A TWIST OF FATE
Well, thankfully, it hasn't taken me nearly as long to write this chapter as the last one had. And it was loads of fun to write! Only three chapters, and I'm having a ball with this already! I just wish more people would take the time to actually review my stuff after reading it, for pity's sake…
Characters (with the exception of Terence) © Disney (and their original creators)
Tumnus and Narnia © C.S. Lewis and Disney/Walden Media
Terence and Story © unicorn-skydancer08
All rights reserved.
Chapter 3: The Caucus Race
Together, reasonably safe (and reasonably dry) inside the empty bottle, Terence and Alice and Tumnus floated aimlessly over the vast, deep water—which seemed to go on forever, in either direction. It was almost impossible to tell which way they were even going, for a thick, swirling fog had amassed around them, and heavy gray clouds blocked out the sky. "Where do you suppose we are headed this time, mate?" Terence asked Tumnus at length.
"I do not think I even want to find out, Terence," the faun answered dryly.
Alice said nothing, but only drew her knees to her chest and silently wrapped her arms about them, letting her chin fall to rest on top of them.
Presently, everyone's ears caught a faint voice singing, and, looking together to one side, their eyes could make out a strange shape in the distance. The shape ultimately turned out to be a bird—and a very large and very peculiar bird at that. His beak seemed almost too big for his face, his head almost too small for the rest of his body…and he was dressed like a sailor; complete with a trim, broad-collared pea jacket, and a three-cornered hat over a powdered wig. He even had a long, smoking pipe sticking jauntily from one side of his beak.
He was perched on the feet of what appeared to be a crow, floating upside-down on its head; and behind, a small blue-green parrot moved them all along by pushing his head against the strange bird's fat rear end and flapping his wings. And as the parrot propelled them across the water, the large bird sang out robustly: "Oh, the sailor's life is the life for me! How I love to sail on the bounding sea! And I never, never, ever do a thing about the weather, for the weather never, ever does a thing for me!"
"What in the world kind of a bird is that?" said Terence bewilderedly, as he and his companions all stared at their newest arrival together.
"That has got to be the oddest-looking bird I've ever seen in my life," Tumnus said.
Alice said nothing, but her sky-blue eyes widened considerably at the sight.
Just as the eccentric bird was in the middle of the second verse, something caught his eye that made him stop singing altogether. "Ahoy!" he cried, removing his pipe from his beak with one hand and using the other hand to shield his eyes, looking and sounding thoroughly excited, as though he had just spotted a most rare sight indeed. "And other nautical expressions!" To his small sea mate behind him, he commanded, "Land ho, by Jove!"
"Where away, Dodo?" said the little parrot from behind, springing to attention in midair and giving a brief, smart salute with his wing.
"Dodo?" Alice repeated incredulously.
"Three points to starboard!" the so-called "Dodo", if that was what the bird was supposed to be, instructed. And so the parrot switched his position a bit and began steering the little crew along at a slightly different angle; and as they resumed their voyage, the Dodo called out heartily over his shoulder, "Follow me, me hearties! Have you at port in no time at all, now!" And then he started singing all over again: "Oh, the sailor's life is the life for me—"
Realizing assistance was suddenly moving away from them, Alice hastily raised herself up and leaned out over the edge of the bottle, waving one arm and crying out frantically, "Oh, Mr. Dodo! Please! Please, help us!" Terence and Tumnus also stood and started calling to the Dodo as well, telling him to wait and come back and give them a hand—but he made no sign of having heard them, and he and his crew soon vanished into the boiling fog, out of sight.
After that, another odd bunch drifted into view: a pelican, a parrot, and a brown owl, all balanced together upon a piece of broken wood.
"Hey!" Tumnus hollered to them. "Hey, we could use a little help here!"
But just like the Dodo, the group of birds simply propelled themselves onward across the sea, never acknowledging Tumnus's voice, or even noticing the sight of the glass bottle floating adrift. "Hey!" Tumnus hollered again, more urgently this time; Terence even whistled, as one whistled for a dog, but it was no use.
Then a group of red lobsters swimming in perfect synchronization appeared, and though Alice and Tumnus and Terence called to them for help, they were of no real assistance, either.
Whether these curious characters were deaf, or just plain idiotic, it was hard to be sure.
As the stranded threesome continued vainly to summon aid, the sea was getting significantly rougher by the minute; and a particularly enormous breaker surged directly over them without warning, enveloping them entirely—bottle and all—and garbling their frantic cries. By the time the bottle bobbed back to the surface, now almost completely filled to the brim with water, and by the time Terence and his companions emerged into the crisp salty air, thoroughly soaked and gasping for breath, a new sight greeted their eyes.
Dead ahead, they could spot the Dodo from before perched upon a high rock, next to a small bonfire, and all surrounded by a bed of wet sand. And all around that big rock paraded the birds and the lobsters, in a full and complete and perfect circle, with a group of mackerel and live starfish accompanying them.
Round and round they went, never slowing and never faltering, racing as if life itself depended on it. And as they ran about together, Terence, Tumnus, and Alice could hear them singing, in one voice:
"Forward, backward,
Inward, outward,
Come and join the chase!
Nothing could be drier
Than a jolly caucus race!
"Backward, forward,
Outward, inward,
Bottom to the top,
Never a beginning,
There can never be a stop—"
During this, the tide abruptly surged in, and the water swallowed up the entire group completely, so that only the Dodo and his fire remained. Undaunted, the Dodo simply held up his fire by the logs, in order to keep the flames from being doused as the water came quite close to covering the rock itself; and he only kept the lively song going:
"—to skipping,
Hopping, tripping,
Fancy free and gay,
I started it tomorrow
And will finish yesterday!"
When the tide pulled out and the level of water had decreased substantially, the Dodo set the little fire back down and shook his hands slightly to cool them; and the caucus race proved to still be on. Everyone just continued running, as spirited as ever, and chanting vigorously:
"Round and round
And round we go,
And dance forevermore,
Once we were behind
But now we find we are be—
"Forward, backward,
Inward, outward,
Come and join the chase!
Nothing could be drier
Than a jolly caucus race!"
What they were doing appeared to make absolutely no sense, none whatsoever. But Terence, Alice, and Tumnus knew that if they were going to get to shore, they would have to swim for it. It was their only hope; and, with the prevailing current, they might have a sporting chance. So, Terence was the first to hold his breath and hurl himself overboard, and Tumnus pinched his nose and did the same. Alice was just on the verge of climbing out of the bottle herself when another wave unexpectedly knocked the bottle over, capsizing it so that the girl was knocked completely off her feet, and ended up taking a rather bad spill into the water.
The very next thing Alice knew, she had been washed up onto the wet sand where the caucus race was held, as had Terence and Tumnus. All three of them were soaked and chilled practically to the bone, and they each had seaweed sticking to their clothes and entangled within their hair. There was even a bit of seaweed clinging to Tumnus's damp fur. And they all lay flat upon their fronts in the sand, with everyone else either leaping over them, swerving around them—or stepping right on top of them.
"I say," said the Dodo, now taking official notice of them at last, "you three will never get dry that way!"
"Get dry?" said Alice disbelievingly.
"Have to run with the others! First rule of a caucus race, you know!"
Tumnus began to protest, "But how in the world can we—" Just then the tide came rolling in again, engulfing them all in yet another wall of water, and the rest of Tumnus's words were drowned out in an instant.
When the tide had receded once more a minute later, and Terence and Alice and Tumnus had been shoved into line and were moving around the circle with the rest of the lot, the Dodo said genially, "That's better! Have you dry in no time!"
Tumnus coughed and spewed out a bit of saltwater before sputtering, "This is madness!"
Even Terence had to agree. "No one could ever get dry this way," the young man complained.
"Nonsense!" the Dodo countered, as he allowed the fire to warm his oversized rump. "Why, I am as dry as a bone already!"
Tumnus scowled up at him. "Well, yes, but that's because you're…"
And then the faun's words were once again drowned out as the tide rushed right back in. After the tide ebbed, Alice now found herself riding on top of the crow's head, while Terence found himself straddling the pelican, and Tumnus was having a rather difficult time trying to avoid tripping over the fish and the starfish.
"All right, chaps!" the Dodo went on unperturbedly. "Let's head now! Look lively!"
Tumnus cast a helpless look over his shoulder in Terence's direction, who only shrugged at the faun in reply, with a don't-look-at-me expression on his face.
But during the midst of all this hullabaloo, Alice cried out, "The White Rabbit!"
And Terence and Tumnus saw the tide carry in none other than the White Rabbit himself, who came riding in on an upside-down black umbrella, like a flooded and slightly tattered sailboat. He ultimately came to a rest just outside the ring, and Terence and Tumnus and Alice all attempted to get to him, but instead were forced to continue on with the caucus race. "Mr. Rabbit!" Alice called to him, trying to get his attention. "Mr. Rabbit!"
Paying no heed to the girl, the White Rabbit fished out his slightly wet watch from his vest pocket; and when he saw the time, his long ears shot straight up and he exclaimed fretfully, "Oh, my goodness! I'm late! I'm late!" And, snatching up his umbrella (spilling some of the water over his head as he did so), he took off in a snowy flash.
"Oh, don't go away, mate!" Terence shouted after him. "We'll be right there!"
But the White Rabbit kept going, shaking the water from his feet as he made his way to higher ground, moaning all the time, "I'm late, I'm late, I'm late—"
"Come on!" Terence urged his friends.
And, somehow, he and Alice and Tumnus managed to slip away from the rest of the group, and disengage themselves from the ring. "Don't step on the fish!" the Dodo cautioned them as they wove their way. "Watch it there! Stop kicking that mackerel!"
When they were free at long last, Terence hurried on ahead, with Alice behind him; while Tumnus stopped and glanced back one last time at the caucus race. There were a great many things the faun could have said and done at that very moment, but all he did was shake his head in disdain and mutter under his breath, "Oh, you have got to be joking." Then, sweeping his dripping curls back from his eyes, he turned and rushed to catch up with Terence and Alice.