My first phanphic, so be merciful, I beg of you!

Rating subject to change, might go up to T for violence in later chappies

SUMMARY:

Part One: Basically, Tumnus' story of his friendship with Lucy.

Part Two: Their friendship after Lucy becomes Queen Lucy the Valiant of Narnia.

Part Three: Lucy and Tumnus reunite many years later, and how their friendship progresses into love.

Disclaimer: I don't own Lucy, Tumnus, or anything, really, in Part One. I get to own more stuff as the book progresses... but for now, I own nothing; I am simply a phanphiction hobo.

I really must apologise for this chapter. I found it not as Narnia-like as it should be (or, I shall say in my defense, it shows more of the 'White Witch' side of Narnia).

Chapter Three:

A Narnia Lullaby

Whilst Tumnus was fixing tea, the vow he made to the White Witch pounded through his mind in throbbing, hammering, guilt (though he was not sure the guilt was for his duty to Jadis or Lucy). He turned around to the child, who was sitting in the chair that was always empty. That chair was always for friends, back when summer still lived to bring felicity. When Ankney was jovial and kind, when the Dryads roamed about the forest freely, when one could stroll about the Western Woods with the smell of rain hanging in the morning mist.

Tumnus sat in the other chair and told Lucy exactly those tales. He told her of Chrystmay, his good friend the Dryad, how ironically serious the centaurs could be. He told Lucy tales that his father had told him as a lad, and shared some of his own memories: the apple tree that once grew outside that very den, when Tumnus had carved his own wooden flute. At that memory, his mind twinged with conscience of how he should or shouldn't be playing Lucy to sleep at this moment ( he couldn't quite lay his fate on either, or Lucy's, for that matter).

He enjoyed what time he shared with her, in any case. Lucy told him stories of her home back in War Drobe, of some thing or another called a blitz, her mother and all of the Pevensie family. She spoke with such an incredible fondness of this land and everything in it that Tumnus was drawn to it with a certain surreal familiarity, as if he, too, lived in the country of Spare Oom and shared her very memories.

The faun watched her with an unusual combination of fascination, pride, and anger. Pride and fascination were towards Lucy, as if she were his own child. Anger he saved for himself, still but split in two between duty and heart.

For an hour at the very least they exchanged tale after tale, as if each were trying to have the other live their past. Tumnus once said with tears in his voice, 'Oh, I remember the day the Long Winter began. I was young, so very young.' He closed his eyes and frowned in grief.

'Please,' prodded Lucy. 'Don't stop.'

'I was walking with my father,' Tumnus said in a quieter voice. 'I remember only the smallest bit of a memory; a breeze was at our feet – it was unnatural, and completely silent. My father told me to turn around, go home, but I wouldn't. He was hysterical, and kept telling me that I needed to go inside.' Tumnus clutched his hands together. 'I wouldn't. And then . . . Then it started to snow. I was young, naïve. Absolutely spellbound by the snow. But my father . . . I realised later that my father sensed something that was not quite right all along. When it snowed, my father fell to the ground and –' Tumnus looked out the window into emptiness. 'he cried.' Tumnus blinked and then looked directly at Lucy. 'He died the next day. Out of grief, I suppose.'

Lucy allowed him time to drown in memory before raising her voice. 'There is one thing that I don't understand. Why is it always winter here, in this land? What made it winter?'

Tumnus sighed and perched himself on his goat knees. 'Always winter, and never Christmas. It would be quite more bearable if only Christmas came once in a while. Alas, but that's wishful thinking. It is the White Witch's doing.'

Lucy shuddered, though she had no knowledge as to why the name scared her so. 'Who is she?'

At the simple inquiry, Tumnus's face altered. His face was shadowed and his eyes were dullcast. 'She lives in a castle just east of where we are now, nestled between two hills. The Witch drives a silver sledge and carries a wand . . . A wand like a dagger; sharp, and even more dangerous.' When Lucy asked what dangers were in this wand, Tumnus shivered and answered not.

For a few moments, they said nothing. Lucy daintily ate her cake and sardines properly, like a lady, but Tumnus smiled, for she was still so childish.

The kettle sang out one shrill note, and Tumnus bustled to the fireplace to pour two cups of tea. 'How do you like your tea?' he murmured to Lucy over the curling steam and smoke.

'Two lumps and milk, please, Mr Tumnus.' She was trying to be grown-up again. Tumnus didn't resist smiling while he gave Lucy the tea. She was a pretty one, that was for certain, this new friend of his. He wouldn't give her up to the Witch, he couldn't, if he had any honorable blood in his body. In spite of his fondness of the girl, he found himself fingering curiously at the box Jadis had left him.

And would come of the deed if he opened it and played for the girl? If it was like any other pipe, she surely wouldn't fall asleep instantly. The thought was easily dismissed. Suppose he played for her only shortly. Should she sleep in that time, Tumnus could change his mind anytime and wake her, then see her safely to wherever her destination be, as long as it was a reasonable walking distance. For a last moment traced the carvings on the box, then lifted off the lid in solid decision. The stupidity crossed his mind again of how he hadn't the dimmest idea how to play it.

'Now,' Tumnus said cordially as he sat straight in his chair. 'Do you know any Narnian lullabies?'

Lucy – sweet, innocent Lucy – took another sip of tea and smiled apologetically. 'No.'

'Good.' Tumnus grinned. 'Because this,' he raised the flute to his lips, 'probably won't sound anything like one.'

The tune that came to the flute was not at all the sort of lullaby that he'd intended. Still, Lucy's eyelids drooped somnolently at the first note. The music was enigmatic and dark, but mostly, the tune was riddled with danger. As he played each note louder and more hauntingly, he stared intently at the child's face, while she raptly gazed into the fire. What was it that she saw?

Still playing, Tumnus looked into the flames to see wraithlike figures emerge from the fireplace. They swam effortlessly through the air toward him, singing beautifully, temptingly. Lucy gasped and tore her eyes to the faun, but he couldn't stray his watching pupils from the spirits. The flute had given him an unearthly strength to keep playing that darkness, and as spirits and wraiths surrounded him, Tumnus knew that it was he controlling them with that tune.

In that moment, Tumnus was consumed by wickedness.

The vulnerable child before him was the victim, his own prey. He could've derisively laughed with sick pleasure as the human was lilted into the mere illusion of safety that was sleep. The wraiths were his minions, his puppets, his slaves as they danced around her in malice. Spirits teemed about Tumnus, their master, the flute-bearer. Still the music played, becoming nothing less than utter evil. And Tumnus, the crazed and wild-eyed creature, was the ringleader of it all.

Chanting with increasing volume, the evil images drowned out the flute's music to nothing more than a haunting echo. The wraiths, smokelike and wispy, flew in and out of the human's mind, trailing a stream of nightmares behind them.

For hours they continued like this, purloining strength from the human creature. Limp and weak the girl became; her skin grew increasingly pale – all the while, she remained unaware in sleep. Each moment of it, Tumnus basked in the morbid greed of suffering while the flute continuously released dark echoes of music. And his slave-spirits taunted, chanted, clawed her hair and ears with bladed teeth.

Tumnus lived for it all, each moment, until he looked at her sleeping form. Really looked at her, sitting limply in innocence . . . and he felt compassion for her as he brimmed himself with disgrace. He knew to stop playing. But he was alarmed to discover that, no matter how he attempted to pry his fingers away, tried to shield his breath from entering the instrument, he physically could not stop playing. And the spirits . . . Once his minions, they now swarmed around him, pulsing demonic chants through his mind: inside, out, and back again. Tumnus knew they'd kill him – and kill Lucy.

'No!'

Tumnus wrenched himself up and tore the flute from his lips as the instrument fell to the carpeted ground. Hissing and shrieking, the wraiths bared their claws and teeth. In one fluid movement, they flew into a river of the damned and latched themselves to Tumnus's scalp. He howled in harsh agony and reached for his back where the wraiths were spreading. The faun grabbed fistfuls of the spitting creatures, but it was otiose in the face of a thousand minuscule knives breaking into his skin, tearing apart his eyelids, uprooting tufts of his hair. Music was nowhere but in the shrill cries of the spirits as they slowly murdered Tumnus. His eyes rolled into the back of his head as repressed garbles erupted from his throat. Unaware of where he was, what he was, Tumnus became only a spastic silhouette against the red fireplace.

Tumnus twitched everywhere as he hunched over in pain, but his eyes in some unknown way found a path of vision to the angry hearth flames.

There was a shape in the fire, forming, and Tumnus found that he couldn't avert his sight. The image was growing, evolving into something unspecified. His eyes widened as he jumped back, and a great, flaming lion jumped out of the fireplace, releasing his lungs fully into a thunderous roar.

Tumnus shouted out in pain as the sound of high-pitches cries endlessly vibrated into his ears, sounding like the throng of a thousand off-pitch violins. The wraiths' grip loosened on his body, and Tumnus fell into corner of the room. A colossal wind swept through the room, snuffing every candle and even silencing the sputtering hearth fire while Tumnus shivered in the nook, jerking violently. His hallucinations – the spirits – writhed on the ground, screeching horribly, entirely unseen by the sleeping girl or the faun, until one by one they silenced, going up in soundless wisps of smoke.

Tumnus stopped twitching. He lay there in a curled and frightened ball, panting in fear of what had happened . . . and what he'd nearly done.