narnia / year 1000

word count: 1,015

peridan requested by abby w

xXx

It had been the one thing his mother warned him not to do.

"Never beyond the mountains, Per. Never for any reason are you to cross beyond those mountains."

But he'd heard the tales the woodspeople told, he'd heard the whispers in the trees; his own distant dryad-ancestors' blood sang with it, that knowing, that hoping beyond all hope.

Aslan has returned to Narnia.

And at fourteen years old, Peridan of Anvard had not been able to help himself.

What could be so dangerous about the mountains in the middle of summer, anyway? It was Narnia cursed into perpetual winter, not Archenland. And if Aslan had truly returned, how much longer could the spell even hold its deadly borders?

He only wanted one look. That was what he'd told himself when he set out that day, trotting into the mountains on his chestnut mare and turning up dense paths disused by all but the most experienced hunters.

Just one look.

But the trees grew closer and closer together, as if standing guard against the world beyond, and blasts of snow blew through the cracks, striking the gentle forest air like a knife.

And still he rode on.

His mare's steps grew nervous, ears flicking forward and back as the temperature dropped. Peridan clutched his cloak tighter around his throat, snow lashing his face in bursts from beyond the sharp dropoff a few yards to his left, the eternal storm raging where accursed cold clashed with summer warmth atop the peaks.

Just one look.

Just one glimpse.

A branch snapped overhead and his mare lurched, rearing as the bough crashed down ahead of them with a burst of heavy snow, and Peridan's grip slipped.

The horse wheeled and bolted before he could clench tight with his knees, and a split second of sickening air engulfed him before the earth flipped up to smack him and his head snapped back into frozen ground.

White light flashed in his vision.

He coughed, sucking air into empty lungs and choking as he struggled hazily up to his hands and knees, world spinning.

The thunder of hoofbeats vanished back down the pass.

A fresh blast of wind struck him with a sheet of snow as he grasped at the nearest tree to haul himself up to his feet, slipping over icy roots as another crack split overhead.

He ducked just in time to miss another crashing branch and lost his footing, shoulder slamming backward into the snow as he tumbled down the hill and landed again with a squeak against a half-buried log, the breath driven all at once from his young body.

Snow came down thick and wet around him. He tried to reorient himself, staring back up the hill, steep as a cliff face, looming over him with the shadow of twisted branches weaving together at its peak.

Locking him out.

"Never for any reason are you to cross beyond those mountains. Our ancestors fled the north for a reason, the forest will not be so welcoming of our return."

He coughed and gasped against the tightness in his chest from the impact, struggling again to his feet and stumbling through deep snow drifts long collected amongst tangled roots, nearly tripping as he dragged himself along the ridge, hoping to spot a break in the trees where he might climb back up.

Foolish, foolish boy.

Perhaps the rumors had been wrong after all.

Perhaps the Lion had not returned.

A root jerked out from underneath him and he pitched to his knees, slipping and tumbling down a snowy bank, desperately clawing his way back up against the trunk of the first tree he could grasp.

"Please," he begged it, clenching his jaw against his chattering teeth, a drizzling chill soaking down to his bones, "please, I'm just lost, I'm trying to go back!"

But he met no answer, clutching blindly for support as he struggled through a heavy, freezing wet drift, ice stinging at his skin, raking it raw, auburn hair lashing into his face through the gale that would surely bury him.

No one would find him this side of the ridge.

His mother had been right. All that dreaming and longing for the spellbound land beyond the mountains would only end the very same way it had for those before him.

He collapsed, shaking at the base of a tree, hands over his face, trying to block out the thick, snowy assault that blinded him, trying to see through the trees, but the world had turned solid white.

Entombing him.

"Please," he breathed, though even the trees themselves could not have heard his voice over the howl of the wind. "Please, I only want to go home."

Peridan didn't know when exactly he slipped out of consciousness, bones turning to ice in his fingers and toes as the storm raged on, face buried in his knees against the biting wind, world blurring into a shivering, aching haze.

But he woke flat on his back.

Sunlight pierced his eyelids, dappling through blinding, brilliant green so that he had to blink and squint against it, a faint breeze rustling his hair, a thousand rich scents striking him at once, warmth soaking up from the damp ground as something tickled his fingers.

He drew a short breath and blinked again, lying alone in the middle of a summer forest, branches waving softly overhead, earth spotted with tiny blue flowers that grew up between his fingers and tangled his body in delicate green creepers.

He sat sharply, tearing up a handful of flowers by accident, but still he wore the soggy remnants of his cloak, half-grown with leafy bracken by now, his hair flopping into his face, damp but no longer freezing.

And that is how, on the day that Father Christmas first returned to the land of Narnia and the High King Peter first drew his sword, Peridan of Anvard thought for a moment he had woken into the afterlife.

He did not wonder until a great while afterward whether perhaps someone had heard his whispered plea after all.