10-1-07 Many thank-you's to elecktrum for becoming my new beta and looking over some of my older chapters! Thanks!
My muse has run off to Tahiti and is refusing to return until the weather here gets nicer. I can't really blame her, (anyplace that can be warm sunny weather in the morning and snowing by afternoon is just wrong...) but she's been kind enough to send postcards so you get at least a little bit! This chapter is more a series of clips than an actual chapter, so if it seems disjointed that's why, it's more of a bridging chapter than anything. More will be upcoming when my muse returns.
Disclaimer: I am merely borrowing C. S. Lewis' charming characters and world, and will eventually return them. The only thing that is mine is the plot.
Disclaimer 2: If this story in any way resembles any other fanfiction it is by complete accident, as I go out of my way to avoid reading fanfictions that resemble mine until mine are completed. My apologies to any other great minds.
Author's note: This story is set pre-, during- and post- The Last Battle. I am a first time fanfiction writer and any reviews are appreciated.
Chapter Twenty-three: Leona's Story, Training
The first place Aslan took Leona to was a small clearing in a wooded forest. Prowler stayed behind in the land at the edge of the world. When Leona asked why the cat wasn't coming with her, Aslan simply replied, "He will have no need to learn the things that you are to be taught. He will do his own learning elsewhere. He is a cat, he will be there when he is needed."
There was a wooden cottage in the clearing and the sound of an ax chopping wood came from the other side. With Leona following behind, Aslan walked towards the sound and as they turned the corner, Leona saw the man who would be her first teacher.
He was tall and burly, with piercing eyes, and when he saw Aslan he immediately put down the ax and bowed.
"My lord!" the man exclaimed. "You are most welcome. How may I be of assistance?"
"Darco," Aslan said. "You are the best fighter in the world, even if you no longer like to fight for a living. I need you to teach this girl. "
Seeing this as her cue, Leona stepped forward and gave a little curtsy. Darco looked her up and down, rather skeptically.
Turning to Aslan he said, "I've tried to be a good man, what evil have I done to be given such an impossible task! With all the time in the world, I could never teach her all I know and expect her to be able to do it! She's not even big enough to wield most of the weapons I use!"
Aslan laughed. "Be at ease, I don't want you to teach her everything you know! Quite the opposite in fact. I want her to know just enough to be able to escape from an attacker, but not so much as to have unusual reflexes. Formally, I want her to know how to use a dagger, and a bow, but I want her to be able to use anything as a weapon. However, she must not appear to be more than she seems. She will need to be able to blend into any situation and a woman her size being a more-than-capable warrior would be out of place. If she is in a situation requiring more talent, I will assist her." With that, Aslan vanished, leaving Leona and Darco in the clearing.
Darco gave her another, still skeptical but more hopeful look. "Well, lass," he said. "Let's get started."
After several months spent learning fighting from Darco, Leona spent several years in various libraries and schools throughout the world learning politics, the histories of the three countries, and other similar subjects. A hermit in the Shuddering Wood taught her about the different Narnian species, like Fauns, Satyrs and Dwarves. A reformed thief in Archenland taught her how to pick pockets, detect forgeries in letters, and even how to pick locks. A widowed matron in Cair Paravel showed her how to use makeup and wigs to disguise herself, even making Leona appear as old as a shriveled crone! Leona had a marvelous time wandering the city in her various appearances, learning how to act according to each outfit and 'face'.
It was a very healing time for her. Busy with the new duties she had and the new things she needed to learn, there was very little time to dwell on what she had lost. In fact, after a while it almost seemed as though the fire and all the events leading up to her taking the position of the Guardian happened to someone else. But every so often she would see something that would remind her of her family and the grief would come back.
She learned to see the people and the lands she was to help protect and guide in a different way than she was used to. Aslan encouraged her to look at the countries as people in and of themselves. Even though each individual being living there had a separate personality and nature, each country had its different aspects and values that it could be generalized by. Narnia was gentle, her people liked spending time in peace and joy, content to live generation after generation in happy simplicity. That did not mean that she was in any way weak or unobservant of her borders, as her foes quickly learned. While slow to anger, once roused Narnia's wrath was swift and skilled. Archenland was much like Narnia, but it held more value in cunning and cleverness. Her people were boisterous and fun loving, relishing a challenge of any kind. She was also impulsive and easily roused to anger and war. Calormen was harsher, and her people were far more nomadic and warlike. There was a nobility in Calormen and a deviousness that was balanced only by the inability of her people to get along with each other. Fighting was a way of life in Calormen instead of a last resort as it was in Narnia. There was a harsh beauty in that desert land and a strength that came from pitting human flesh against the elements and its fellow man. Calormen was easily swayed to evil, but could also be trusted upon to rise to any challenge. Each country had its own heartbeat and rhythm and Leona learned to love them, though Narnia earned a special place in her heart for its nobility and beauty.
Fifty years later
Leona had traveled all over the known world by the time that Aslan deemed her outside learning complete. The slightly timid, naïve and uneducated girl that had been plucked from the back alley of Cair Paravel was gone. The woman in her place was poised and confident in her own abilities and talents. The smile came more easily to her lips and the pain that was so evident when she last stood on the high cliff top on the edge of the world was hidden, if not completely healed.
Aslan sat surveying her as she wandered the clearing softly singing to herself. As Aslan had promised, she indeed found her voice again and even found herself composing songs. She had truly come a long way from the grief-ravaged girl who had first entered this clearing over fifty years before, even though she had not physically grown a day older.
Aslan called her to his side, and they sat in comfortable silence for a few moments.
"You are nearly ready for the final part of your training," Aslan said. "This last is the hardest part. You must learn to accept my presence in your mind and guiding your actions. Do not expect this to be a quick process. I fully expect it to take years if not decades before you are comfortable with it. In a way, it is almost a form of possession and as such is very hard to adapt to and accept. It will be very difficult at first, but I need to be able to slip in and out of your mind at will. Are you ready to try?"
Leona nodded a little uncomfortably and asked, "What do I need to do?"
"Simply sit there for now," the Lion said. "Then, when you feel my presence in your head, let go of your will and let me direct your actions."
That doesn't sound too incredibly difficult, she thought, leaning back against Aslan's side. Then she felt something, a tickling in her head that grew into a pressure, as though she had gone too far up a mountainside. Suddenly, there was someone in her mind, a presence that was not necessarily threatening, but still overwhelmingly foreign and terribly frightening. It tried to settle into her mind, but defenses she didn't know she had started to fight it, and she mentally shouted No! Get out, get out! The presence immediately slipped away and left her alone in her head.
She threw herself away from the lion and sat shaking on the grass, breathing hard. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know it was only you, but..."
"Now you understand why I said that this will take a very long time," Aslan replied, not at all upset or concerned. "The relationship between the mind and the body is like that of a horse and its rider. What I am trying to do is take the mental reins from your hands and direct the 'horse' myself. That is not at all a comfortable position to be in, particularly until you get used to it. Once you are capable of allowing me into your mind even if I don't actually direct your actions, then I will start sending you on missions."
Fifty years later
Aslan was right, it did take a very long time for Leona to build up the trust to let him into her mind and take over her body. Several decades in fact. Personally, she thought that it would have happened a lot sooner if Aslan would try more than once or twice a year. It seemed as though he was waiting for her to grow in wisdom and to gain the self-confidence needed to let go of her own body. Now she knew that she could take up the reins again once Aslan was finished with whatever needed doing.
"Now that you can allow me into your mind, you are ready to be the Guardian," Aslan told her. Prowler sat by her feet, having just shown up the day before ready to get to work and surprisingly closed-mouthed about what he had been doing for the last hundred years.
"We will start with something small. I doubt I will need to actually take over your body. You should be able to handle anything that comes up," he said.
Without another word, the world blurred and Leona found herself and Prowler in the middle of a crowded marketplace in what looked to be Narnia. Aslan was nowhere to be seen.
"Talk about sink or swim," Leona heard Prowler mutter.
Leona laughed. "Well, let's look around a bit until we know what we are here for."
The two wandered around the marketplace for a while looking at the wares for sale and waiting for a mental nudge from Aslan. Leona saw a beautiful necklace in a stall and stopped to look at it. Prowler walked on ahead, and was lost to view within a moment. She wasn't worried, he would turn up eventually and she doubted that he'd be left behind if Aslan whisked her away in a hurry. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a woman going from one group of people to another asking something then hurrying on when her query was met with a negative reply. She looked highly upset and almost frantic. Leona made to go and ask her what was the matter when the sign she was waiting for happened.
It wasn't a voice in her head or even the pressure that heralded Aslan taking over her body, simply a knowledge that she needed to go find Prowler, now. Turning away from the woman, Leona started down the street in the direction that she had last seen the cat. Looking under tables and on top of windowsills she could not find the feline anywhere. Finally she turned down a darker alley, thinking she saw a flick of a ginger tail.
Something told her to walk quietly. As she crept around some rubbish she realized that she'd found the cat. Prowler had apparently made a friend, and an enemy as well. The cat was being held tightly to the chest of a little girl, only about five or six years old. She was silently crying as she dodged the hands of a man who was reaching for her with a bag in one hand.
"Hold still, you little brat," the man said. "I'm not going to hurt you. All your daddy has to do to get you back is give me what I want."
Leona reached down and picked up a large chunk of wood. "Hey, what are you doing to that child?"
At the sound of her voice the ruffian turned, and as he did so, Leona hit him as hard as she could over the head with the makeshift club. He dropped like a stone. The little girl stopped trying to run and looked up at Leona with tears still running down her cheeks. Leona dropped the club on the ground next to the unconscious kidnapper and held out a hand to the child.
"It's all right now," she said. "Let's find your mother and get you home."
Prowler wriggled out from the child's arms and she slipped one small hand into Leona's. With the cat leading the way, they left the alley and entered the bright street. Leona looked up and down the marketplace for the worried woman she had seen a moment before. Something told her that what the woman was looking for had a small hand in hers.
Sure enough, the woman came into view again, this time with tears of dismay and frantic worry running down her face. Leona bent down to the little girl's level, and pointed to the other woman. The girl dropped Leona's hand and ran to the other lady, who caught her up in her arms with a glad cry.
"Oh, Terina, there you are! I was so worried," the woman exclaimed. She settled the girl onto her hip and started making strange gestures with her free hand. Leona suddenly understood why the little girl had not cried out for help. She was mute. Terina started gesturing back at her mother and soon the lady came up to Leona and Prowler to thank them.
"Thank you so much," the mother said. "That man was a useless employee of my husband's and he was fired a few weeks ago. We never thought that he would ever do something like this. Thank Aslan you were there."
Leona felt rather uncomfortable. She hadn't really done anything that anyone else couldn't have done. She made a few non-committal remarks and quickly excused herself. Once she and Prowler had gotten to a quiet place she turned to speak to the Cat, but saw Aslan standing behind them. With another dizzying blur she and the two felines, large and small, were all back in the clearing at the world's edge.
"Well done," Aslan said.
Leona turned to him, rather confused. "But I didn't do anything special. I won't deny that it was important, but why was I needed there? Wouldn't someone else have come along?"
Aslan did not answer her questions, but said, "You followed the promptings I gave you, saw the situation and acted accordingly."
"It seemed a little anti-climactic," Leona said. "I was thinking that I'd be going on wild adventures. All of that training in everything from spying to swordplay, and I was using a club to hit a petty thug. Not that I'm complaining mind you, it's just not what I was expecting."
"I challenge you to tell that mother that it was anti-climactic," Aslan chided mildly. "But, you need to understand that I will never put you to a task that is not important, even if the reason why is not immediately visible. Now, you may wander the world as you will, until I need you again. If you ever are tired of wandering and want to come to me, meet me at the Lamppost in the Lantern Waste. I will know you are there, and come to you."
As their surroundings shifted again, depositing them back in the marketplace, Leona turned to Prowler. "Why didn't you call out for help? You are a Talking Cat."
Prowler gave her a dirty look. "I couldn't. That child was holding me so tight I couldn't breathe let alone shout..." Leona started to laugh, and Prowler stalked off, tail held high in affronted dignity.
Leona didn't understand what Aslan had meant about none of her missions being unimportant until fourteen years later, when little mute Terina wed the second son of the King of Narnia. Rarely did she ever again question that Aslan knew what he was doing.
Over the centuries Leona's missions varied. Some were short, lasting only minutes, others took years or decades to complete. She spied on treacherous lords, and started rebellions to take down evil rulers. She traveled the world, but spent quite a lot of her time in Narnia and Archenland simply singing as a bard, going from one community to the next learning songs and composing new ones. Whenever she got tired, grief-sore, or just needed a rest, she would go to the lamppost and curl up to sleep at its base, always waking up in the clearing at the end of the world.
Prowler came and went as he pleased, traveling with her at times and going his own way at others. He was right when he had told Aslan he would be able to go places even Leona could not and had often retrieved valuable information, simply because the enemy did not know he could talk.
She learned several important things about her immortality. Firstly, it helped her memory not a whit. She still couldn't remember where she left her shoes the night before and after a few years had passed the details of the missions she had been on started to fade. Oh, she could still recall them if she tried, but unless something was very important, she wouldn't remember it. Aslan always made sure that if she needed information of some kind, she would know it. The only thing that she never forgot was the loss of her family. Christmas was never a truly happy time for her, no matter what she was doing or who she was with. It seemed like that turning point in her life was burned into her memory like a brand. The wound may have healed, but the scars always remained.
The world can never stay the same, however. Good and evil always fight for supremacy, sometimes on a small level, other times on a larger. The White Witch attacked Narnia and actually won. Leona was in Calormen at the time and when she had rushed back, the borders had already been magically sealed. There was nothing she could do except wait for Aslan to do something himself.
When the hundred years of winter finally ended with the defeat of the White Witch and the establishing of a new royal line in Narnia, Leona was sent to Calormen. She rarely entered Narnia during the reign of the Kings Peter and Edmund, and Queens Susan and Lucy. She briefly met King Peter, but quickly forgot him again as just one in a long string of missions.
A little over a hundred years after the four rulers vanished into thin air, Aslan took her aside.
For once he came straight to the point. "Things will soon happen that you must stand aside and watch. You will want nothing more than to interfere, so I'm offering you a choice. I can send you to another world for a short while, or you can stay and observe what must happen."
Leona looked at the Lion, bewildered. "What are you saying? Do you want me to leave?"
"Evil must happen in order for good to prevail. It is time for darkness to win for a while. There are many other worlds; you remember that I sometimes summon children from one of them. I am offering you a chance to see another world for a few weeks. Your other option is to stay in this world and watch," Aslan was completely serious.
"Well, you know how much I hate seeing a wrong that I can't fix, so..." Leona trailed off. "What would I need to do in this other world?"
"Simply learn about it," Aslan said. "Learn how the people live, what they do, their history. Consider it a test of your ability to blend into strange surroundings."
So, when she woke up in a church in a place called London, she simply learned. The 'nuns' who took her in thought her simple-minded and that she had lost her memory and were happy to loan her books to read and newspapers to look at. It boggled Leona's mind what things these people invented, both wonderful and terrible. The country was in the middle of a bloody, widespread war using weapons that she'd never even imagined could exist. But in many ways, it was still much like home. Foods were similar, and the language was the same, for the most part. She felt that she could make a life here someday if she had to.
Within three weeks she was settled into the small convent she was staying at and had learned much about this strange new world and had even taken to walking throughout the enormous city. But she couldn't help but worry about what was happening at home. It may be easier not to know, but the knowledge that something bad was happening to Narnia preyed on her mind.
Sure enough, when Aslan called her back a week later, she found that the Telmarines had invaded Narnia, killed many of the non-human residents and drove the rest into hiding for fear of their lives. Aslan and Prowler had to endure a furious rant on the stupidity, selfishness, thoughtlessness and cruelty of mankind. (Never mind that she was human herself and had seen many examples throughout the centuries of the wisdom, selflessness, thoughtfulness and gentleness of mankind as well.) She simply wasn't in the mood to be sensible and it took Aslan giving her several challenging missions before she could work off her frustrations. She did admit that it was better not having to watch. Aslan nobly refrained from saying, "I told you so."
After that, things rather got back to normal. Leona would go on the same sort of missions that she had done for centuries. As time passed Aslan's other-worldly helpers came and went without her ever encountering them, which she was rather disappointed by. She wanted to find out what they were like and if they were anything like her. But, somehow their paths never crossed. Life moved on, her earlier missions faded into mere memory and it seemed like Narnia would go on forever.
It was the Narnian year 2436, eighty-one years since the reign of King Caspian the Seafarer, and one thousand, eight hundred and fifty-seven years since Aslan had first made her the Guardian, when the bottom fell out of her world and her faith was given its hardest test yet.
TBC...
Author's note for chapter: For those of you wondering what year Leona would have come to England in, this first time, it's 1941. It's in between the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. She does not meet any of the Pevensies, and simply learns about England, which is why she's so good at blending into it in her later visit.
I don't know when the next chapter will be out, but don't be too surprised if it takes another month. Don't forget to review!!!!