Chapter Nineteen: Discoveries, Both Alarming and Queer
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~ Narnia ~
Reep was the first to spot it; a low land lying like a cloud between them and the horizon in the distance. He had gone up top to make doubly sure the mast ropes were still securely tied and that the sail was not in danger of tearing loose. Just as he had finished knotting off a loose rope, he looked up. He had never been so excited nor overjoyed to see land in his life; he could hardly speak because of the shock. Finally, he found his tongue, and shouted with all the strength in his small frame.
"Land ho! Land straight ahead!" He shouted with a slightly wild laugh as he slid down the ropes to the deck. "Drinian, land!" he cried again, scurrying up to the helm.
"I know my friend, I know," Drinian replied.
"Praise Aslan, land!" Arran cried, coming down from the fighting top, a look of relief that would have been comical in any other situation coming across his face.
All the Pevensies and Caspian came from the cabins and below deck. Lucy gave a shout of delight and twirled Gael around in excitement. Serene and Susan laughed until tears came to their eyes. They shared knowing glances; the older women had been thinking of more than just finding land, as women of their age are apt to do, they thought of the situation in its entirety.
"And you said that it was not possible!" Arran laughed, clapping Drinian on the back.
"I said the chance of finding land was doubtful!" Drinian amended.
Caspian, Edmund, Drinian and Arran held a brief council, but in the end, all four decided to go ashore, as provisions were sorely needed and they must find a new mast as soon as possible. They were lowering the longboats, when Edmund remarked, "This place may hold some answers."
They came ashore by way of a pebble strewn beach; tiny pebbles of fine, smooth colored glass that shone rainbow hues in the sunlight. Lucy picked up a handful and marveled at the beauty as she sifted them through her fingers. Gael laughingly picked up several purple colored stones as well. They walked farther up the beach and came to some perfectly rounded boulders, not as if they had been fashioned to such a shape, but as if they had been created naturally so. After these was lush grass cut all the same length, like a thick carpet; and a wonderful deep, dark green it was all around; as if there were ten gardeners hired to keep it.
It softened the sound of their boots to whispers and made Lucy think of the beautiful gardens back home, like the garden Digory had had at his country estate. The trees were trimmed and pruned so that not a broken or dead branch was in sight. The bushes were trimmed into unusual shapes, figures of mermaids and dragons, knights and chargers. Sometimes a dove or pigeon cooed, but otherwise there was stillness, a sleepy sort of peace that Digory would have known well.
"There is magic here, of great quality," Arran remarked, resting his hand on a tree's smooth trunk. Serene nodded as they came to a well-sanded path, with not a weed in sight. Smooth, rounded, grey marble stones lined the path, and outside of these were rose shrubs, with blooms of all hues, from burgundy to blue, surprisingly. And past these were spruce and cypress trees, spaced evenly into the soft light of the afternoon.
Soon they came to a small bridge, of light red wood, that ran over a pond with sapphire blue water, and emerald green lily pads, the blossoms as white as snow. Swimming slowly underneath were what Lucy knew would be referred to as coy fish in her world. But they were far more stunning, their tails and fins rippling like the finest silk under the water as they swam.
Ahead of them was a beautiful mansion, more beautiful, Edmund acknowledged, than any of the finest houses in England. It was of grey sandstone and marble. The leaded window panes of the first, second and third floor rooms glittered slightly in the sunlight as they entered the courtyard. Here too, the landscaping was stunning. Hollyhocks, irises, roses and calla lilies were in the garden beds by the windows, and over the front entry hall grew green ivy and trailing honeysuckle of a fiery orange color. The fine white gravel under their feet was white marble, and the beauty seemed never to end.
The stables to their left were silent, but gave off the feeling that they were full. After a while, Lucy began to feel as if she was being watched, but every time she glanced in that direction, there was nothing, not even a movement of the ivy trailing over the roof and down around the stable doors, to give hint that someone was watching. Edmund, Drinian, Caspian, Rhince and most of the men walked around the mansion, wondering if the master of the residence was in.
After a while, Edmund came up to Lucy. "We can't understand it, it seems as if someone has not lived here for some time, and yet, everything around here is so perfect. Drinian and Arran both suggest waiting here before we actually take any water, as it would be proper to wait for the Lord of this manor," he confided, turning to look back at the mansion as he finished.
"Hmm, so we may drink the water, but we won't take any? Because I wish for a full glass of fresh water; Eustace is right about that, the water on board is beginning to taste like the cask it came from," Lucy said with a smile.
Edmund smiled with a shake of his head, "Yes, he is right about that."
After Arran and Caspian had fully explored the mansion, and both agreed that it seemed empty, they headed back toward the shore. Everyone was tired of spending their nights on the ship, so it was a warm shout of agreement that met the proposal of sleeping on the beach. Everyone eagerly helped take the necessary things off shipboard to the beach, even Eustace. Fires were lit and then Drinian, Arran and Rhince told the sailors and Susan, who had not come with them, about the beauty they had seen so far of this strange new island.
Susan listened with a smile, simply content to know they were all safe back and that they had finally found land and decent water. She looked around at all the exhilarated, yet tired faces. Tomorrow, she thought, yes, tomorrow would be a good day. Things would finally, perhaps, look a little brighter, even though they had still so much left to explore.
~|:Xo0oX:|~
Lucy had stayed up after the others to read a book from chart cabin, eager to know of the goings on and happenings in Narnia since they'd left, and what had gone on in that long gap of time between their ruling years and the time they had returned to help Caspian gain his throne. She had fallen asleep after finishing yet another chapter in the book about the Dark Age of Narnia. A quiet, perhaps the same quiet that causes one to think they had been there forever and that nothing loud or frightful had ever happened, descended upon the island. It was, had the Stars been able to stay awake to tell them, a magical sleep, something only the best of magicians could perform. Leaving the recipient only good dreams and feeling well-rested when they awoke the next morning.
From the velvety darkness of the trees that grew twenty feet up the beach, came soft voices and an unusual thump, that anyone, beast or man, would have heard in a regular setting. But here, with the good magic so strong and dark magic so far off, it was impossible. The only way to avoid the wonderful enchantments was if one was a strong magician, or a being that had had an enchantment placed upon him. These creatures had just such a thing done to them, making them 'immune' so-to-speak, against any of the magic.
With muffled thuds on the pebbles, they looked down on the sleeping party of Narnians.
"Remember, it must be The Girl! Unless you can find a magician among them, what fortunate luck that would be!" one voice muttered.
"Nope, no magician among this lot," a second voice declared.
"Oi, look here, hear that? They must have brought a pig with them! Why you'd bring a dirty pig to such beautiful shores," a third complained.
"I found a girl, Chief, is she the right one?" a fourth voice spoke up hopefully. There was a bit of thudding before any answer was given.
"You stupid blighter, this one is too small to be Her! Why can't you ever pay attention? Remember, The Girl is the one with the kind smile and that doe-brown hair, not hard to forget, unless it's left up to you," The First Voice, which was addressed as 'Chief' replied.
"Here's the one!" the Second Voice cheered. There were several quick thumps in the darkness as all the voices gathered around the girl in question. "And she reads too!" The Second Voice added, flipping the pages of a book by the girl's hand.
"Yes, it's her, come on then and quietly, even though I don't think anything would disturb her friends, the magic has them too strong now!" The Chief voice whispered gleefully, before thumping away back among the trees. The owner of the second voice carefully scooped up the girl and began thudding off; careful to keep her asleep so she couldn't see the way back or try to run away.
~|:Xo0oX:|~
Lucy woke with a start. Coming farther from the enchanted shores, where the magic was strongest, she woke from the thumping and unsteady movement of her captor. Before she could put much thought into fighting her way from them, she was unceremoniously dropped to the ground. Gathering her senses as best she could she looked around at the seemingly empty landscape. She had no idea where she was, and could not hope to find her way back in the pitch darkness. She looked up, and noticed the clouds racing past the stars in the night sky.
"Don't think about running off," the Chief Voice said suddenly.
"That's right Chief, you tell her," the Fourth Voice cheered.
Lucy's first impulse however was to pull her dagger, years of experience, and her recent adventure on Felimath, had taught her that. But just as quickly, it was knocked from her hand, and picked up by an invisible one and thrown into the surrounding darkness.
"What is it you want with me?" Lucy said loudly, trying to maintain an even tone and keep up her composure, though she felt close to tears.
"We want something you can do," the Chief Voice replied.
"And what is that?" Lucy pressed.
"Well, it is a rather long story. Suppose we all sit down?" The Voice asked. The proposal was warmly accepted by the other invisible beings, but Lucy, however, remained standing.
"Well," said the Chief Voice. "It's like this. This Island has been the property of a great man time out of mind, no, not great in that good sort of way, he's horrible, an oppressor, anyway, that is what we call him; the Oppressor. And we all are – or perhaps in a manner of speaking, I might say, we were – his servants,"
"Though slaves is more like it," the Fourth Voice interrupted.
"Yes, yes, servants, slaves, it's all the same to us. Now, to make a long story short, this man, the Oppressor that I was speaking about, he told us to do some things that we didn't like. And why not? Because we didn't want to. Well then, this same man, he fell into a great rage; for I ought to tell you he owned the island and he wasn't used to being crossed. He was terribly downright, you know. But now… wait, where was I?" the Chief Voice sounded befuddled, and seemed to fade as he questioned his own tale.
"The Oppressor was angry?" Lucy hinted, growing impatient with them, wondering if it was possible for someone to talk another to death in this place.
"Oh yes, well, the Oppressor goes upstairs; he dabbles in magic a bit, and kept all his things up there, so as we couldn't get to them, see. I say, he goes upstairs and puts a spell on us. An unglifying spell. If you saw us now, which you should thank your stars you can't, you wouldn't believe what we looked like before we were uglified."
"You wouldn't," the Third Voice added.
"Really and truly," the Fourth Voice chimed in.
"Anyways, there we all were, so ugly we couldn't bear to look at one another. You're probably wondering what we did. Well, I'll tell you, as this gets to the important business. We waited until we thought the Oppressor would be asleep in the afternoon and crept upstairs and got to his magic book, as bold as brass, to see what's something we can do about this uglification."
"We were all a-sweating and a-trembling to be sure, scared to death the Oppressor would wake before we'd finished," a Fifth Voice suddenly spoke from a distance away.
"But," the Chief Voice continued as if he had not been interrupted, "but believe me or believe me not, I do assure you that we couldn't find anything in the way of a spell for taking off the ugliness. And what with time getting on and being afraid that the old man might wake up any minute – I was downright nervous, I won't deceive you – well, to cut a long story short, whether we did right or whether we did wrong, in the end we did see a spell for making people invisible. And we thought we'd rather be invisible than go on being ugly as all that. And why? Because we'd like it better," The Voice paused for breath.
"So the youngest of my bunch, that would be little Clipsie, who's now too grown and too old to be reading any spells – side's that all the magic's gone from her voice – read the spell aloud – you've got to read it aloud, I should say a young girl's got to read it aloud, less'n you're a magician or a sorcerer – My Clipsie reads beautifully just so you know. Anyway, Clipsie reads the spell aloud and there we all were, as invisible as you could wish to see. And I do assure you it was a relief not to see another's faces. Least-ways, right at first."
"The long and short of it is this, we're mortal tired of being invisible. And there's another thing. We never did reckon the Oppressor to be going invisible too," a Seventh Voice spoke up.
"We haven't seen him since!" the Second Voice muttered dolefully.
"We don't know if he's dead or alive, or gone away, or whether he's just sitting upstairs going on being invisible," the Fourth Voice added.
"And believe you me, it's no manner of use listening because he always did go about without any shoes on, making no more noise than a great big cat. And I'll tell you straight young lady, it's getting to be more than our nerves can stand," the Chief Voice finished.
Lucy could not understand, and all the chatter from the other voices had driven her to frustration. "But, whatever do you need me for then?" She asked, glancing around into the darkness. As far as she was concerned, it seemed like they had wanted to be the way they were.
"Why, bless me, if I haven't gone and left out the whole point," the Chief Voice cried.
"Indeed you have, indeed you have," shouted all the Other Voices in unison.
"Well, I needn't go over the whole story again, shall I?" the Chief Voice asked with slight uncertainty.
"No, please don't! I-I mean, do go on," Lucy cried, worried that she'd go insane if they did try to tell it over.
"Well, putting it bluntly, we've been waiting ever so long for a girl like yourself, see. A girl from foreign parts with magic in her voice, that's you Missy. Who could go upstairs and read aloud the words that would make us see-able creatures once more from the Book of Incantations." The Chief Voice finished.
"And here you are! A girl from over the water with magic on her tongue!" a Sixth Voice said almost encouragingly.
"You want me to free you, because you've no one else! Is that it?" Lucy cried, trying to keep the frustration from her voice. If only they had asked, and in the daylight, perhaps she would have been in better spirits.
"Yes, that's it," The Chief Voice replied, echoed by his followers.
"What if I don't want to help you?" She asked, curious as to what they might say.
"Then we'll have to kill your friends, as we promised one another that we wouldn't let any strangers off this island unless they helped us. And if you won't help us, we'll have to go into that nasty throat-slitting business. Merely because of, well, business – no offense," the Chief Voice replied.
"What must I do?" Lucy sighed, knowing she could not risk her friends, or her family, over such trifles.
"You must enter the house of the Oppressor," the Chief Voice answered, nudging her toward the darkness.
"There is no house, it's miles away in the other direction," Lucy protested, confused.
"Yes there is, right… here," the Fourth Voice answered. As he spoke, there was the clanging sound of heavy wooden and metal doors being opened, and before Lucy's eyes the darkness was revealed to be, in fact, the back wall of the mansion from earlier. Light of a dim, fire-type, the kind of which she remembered from her days when she would visit Mr. Tumnus, poured out between the now-opened double doors.
Lucy stepped toward the opening, thinking that perhaps this wouldn't be all bad. Before she could get much farther, what felt like a spear crossed her shoulders, keeping her from moving forward. "Remember, the Book of Incantations is upstairs, and you must recite the spell 'That Which Makes the Unseen Seen' – got it?" A voice, which Lucy cared not if it was the Eighth or the Twelfth, told her.
"But, w-what about this 'Oppressor; what if he keeps me from doing as you've requested, will you let my friends go?" Lucy asked.
"Of course, can't very well blame them if you get yourself in a fix. Now go on, we haven't got all night!" the Chief Voice answered brusquely.
Lucy nodded, and as her title and nature suggested, valiantly stepped through the double doors, which clanged shut upon her entrance.
~|:Xo0oX:|~
Lucy jumped as the doors slammed shut, giving a small gasp of shock. Even though she had acted as if the mentions of the Oppressor hadn't truly frightened her, they had. She looked about, and was surprised to note that everything had the same grandeur of Cair Paravel. The same dark paneled wood and the same grey and brown marbled beauty of Peter's study or the Great Library. And the carvings! She could have cried with laughter, except she was still far too afraid to do such a thing in that solemn place. The carvings and engravings were beautiful gryphons, dragons, unicorns and all sorts of Old-Narnian things that she remembered from Cair.
The woodwork of the grand stairs that were in the center of the far wall, leading around and up, was marvelous. She lightly brushed her fingers over an orange and purple orchid growing in an olive-green pot by an alcove filled with books of all sizes. Some books were as big as maps (chart books) and some as small as pocketbooks (journals and the like). They were all covered in leather and brass-bound, or velvet and heavy parchment, dyed different colors with handwritten titles.
Lucy smiled as her glance landed on several quilled pens of various sizes in a cut-glass jar, near a narrow leaded window, that ran from the floor to the ceiling of the alcove. Edmund would love this house, she thought. There was thick Calormene-Persian type rugs with golden tassels spread at length along the wide halls and on each of the landings of the great staircase. She rested her hand on the dark wood banister as she began her ascent to the second floor. Her mind recalled when she and her siblings had been sent to Digory's by the Calormene scimitars and rounded shields hanging on the walls being so like the Roman and Persian ones that had belonged to the Professor.
In fact, there was an assortment of various weapons, ranging from Narnian to Telmarine, on the staircase walls. As she neared the last flight of stairs, she stopped on the final landing and gazed up at a rack of Calormene, Archish, Telmarine and Narnian spears, shuddering slightly when she realized that they had most likely been collected from some battlefield or other. Turning from them, she peered down a long hall, lit at intervals by small, overhanging chandeliers made of dark metal, which reminded her of Miraz' castle.
Realizing they had failed to tell her which door she had to open to find the Book of Incantations, she began looking into each door. The doors were not the plain doors of your home, or my own. At first, each one had fantastical, painted, carvings of fairytales, Lumean mostly. She noticed carvings of the Stone Table, and of herself, Peter, Susan and Edmund standing beside their thrones; these rooms opened into bedrooms and other such things one might find in a regular mansion. As the doors went on, however, there were different carvings. Those of a great dragon breathing fire and smoke down on a village that Lucy had never seen before; and battles, ruined cities and towns. Soon she forgot about opening the doors, and simply passed each one to look upon the carvings.
These were now carvings of kings, and men – women too – beings she did not know what to call. At one door, she paused to run her fingers over three carved beings – Stars clearly – who were looking down at something. It took her a moment to decipher the carvings below them in the dim light. Almost at once though, she understood they were watching the creation of Lumea. Then there were people holding rings, and people sifting what Lucy interpreted to be sand into a box. Sometimes Lucy realized the worlds carved into the doors were not Lumea at all, but others, vastly different from Narnia.
It was then, as her hand rested on a door handle, about to twist it downwards and push in to enter the room; that she remembered Digory telling her and her siblings about the Wood Between Worlds that he and Polly had discovered. And how, if you jumped into certain pools of water between the trees, with certain colored rings on, you might go about getting yourself into other worlds. She jerked her hand away from the door when she realized that at the end of this hall was yet another staircase, which probably led to yet another hall filled with carven doors. What if, the thought came to her sharply, what if all these doors led right into other worlds, and that the carvings meant that those would be the places and times you went to in them?
She shook her head to rid herself of the outrageous idea, before coming to the last door. This was not one door, but two, and, compared to all the others in the hall, (there were twenty-four other doors) these were rather plain. The carvings were of what appeared to be some sort of library, with a man carven across both doors, his back to the observer, performing some sort of magician's trick, a great book open before him. His robe came to the carved floor and books were about his feet. Lucy decided, upon noticing the great book, that this must be the room that held the Book of Incantations.
She pushed open the double doors, which groaned as if greatly pained by her efforts, to reveal a two-story library with a domed glass roof. It was beautiful, a perfect miniature of Great Library back at Cair, she thought. An eerie sigh fell over the room as she entered, and the flickering light suddenly took on a more ominous aspect. She walked quickly up to the large leather and iron bound book resting on a silver and gold book-stand. She frowned upon trying to open it, and found that try as she might, she could not pull the clasp. Remembering Edmund's journals, she looked about for a hint as to how to unclasp it.
Two cherubs, made out of brass which was part of the top of the book-stand, seemed to blow on the clouds below them. Lucy took the hint and blew on the jumbled letters across the front of the book. 'The Book of Incantations' came out of the mess. Lucy smiled; she was that much closer to finishing her adventure.
A/N:
Well, how do you like this? It's one part book, one part movie and one part my own head (the doors for instance; in the book they had signs with strange names). I rather enjoyed writing this, I suppose because it's really (if you were to exclude my characters and little tidbits of course) what I would have wished had happened. I mean, look, how hard could it have been to combine both the book and Twentieth Century's plot? I can do it, and so could they. Sometimes, like now, I wonder what they were thinking.
Oh, by the way, there are hints of several other fantasy books in this chapter. Lotr, the Hobbit, the Magician's Nephew, a fantasy book I'm trying to write, A Wrinkle in Time, and a few more that I can't remember now. Just thought you'd find that interesting, though you probably already noticed these things.
I don't know what else to write in this a/n, isn't that curious? I can say that I changed a few things to what I had always seen in my head from reading the book. Like the shore of colored glass, and the roses. I like writing descriptions of places, and I wish that I could make a film so that all of you could see exactly what I see when I write. It really is a shame.
Surprisingly, it wasn't very difficult for me to tie-in book, movie, and my own personal plot as I thought it would be. I had expected this would take days to get even one chapter out, and here I've nearly finished three! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I hope you enjoy the next too.
Small side-note: I cannot believe I am slightly over 100,000 words! **Awesome!**
ILoveFanfiction:
Thank you for your wonderful review, and pointing out that error in my last chapter, I knew something sounded wrong about that. (I had a week and a bit more to fix it, I can't believe I didn't!) I'm glad you like the Stars too. I don't know why, but I love writing them. And yes, my hand has gotten better; thank you!
Again, if there is anything I missed, {explanations, punctuations, grammar, misspellings, plot-that-doesn't-make-sense, something that I failed to clarify on, etc...} Please tell me so I can fix/tell you about it in a PM/Author's Note.
Happy reading,
W.H. 1492