So, I'd like to apologize because my editing was horrible on the last chapter. IMPORTANT: I accidentally switched the Fox's name during the chapter from Savio to Salvio without noticing. Savio means "clever, bright" in Italian. Salvio means nothing at all. I will be switching to Savio in future chapters, but I figure cleaning it up here will make people think a new chapter's been posted and that would be mean.
I know I said I'd post this on the 11th, but it's WillowDryad's birthday today and she asked. Since she's been supporting me since the beginning, and was the one who nominated me for my eventual win in 2012's ff. net Narnia awards, I figure this can totally be accommodated. Happy Birthday! Hope your day is fantastic!
pineapple101: Thanks for reading and reviewing! Peter is absolutely feeling guilty and making himself a headcase over it. Good thing he's got Susan to pull him from his funk Maybe I'll throw in some Lucy cuddles next time, too.
Lady Hannah: I'm so glad you liked this chapter! They will always switch between the brothers' POVs, and I'll try and get every important moment in. If you think I miss one, let me know and I might make it a one-shot I'm also happy that you liked Peter's checklist. I was worried it'd be a sloppy set of paragraphs, but I really wanted it in there.
Narniagirlfan: Perfection? What high praise! Thank you! I'm so happy you like my writing style, too. I think this is the closest I've gotten in fanfiction to my writer's voice. It comes across better in original work.
Disclaimer: I don't claim C.S. Lewis or Machiavelli. But I do claim Edmund. ^_^
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The Lion and the Fox
Chapter Twenty-Three: Fox's Reaping
Kastalinn Vetur Konungur, 100th Year of the Reign of Her Imperial Majesty Jadis, Queen of Narnia
"Since a prince must know how to make good use of the beast [in his own personality], he should choose then the fox and the lion [as his representations]; for the lion has no protection from traps, and the fox is defenseless against wolves. It is necessary, therefore, to be a fox in order to know the traps, and a lion to frighten the wolves. –Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince chapter XVIII 'How a Prince Should Keep His Word'"
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Before now, Edmund would have said he knew fear: the different types; some rational, others not; being afraid versus creating fear. He has the everyday fears of all young boys: father's anger, climbing a tree and disturbing a bee's nest, older girls. He has other fears, too, of air raids and what the Fuhrer's done to the brave British soldiers— these are newer, less familiar fears. He is afraid of pain, of his classmates looking at him like he doesn't belong. These fears can be dealt with, quashed, trampled, run from. He has believed himself so much the master of fear as to be an expert on the subject, a connoisseur. He knows how to glance at a person to make them step aside, how to blow a spitball while a professor's back is turned and then stare defiantly until the insecure adult doesn't dare accuse him, how to make little girls cry and little boys turn over their pocket money. After Reggie, ahead of Albert, he is an ace, clever and subtle in his tricks; a savvy friend, a dangerous enemy. They've started calling him "Fox" at the Experiment House.
Before now, Edmund would have said he knew fear, but with Ginarrbrik's blade unrelentingly pressed against his back, forcing him deeper and deeper into the Queen's castle and the unknown, he is not so certain
Still, he's not "Fox" for nothing. Edmund does his best to memorize all the turns he takes so that he can find his way out. There are many and he loses track, but doesn't despair. He's bigger than the Queen's Dwarf crony, so when they enter a narrow corridor lit with sputtering torches, Edmund seizes his chance. Hurling himself forward, he breaks free of Ginarrbrik's grasp. He knows running further in will not help him, and while he's tried to think of another solution, he knows he must face the Dwarf. Turning, Edmund yells and rushes him, head down, arms up, full-on charge. Ginarrbrik, unimpressed and unconcerned, steps aside. Edmund barrels past and keeps running, doesn't dare stop and consider why the Queen's loyal bodyguard would simply let him go. Doesn't think about where he'll go once he's gone, just away, away, away.
That's when the whip coils around his legs and brings him crashing to the floor. Edmund cries out, twisting to tug with frantic jerks at the loops trapping his knees. Ginarrbrik advances slowly, grinning. A tiny moan slips past Edmund's lips and he pulls harder, tearing his nails and bloodying his fingertips. Ginarrbrik reaches his side, crouches next to him. Edmund stills. He tries to look at the Dwarf. Can't.
"Her Majesty will not be pleased." With a low chuckle, Ginarrbrik clubs him with the hilt of his knife, and Edmund's world is silent.
He comes around curled up in a bare, chilled cell, shackles tethering him to the wall. He tugs the chain experimentally, but without any real anticipation. It doesn't loosen. A soft scuffling causes him to bolt upright, and when the ensuing dizziness and explosions of color clear, he realizes he's not alone. Someone else is imprisoned in the cell next to his, turned away and hidden in the poor light. He can't make the person out and his throbbing head commands far more attention.
Reaching up a tentative hand, he touches the back of his head. Pain lances through his skull and he drops his hand quickly, holding his breath. As the sting fades, he exhales slowly, wiping his runny nose on his sleeve. His hand flashes scarlet, and Edmund studies his fingers numbly, bloodied not just from tearing at the whip. He shivers, the cold hardly a factor.
Come now, Edmund, he thinks firmly, you know this sort of situation. It's the Waiting Game. Lock someone in a closet, in a storeroom, wait for them to break.
He thought he knew fear, then, but it had been Albert who'd suggested this game to play on Jordy Hutchins, who hated small spaces in a way none of them could understand, but seemed a fantastic solution to get him to do their homework for the week. He had not considered using these mind tricks at first, had preferred physicality to get his way. Over time, he had learned—was still learning. The day he had convinced Albert to climb up onto the roof during a thunderstorm and then taken the ladder, though, was the day Reggie had started coming to him and not Al. Because Edmund had spoken softly to Albert, cajoled and smiled and plied him with questions to keep his mind off his fear of heights, until it was too late. Edmund had tasted the power his mind held, loved it
Now he tastes the fear that mind games inflict. Its flavor is like snow and bile and a hint of Turkish Delight. Physical fear tastes like sweat and blood and the grass in the schoolyard. He misses it. Misses the laughter and the planning and—
"All right then, Eddy?"
No, not that. He doesn't miss that. Not a bit.
Heavy, slow footsteps echo outside the cells. Edmund straightens, stands, wild hope fluttering in his chest, soothing the ache there. Here She is now to praise him, tell him he's done well in her little test, and get him settled in a fancy room with a roaring fire.
He stumbles backwards as a huge, lumpy creature heaves into view. It bends, unlocks the grating. Edmund breathes deeply, instantly regretting it as he gets a whiff of the creature's unwashed stench, steps forward once more. The creature glares at him with small, yellow eyes crusted nearly shut. When Edmund takes another tentative step, it opens its mouth and roars, spittle flying. Edmund leaps away, heart ricocheting off his ribs, and the creature tosses a tray onto the floor, on which sits a cup and a rock. Before Edmund can register what's happened, the cell is locked again, the creature lumbering away.
Edmund thinks he may have just encountered a Troll. As his jailer.
He sits beside the tray. His appetite has vanished. The Queen isn't freeing him any time soon. There must be some sort of misunderstanding. Those prophecies the Beavers told can't really mean his family. Soon the Queen will realize her mistake and free him, apologize, maybe even grant him some of Narnia to rule right away. Pleased, Edmund bites habitually into what he has deduced to be bread; not, in fact, a rock.
Coughing violently at the scratchy dryness of the roll, Edmund wonder if he should rethink the not-a-rock inference. The bread is so stale as to be inedible. Trying to clear the crumbs from his throat, he reaches for the cup of water, only to find it frozen solid. Desperate, he breathes hotly on the cup and licks at the ice, to no avail. He shakes the cup, hoping to loosen the ice. Nothing. Swallowing roughly, he puts the cup and bread aside and curls up once more. The cell seems even colder now. His stomach rumbles.
"If…if you're not going to eat that…?"
Edmund shudders in shock, glancing over at the other cell, which he has distanced himself from. The prisoner is pressed against the bars, his filthy, battered face illuminated by the single lamp hanging from the ceiling. Edmund studies his surprisingly human features (excepting the horns and ears); the raw marks on his torso below a once-red, ragged scarf; the hairy, twisted goat legs tapering to cloven hooves. He meets the prisoner's hungered gaze and shakes his head. His tongue is lost somewhere in the slow swell of realization.
The prisoner shifts slightly, legs dragging. His eyes flick to the bread, to Edmund, to the bread again. "I—I'd get up, but my legs…"
Edmund picks up the bread and eases over to the gap between their cells. He holds out the bread. Only after the prisoner takes it quickly and begins to tear into it does he realize that he has not given something to someone, just given it, in so long. He looks at this prisoner and sees someone who can do nothing for him, who doesn't even offer to repay him because they both know the likelihood of that. Edmund isn't sure why he gave him the bread without expectations, but he has and can't change that now.
The realization becomes more solid, more easily formed into words, and he glances sidelong at the prisoner before saying quietly, "Mr. Tumnus."
The words ring true, sound the way Lucy says them, and a stem of warmth starts inside him.
The prisoner barely stirs, chewing as though he can't manage much else. Edmund wouldn't be surprised if that were true. "What's left of him," the Faun says, and Edmund looks quickly away. The Witch has broken Lucy's friend, who loves her so very much. What will she do to him?
"You're Lucy Pevensie's brother," the Faun realizes, and the truth behind those words withers the stem of warmth Edmund had felt. He has no right to take that title, to accept the respect with which Mr. Tumnus has spoken to him. When Edmund glances over again, the Faun's eyes are kind. He snaps his head away, picking at the hem of his trousers, tugging up his woolen socks. He huffs out a steadying breath of air.
"I'm Edmund," he admits, wonders if his name trails a list of crimes all the way back to Beaver's Dam.
"You have the same nose," Mr. Tumnus comments, and Edmund feels sick, swiping at his treacherous nose. He is nothing like Lucy.
Mr. Tumnus's voice changes. "Is your sister all right?" he asks, undercut with fear and urgency. Edmund thinks of Lucy screaming across the lake, thinks of Maugrim and his Wolves howling through the night. He does not reply.
"Is she safe?" Mr. Tumnus presses, and the Wolves howl again. Edmund starts, looks around, realizes the sounds are not in his mind but in the castle, and fights the burning behind his eyes. Any second they could be dragged in here, bloodied and broken, already—
Lucy with her bright eyes and bubbling laugh, holding up her new doll and demanding a name, dragging him to a tea party, promising not to tell if he gives her a chocolate to keep quiet in the backyard prison, so happy that he's found Narnia, too—
"I don't know," he whispers.
She arrives too suddenly for Mr. Tumnus to do more than shrink away, flings open the doors to the cells and stands for a moment, framed in iron and ice. He stares, can't help it, because she's so beautiful and so powerful and he has never seen anyone like her. The Queen. The Witch. His head is spinning.
She advances on him and he scrambles backwards, hating himself for it, for this fear. He had thought he knew fear. He was wrong, so wrong.
Looking at the emptiness of her eyes and the terribleness of her face, he regrets it all.
"My police tore that dam apart," she snarls, each word an ice shard slicing his skin, "Your little family is nowhere to be found."
The relief that crashes over him is immense. He tries to hide it, closing his eyes, but she sees it, of course she does. Her hand is around his throat, clutching his collar, hauling him into the air so he chokes and struggles, heart rabbiting. "Where are they?" she hisses, and he feels her rapidly assessing how to get what she wants. Her grasp tightens, scratching his neck.
"I don't know!" he cries, because it's true, he doesn't. They've got away, they're safe, he can't tell her any more.
But then, he thinks with a very real sort of horror, if he's useless, what's to make her keep him around?
She comes to the same conclusion, and he opens his mouth to stop her, say something, say anything, but he can't. He shouldn't. He can't.
"Then you're of no further use to me," she says coldly, and he gasps in disbelief and pain as she throws him to the ground. She raises her wand high, the ice glinting blue, and he panics.
"Wait!" he pleads, because he can't help himself, has fallen too far to do more than scrabble at the side of his hole in an effort to keep from sliding further down, "The Beavers said something about Aslan!"
It stills her in a way she hasn't stilled since she first figured out what he was. Mr. Tumnus lifts his head, a life to him that Edmund didn't expect. He tries not to stare at the way the Faun's eyes are alight, like the Beavers'. With hope.
Her mouth moves soundlessly, then she repeats, "Aslan? Where?"
Edmund hesitates. "I—"
"He's a stranger here, Your Majesty," Mr. Tumnus interrupts, and Edmund relaxes slightly because yes, that's true, he doesn't have to tell her anything more. "He can't be expected to know anything—"
Ginarrbrik hits him, hard, with the butt of an axe. The Faun crumples, sobbing, and Edmund falters. How long has it been since someone tried to help him like that? Since someone has looked at him, as Mr. Tumnus is now, with so much anxiety and hope? This Narnian saved Lucy with full knowledge that the worst could happen to him, and the worst has. Yet still he fights Her, helps others. Not as broken, Edmund knows now, as he first seemed.
"I—I don't know," he answers, tearing his eyes from the Faun. "I left before they said anything." It makes him feel bigger, lying to her like this. He thinks of the others, slogging through the snow and night, and wonders what they'll tell Aslan. How will they explain that one of the four prophesied rulers of Narnia is a traitor who will, more likely than not, be a statue before they can get him from the Witch and hold a proper British trial, Susan would likely demand?
He wonders if they'll know he's sorry.
The Witch's face hardens, and he knows she doesn't believe him. "Guard!" she calls.
The Troll lumbers in. "Your Majesty?"
"Release the Faun," she orders. Edmund wants to cry. Let him go, too!
When the Troll frees Mr. Tumnus, he brings his hammer down on the shackles, shattering them and whatever unbroken bone remains beneath. Edmund flinches, pulling in his own legs in sympathy. Mr. Tumnus is thrown before the Witch, where he lies helpless. Release, Edmund discovers, has a different meaning here.
"Do you know why you're here, Faun?" the Witch questions.
Mr. Tumnus looks up slowly, pride strengthening his swollen face. "Because I believe in a free Narnia," he bites out, before dropping his head once again.
The Witch smirks, shrugs. His beliefs mean nothing to her. Her power is absolute.
"You're here," she counters, "because he—" and she swings her wand to point at Edmund, who should have known this was coming, should have expected this, the betrayer betrayed, "—turned you in. For sweeties."
Edmund can't breathe.
Mr. Tumnus turns his head slowly, painfully, to gape at him in disbelief. The sister of Lucy Pevensie? It's not to be thought. But Edmund knows his guilt is visible, oozes from every pore, radiates from his eyes, is found in the traitorous thud of his heart. He cannot hold under Tumnus's scrutiny. And so the Faun knows it's true.
"Take him upstairs," orders the Witch dispassionately. As Edmund listens to the Mr. Tumnus's fading cries, he knows Lucy will never, never forgive him, because he has doomed her truest friend, doomed him outright.
"And ready my sleigh," She adds, though Edmund thinks nothing of this request until she looks at him slyly and says, "Edmund misses his family."
He stares up at her in resignation, knows it would to come to this, a final chase. Ginarrbrik heads for the corridor, then pauses uncertainly. He is trained to never leave before his Queen. "Your Majesty?" he asks carefully. Her eyes, clear and crystalline, do not leave Edmund's.
"Leave us. Return when all is prepared," she commands, and Edmund's whole body stiffens. She will try to pry more answers from him. Where his family is going, where Aslan is, do they have an army? All things he knows. All things he must not tell her. He will not.
Everything that matters is his to lose, and he will not lose them. No more than he has already.
Ginarrbrik locks the grating after he leaves, hurries away. Edmund closes his eyes as the Witch steps towards him. He searches for something to cling to, searches his own darkness and comes up wanting.
It does not lessen his resolve.
Her nails rake down his face, a parody of a caress, and he stifles a cry of pain. He will tell her nothing.
Her words cleave into him, permeate his nightmares, and he breathes deeply the scent of snow and blood. He will tell her nothing.
Her wand slides along his sides, lays open cloth and skin, threatens the fragile workings beneath. He screams then, a single, agonized prayer for strength with no real hope of response. She cuts him again. Her words go deeper, leaving him limp and seizing, sweating and shivering, tears and blood and urine pooling around him. It does not matter.
He tells her nothing.
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Please review!
Fun fact: Just read "Out of the Silent Planet" by C.S. Lewis. It's short and sci-fi and the start of a trilogy that I will absolutely read the rest of. A totally different look at Mars and first encounters. Also a very different style of writing than the Narnia series. Y'all should look into it.