Chapter 21
Edmund stopped by the hut that his family and his friends shared, and grabbed one of the extra blankets before following Jill down to the ground below the village. He found her crying at the edge of the jungle, her face buried in her hands.
"Jill?" he said hesitantly as he stepped closer to her.
"Go away," Jill murmured, not looking at him.
Edmund ignored the order and moved closer.
"I said go away!" Jill snapped.
Edmund sat down beside her. "You know, when Eustace started talking about how the Eloi and Morlocks behave quite a bit like animals, it got me thinking."
"They're not animals," Jill growled. She gave him a glare that definitely would have made Eustace flinch. Edmund just gave her a slight smile and unsheathed his knife. He started cutting thin strips off the blanket.
"It depends on your definition of animal," he told her.
"If you start quoting the dictionary at me like Scrubb, I swear, I'll –"
"In Narnia," Edmund said quickly to head off her stinging diatribe, "you know that there are animals that can talk and reason, just the same as other sentient races like humans and dwarves. We used to refer to them as Animals with a capital A, or as wise beasts. Some of our dearest friends were wise beasts, like the beavers we met our first time in Narnia, and Reepicheep, one of the heroes who helped put Caspian on the throne."
"So what?" Jill asked. She sniffed and turned her face away from Edmund.
"So I was thinking . . ." Edmund paused for a moment as he finished cutting six thin strips off the blanket. He tied three of them off at one end and began braiding them. "The wise beasts in Narnia were rarely killed during hunts – whether the hunters were humans or other animals that could or couldn't talk."
"Why?" Jill wanted to know, her interest finally sparked.
"It took me awhile to figure that out," Edmund told her. "I mean, it was obvious why the sentient races didn't hunt down the wise beasts – they could talk and it's just wrong to eat something that you can have a real conversation with. No one in Narnia would eat a wise beast anymore than they'd eat a human – though if they'll eat a human all bets are off for all other creatures too," he added, remembering how the giants in the north had a taste for human flesh.
"That makes sense," Jill said. "And the normal animals? Did they not eat the wise beasts for the same reason? They had some sort of ingrained respect for them?"
"Not at all," Edmund told her. "The truly wild animals of Narnia behaved just like normal animals. A normal wolf would have no qualms about hunting a wise rabbit. A hungry bear might attack a human."
"But you said that the wise beasts didn't get hunted down . . ."
"I said that the wise beasts were rarely killed during hunts," Edmund reminded her. "Wild animals rarely succeeded in getting their quarry if their quarry was a wise beast."
"Okay . . ." Jill said uncertainly, but now she looked genuinely interested. "Why?"
"Because the wise beasts had a number of advantages over normal animals of their species. For one thing, they're smarter. Also, they tend to grow quite a bit bigger. A few extra inches and a couple extra pounds of muscle never hurt in a fight." Edmund finished braiding his ropes and cut another piece off the blanket – this one shaped like a small square. "But the main reason why they had such a high survival rate is because they did fight. Every single time."
"Wild animals fight for their lives too," Jill said, "and I'm pretty sure they fight every single time. It's instinctual to try to stay alive."
"Yes, but when you're capable of sentient reasoning you can overcome base instincts. Instead of trying to just run madly away or trying in vain to bite the fox, the Rabbits would try to kick it in the snout – or the eyes. Deer, instead of just running away would try to batter the wolves down with their hooves. They weren't trying to kill them," Edmund assured her. "They were just trying to convince the predators that killing them wasn't worth the trouble. If easier, less painful prey was available, more often than not the normal animals would give up on killing the wise beasts."
Jill looked at Edmund, her eyes starting to gleam with hope. "You mean . . . ?"
"Trying to teach the Eloi to kill Morlocks would be a lost cause. They're not killers. It would be wrong to try to make them so . . . but it would also be wrong to stand back and do nothing."
His creation complete, Edmund got to his feet. He held his free hand out to Jill to help her up. She took it and allowed him to pull her off the ground.
"So . . . what are we going to do?" Jill asked. She watched as Edmund stooped to pick up a stone.
Edmund gave her a crooked smile and set the stone in the pocket formed by the square piece of fabric he'd tied between the ropes he'd braided. Then he started spinning the sling around and around, very quickly and took aim at a piece of fruit that hung in a nearby tree. He released one of the ropes just as he directed his arm straight at the fruit. The rock flew from the sling and went exactly where he wanted it to go. It hit the fruit and knocked it loose from the tree. Edmund caught it before it hit the ground and grinned. There was a nice, rock sized dent in its thick rind, that would make peeling it open easier. "We're going to teach the Eloi how to be too much trouble."
X
Edmund was surprised by how well his plan went over. The Eloi, despite their childish appearance and nature, were actually quite good at learning, or at least at mimicking. Using the sling to propel rocks and knock fruit down from the trees became a game to them. Their aim was excellent – better than Jill's, though she was just a beginner at using the sling too, but almost as good as Edmund's. Granted it had been twenty-some Narnian years since the last time he'd used a sling, plus half a dozen earth years, so he thought it was understandable that he was a bit rusty.
They made more slings out of materials that the Eloi had handy – mainly a rough cloth woven out of fibers peeled off of fruit skins. They reminded Edmund of the threads that came off coconut shells. In less than an hour half the Eloi in the village had made their own slings and were flinging rocks at the targets Edmund carved on tree trunks, so they wouldn't knock down all the fruit before it even ripened.
"This is going well," Jill commented as they watched rock after rock crash against the targets.
"They're naturals," Edmund agreed. "But next comes the hard part."
Jill looked curious. "What's that?"
"Teaching them to apply what they've learned here to a Morlock attack." That was a subject that Edmund didn't even know how to breach. Somehow, "Hey guys, have you ever thought of flinging rocks at the Morlocks?" didn't seem like the greatest way to introduce them to the idea.
"I guess we can't bring Shift out here and tie him up in front of the targets," Jill muttered, startling a laugh out of Edmund.
"Yeah," he said, "I don't think the others will agree to that."
"It would be nice though . . ." Jill said reluctantly.
Edmund nodded. "It is a really good idea." He really regretted that Peter would never allow that.
"What if you tell them a story?" Jill suggested.
"Tell them a story?"
"You know? David versus Goliath. You're good at telling stories. You and Caspian have sold so many books."
"That might work," Edmund said, surprised that he hadn't thought of it himself. The biblical story of David's defeat of the giant Goliath was probably the most famous example of a sling being used in all of history, and David's situation kind of mirrored the Eloi's – much bigger enemies, overwhelming odds, a hopeless situation, and, of course, the solution with the least amount of bloodshed. "You think this is how David felt? Knowing how many lives depended on his sling skills?"
Jill smiled. "Remember the story? He never flinched. And he never ran away, even though many full grown men did. He had complete faith in both his skills and in the one who gave him those skills. So, yeah . . . I think this is how David felt."
End of Chapter 21
Many thanks to everyone who reviewed, including:
Miniver – once again, you figured it out. Good job!
Puella Deorum – I'm glad you liked my last story, and I hope you continue to like this one too!
selenemaree – I'm planning a separate story that will be about Jill, Eustace, and Edmund. Who she ends up with will probably be determined by who most reviewers want her to end up with.
HeadbangGirl, merlyn2, diva divine, and boarcher – writing the arguments for both sides of their Eloi/Morlock/ecosystem debate was challenging, but fun. I tried to take real ecological logistics into consideration and bring them into the debate while putting the characters on the side I thought they'd be most likely to take. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
mae-E, maristelle, and garnetred – I hope you guys like Edmund's solution. I thought a long, long time before I was able to come up with something I actually thought would work for the characters. I think a lot of us would have been all for wiping the Morlocks out (since kidnapping Caspian was an unpardonable sin) but the Friends of Narnia don't seem like the type to appreciate a vengeful massacre . . .
Next chapter will be up on Monday. See you then!