Musical Interlude

"Aslan?"

"Yes, Edmund?"

"What happened? What was it I saw in the dream?"

He drew a deep breath, his expression thoughtful as he formed his answer, for this was the first time since waking up yesterday that I had been able to bring myself to talk about what I had seen on Charn. I was sure he didn't want to risk repeating the scene. I know I certainly didn't.

"What you witnessed in your dream happened long in the past, on a world far removed from here."

"She really did that? Killed her whole world? Why?"

We were relaxing in the sitting room attached to the queens' suite, where my siblings and I normally gathered for breakfast. This was as far as I could walk right now and after somehow ending up in here I couldn't be bothered to leave. The fire was warm and I was swathed in blankets and robes, complete with gloves, two layers of clothes (Peter's) and three pairs of socks to combat this constant chill. After so much sleep it seemed strange that I could still be exhausted, but I hadn't felt this knocked up since the day I had been knighted. Martil had brought me soup and tea and I was eating very, very slowly in the hopes that I wouldn't be sick.

"Jadis would far sooner destroy a thing she coveted than to see it loved by another. As you well know."

I felt a twinge of shame, though I was sure that wasn't the Lion's intent. "How did she do it?"

"A powerful and terrible magic called the Deplorable Word. It is the blackest of magic, the sort of power that should never be pursued or used. Knowledge of such a thing comes at a heavy price."

"I can't argue that," I agreed. I was actually having trouble carrying on this conversation. In my mind I was concentrating very hard upon a piece of music I'd heard the court musicians play last week in order to keep from rethinking the Deplorable Word. Sounds, not words, were running through my head right then.

"Eat your soup," Aslan ordered gently, and I obediently downed another spoonful from the bowl before me. It was late morning and after an hour of persuasion on my part, the girls had left me to Aslan's care and were in dance class. I had never thought the day would dawn that I'd miss dancing, but here it was. Peter would faint if he knew.

There was a question I had to ask, though. I pushed aside my fears. "Why didn't it kill me, then?"

"The first time she said it, you were looking into a window on the past, a witness to an old memory on a world not your own. The second time...the Word must be spoken by the living, not the dead, for its true power to work. What you felt was a mere echo, whispered by a shadow."

I ate some more soup, the closest to hungry I had been in weeks. "It was still pretty effective."

"It was," he agreed.

"Did she ever try using it here in Narnia?"

"She did. Fortunately the nature and the scope of that power did not carry over to any world outside of Charn. Indeed, Jadis found that all her powers save her physical strength had changed once she left her world."

My curiosity got ahead of my sense. "What became of it here?"

Aslan cocked his head and looked at me, perhaps deciding it was better for me to know. "The Deplorable Word turned the living into stone."

The spoon clattered out of my suddenly clumsy grasp and I thought hard on music to keep from recalling the word. "Wha-?" I asked stupidly. "But...her wand!"

Apparently I looked as stupid as I felt, because he smiled faintly. "Was infused with that power so that she could focus it on an individual being. She found, too, that the ceremony necessary for the Word's use on Charn was pointless here, making it more responsive to her command."

I thought of Peter isolated and surrounded at Beruna, the White Witch all clad in mail and Aslan's shorn mane striding towards him, her wand at the ready to steal his life. The thought of what my actions that day had prevented made me positively dizzy.

"I am so glad I broke that wand!" I exclaimed a little fiercer than I intended.

A deep chuckle answered. "As am I, my child."

"Couldn't anyone have used it, then?"

"Only someone with a knowledge of the Deplorable Word, and even then only after they wrestled the wand from her."

I snorted at the notion of anyone getting that close to Jadis. "Good luck." A horrid thought struck me. I had that knowledge now, not that I wanted it. The fact that it existed anywhere, especially in my memories, frightened me to an extreme. I looked at Aslan desperately. "It is broken? It won't work no matter what...please?"

He knew what I was thinking. Besides the music, anyway.

"The wand's ability to conduct the Deplorable Word was destroyed when you broke it, Edmund. You need not fear."

I opened my mouth and he checked me. "One more question, then finish your soup."

"If I know this - ow!" I hissed and leaned far over as the sound of the Deplorable Word passed unbidden and unwelcome through my thoughts again, sending a stabbing pain through my skull. I took a few gulping breaths, but there was no blood this time. I held the bridge of my nose until the discomfort faded a little. "Why aren't I a statue out in the garden right now?"

"You cannot use it upon yourself. And I doubt your sisters would leave you outside."

I smirked, for Aslan rarely joked, but I supposed not even he could resist. I should have thought of that on my own and not wasted my question. Blast. I dropped my hand in annoyance, then snuck in one more. I wouldn't be Edmund Randall Pevensie if I didn't at least try. "So why does it hurt?"

He indulged me. "It was not meant for the Son of Man to know. It is too powerful for your kind to wield. Jadis was not Human. In addition, part of the price she paid for knowledge of the Word was the inability to feel pain the way you and I do."

That surprised me not at all. I picked up the spoon. "Small wonder she enjoyed it so much."