The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess 2

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Chapter Seventeen: The Very End of the World

The Dawn Treader sailed in fairly shallow water and the bottom was weedy. Just before midday Lucy saw a large shoal of fishes grazing on the weed. They were all eating steadily and all moving in the same direction.

"Just like a flock of sheep," Lucy mused to herself. Suddenly she spotted a little Sea Girl of about her own age in the middle of them - a quiet, lonely-looking girl with a sort of crook in her hand.

Lucy swung her head around quickly, but no one saw the girl except for her. Both the fishes and the girl were quite close to the surface. And just as the girl, gliding in the shallow water, and Lucy, leaning over the bulwark, came opposite to one another, the girl looked up and stared straight into Lucy's face. Neither could speak to the other and in a moment the Sea Girl dropped astern. But Lucy would never forget her face. It did not look frightened or angry like any of the other Sea People. Lucy had liked that girl and she felt certain the girl had liked her. In that one moment they had somehow become friends. Lucy sighed heavily and turned, leaning against the railing of the ship.

After that for many days, without wind in her shrouds or foam at her bows, across a waveless sea, the Dawn Treader glided smoothly east. Every day and every hour the light became more brilliant and still they could bear it. No one ate or slept except for the children, for Sophie was not about to let them go hungry or lose sleep, but the rest of the crew drew buckets of dazzling water from the sea, stronger than wine and somehow wetter, more liquid, than ordinary water, and drank deep draughts of it. And one or two of the sailors who had been oldish men when the voyage began now grew younger every day. Everyone on board was filled with joy and excitement, but not an excitement that made one talk. The further they sailed the less they spoke, and then almost in a whisper. The stillness of that last sea laid hold on them.

"My Lord," Caspian walked up next to Drinian, "what do you see ahead?"

"Sire," Drinian replied, "I see whiteness. All along the horizon from north to south, as far as my eyes can reach."

"That is what I see too," Caspian sighed, "and I cannot imagine what it is." He looked out of the sea, his hands gripping the railing.

"If we were in higher latitudes, your Majesty," Drinian ventured, "I would say it was ice. But it can't be that; not here. All the same, we'd better get men to the oars and hold the ship back against the current. Whatever the stuff is, we don't want to crash into it at this speed!" Sophie came up behind the two men.

"Is everything alright, gentlemen?" She asked. Caspian pointed out at the whiteness and Drinian repeated the plan about the oars.

The whiteness did not get any less mysterious as they - approached it. If it was land it must be a very strange land, for it seemed just as smooth as the water and on the same level with it. When they got very close to it Drinian put the helm hard over and turned the Dawn Treader south so that she was broadside on to the current and rowed a little way southward along the edge of the whiteness. In so doing they accidentally made the important discovery that the current was only about forty feet wide and the rest of the sea as still as a pond. This was good news for the crew, who had already begun to think that the return journey to Ramandu's land, rowing against stream all the way, would be pretty poor sport.

And still no one could make out what the white stuff was. Caspian ordered a boat to be lowered to investigate. Rynelf, Peter and Eustace went out on the boat and glided right through the whiteness. The boat sailed a ways and then came back, filled with the stuff.

"Lilies, your Majesty!" Rynelf said, as the ship got closer.

"What did you say?" Caspian asked, raising an eyebrow. They pulled the boat up on board and a bunch of white petals flowed onto the ship.

"Blooming lilies, your Majesty," Rynelf said again. "Same as in a pool or in a garden at home."

"What's the depth?" Drinian asked.

"That's a funny thing, Captain," Peter replied. "It's still deep. Three and a half fathoms clear."

"They can't be real lilies - not what we call lilies," Eustace said, climbing out of the boat covered in the flowers. He looked ridiculous and Lucy, Gael and Razier began laughing. Soon everyone was laughing, including Eustace. He began dancing around like a nymph, which caused Lucy to collapse in a fit of laughter. The silence was gone now, but nobody minded for laughter was good for the soul.

After some consultation, the Dawn Treader turned back into the current and began to glide eastward through the Lily Lake or the Silver Sea (they tried both these names but it was the Silver Sea that stuck and is now on Caspian's map) the strangest part of their travels began. Very soon the open sea which they were leaving was only a thin rim of blue on the western horizon. Whiteness, shot with faintest color of gold, spread round them on every side, except just astern where their passage had thrust the lilies apart and left an open lane of water that shone like dark green glass. To look at, this last sea was very like the Arctic; and if their eyes had not by now grown as strong as eagles' the sun on all that whiteness - especially at early morning when the sun was hugest would have been unbearable. And every evening the same whiteness made the daylight last longer. There seemed no end to the lilies. Day after day from all those miles and leagues of flowers there rose a smell which Lucy found it very hard to describe; sweet - yes, but not at all sleepy or overpowering, a fresh, wild, lonely smell that seemed to get into your brain and make you feel that you could go up mountains at a run or wrestle with an elephant.

"I feel that I can't stand much more of this, yet I don't want it to stop." Lucy mused to Reepicheep. The mouse was perched on her shoulder.

"I understand the feeling," He replied.

They took soundings very often but it was only several days later that the water became shallower. After that it went on getting shallower. There came a day when they had to row out of the current and feel their way forward at a snail's pace, rowing. And soon it was clear that the Dawn Treader could sail no further east. Indeed it was only by very clever handling that they saved her from grounding.

"Lower the boat," cried Caspian, "and then call the men aft. I must speak to them."

"What's he going to do?" Eustace whispered to Edmund. "There's a queer look in his eyes."

"I think we probably all look the same," Edmund replied.

They all joined Caspian on the poop and soon all the men were crowded together at the foot of the ladder to hear the King's speech.

"Friends," said Caspian, "we have now fulfilled the quest on which you embarked. The seven lords are all accounted for and as Sir Reepicheep has sworn never to return, when you reach Ramandu's Land you will doubtless find the Lords Revilian and Argoz and Mavramorn awake. To you, my Lord Drinian, I entrust this ship, bidding you sail to Narnia with all the speed you may, and above all not to land on the Island of Deathwater. And instruct my regent, the Dwarf Trumpkin, to give to all these, my shipmates, the rewards I promised them. They have been earned well. And if I come not again it is my will that the Regent, and Master Cornelius, and Trufflehunter the Badger, and Peter will choose a King of Narnia with the consent - "

"But, Sire," Drinian interrupted, "are you abdicating?"

"I am going with Reepicheep to see the World's End," Caspian replied. Sophie gasped. A low murmur of dismay ran through the sailors. "We will take the boat. You will have no need of it in these gentle seas and you must build a new one in Ramandu's island. And now - "

"Caspian," Peter said suddenly and sternly, "you can't do this."

"Most certainly," Reepicheep agreed, "his Majesty cannot."

"No indeed," Drinian said.

"Can't?" asked Caspian sharply, looking for a moment not unlike his uncle Miraz.

"Begging your Majesty's pardon," Rynelf said from the deck below, "but if one of us did the same it would be called deserting."

"You presume too much on your long service, Rynelf," Caspian snapped.

"You know he's right," Sophie said. Caspian looked at her, agitated.

"By the Mane of Aslan," Caspian barked, "I had thought you were all my subjects here, not my schoolmasters."

"I'm not," Edmund replied, "and I say you can not do this." Lucy stepped up next to her brother and nodded.

"Can't again," Caspian frowned. "What do you mean?"

"What we mean is that you shall not," Sophie said softly. "You are the King of Narnia. You break faith with all your subjects, and especially with Trumpkin, if you do not return. You shall not please yourself with adventures as if you were a private person. And if you will not hear reason it will be the truest loyalty of every man on board to follow me in disarming and binding you till you come to your senses." Sophie stood to her full height.

"And you've almost promised Ramandu's daughter to go back" Lucy reminded the King. Caspian paused.

"Well, yes. There is that," he said. He stood irresolute for a moment and then shouted out to the ship in general. "Well, have your way. The quest is ended. We all return. Get the boat up again."

"Sire," Reepicheep replied, "we do not all return. I, as I explained before - "

"Silence!" Caspian thundered. "I've been lessoned but I'll not be baited. Will no one silence that Mouse?" Sophie slapped Caspian, hard.

"What is the matter with you?" She snapped. Caspian blinked and seemed as though he were in trance. Suddenly his eyes cleared and he sighed.

"Aslan has spoken to me. You're to go on - Reep and Edmund, and Lucy, and Eustace; and we're to go back." Caspian told them. Peter sighed and looked at his siblings and cousins with tears in his eyes.

"I don't want you to leave" He said, pulling Lucy into a hug.

"You knew we'd have to go back to our own world sooner or later" Lucy said. Peter nodded and kissed the top of her head.

"Yes," said Caspian with a sob, "but this is sooner."

"You'll feel better when you get back to Ramandu's Island," said Lucy.

About two o'clock in the afternoon, well watered (though they thought they would need neither food nor drink) and with Reepicheep's coracle on board, the boat pulled away from the Dawn Treader to row through the endless carpet of lilies. The Dawn Trader flew all her flags and hung out her shields to honour their departure. Tall and big and homelike she looked from their low position with the lilies all round them.

Peter and Sophie watched as the boat rowed out of sight.

"It is for the best, Son of Adam," Peter turned to see Aslan standing on the deck.

"Will I ever see them again?" He asked.

"Lucy and Edmund has finished their time in Narnia" Aslan replied. "They must find me in their own world" Peter was silent for a moment.

"Sire, you mentioned Lucy and Edmund, does this mean Eustace may return?" Sophie asked.

"He might return someday" Aslan replied. "But you will not know the day nor the hour of his return" Aslan vanished and Peter turned back to look out at the sea.

"Are you going to be okay?" Sophie asked.

"Yes" Peter replied. "I think I'll be just fine"

THE END