The four lords willingly came back with Caspian, and three of them loved every part of the journey—the Dawn Treader, the crew, the King, his Queen, and the sea. Even the adventures.
Lord Rhoop did not. His sleep at Ramandu's Island restored his strength, and meeting his old friends did much to restore the brokenness of his heart. What it did not do, could not do, was give him hope for the future. The other three lords sat talking with Caspian and Drinian long into the night, discussing laws and changes and what Narnia was now. Rhoop, who ahd one been the greatest dreamer, sat silent on the a wooden barrel and listened. Narnia sounded too strange to be home; and if it was not home, what could be?
What was life, without a home to return to?
He told himself he'd had enough of wandering, and the welcome they received on the shores of Narnia did lift his spirits—though the Beasts had strange forms, they had minds and souls like men, and there were even dreamers among them—but the castle where his king had ruled was no longer used, his old friends, saving the three, were dead, and—there was no place for him.
He took to walking on the seashore, morning after morning, leaving his shoes on the shore and walking in the water. He was not quite sure why. Perhaps because the sea, ever changing, ever moving, somehow remained the same. It was itself, and it did not alter as it changed.
One night he could not sleep. Leaving Cair Paravel in the dark, he made his way down to the seashore. The light began to brighten the sky, the sun's first rays burned above the water. Rhoop wished with all his heart that his own hope could burn so steadily. His life was dark without it.
"Man of the shore." The words washed over him like a wave over his bare feet. The voice was soft, feminine—but powerful.
"Who is there?" he called sharply, turning towards the shore. He saw no one. His old nightmares had no voices like this—but the voice was not human. He had heard enough other voices now that he could tell.
"Why do you walk on the fringes of my skirt, morning after morning?" The voice was stronger now, still so soft, and cool but amused. Still there was no one in sight.
"Tell me who you are, lady, and I will answer your questions."
"I am the sea you walk beside. Look to the water, man of the shore."
Rhoop turned—and stumbled backwards.
An enormous form, larger than four ships, floated far out on the water. Long hair streamed from her head to her waist, sparkling in the sun, the same colour as the water, with waves in every lock; her legs were under the water, if they existed at all. She swept forward, moving in like a tidal wave—but shrinking as she came. When she walked out of the water, she stood a foot higher than Rhoop.
He gulped. Her skin was white as a seashell, but her eyes were completely dark, as dark as the ocean's depths. Her lips were faintly green, like the sky above the sea in a storm. She was entirely other.
"You said you would answer my question," she reminded him. This close, her voice crashed like the roar of a wave, and Rhoop almost covered his ears.
"Your question?"
"Why do you walk on my shores each morning?"
This, Rhoop did want to say out loud. But he dared not break his word to this strange being. "Because you are familiar, when the rest of my world is not."
"Am I familiar to you?" She smiled, and that smile eased her power, as if the waves cradled the ship instead of crashing against it.
"No—and yes," Rhoop added, for in a way she was. As if he had met a youngr cousin or sister and knew them well, and could hear their cadences in the way she spoke. She was this sea.
"No or yes?"
"I know you—but not as well as I thought I did. I did not know you were a person."
"I am not."
Rhoop did not have an answer to that.
"If I am not familiar to you, man of the shore, and you cannot live in me, why are you looking to me instead of your home?"
Rhoop had no answer for that.
"All of the world is stranger than you knew. Is that such a bad thing? Was your old life so much like home you wish no other?"
"It was before Miraz," Rhoop cut in, passionate—the words almost a cry. The sea shrugged, waves of hair rippling.
"Then mourn it, weep for it, and move on." She stepped back into the waves, and her form turned to water and fell into the wave.
But her voice offered one more thing, another whisper as she moved away. "The sea and time change all things they touch. Accept the changes, or be drowned by their waves."
Rhoop stood in the waves—in the waves still—and realised the dawn was complete. And he was crying.
14. Some myths create a personification of the sea. Write about Caspian (or someone else, if you like) meeting such a personification.
