Disclaimer: Narnia isn't mine, I shouldn't think. Nothing that exists ever really is. It all comes to an end anyway.
The names Gloomcloud and Doldrum also belong to SouthwestExpat, from a very long time ago, because she's brilliant and came up with them. Also thanks to WillowDryad, who helped give the story a bit of direction several months before it was actually written.
…Do you think I'll ever actually finish my prompts list?
Beta'd by trustingHim17!
Christmas with the Marshwiggles
(A lesson in decorating for Christmas with pessimists.)
"It's not funny, Edmund!"
"Are you sure it's not?" Edmund, bent over with laughter, wheezed as he questioned his older sister. Lucy, sitting beside him in the small room adjourning the library, had twitches tugging at the corners of her mouth, but she was doing her best not to join her brother in laughter since she could see Susan was truly annoyed.
"It's Christmas! Of all the times they want to come and help, why does it have to be Christmas?"
"It could be worse," Lucy interposed. "Imagine if they'd wanted to help at the Celebration of Spring?" Susan shuddered. "They'd spend the entire time predicting how many people would die before winter as we celebrated the renewal of life." Lucy's eyes were a bit far-away as she remembered her favorite holiday, but she came back to smile at her sister. "It's Cair Paravel. Christmas won't be awful, no matter what they do. And the Fauns are still bringing their music, and the Centaurs say we may even be able to hear the Stars sing, and Mrs. Gruse will still be in charge of the cooking. As long as her food is on the table, I doubt people will notice what the table looks like."
"I will," Edmund said, cracking up again. "I'm sure I won't forget it for years!" Lucy gave him a pointed look, indicating Susan with her eyes, and he subsided. "It's a good sign they want to come and help, Su. They've been wary of leaving their marshes for more than half a day's travel for the past few years. This is a good sign. They're coming and willing to stay overnight for a celebration. It's progress."
"But they do not celebrate," Susan protested. "How are the rest of us to celebrate if they are in charge of our merriment?" Edmund, his laughter dying away, looked more closely at her.
"I'm sure we'll manage," Lucy advised, handing Edmund the correspondence she'd been helping with and getting to her feet. "Nothing could truly spoil Christmas."
Edmund waited till Lucy left, then looked at Susan more seriously. "All right, Su, out with it. What really worries you about their visit?"
Susan looked away, absently scanning the shelves holding quills, paper, and envelopes. She should have known better than to come to her perceptive brother with this.
But she did want a better solution, and so she sat, drawing her skirts around her and folding her hands. "As you said, it's the first time the Marshwiggles—any Marshwiggles—have visited us." Edmund nodded. "But all of us have been there, and their homes, their habits, are as merry as a Beaver on bath-day. Which means we can either have a merry Christmas, as is normal and seems right, and make them feel entirely out of place, or we can have a Christmas filled with doleful predictions and little laughter, and perhaps they will come again, after they see how much we want them here." Susan sighed. "I do not know how to balance the requirements of hostess for them, and serving the other Narnians that I know will come again."
"What does Peter say?" Edmund inquired curiously.
"That the Narnians will make merry whether the Marshwiggles are here or not, for such is their nature." Edmund choked on another laugh, trying as he was to give his sister his full and serious attention. "Don't laugh so at this! I came for advice, not for such antics!" But Susan could feel her own lips beginning to twitch. Edmund's laughs, rare and full and good, restored her own good humor.
"He is right, you know. The Narnians will welcome them wholeheartedly and celebrate as wholeheartedly as they welcome them. But it is foolishness to worry about finding a balance for two weights that are not here to be measured yet, much less try to measure their unknown needs against each other," Edmund pointed out, though his tone was kind. "Perhaps it would be best to let them help with the Christmas Celebration as they've offered. That will make them feel that they are welcome here, and that this place is, to some measure, theirs. Then when the laughter comes they will see that laughter has its place in their lives as well."
Susan looked down at her fingers. "It is a good solution," she murmured.
"But?" Susan looked up, and he smiled at her. "I know you too well not to hear the objection you do not voice. But?"
"I do not want to let them decorate," Susan confessed. "I love Christmas. There is no other time Cair Paravel basks in such beauty. The color of the glass-covered candles cast over the warm stone walls, the smell of the pine and berry wreathes with every indrawn breath, the eager happiness of every face within its halls—there is a beauty at Christmas that sets my heart at ease, and lightens every load and task. It is a time to remember we live amid beauty in every tree and window. To surrender the making of such beauty to those who do not find…the same beauty, for I have seen their wigwams, takes a year-long hope within me and bids it cease."
"And takes your favorite time of year and bids it be less beautiful," Edmund added. He reached forward and took his sister's hands. "I would I could ease that loss, my sister, but when we opened our home to become Narnia's as well-"
"We lost the right to make it entirely as we alone would have it," Susan finished. She squeezed Edmund's fingers. "I must find beauty where in the corners it will still reside, then. And in the smiles that both you and Peter say will not cease, for all the pessimism of our guests."
Those particular guests arrived the next morning, three days before the Christmas celebration (called the Feast and Dance) was to begin. Susan saw them first, as she quietly shivered in the courtyard while accepting countless gifts of boughs and berries from Rabbits, Squirrels, and Birds (all very anxious to give their own gifts to further the Feast and Dance and thrilled when their Queen received them). The Marshwiggles were tall, with the very small bodies and very long, thin arms and legs common to their kind. The tips of their pointed hats stood taller than most Centaurs, and beneath it their straw-like hair hung over their shoulders like a second covering from the wind. Susan, watching them from the corner of her eye as she accepted the last gift from a chirruping Sparrow, noticed they had very dark, almost black berries decorating the crowns of their hats, and the Marshwiggle with much longer hair had a sash of dark red tied round her cloak.
"Thank you, good cousin, for such a gift. Such a perfectly circled wreath shall adorn the doors of Cair Paravel itself," she said, smiling at the Sparrow, who fluttered up and down in the way that Sparrows blushed. "But quickly to your home, for night is falling and it is cold!" She let the Sparrow land on her finger and launched him into the air, giving him the height to make it over the walls, and then turned to the two approaching guests.
"Be welcomed to Cair Paravel, good cousins! I am Queen Susan, the second of the Four."
"I am Gloomcloud, Your Majesty, and this is my wife, Doldrum," said the shorter-haired Marshwiggle, introducing them as they bowed. Susan's heart sank. Some of the Marshwiggles had lovely names—she'd met Riverreed, who admittedly hadn't been quite as lively as her name sounded—but others had very sad names, such as Dourfog, a name she'd heard mentioned. This was not a promising beginning for a merry Christmas.
But she was a Queen, and their Queen, and it would not do to show it. "Be welcome, cousins, and come in out of the cold. How was your journey?" she asked, already heading towards the doors. She paused just outside them to hang the wreath on one of the iron knockers, then used the metal to knock and let the guards know to let her in.
"It could have been worse," a higher voice said. Doldrum sounded like water slowly moving over mud, while her husband sounded as dark and damp as the mud itself. "All of the signs said we'd have a snowstorm. Buried in it, I thought we'd be, and not found till spring."
"The clouds were many," her husband agreed. "It will be a dark and stormy night,* but we'll make the best of it. We can burn the furniture if we have to."
Susan firmly put the picture of a large fire in the courtyard out of her mind, refusing to dwell on the image of their halls entirely empty as their guests stood in dismay.
"We have wood enough for many cold winter days," she said pleasantly. "Please come in and enjoy the warmth."
"We could decorate these stairs with icicles," Doldrum remarked. "But they'd probably all break before someone saw them, I would think."
"Or the guests would slip on the stairs and break their limbs, and that might inhibit the dancing," Gloomgloud added. "But all decorating requires risk. The Fauns hang sprigs of mistletoe, and I knew one once where the mistletoe dropped and scratched his eye. He says he doesn't mind the scar, but he's making the best of it. He'll probably lose his sight completely by the time he's an old Faun. Permanent damage, that's what probably happened."
Susan had another image of the garlands they usually hung dropping on the dancers and them tripping and breaking limbs, or the trees within the castle falling on the smaller creatures, and-
She resolutely stopped. She was not going to let the Marshwiggles pessimistic predictions worry her. "What are your ideas so far?" she asked.
"Berries," Gloomcloud put in. "On the doorways, and around the bottoms of the goblets."
"Oh, that would be so pretty," Susan exclaimed softly; the second idea was something she had not thought of before. "We've lots of berries stored, almost anyone can show you where." They were inside, and a few of the busy maids stopped and started to come over. Susan spoke to the nearest, a pretty Hedgehog. "Would you please show our guests to their rooms? Dinner will be served in about an hour," she added to Marshwiggles.
"We probably won't be able to eat any of it," Gloomcloud said.
Susan stopped the burst of impatience from coloring her words. "We asked what Marshwiggles like to eat, and have tried to have some of your usual foods. I'd like to try them myself tonight; but if there's anything we're missing, please let us know at once. We love making people feel at home," she added, much more easily, for the last was certainly true.
"Then you'll have a problem with overcrowding, I would think," Doldrum said sadly, shaking her head. "But you can always come and stay in the Marshlands, there's lots of room."
Susan bit her lip, absolutely refraining from the "I wonder why that would be?" muttered comment she knew Edmund would have made, and merely curtsied and thanked them gravely. They bowed in return and walked away, their tall, snowed-on forms following the tiny Hedgehog.
A burst of giggles from up and to the right made Susan turn as soon as they were out of sight. Lucy, sitting two-thirds of the way up the stairs between Leo and Por,** looked down at her. "Susan, they're awful."
"I know," Susan sighed.
"I'm going to love them," Lucy said happily. Susan blinked at her. "I'm going to laugh so much more now that they're around." She stood, starting to laugh again. "Can you picture Edmund's reactions to the things they say?"
Yes, Susan could. And had. She felt her own smile begin. "That will be amusing," she admitted, walking towards the bottom of the staircase. "But I thought you were decorating your rooms today?"
"I was." Lucy started down at the same time Edmund's voice called to her from above, twisted to look, and missed her step. Leo and Por, in the same fluid motion, grabbed mouthfuls of her dress and held her till she regained her balance. "Thank you," she told them, and they let go. "And Edmund, that wasn't nice!" she called up.
"No, it was not," Susan agreed, panting from where she'd run up the stairs. "Lucy, you're all right?"
"Fine," she replied cheerfully.
"Sorry, Lu," Edmund said, coming down. "I didn't mean to. But I'm glad you're all right, because I think the two of you should come see this."
"This" was a series of barrels sitting next to the rooms that currently stored the Christmas decorations. Susan wrinkled her nose at the bitter, almost decaying smell. Beside her, Por choked, and Leo nudged him.
"What are they?"
"The Marshwiggles contribution to the decorations," Edmund said solemnly. He dissolved into laughter, unable to keep his straight face. "It's dye."
"For what?" Susan asked, startled. She ignored the movement beside her as Por crouched, knowing Leo would stop him from actually jumping on the barrels. A moment later Por's entire body drooped, properly chastised.
Susan appreciated that about Leo.
"For the Christmas decorations, of course!" Edmund replied. Susan closed her eyes, remembering the dark berries around the Marshwiggles' hats, and imagining them all. Over. Cair Paravel.
She ached for the beauty of Christmas.
"Why would they want to dye berries and branches?" Lucy asked curiously.
Edmund shrugged, and Lucy stole a glance at Susan. "Maybe there won't be enough for all of them," she said quietly.
"Well, I was thinking Leo and Por could help me with that," Edmund said. "If they were to help me move them…"
"And one of us were clumsy-" Por breathed excitedly.
"A few of them might spill," Leo finished.
There were definitely times Susan appreciated Por, too.
"I would be most appreciative," she told the Leopards. "Carry on." She turned to leave, and paused in the doorway as she inhaled the fresher air. "Make sure to bath after," she advised, and tried not to laugh when both Leopards growled softly as they realised what they'd signed up for. She watched, a small smile playing on her lips, as they held one of those silent conversations that led to Leo stepping forward. He pushed over the first barrel, jumping aside as quickly as possible. But not quickly enough! One foot slipped in the dark dye, and he slipped, rolling right over into the pooling liquid. Edmund and Por began to laugh very, very hard as Leo growled, getting up and looking down disgustedly. He looked half Leopard, and half Panther. Susan left before she could insult the Leopard by laughing as well.
That, at least, would be a lovely Christmas memory from this year. There was still laughter in the Cair.
OOOOO
*Quite obviously not mine. I couldn't resist. I have a feeling Dickens would have gotten along quite well with the Marshwiggles in some of his moods.
**two Leopard brothers from my story "Loyalty." I had a few requests to see them more; I'm seeing if I can slip them in to other stories.
A/N: There will be a part II. If you were wondering.