Okay, I'm very embarrassed. *insert blush here* I made a mistake in calculating their ages and thankfully, some reviewers have graciously pointed that out to me. So hopefully I'll get it right this time. In my head, I picture them in LWW as the movie actors and aged 17 and 13. So I set this story approximately three years into their reign, which should make them 20 and 16 actually. No, I don't go by the book ages. But please feel free to stick to your own preference for age. I apologize for the confusion (I don't know how I messed up the first time, even according to my own head canon ages, haha!)
And...on a more important note: the identity of Just a Faun (the reviewer who prompted this entire story) has been revealed to me! It was actually NarniaGirl! I just wanted everyone to know so that she can get the full credit she deserves :D
Edmund
"So how long do you suppose we'll be stuck here?" I asked, glancing over at Peter.
He squinted up at the sky, estimating the sun's position. "It can't be much past midday now. And no one's expecting us home until tomorrow afternoon at least."
"Perhaps the mermaids will go to the Cair and tell everyone about the pirates," I suggested brightly.
"That's possible," Peter acknowledged. "Although, I'm not sure how they'll get to us. It's not as though Narnia has any seaworthy vessels."
"Our skiff managed fine in the storm," I protested.
Peter raised an eyebrow at me and pointed at the heap of wood that used to be our boat.
"You know, it is rather an oversight on our part," I commented.
Peter looked at me quizzically.
"Our lack of a navy, I mean," I said.
Considering my words, Peter nodded. "You're right. That's something we should probably look into when we get back."
"We've never even been to the Lone Islands, apart from that time we went with King Lune's entourage," I pointed out.
Peter nodded.
"You don't think this could be one of them, do you?" I asked hopefully.
"I doubt it," Peter replied. "I don't see any sign of civilization. As far as I can tell, we're the first ones to step foot on this island."
"Well, that's wonderful," I grumbled sarcastically.
"Cheer up, Ed." Peter clapped me on the back. "I know this isn't quite the trip I had planned, but at least we're still getting some time off."
"Yes. And it only took murderous pirates and a magically conjured storm in order for us to have it," I quipped.
"Such is the life of kings," Peter returned with a wry smile.
"Am I the only one who's starving?" I asked, completely changing the subject.
Peter chuckled. "You're always hungry, Ed."
"I wonder if any of our food survived the journey," I said.
"Only one way to find out." Peter jumped onto the smashed deck of our ship, and I followed close behind.
This time, looking into the boat instead of around it, I found something I hadn't seen at first. One of the pirates lay face down on the wooden planks. Cautiously, I rolled him over with the tip of my boot. His open eyes stared up at me and I startled. My initial assumption was that he had died in the wreck. But when I knelt for a closer inspection, I discovered a ring of purple around his neck, the band perfectly fitted to a length of rope. I could find no rope around the body. The only rope I had seen apart from the cord dangling from the mast was the one around Peter's wrists. A chill crept over me and I raised my eyes to find Peter looking directly at me. He didn't offer an explanation, and I found my mouth suddenly too dry to ask. I glanced away first, and heard his boots move farther up the small deck.
"Here."
An apple landed directly in my lap.
"It's all I could find," Peter said.
I wordlessly rose and moved to get off the boat. Peter did the same, stopping briefly to pick up the dead pirate's sword and placing it in his own belt. We found a dry spot in the sand, a little ways off from the boat, and sat down. We didn't speak for some time. I munched on the apple and Peter stared at the sea. When I was halfway finished with the fruit, I offered it to Peter. He hesitated before taking it and finishing it off. When he was done, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and tossed the core toward the waterline.
"That was a nice snack but I doubt it will be enough to last until tomorrow afternoon," I said, voice oddly loud in the hush of the surf and the breeze.
Peter didn't answer.
"We should probably try to find some other food. Or at least fresh water," I continued.
Again, Peter gave no verbal response.
"Perhaps in the jungle?" I suggested.
Peter sighed, reluctantly moving his gaze from the water to me. "No, we wait here."
"But Peter, we're both hungry and thirsty. It'll do no one any good if all they find is a couple of skeletons when they come looking for us," I wheedled.
"Don't be so dramatic, Ed," Peter replied. "Besides, it's too dangerous. We don't know what's in there, if there are any dangerous creatures, or if there's even anything edible. And what happens if we get lost, hm? Then we've no chance of a rescue."
I lowered my head, knowing he was right but not liking the implications of what he was saying.
"The best thing we can do is pray for a swift rescue, and wait for it right here," Peter said in his high-kingly tone of finality.
A knife suddenly thumped into the sand between us, the tip pointed down, handle quivering from the force of the throw. Peter and I blinked at it in astonishment for its sheer unexpectedness before we scrambled to our feet and started running. The attack had come from the direction of the ship, leaving us no choice but to head away from the only shelter on the flat beach.
"Who did that?" I asked, struggling to match Peter's stride through the shifting sand.
"One of the other pirates," Peter said, glancing over his shoulder. "Ed, get down!"
He shoved me hard in the back and I fell. A second throwing knife whizzed through the air above me, landing nearby. I reached out to pick it up, but Peter was already hauling me to my feet and propelling me forward.
"We have to go into the jungle," I said.
"What?" Peter asked incredulously. "Didn't we just discuss why that was a bad idea?"
"That was before there was a knife-throwing maniac trying to kill us," I protested.
"No," Peter said, luckily dodging another projectile.
I nearly rolled my eyes at his stubbornness. "We're on a beach right now. There's nowhere to hide. We're easy targets!"
Peter's face telegraphed his displeasure but he grabbed my arm and tugged in the direction of the trees. We had only passed the first few trees when Peter abruptly stopped, sending a jolt through my arm from the quick stop. We ducked behind a thick tree trunk and waited, doing our best to stifle our panting breaths.
"So who is he?" I whispered.
At first, Peter looked cross that I had spoken but he relented and answered back quietly. "I never heard his name. But he's the one who was holding you."
"If he's here, where are the others?" I asked.
Peter shrugged, peering cautiously around the tree. "I don't know. They jumped off right before the crash."
"How many knives do you think he has left?" I queried.
The mentioned weapon slammed into the bark of our chosen tree.
"At least one more," Peter said before springing away.
I went after him. The course was not easy. It was drastically different from the times I spent romping with the forest creatures in the Western Wood. In my own dear realm, the ground was hard packed from the passage of many feet and hooves. The Trees were alive, moving and dancing, swaying. The air itself felt pure and crisp. Here, in this jungle, the ground was treacherously damp, coated with slimy fallen leaves and loose clumps of dirt. The trees were just trees, tall, thick, foreign pillars of wood, covered in vines, with wild roots snaking every which way. Moisture in the air made it hang thick and heavy, until it felt more like it was clogging my lungs rather than sustaining them. I pushed forward, even as large leaves slapped my body and twisted vines scratched my cheeks as I passed.
Behind us, I could hear the crash of our pursuer through the foliage. He was getting closer. And then my foot snagged on a root and I tumbled to the jungle floor. Peter immediately noticed and came to my side.
"Come on, Edmund," he urged, yanking at my arm.
"I'm stuck!" I yelped, realizing my boot was twisted sideways beneath the root.
Peter bent to inspect it but jerked upright when the pirate came barreling out of the trees. He never slowed his pace, charging straight into Peter and knocking them both to the ground. He had a knife in his hand, I could see the glint of it in the meager sunlight filtering through the tree branches. With a gleeful smile, showcasing a golden front tooth, he straddled Peter and raised the knife, prepared to plunge it into my brother's chest. Bringing his crossed forearms up, Peter caught the blow before it could land. The pirate snarled at him, lifting his arm from Peter's block. He brought the knife down near Peter's head, though Peter was quick enough to jerk away from it. Undeterred, his opponent tried again to hit his chest. Peter caught his wrist and the two grappled awkwardly for control of the knife. Feeling absurdly useless, I dug around in the leaves and dirt for a makeshift weapon. All I found was a moss covered stone. With as much strength as I could manage from my sitting position, I flung the rock at the pirate. It bounced off his bicep, but it served its purpose as a distraction. When he turned to look at me, Peter bucked up, causing the man to lose his center of gravity. From there, it was an easy thing for Peter to roll, dislodging the pirate completely. Before he could recover, Peter was on him. He wrestled the knife from his hand and stabbed it into his chest. The man twitched, once, twice, and went still. Peter held onto the knife a moment longer, then he snatched his hands away and stumbled to his feet, hurriedly backing up from the corpse. I angled my leg around and slid my foot free, rising to stand beside my brother. He was gulping in copious amounts of the humid air, cheeks flushed red.
"His dagger, Peter," I murmured.
Peter startled, whipping his head around to look at me. "What?"
"I still need a weapon," I explained. "Just in case."
"Oh. Right."
Even though I had planned on retrieving the item myself, Peter was faster. He reached down and unfastened the sheathed dagger from the pirate's belt, handing it to me. It was bigger than I had first thought. It measured from my elbow to fingertip, causing me to modify my label from dagger to short sword.
"Let's get back to the beach," Peter said, tone subdued.
"Do you remember the way?" I asked, knowing how we had changed direction multiple times in an attempt to shake our pursuer.
The corner of Peter's mouth lifted. "It shouldn't be too hard to find our trail. We weren't exactly being subtle."
I nodded. I had already learned some of the basics of tracking, so following the path of cracked branches and muddy boot prints would be no problem for me. However, when I turned around, I could see no indication of disturbance in the scenery around me.
"Uh, Peter?" I called, hoping I was merely overlooking the evidence of our mad dash through the vegetation.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Is it just me, or has every trace of us disappeared?" I questioned.
Peter's eyebrows knit. "What?"
I pointed straight ahead. "Shouldn't there be some broken branches, or torn off leaves, or kicked up dirt right here? Something, anything? We just ran through there not five minutes ago."
Peter took a couple steps forward, lightly touching the pristine plants that I knew we had trampled in our flight. He pursued his lips. "It does seem odd."
Odd didn't seem sufficient enough for the feeling of unease the jungle created in me. As we stood there, I came to notice how there was no noise of animal life. There were no birds calling, no insects buzzing, no predators roaming, no critters foraging. Like the beach, it was unnaturally silent. But at least on the beach, there had been sunlight and a clean breeze. In here, under the dome of thick greenery, there was neither. What little light did come through was tinted and murky. And the air was so thick. It reminded me of a time when I was younger, back in England, when we'd been playing hide and seek. I had hidden in a small cabinet and it took Susan a while to find me. The longer I had remained in the confined space, the more stale the air had become. This air had the same stagnant quality, only exacerbated by the fact that it was also humid here. The moisture in the still air was cloying and the more I thought about it, the more certain I became that I couldn't breathe.
There wasn't enough oxygen. I wasn't getting anything into my chest but the dirt scented mugginess of the jungle. My chest started heaving and I bent in half to brace my hands on my knees. Black spots ate away at my vision, starting at the corners and spinning closer. I was going to die. There was nothing I could do about it. This alien jungle was slowly strangling me and I was helpless. The humidity was a solid pressure on my shoulders, pushing me down, wringing sweat from my body. I was going to melt, consumed by the moist heat, the lack of light, the silence.
I sluggishly raised my eyes, and found Peter's face close to mine. His lips were moving and I forced myself to think past the discomfort until I could hear what he was saying.
"-mund! Breathe! Calm down and breathe! Like me. Come on, Ed. Edmund!"
As if breaking the surface after being submerged in water for a long time, I gasped. Peter smiled encouragingly.
"That's it. Come on, Edmund. Breathe. You can do it."
I took another large breath, filling my lungs until they were achingly full. I held the air in my rib cage just a moment longer, before I slowly let it out. After that, my regular respiratory rhythm returned and my head cleared.
Sheepish, I cleared my throat. "I'm sorry."
"You should be. You gave me quite a scare," Peter grumbled, his irritation doing a poor job of masking his worry. "What was that? Did you have some kind of fit or seizure?"
My cheeks flushed. "No. It wasn't anything like that. I just…" I trailed off, unsure how to explain what had happened. "There's something about this jungle," I ended up saying instead. It wasn't really an answer, nor was it a logical presentation of my misgivings. But rather than press me to communicate more efficiently, Peter only gave a slight nod.
"I know. I can feel it too." His eyes scanned the trees around us, and I recognized his expression as one of suspicion. "It's as if this place is...evil."
Now that he had put a label to it, I realized that was exactly what I had been sensing, even if I hadn't been able to find the word myself. Suddenly, I was bursting with impatience to get back to the beach.
"We have to leave. Right now," I said, spinning on my heel and shoving vines out of my way as I sprinted off.
"Edmund, wait!"
I heard Peter's cry but I was already speeding my pace, the desire to be free like an unbearable itch. I hadn't gotten very far before a hand on my collar yanked me backward. Bucking against it, I strained to push on. But Peter was stronger than I was, and he held me in place until I finally gave up my useless struggles.
"You idiot! What were you thinking?" Peter snapped.
"I have to get out of here," I said earnestly.
"Well, it might help if you went the right way," Peter suggested heatedly. "And you might actually wait for me next time."
I couldn't quite make myself apologize, so I settled for hanging my head and allowing him to lead the way. I supposed he was taking us back the way we had come, although the tangled vines and thick tree trunks all looked the same to me. Because I was looking at the jungle around me, I didn't notice when Peter abruptly stopped and I smacked into his back.
"Now who's the idiot?" I muttered moodily.
Peter didn't answer and I stepped past him, only to freeze as well. We had returned to the place where the pirate attacked us. But the body was no longer there. The man's throwing knife, which Peter had used against him, was in the same spot. Aside from that, nothing remained of the fight. There was no corpse, no blood. Even the knife was spotless.
"This is the place, isn't it?" Peter queried, uncertain.
I pointed at the ground. "Yes. Look, there's root I tripped over."
"Then where's….?" Peter trailed off.
I swallowed hard and glanced nervously at the jungle crowded around us. Perhaps something had carried off the corpse. Maybe a monster. And maybe it was still here, lurking just out of sight. It could have been in a tree. Or maybe hanging from a vine. Or crouched under a bush. Or hidden behind a rock. Perhaps it was that shadow, in the corner of my eye. I whirled around, drawing my appropriated short sword. Peter did the same, out of reflex rather than reason.
"What is it, Ed?" he whispered, weapon held at the ready.
After peering more intently into the gloom, I decided it was only my mind playing tricks on me. "Nothing. Nevermind," I grunted, sheathing my blade.
Peter was slower to put his sword away. "Come on. The beach should be this way."
He ended up having to draw it again soon after, as there were patches of bushes or vines that were impassable and hindered our progress. Peter hacked at them with the pirate sword until there was room for us to go on. Some plants oozed a sticky sap when he cut them and we both avoided touching the stuff. No matter the time we spent in it, the only change I could see in the jungle was that it seemed to get more menacing. The humidity, the quiet, the absence of animals, all of that stayed the same. But somehow, the longer we plodded on through the overgrowth, the more uneasy I grew. After about an hour, I broke the silence.
"Shouldn't we have reached the beach by now?" I asked timidly, hunching my shoulders against the looming shapes of the ancient trees.
Peter snorted. "Of course you would ask that."
"What do you mean?" I frowned at the uncalled for hostility in his voice.
"You don't trust me to get us there," Peter accused, beating at the next section of foliage with unnecessary force.
"Are you even sure you're going the right way?" I questioned, bristling at his tone.
"Do you honestly believe you can do better?" Peter snapped.
I shrugged with faux nonchalance. "Oh, I don't know. But seeing as how I'm King of the Western Wood, I think I might have a better chance navigating through trees than you do."
The rigid line of Peter's back showed me that I had landed a strike. I knew he had claustrophobia, which always seemed to manifest in his discomfort among the tightly packed trees and gloomy shadows of forests.
"But I'm the High King. So I should lead," he grit out through clenched teeth, shoving his way forward through the jungle.
"Yeah, you get a fancy title and think it makes you special," I taunted, slapping away the branch that Peter let swing after him.
"At least I make a better choice for a king than you do," Peter sneered. "After all you were a-" he clamped his mouth shut on the end of his sentence.
I stopped dead in my tracks, feeling the blood rush to my face. "A what?"
He froze, his back to me.
"Go on. Say it, Peter," I challenged, anger flooding hot through me.
Slowly, Peter turned around. His expression was one of conflicted confusion. He squeezed his eyes shut, brought a hand to his forehead and rubbed it as if trying to relieve a headache. Shaking his head, he opened his eyes and looked at me with regret.
"Edmund, I'm sorry. I didn't mean what I said," he apologized. "I have no right to bring up the past, or to use it against you like that. You know I've already forgiven you for it, ever since that day on the field of Beruna."
His apology doused my ire, and I lowered the fist I hadn't even known I'd raised.
"I-I'm sorry too," I said, wondering how I could have let myself get so worked up.
"I think this place is getting to me," Peter offered with a self-deprecating smile.
"To us," I corrected.
"Well then, we'll have to be more careful," Peter resolved, extending the hilt of his sword to me.
At first, I didn't understand. When he gestured ahead of himself, I realized he wanted me to take the lead. I gave him a grateful, determined nod, and stepped in front. I sliced through the tangle of leaves that blocked our path. They fell away to reveal a clearing in the jungle.
And in the middle of it was a gigantic pile of bones.
NarniaGirl: I would love to hear more of your ideas! Please let me know if this story gets off track from what you imagined and maybe I can fix it into something more like what you wanted ;)
Girl Yaas: Hopefully I cleared up the miscommunication. I appreciate you pointing that out to me ;) And yes, if you like them younger, of course you should picture them younger (although I personally like them a bit older seeing as how they have to do certain things-such as killing-to survive)
ChildofGod: Thanks! *absentmindedly reaches for a candy to snack on while I write* *accidentally eats a flower*
ForNarnia: I'm not sure if there are any black magic pirate practitioners, but for the sake of this story there was ;) I guess I kind of wanted it to go fast (it is an action chapter so I'd fail as an author if it dragged) but I'm glad you liked it anyway!
CinnamonRoll4Lif: I've never been told that before. But that's a good thing, right?
Guest: Did the author's note clarify their ages for you? I think that's the plainest I can explain it.
ArtistKurai: Thanks! No one's ever accused pirates of being the smartest bunch ;)