cutting; they are moved as we move. But I will take you."
She led him across the broad clearing, into the forest and a little south, and Reznar, Nem and Wily went with them. As they got closer he could see among the trees a work-gang of some twenty Beasts, ranked in two long rows; closer still, and he saw they were forcibly held, chained and shackled, each to the next.
"Why must they be chained, even when they are not hauling timber?" he demanded of Reznar, but it was Nem who cut in.
"It's best to keep them as they're accustomed to being, King. Any change in routine can upset them. We do care for them well, here. They get good treatment."
He shrugged. Telmarine ideas of good treatment were, after all, utterly irrelevant to his mission. More important was its simple urgency. If Gul was plotting with some mysterious Southerner then he needed to be done here and away before whatever mystery it was burst on him. He needed to convince the Telmarines, quickly, and then to begin the journey back to the Herd.
"Does Hoom meet us here? Or whose word will be sufficient that these have shown their personhood?" he asked.
"If they could show that, King, you will not need other witnesses!" said Mavram in tones of gentle, resigned, disbelieving humour. "If you think you can prove they speak..."
He did not stay to hear the rest.
o-o-o-o-o
Close to, they were disconcertingly many, disconcertingly large, and disconcertingly reminiscent of his encounter with Rummornornarhh and the Herd. Rummornornarhh had been scornful, hostile and bitter; the rest of the Herd scarcely less so; he had expected to be welcomed as their king and rescuer, and had found he was condemned as an ineffectual upstart.
In the end he had wrung from them one concession: to hear him again, if he could find and return to them their kidnapped children. These chained ones before him were adults now, he thought, but the Ravens had assured him they were thinking, feeling beings, showing compassion for each other, if not speech. Surely these here were those kidnapped many years past, the lost ones of the Herd.
But if they had no speech... He felt again what Rummornornarhh had shown him—how inadequate he was for this task. But it was up to him, and Peter and Susan and Lucy all trusted him, and he had promised, and... He took one deep breath, and began.
"Narnians!"
Simultaneously, the whole long line, and those behind, turned their heads, and looked at him; it was unexpectedly daunting.
"I... Cousins! I have come from Narnia to..."
They were all still looking at him, and he could swear that their eyes showed awareness, as the Ravens had said, but he saw no compassion. The gaze which pressed on him from these prisoners was remote, cold and judging.
"I have come to help you gain your freedom."
No response. Their eyes showed that they knew that he spoke to them—and dismissed him. They swayed in their chains with an enormous, contemptuous indifference.
"You are... Friends, you were born for freedom, not for slavery! The free Herd waits..."
He could hear his own voice faltering; it sounded thin, unconvincing. One of the Elephants turned away, angled his whole body to stare coldly away from the King, and slowly the whole line swayed, and shifted, and followed suit.
So. These Elephants, no more than the ferry-slaves or the capstan-slaves, would answer his voice. But those had not had mind, he thought, whereas these—it was plain to his eyes, that they looked at him with knowledge, even if they had no language. With knowledge and with bitter resentment. This was not mindlessness; it was refusal, an angry, wilful determination not to speak.
"Come away, King," came Nem's voice. "You've tried. Come back away and we'll see about getting some evening meal for you."
"No." Did they take him for a child? He needed to be alone to choke down the bitter taste of failure. "No, I will stay here the night."
"That is not wise, King." It was Mavram. "If you will, we will bring just one elephant over for you, in the morning, but now come with us, and rest."
"No." He didn't want to look at her, no matter how kind was the triumph in her eyes. "No. I'll stay."
"King, leave it. Come with us." Nem's voice had even a shade of urgency in it now, and he looked up, surprised, and became aware, perplexedly, that the game or chase, or whatever it was, had drawn much nearer, had edged along the clearing and were closer now to this edge of the forest.
Still laughing, still cheering—though now that they were closer he heard a more jeering, mocking note to the voices.
A crowd of Men running, shouting and laughing, lashing at something in among them, a small bumbling shape, stumbling, hardly bigger than a goat, and they were edging it this way, it was...
But he did not stay to complete his thought, nor to hear Mavram's shout of "King!" nor Nem's: "It's all right! Mudsmoke, it's all right! They don't feel it! They've got tough hides! It doesn't hurt them!"
He was running, pelting without thought as hard as he could through the forest-edge towards that moving crowd, and then had burst in among them, in amongst the tall Telmarines, and was grabbing and flinging them aside until he had got through to it, to their victim—a little rounded, stumbling Elephant child, no more than a baby, its eyes wild, and its mouth open, terrified, and crying, raising its trunk in a high squealing baby-bellow... Nhaarhh! it called pleadingly, desperately. Nhaaarhh!
And the Elephants of the line were shifting and trumpeting back, and there was shouting and confusion all around him, but above it all he could hear a mighty voice like the voice of a Giant shouting, "Stand back! Let none of you dare to touch this Elephant! In the name of Narnia, stand back!"
o-o-o-o-o
o-o-o
Author's note: I've been thinking of these two sets of Elephants as suffering differently, from different circumstances. The timber-Elephants have been kidnapped as babies, and have no real grasp of language, but do have strong social interaction among themselves. The ferry-Elephants and capstan-Elephants have in addition to the kidnap trauma and the lack of language, been totally socially isolated. I don't know of any studies of the effects of prolonged social isolation in elephants (and trust that no-one would ever want to do them). Studies of other animals have shown mental and behavioural disturbance, including fear and self-harm; further clinical studies would obviously be vile and unethical.