Row by row, the crew sink to their knees and bow their heads in respect. After a moment's hesitation, I do the same.
The crowd disperses as to not overwhelm them and my view is finally clear. They appear younger than I am, but not by much, and greet Caspian and Reepicheep like old friends; which, I've learnt through Caspian's stories, they are exactly that. As for Caspian, this is by far the happiest he's been through the whole journey. It was one thing to hear the love in his voice when he spoke of the King and Queens of Old, but to see how it transforms him first hand is unbelievable. He looks younger now than ever.
He looks like he's home.
A scream splits the air, startling us all. "That giant rat thing just tried to claw my face off!" A boy, small and pinched with the word 'privileged' all but spelled out on his forehead, yells, his voice hoarse from coughing. His whole body shakes as he stands, pointing an accusatory finger at Reepicheep.
"I was merely trying to expel the water from your lungs, Sir." It's with a combination of pity and amusement that I watch the boy come apart. When I was introduced to Reepicheep, I was fortunate enough to have felt like my brain was a broken-down car waiting for repair, incapable of functioning and by extension, doing anything else unwanted – like spewing black clouds of fuel or exploding. Had it been whirring happily, I could see myself responding the same way he is now.
"I demand to know just where in the blazes am I?!" He won't be able to live this down any time soon, I think, cringing on his behalf.
"You're on the Dawn Treader, the finest ship in Narnia's navy." Tavros answers. The crew roars with laughter louder than ever as the boy collapses on the deck. I sigh and turn away. He'll have a dreadful headache when he wakes, which I wish I didn't know from experience.
Marco nudges my shoulder and nods his head in the direction of the kid, now in Tavros's arms as he moves him below deck. "Long lost brother of yours?" He jokes. I fake an exasperated sigh and plaster a smile on my face, trying to smother the pang in my chest. I can't say for sure, I think begrudgingly.
"Do you think King Edmund would duel me? I'd love to be able to tell my father I fought him. Did you know he took on the White Witch alone on the Fords of Beruna?" Marco keeps looking over his shoulder to the door he, Queen Lucy, and Caspian disappeared through as if he'd return brandishing a sword asking for a sparring partner immediately after being fished out of the ocean. His face is alight with childlike wonder, living legends he'd known only as bedtime stories now real and breathing and stuck with him for months with no escape... I consider warning them in advance.
"You respect their authority, do you?" I jump, spinning around and almost colliding with Caspian, currently watching me in amusement. A mere moment after Marco last craned his neck to check the door, Caspian had appeared in dry clothes, including a rich, sweetly scented leather tunic I have to restrain myself from not leaning in and inhaling deeper. I'm reminded of the farm I used to visit in my childhood, though my memories of the chipper yellow barn have turned sour with age.
"What do you mean?"
"You bowed to them, am I not worthy of the same?" He tries to feign hurt but a slow grin cracks his façade easily, and I huff out a sigh of relief.
"I didn't want to draw attention to myself. I thought standing above a crowd of kneeling sailors would do just that."
"I understand." He places a hand on my arm, then turns to call over Edmund and Lucy as they emerge from the stern. "I'd like you both to meet Amber Blackwill, our latest recruit."
"A female sailor! Susan would be pleased." Lucy delights, nudging Caspian. He waves it off flippantly.
"How long have you been a sailor for? You look so young!" Edmund jumps in. I struggle for words, running through my options mentally and trying to determine which best matches my desire of 'ambiguous truth'.
"I, um… Two weeks?" I look to Caspian for help, faltering when I see him trying to stifle a laugh.
"She was brought here much like you were, through a painting of our ship she frequented in London." He relieves me of my fumbling, my relief momentarily more present than what he's just said.
"You're from England?" Lucy asks. Hope rolls through me like a flood – they're like me.
"Yes! Are you?" My heart seizes in my chest, clenched with the promise of home that I'd allowed to slowly dwindle.
"They're the Pevensies I spoke of before." Caspian explains, but I take a moment to recall when they were mentioned.
"Do you know the Pevensies?" He leans closer, one 'yes!' short of bouncing in his seat like a schoolboy. Since that first conversation he had mentioned the Kings and Queens of Old countless times, but never linked them as he's just done.
"That's brilliant! Do you know how to get back?" I implore, eyes switching between them.
"So eager to leave my company?" I hear Caspian mutter, but I've long since stopped taking anything he says seriously.
"Caspian, you know I've enjoyed it so far, but I wasn't made to live on a boat, it's too crowded." For some reason, I feel the need to explain regardless of the context in which he asked. Other than Marco, he's the only aspect of this journey that's keeping me sane, and I don't enjoy the idea of him believing for a second that I'd abandon that support easily.
"I know. If I were in your position, I'd want to find a way home too." He says softly.
Edmund clears his throat and we look to him simultaneously, his eyes momentarily flashing between Caspian and I, eyebrows knitted. "I'm sorry, but no. The first time we left Narnia we were guided by a white stag, and the second we were simply decreed to go by Aslan."
Lucy cuts in. "It's always after we assist them in some way. If you're here, there's a reason. We'll just have to wait to see what it is." I nod slowly, feeling my hope decay into a cold, dead weight that unsettles my stomach. With a strained smile, I thank them, and walk away.
The feeling of being sent here, on a boat isolated from land in a world that shouldn't be possible, for a specific purpose is deeply unsettling. Despite my growing attachment to these people and the home they speak so fondly of, that does not make it my home too.
My home is England. My home is soot stained streets and charcoal houses. Bowler hats and stockings, not leather tunics and breeches. I live each day questioning if it's my last, wandering streets stacked high with loose bricks and splintered wood from the last raid that shook the earth, smiling at strangers as we power through our broken city, praying that today will be the day we don't pass the remnants of those who hadn't made it through the night. Our chimney smoke is entwined with despair and our lungs near black and useless, but we persist. We believe, we hope, and above anything else, we keep calm and carry on.
My reality is not braiding daisies into the hair of a young faun at twilight while the fire that warms us leaps in the air and performs a daring tale or galloping alongside centaurs through thick forest groves and across dazzling emerald valleys, peppered with the stone huts of dwarves where we rest and admire the snow-capped mountains in the distance. My reality is certainly not twirling around a floor inlaid with real gold with royals, mesmerized by the strum of a harp and the effortless rhythm with which the crowd dances, their movements fluid as water. My reality is not the stories I have heard. It doesn't belong to me.
Though I desperately wish it did.
I consider entertaining the thought that my reason for being here could lead to a long life in Narnia. That I'm meant to be a Queen, like Lucy, and who could tell a Queen she has to return to a land at war? Beyond a few spare moments, no one would question my absence in England. I'd be documented as one of many causalities sustained, and those I knew would soon refocus on not joining me in the steadily rising death toll.
This is why I need to go back. Fantasizing of a peaceful life is disastrous; the more I entangle myself in this, the harder it will be to free myself when I'm eventually cast out, as I know I will be. My dreams upon returning will be plagued by idyllic environments out of my grasp, memories of here slipping through my fingers like mist until long forgotten. Tar and ash will embrace my lungs, as a parent would hug a child, with an unrelenting tightness until I can no longer recall what inhaling the fresh, salty, ocean air felt like. In time it will be all I know, which can only be for the best, but the longer I spend here means the longer time I will spend in pain, desperately trying to rid myself of the memories sooner.
I'd rather drown.
Amber's thoughts follow the same, continuous cycle for hours after her conversation with King Edmund and Queen Lucy, rocking through in time with each crest of a wave.
I need to go home. I can't go home. I don't want to go home. I need to go home. I can't go home. I don't want to –
"You look worse than you did when we pulled you out the sea. What's troubling you?" Marco sidles up beside her with the courage he had been building for the past half hour, sending her concerned glances to which she responded to with a blank, oblivious gaze over the sea. Everything sharpens at the sound of his voice, as if her surroundings were muffled behind a heavy door, now open. Her eyes soften when she notices his worry.
"I need to go home, but by the looks of it I won't get the opportunity to any time soon." Marco straightens. He assumed as much, and now he had to hope he chosen the right way to try and help.
"You have two options, Amber." He says firmly, stepping away from the railing and concealing his hands behind his back. Intrigued, Amber mimics his position opposite.
"And they are?"
He reveals one hand, holding a half empty bottle of rum. "Wallow in self-pity, spend your days drinking in a hammock and hurling over the railing or –" He reveals the second, hand clasped around the hilt of a sword. "Embrace it. Enjoy the view and the company and try and best me in a fight." He studied her reaction carefully. Typically, he wouldn't be so direct. He'd disguise his attempts to cheer her up as obvious jokes or passing comments, but he couldn't deny his father's preference for blunt truth had its benefits. Besides, she didn't need a pat on the arm or a sympathetic 'I'm sorry'. She needed a distraction. Thankfully, that was his specialty.
She smiles, nodding slow in agreement, before accepting the sword. He'd chosen the ones with the branched hilts, woven cages of gold painted steel that encased your hand, handily doubling as brass knuckles for close quarter combat, though they were rarely used as such in casual sparring. She held her thumb underneath the cross guard, wrapping her fingers half way around the hilt to free her movements and treat the weapon as a fluid extension of her arm as Caspian had taught her.
They take their positions and start to circle, but two steps in the match begins. Amber lunges forward, arcing her blade downwards and forcing Marco to parry up and out wide to the right, leaving his person unprotected. Their swords scrape against each other as they deflect, Amber swiftly pulling her sword free of its strain against the other, completing an arc in the shape of an elaborate C as she swipes up to his neck. Marco tactfully retreats back, lunging in a second later to begin a rapid back-and-forth of attacks and deflects. With each attack he pushes his blade with increased pressure, forcing Amber to hold her arm closer to her body and limit her range. From the split second glances he gets of her expression between each move, he can see her temper shorten. Eyebrows furrowed and mouth drawn in a tight line, she dives backwards and right, out of range for his attack. The momentum from his swing twists his body away from her, presenting the opportunity for Amber to swing her sword up and underneath his arm where the tip could prick his chin, but his circle parry response is swifter than her thanks to experience, forcing her blade toward the ground. As she lifts her sword again, an idea springs to mind. Stupid, dangerous, and completely unpractised. Should be fine, she thinks sarcastically. Marco attacks again, but instead of parrying as he predicted, Amber plunges her sword through the handle of his, wedges it into one of the larger gaps in the makeshift cage, and pulls.
The sword is ripped from his grasp, thrown up by Amber as she separates it from her own, before catching the second weapon in her left hand and arcing it towards his neck – stopping mere millimetres away, her own sword poised over his heart. A seagull gives an uninterested squawk as the crew descend into shocked silence, processing the unexpected outcome. Marco and Amber stand silent, staring and breathing heavy with both swords still raised.
"It's about time." Marco huffs, grinning. As if spurred from a daze by his voice, the crew cheer respectfully and swarm around the stunned pair. Amber lowers her arms, still in disbelief that it worked and had garnered her first ever win. Her grin widens with each pat on the back, basking in the praise and accepting the celebratory glass of rum from a nearby crew member before the crowd dissolves into smaller groups, a few members remaining to partake in pleasant conversation. The dregs of adrenalin still coursing through her, chest light with the freeing possession of victory, Amber floats through the remaining hours of the day without another thought of London.
Caspian watched on in amusement and relief. Earlier, when Edmund delivered the unfortunate news, the weight of her new reality slumped her shoulders and settled misery over her previously optimistic features. He reluctantly left her to process it alone, but never strayed far lest she'd require company.
While conversing with Edmund and Lucy about the journey ahead of them, his attention swayed to where Amber stood facing Marco by the railing. By the time he'd parried her first lunge, the Pevensies had accepted that he was lost to them, at least until the spar had met its end. He marvelled at how well she had improved over the past fortnight, the sword a natural and graceful extension of her arm, swung deftly and with precision. She grinned broadly as she was congratulated by the crew and Caspian silently thanked Marco for whatever he had said to her.
A/N: So I know this story is SUPER slow right now, but it's going to pick up in the next chapter, they're finally going to reach the first Lone Island. After that, it gets a lot quicker (I think. I haven't written it yet, but that's the intention.) Feel free (translation: Please. I need validation.) to favourite or leave a review if you're enjoying it so far.
