AN: As we draw closer to the ending of this story (don't freak, it's not quite the last chapter yet, though we are getting there) coming to this chapter was unavoidable. I like it, but I feel I must warn readers that some of the stuff in here regarding churches, bibles, and orignial sin is a wee bit heavy-handed. So if you find it offencive, either don't read it, or skip that part or whatever feels best to you, cuz the story doesn't work without it and I'm not changing it and I don't want to hear negitive comments regarding it. As always though I hope you do like the chapter and feel free to review.
The door of Lord Asriel's 'little study' creaked open and a sleek-furred black-and-brown pincher stuck his head out and barked once.
Susan recoiled and Lucy clutched Reepicheep a little tighter. Then, Maugrim seemed to sense something, and a surprisingly mild, "Hallo there!" came out of the pincher's mouth. It was a dæmon. His human, a lean, middle-aged, friendly-faced manservant was standing behind him, hidden unwittingly by the shadows of the wall.
The manservant's name was Thorold, and while he was something of a boring person, having no apparent purpose in life beyond catering to Lord Asriel's each and every whim, he was a friendly soul and harmless enough under most circumstances. Susan, at least, felt some relief when she saw him; he was very straight forward and not at all angry, just as causal as if they had merely arrived unexpectedly for tea.
"We're here to see Lord Asriel, if you please, sir." Lucy said politely as the pincher-dæmon sniffed at Maugrim and then at Reepicheep in her arms.
"Certainly, certainly," said Thorold, waving them in. "Right this way-he's busy at the moment, but I'm sure he'll be pleased enough to have company."
As they walked further in, away from the glass parts of the house, it grew darker, lit mostly by oil lamps and projectors. The hallway was lined with bookshelves housing tomes with worn spines of leather and copper, and the room adjourning to it had dark brown borders and a coffee-coloured carpet, perfectly neat and clean if one could ignore the faint smell of tobacco-ash.
Lord Asriel, dressed in a warm-looking woolen gray sweater and well-pressed black slacks, sat at his desk, shaving off his beard. He had just finished and wiped his chin clean, nodding briefly at his reflection in the little mirror propped against the back of a brass microscope, seeming satisfied with the results, when he saw-out of the corner of his eye-a young girl of about twelve enter the room.
For a half-second, he seemed extremely pleased; then he recognized her and his eyes widened with horror as he flung back his chair and shouted, "Get back! I didn't send for you! Anyone but you!"
Lucy hadn't expected him to be so angry, she took a step back. "No, I came to help you-to warn you about the Ruling Powers..."
He looked like he was going to scream at her again, indeed his mouth opened for it, but then he blinked-surprised at something-and promptly shut his lips and tightened his jaw-line.
Susan had come behind Lucy and placed her hand on her sister-in-law's shoulder, wondering why on earth Asriel was being so harsh on his own daughter who'd come, not to bother him, but to warn him of great danger.
Stranger still, Lord Asriel's eyes were no longer on Lucy at all-they were on her. She felt uncomfortable under his meditative gaze, somehow knowing without him saying anything that he could tell she was with child. She wasn't showing very much yet, but one could presumably tell if they looked closely enough, as her stomach was a little rounder than it would have been otherwise.
Turning his attention back to his daughter, Asriel's look was milder, an expression of relief and calmness washing over his stern, clean-shaven face. "Lucy,"
"Lyra was with us but we got separated." Lucy said, unable to read his expression, trying to guess at what had been bothering him up until a moment ago.
"Alright, then." Lord Asriel nodded. To Thorold, he said, "Draw a bath for these two and prepare them some food."
"Yes, certainly, my Lord." the manservant replied, bowing quickly before walking off at a reasonable speed to obey.
"You're Edmund Coulter's daughter," Lord Asriel said to Susan randomly-it was a statement, not a question.
"Yes." Susan muttered monosyaballicly, feeling afraid of him without fully understanding why. Maugrim growled cautiously at Stelmaria, but the snow leopard merely blinked indifferently at him in return.
"You're with child," he added.
Instinctively pressing her hand to her belly, she didn't want to answer this question, but the snow leopard growled, so much more intensely than Maugrim had ever growled, and she blurted out a quick, "Yes."
"Thank you, that's all I need to know." Lord Asriel said, sighing deeply, giving his dæmon a light pat on the head while he spoke. "Thorold will see that you are both washed up in time for supper."
"Come along," Thorold popped back into the room, his pincher trotting briskly at his side. "the bath is drawn."
Lucy noticed little tears glittering brightly in Susan's eyes. "It's alright, Su, we're safe now." she tried to reassure her.
Lord Asriel took a step closer to her and, smiling down at his daughter, he said, "I want to thank you, Lucy, for bringing me exactly what I needed."
He knows I have an alethiometer of my own! Thought Lucy, wondering if she ought to give Lord Digory's silver pocket watch to him-not to keep, of course, but to borrow if he somehow already knew about it and needed it so badly.
As if she were trapped in slow motion, Lucy bent down and put Reepicheep on the floor where he shifted into his golden band with the red feather mouse form, and reached into her pocket for the silver alethiometer. She held it out to Asriel with shaking hands, not sure if she was doing the right thing or not.
He glanced at it with crinkled brows. "What the devil is that?"
"It's an alethiometer," said Lucy, her throat suddenly very dry.
"Of course it is," he replied patronizingly.
Undeterred, she tried again. "I know it's not the one you gave to the Master-Lyra has that one-but I can read this one and...and if there was something...something you wanted to know..."
His dæmon laughed shortly and smiled up at her human as he wiggled his fair left brow at her. To Lucy, he chuckled, "That was very...er...thoughtful of you."
"But I thought-"
"It's yours, Lucy, I wont take it from you," Lord Asriel told her, done talking for now. "Go to your bath, you smell as if you haven't washed up properly for a while."
"Don't you need-"
"No, it's of no use to me, go on now and don't argue or I shall be angry again."
Outside of the marble-and-brass bathroom, there was a little ledge sort of seat next to a high-up slotted wooden-bar-covered opening so that whoever was bathing could talk quietly to whoever was sitting on the seat without them being in the same room.
Susan, who was taking her bath first, whispered to Lucy through it. "I don't like the way he looks at me, Lu, I don't trust him."
"He did seem strange...perhaps he's gone a bit mad being up here all alone." Lucy suggested, gently rubbing the back of her hands absently against Reepicheep's soft mouse-fur while she spoke.
"No, that's not it, he isn't mad exactly..." Susan mused, shivering even in bath water hot enough to boil a lobster. "...something else...like how upset he was when he first saw you and thought you had come alone."
"He was shocked, that's all, anyone would have been surprised to see somebody they weren't expecting-except maybe Thorold." Lucy said quickly, wondering, even as she was speaking, why she was bothering to defend Lord Asriel.
Susan sat up straighter in the tub and lifted the damp tips of her long hair over one shoulder, leaning her head closer to the opening. "I hate to admit it, but I will: I'm scared of him, terrified."
"Why?" asked Lucy. Sure Lord Asriel was a strange, stern, rather alarming nobleman and all that, but for someone as practical as Susan to be that frightened of him was unsettling.
"I don't know," she shuddered, unable to harness her fiercely-flashing thoughts. "but I'm more afraid of him than I ever was of my mother, let's just put it that way."
"You find Lord Asriel more frightening than Mrs. Coulter?" Lucy gasped in disbelief, figuring that while something was amiss, much of that had to be due to the fact that Susan had grown up around Lady Marisa and thus was used to her kind of scariness.
Susan laughed to herself-it sounded forced but it wasn't completely so. "It's silly, I know it's silly-maybe I should stop going on about it."
"I think he is glad to see us...deep down..." Lucy mulled, standing up and trading places with Susan as she walked out of the bathroom wrapped in a dressing-gown of pale yellow silk. "...he just has such a funny way of showing it-I think he really is mad, Susan."
"No, he's perfectly sane," retorted Susan, thinking to herself that that was what scared her the most about the whole matter.
"Do you think the Ruling Powers will come and kill all of us since we're here with him now?" Reepicheep wanted to know, resting in his golden-brown cat form on the sill of the opening.
"No," said Maugrim, placing his paws into his human's lap and resting his head down between them. "I don't. Lord Asriel knows they're coming now-thanks to us. He'll make sure the place is deserted before they arrive."
"All the same," Susan whispered, speaking mostly to herself. "I do wish-"
"Wish what?" Lucy asked curiously.
"Nothing." she said shortly, waving it off. "Just that your brother was here with us. I think I'd feel a bit safer if he were." She sighed to herself and stroked Maugrim's ears, thinking about her husband.
Lucy had her bathe, not bothering to see which way Reepicheep was looking. Whereas the ladies of high society (like Susan) had been trained from well before they even hit puberty to have their dæmon never look at them when they were indecent, as a matter of etiquette, Lucy thought that was all rot. It seemed stupid, really, to have your dæmon look away as if it weren't even truly a part of you-it was as pointless as keeping your own eyes shut the whole time you washed yourself. Still, such engrained habits and attitudes were hard to break, she supposed, and it figured that they were passed down from those families who were too prudish to know better. Lyra, for example, raised amongst the smug, free-thinking professors and scholars, would have never bothered with such a superstitious, overly-concerned tradition. Before she'd gone to live with Mrs. Coulter, she didn't even know other people did that.
After they'd both finished their washing up, Thorold directed them back into Lord Asriel's study where a tea-tray filled with fine food had been put out for their supper. Obviously, Lord Asriel's sense of luxury regarding his surroundings and material objects had gone as deep as his stomach as well. There was nothing missing from that meal: cold ham, hot pea soup, fresh coffee (Tea for Susan and Lucy; if Lyra had been there, she would have taken coffee, but it was a little strong for them), steaming bread rolls with soft insides and flaky crusts, rich yellow butter offered on a dish made of black marble, lobster meat, and fried onions seasoned with the most expensive kind of salt one could buy. For dessert they had their choice of brown-sugar cake topped with clear icing or a colourful fruit salad dipped in rose-water dressing. The cups they sipped from were rimmed with real gold and had stems of solid silver-the clear glass in the middle twinkled in a rather glacial manner.
"Lord Asriel," Lucy said suddenly, interrupting the quiet grunts of their three dæmons and the light clinking of their diamond-studded, gold-plated silverware, talking over them both. "I want to ask you something."
He looked up and glanced at her. His blue eyes sparkled with a queer mix of curious interest and mild annoyance at her words. "What it is?"
Glancing from Susan and Maugrim, watching the wolf's bright eyes flash yellow and red with anxiousness over the unknown, to Lord Asriel and his calm Stelmaria who's eyes, normally blue like her master's, looked sort of tawny-hazel, even-in the candlelight lit room.
"I think," she said, swallowing hard as Reepicheep rested his golden-brown cat form at her feet, his ears pricked up eagerly. "I think, Lord Asriel, that Susan and I have a right to know-since we came all this way. What is Dust?"
Intrigued, Lord Asriel twisted his chin and pursed his lips in a thoughtful manner, trying to figure out how to explain it. "Well, they're particles. Did anyone ever explain to you what a particle is, Lucy?"
"Yes," she squirmed in her chair, wishing he'd get to the point faster, sensing even in her innocent mind how hard it seemed to be for him to stop being condescending in his speech-to the child who was supposedly his own daughter, no less. "Peter taught me; he teaches me everything."
"All right, so you know particles, that's a start." He placed his hand on his dæmon's head. "Do you know what original sin is, Lucy?"
"You mean like Adam and Eve? When Eve wasn't supposed to eat the fruit but she did and so God kicked them out of the garden?" Lucy asked. "In the first book of the Bible?"
"No, not in your brother's world, in this one." Lord Asriel explained.
"No," Lucy had to admit; she hadn't the foggiest idea what he was talking about.
"I think he means the story of Frank and Helen," Susan said softly, feeling very uncomfortable talking about the little bit of religious mythology she remembered from her mother's lessons. Wasn't this bordering on heresy? If it wasn't, she had the feeling it soon would. "The White Lady told them to eat the fruit but they wouldn't, and so they gave the silver apples of the tree in the garden to a wild lion."
Lord Asriel's dæmon blinked at her. "Lucy, fetch the book with the engraving of two snakes biting each other's tails from the self in the back, would you?"
She stood up, brushed some of the crumbs from the bread rolls off of her lap, got the book, and handed it to her father.
He flung the cover open and licked his thumb, searching through the pages for the one he wanted, "And this is what happened after that: And Frank and Helen saw that the lion shone as bright as gold and sang up another tree, outside of the garden, of silver apples, but they were slightly different, lacking the power to give life everlasting. Sayth the White Lady, 'Because you have not listened to me, and have given what ought to have been your own to a wild beast who cares nothing for you, you shalt not have endless days, nor endless childhood-like weeks. Your dæmons, and your children's children's dæmons are from now on for ever subject to settling with the passing of time, no longer can they take any form they wish for ever. And you will die; dust to dust, ashes to ashes.'."
Susan frowned and wrinkled her pretty little nose, puzzled. "But it's not true, is it? Not like government and society and studies and things?"
With a disgusted glower, Lord Asriel slammed the book shut and tossed it aside. No one went to pick it up although Reepicheep cocked his head curiously in its direction and there was a struggle written across Lucy's face from not going to take a closer look at the tome.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "the text is horribly corrupt."
"How do you mean?"
"Well," he rolled his eyes. "Take for example the White Lady. It wasn't her garden to begin with, was it? Wasn't there something in a footnote of it belonging to the lion from the start? Of Frank and Helen, the first man and woman of this world, being told to get the apple for him? So what right does this so-called goddess have to punish them for doing their jobs?"
"I-I-I don't know," Susan stammered, feeling small and trapped under his tight gaze.
"People in charge, hungry for power and position, will do and say anything to keep their places and to keep on advancing in them. In your brother's world, Lucy, there is the story of Adam and Eve, as you mentioned. Did you know that, without even changing one single solitary word of the text, some knowingly misguided others into thinking that original sin was sex, not the eating of the fruit?"
Susan fought the urge to imitate Peter by covering Lucy's ears, surprised at Lord Asriel's ready usage of that particular word when speaking to his twelve year old daughter.
As for Lucy, she didn't respond-the Pevensie parents, bless them, were good-hearted, loving, tender people, but they were no more religious than average and had not given their children much more than the same basic Bible coverage their parents had given them, so she didn't know what to say.
"But there was a massive flaw in their plans, and when the common people learned to read better, they saw it clear as day." Lord Asriel continued. "They saw that god more or less told Adam and Eve to reproduce. Big over-sight on the church's part, wouldn't you say? Thus, it was the fruit after all."
Lucy nodded.
"Well, very much the same thing happened here in this world; the Ruling Powers wanted more power-they wanted to control people's lives, to tell them what to do. But, if they said one thing, and the text said another, would they risk a fall of office?"
Susan held up her palm and Maugrim's upper teeth showed themselves. "Wait a moment, are you suggesting that the text of law, the one everyone's gone by for generations is incorrect?"
"That's right," Lord Asriel answered.
"But-" said Lucy. "What has that got to do with Dust?"
"That's where they got the name, from the stories of so-called original sin...because humans are made of dust from the ground...so they borrowed the word for natural things they couldn't explain. Like the Lion; he used to be called Aslan, once."
Upon hearing the Lion's name, Lucy felt sure beyond any doubt that Lord Asriel was telling the truth, the White Lady was bad, and the lion, Aslan, was good.
"They say he sung Dust-powerfully charged particles-into the world after he ate the silver apple," Lord Asriel said somberly. "but that it was the White Lady's way of punishment, but it seems to be that this witch-that's what she really was, I believe-wouldn't have had anything to do with it."
"But why did they let their text get changed around like that?" Lucy wanted to know. "Not everyone could have been...well...all bad...bad enough for that, at least."
"Think about it," he blinked coolly. "Think really hard. Haven't you ever picked up a Bible, flipped to the middle of Psalms, and found 'Lord' where god's name ought to have been?"
She vaguely recalled Mr. Pevensie reading Psalms to her when she was little. "Well, sort of."
"Ah, now we're onto something, aren't we?" he smiled an irony-filled smirk. "If in your world, even good people let god's name be written out because they were afraid, couldn't our world have someone a little less important, someone like a lion who could sing land into existence, be written out to almost nothing-changed into a meaningless villain?"
"How do you know so much about Peter's world?" Susan demanded, finding her strong voice at last.
"I've been there."
"You have?"
"Yes, once there were many chasms between that world and this one, but they have grown fewer, the Ruling Powers like to destroy them, they want people to think this is the only world."
"What about that world in the Northern Lights you mentioned back at Jordan college?" Lucy asked.
"Dust flows from it directly into our world," he said softly, his eyes shinning brightly while he spoke. "I mean to go there-to that other place-and to find Dust. If it is sin after all, I'll destroy it, put the Ruling Powers right out of business, put an end to death. If it isn't sin, I'll prove it to not only our world, but to all worlds."
"How do you intend to get to that other world, Lord Asriel?" Susan had heard enough nonsense for one evening, she thought. "Just leap into the aurora?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes, a door just needs to be opened first."
They were silent for a few moments until he grunted and added, "Your mother, Susan, she doesn't think far enough. She cuts children's dæmons away and she doesn't even see what she has going there."
"Huh?" Lucy blurted out. Reepicheep became a red fox and growled unexpectedly.
"When you cut a child away from its dæmon, the amount of energy that comes out is incredible! Mind-blowing! But does that silly Coulter woman ever think of that? No, she just figures its shock or whatever and keeps on cutting and letting all that energy go to waste. It's appalling, really, simply appalling." His dæmon bared her pearly teeth the same colour as her gleaming snowy-white fur.
Neither girl could think of a reply to that, they were too shocked and confused and overwhelmed with disgust.
"Good night," he said finally, in a commanding voice that told them flatly that the conversation was over, signaling for Thorold to show them to their beds.
That night, Susan was plagued by thoughts of what Lucy's father intended to do. Lucy seemed troubled as well, though mostly confused, but eventually sleep claimed her and she nodded off. Susan, however, rested more fitfully, tossing and turning as if it were the last night before an execution. She had the nightmare again, about Rabadash, except when she stood before the Ruling Powers, it was Lord Asriel who wielded the blade to behead her, not her ex-betrothed, and she saw the colours of the northern lights before her eyes shot open. Needless to say, she was tired and scared, but there was no one to comfort her, to wipe away her tears, this time.
A hand was over her mouth and, squinting in the darkness, she saw Lord Asriel with his finger to his lip, telling her to get up quietly.
"What's wrong?" Susan whispered, moving as far away from him as possible, yet still following his silent orders at the same time. "Have the Ruling Powers come?"
"Not yet," whispered Lord Asriel. "get dressed-warm clothes, its cold outside."
"Where are we going?" Susan asked, slipping on her boots and throwing a parka over her nightdress, having no intention of changing with Stelmaria staring at her and Maugrim so intently, not to mention Lord Asriel standing there, lightly tapping his right foot impatiently.
"Never mind that, just get ready."
"Lucy," Susan, with Maugrim at her heels, went to wake up her sister-in-law.
Lord Asriel grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back. "Don't wake her."
"Isn't she coming with us?" Susan felt her voice quiver and she knew she was trembling, though she couldn't make herself stop.
"No, hurry up."
"But where are we going?"
His dæmon growled and gave Maugrim a nip on one of his forelegs.
"Ow!" Susan bit her lip to keep from crying out.
"Hurry up," Lord Asriel said again.
"All right," she knew tears were rolling down her face, but was also aware that he didn't take note of them-so why should she try to keep them in check? "I'm coming."
As for where he was taking her, she still didn't know, and she dared not ask again.
AN: Reviews? Please?
