Author's Note: After some consideration I've decided to post this. It's no more graphic than a later chapter and people are having a hard time with the link. Love scene ahead.
Tumbling Down
Chapter Six
His Other Life
Lucy was soaking in a late-night bath, reading a large book she had borrowed from Mr. Tumnus by candlelight, when a knock came at her door.
Cera looked into the bathroom, rosy eyes curious.
"See who it is," Lucy told her, without looking up.
"Your sister, Queen Lucy," Cera's voice came from the bedroom.
"Tell her I'm busy," but Lucy sighed when she heard the door pushed open anyway and Susan stood in the bathroom, wearing a silk robe and a long white nightgown. Her long black hair was loose and, for a moment, Lucy didn't recognize her.
"Why are you still up?" Susan asked, seeming to be distracted.
"I couldn't sleep," Lucy replied, grateful for the thick foam that hid her body from view. She set Is Man a Myth? down on the table by her tub.
"What are you reading?"
"Something Mr. Tumnus lent me," Lucy replied, and Susan's face faltered. Lucy immediately knew something was wrong. "Are you all right?"
Susan leaned back in the chair Cera had brought and hiked up her skirts. She put her feet into Lucy's bath. "Susan," Lucy looked disapproving, but her sister didn't move her feet. "You may go, Cera," Lucy called, and she waited for the door to click closed, she leveled her blue eyes at Susan. "Spill it."
Susan twisted the hem of her robe in her fingers. "What do you think of Noor?"
Lucy shrugged, her long blond hair in a knot on top of her head. "I don't know. He's all right. He seems rather cocky. He's not my type."
"What is your type, dear?" Susan asked, and her ice-blue eyes were bleary for some reason.
"I don't know," Lucy looked out the window, at the low-hung moon. "I like dark eyes." Eyes like looking down a well, she thought, and she shivered just imagining his eyes on hers like Noor's had been. "And not so tall."
"With curly hair?" Susan asked quietly, and before Lucy really registered she replied "Yes, exactly." Susan sighed.
"You must marry Noor," she explained, "so you might as well get these foolish notions of someone else out of your head."
"There is no one else," Lucy snapped. Susan began braiding her long black hair.
"I was just talking to Peter," Susan said quietly.
"And?"
"And he asked me to tell you something."
"Let's hear it, then," Lucy said shortly, "so I may get back to my bath. Probably something horrid and unbearable."
"He says you must not see Mr. Tumnus any more."
Lucy blinked, and looked at her sister for a moment in confusion. Then she laughed.
"Very good."
"He is quite serious. It seems Prince Noor thinks that…well, he was under the impression that Tumnus' intentions—and perhaps yours as well—are not entirely innocent."
"That is rubbish," Lucy said finally, her knees above the water like islands, "and you know it. Peter knows it!"
"I know," Susan said with a sigh. "I tried to tell him he was being stupid. Edmund is very upset with him, you know. He thinks this very unfair."
"It is. But I am doing it for my country. I will not, however, give up my dearest friend for Peter or for Noor—I won't give him up for Narnia. Why does Noor think such things about me?"
"Because you are very close, Lucy," Susan said. "You cannot deny that."
"No closer than you and your friends," Lucy snapped, "or Edmund and his or Peter and his. It's just because I'm the youngest! It isn't fair at all!" Lucy's voice was rising in strength.
"Well, you may visit him with a chaperone," Susan said desperately, trying to smile. "It's not so bad."
"That is absolutely unacceptable," Lucy flared up, blue eyes like fire. "That is impossible and I will not do it."
"You must, Lucy."
"I refuse."
"You cannot!" Susan had finally snapped, and the usually gentle Queen shouted at her sister in frustration. Lucy looked surprised. "You must do as Peter says because he is High King, and he must please this Prince Noor in order for us to have peace. You will do as Peter has decided, and I will have no more of your immature protest. We have decided."
"Susan," Lucy was incredulous. "You can't agree with him!"
"I agree with keeping Narnia at peace," Susan said firmly. "I will leave you. Shall I send Cera back in?"
"No," Lucy said with hate in her voice. "And you are not welcome back any time soon, either. Nor is Peter."
"And what about Edmund?"
"Edmund may come if he proves to have less of a vice around his heart," Lucy spat at her sister with venom, and Susan looked hesitant for a moment. "You have no love for any man, friend or otherwise. You do not understand what it feels like. Get out, Susan. You disgust me. You have no concept of friendship. I dislike Noor, but that it on principle. It is you and Peter whom I loathe. I can't bear the sight of you. Get out of my rooms—and you must obey, for in case you forgot I am a Queen as much as you."
Susan got up and left, without a word, looking as though she might cry. Lucy hoped she would.
Lucy took a deep breath and slid underneath the water in her tub.
The silence enveloped her, and, except for her heartbeat, nothing else existed in that moment. She kept her eyes closed.
She opened her mouth and screamed until she ran out of oxygen and her lungs folded in.
She surfaced, gasping. Her eyes stung and her jaw ached. She stood up out of the water, grabbing her towel and drying off quickly. She slipped into her room and pulled on a plain cotton dress, soft brown boots, and she opened the window and inhaled the night air. She looked out over Narnia and something caught her eye.
Not so far away—Lucy estimated about an hour or two walking—a bonfire blazed. Shouting and singing and music drifted lazily through the woods towards her.
She grinned, and, pulling her long hair down from the knot on her head, she shimmied down the balcony and out into the forest.
One thing Mr. Tumnus had taught her was how to walk without noise in the forest. She kept listening for the music, pushing aside green branches. The night was warm, for autumn, and she vaguely remembered stories she had heard of the feasts and festivals that took place on the Autumnal Equinox—before Susan's party overshadowed everything else and vague traditions became legend.
She had been walking for more than an hour and suddenly everything was louder, and shadows moved up ahead.
She crept silently and spotted a large outcropping of rock. Thankful for her dark dress and boots, she clambered up its rough side and perched near the top, and she sucked in a sharp breath at the sight she saw.
Around a roaring fire, beasts and girls danced—although they weren't girls, really; they were nymphs and dryads. Lucy recognized Cera's pinkish hair bobbing in the firelight as she shrieked and sang, in the arms of a young dryad. Several satyrs and fauns danced with nymphs, loud and raucous and obviously drunk; tankards and barrels littered the clearing, and mugs and goblets were scattered about. A few fauns played pipes; there was a large dryad on a deep drum, banging and wild. Long hair whipped in the autumn wind as nymphs sang with the music; the fire pulsed and lips crashed together, hands on bodies, feet lighter than leaves on the air.
She crept closer to the band, and she thought she knew one of the fauns sitting on a barrel of wine, playing as though his life depended on it. Three nymphs on the back of a bear obscured the view for a moment, but they passed and firelight fell on his face, and it was Tumnus.
He looked different, somehow. His dark eyes were deeper than the ocean, black and wide; his lashes were heavy and shone in the firelight like silk. His curly brown hair was wild, shaggy and tangled by wind. Leaves stuck in it and around his horns he wore a wreath of ivy. She noticed then that all wore crowns of plants; nymphs had late flowers, asters and late roses; men wore leaves, branches—even thorns. Tumnus' stubs of horns seemed jagged in the flickering light. His chest was bare—no scarf tonight—and it was painted blue and red, handprints of girls and the paw print of the bear was over his spine. His legs were steady; his hooves had been dyed a bright red with henna or something like it; his fur had been painted like his chest, streaks and zigzags and primitive symbols. He was almost frightening and nothing like the faun she knew; tonight he was mostly beast and much less man. Lucy felt she was looking at a stranger.
The song ended and all cheered, raising glasses and mugs to the musicians, who bowed and raised their goblets back. People ceased dancing for food, large slabs of greasy meat and rough brown bread. There was no fruit on the long table (really just a log with a woven cloth over it) but there were squashes and pumpkins; corn and potatoes. They ate together, standing, with their hands. Lucy crouched where she was, feeling her stomach growl. She wanted nothing more than to go down and join the naked nymphs and the sweaty dryads. She wanted to strip out of her stuffy gown and be one with the world, as these creatures so seemed to be. She began to move off her perch, but a long wail distracted her and she looked again.
The huge dryad had taken up the drum again, and everyone began laughing and grinning in a way quite unsettling. Couples formed and a circle—rough and lopsided, but a circle nonetheless—snaked around the large table and the drummer. A slim nymph perched on the edge of his barrel drum, and she sung a haunting song, holding a strange lute-like instrument of her own. The clouds parted and the harvest moon poured down on the clearing, lighting everyone in a strange golden light.
Her eyes found Mr. Tumnus again and a nymph, pale green and beautiful, with a tiny waist and long legs, small breasts and thick waves of blue hair, had hold of his hands, and he was laughing, protesting, but finally he grinned—a feral, toothy grin, so unlike the way he smiled at her—and he took the nymph's face in his hands and he kissed her hard, lips and teeth together, tongues entwined. Lucy felt her stomach drop. The drumming beat inside of Lucy's body. The instrument filled her head and her chest with such a longing she thought she might burst.
Tumnus had dropped to his knees, the girl before him, and his hooves shone like blood in the fire. She bent to him, long hair hiding his face, and his hands spread over the back of her thighs like bruises. Lucy heard him say something in a foreign language. The nymph replied with a laugh—harsh and much like a crow's—and Tumnus growled at her, turning her over rather roughly.
Lucy was reminded of the time she saw the neighbor's Dalmatian on top of their spaniel, and she had called Edmund in a panic. Edmund had laughed at her—no, they're not fighting, Lu—and after a bit Lady had given birth to beautiful spotted puppies. And suddenly Lucy understood, and her eyes were huge in her head. She wanted to look away but it was something like a train wreck—her eyes were fixed on Tumnus as he grabbed the nymph's hips roughly, his hair hiding his eyes, as he pushed against her. Her legs hooked around his hocks and he muttered something in that low, strange language again.
They were straining together, sweat coating their bodies in a strange silver film, and Lucy couldn't look away.
The girl tossed her head back, and Tumnus reached out and grabbed her hair, pulling her neck up, exposed. Lucy's mouth was open; she was horrified, but at the same time her stomach was growing warm and something in her was pounding and it had nothing to do with the drum.
Tumnus was panting. Lucy watched and felt her cheeks flush dark as she imagined herself in the nymph's place.
His teeth shone as he gasped.
Her mouth was open and her lips were dry.
He leaned over the nymph's back, making the shape her back took, curved together like a serpent.
Her fingers gripped the rock and along her arms, goose bumps stood up.
Around the nymph and Tumnus, couples moved and moaned, but Lucy saw nothing but the faun who made her tea and sandwiches; the faun who read her bedtime stories.
His nails dug into the girl's upper arms and left bleeding crescents there.
Her hair fell in her eyes.
He suddenly shuddered, and cried out sharply, and she was scared for a moment that he was hurt and then she remembered the girl in Peter's room and she understood, finally understood.
She heard Peter's voice in her mind, as he leaned over the redhead, whisper I love you.
Lucy felt sick and she stood up suddenly, dizzy and disoriented.
And the movement caught his eye, and he looked up.
Their eyes met and his face froze. He had a blue circle around one brown eye and he looked as though someone had punched him in the gut.
Lucy stood, some pale spirit, in her black dress, with her blonde hair spilling down over her shoulders and her breasts in waves.
His mouth moved, but she could not hear what he said.
He took a step forward, and Lucy was gone.