england / september 10, 1940

prompt: "candles"

word count: 2,091

xXx

Ten candles.

Edmund counted them again, though he'd been expecting no more and no less. He'd simply never known ten to look like such a small number before, flickering in multicolored wax and melting the chocolate icing of the birthday cake that Lucy and Susan had so lovingly decorated that morning with their delicate child fingers.

"What are you wishing for?" whispered Lucy loudly, leaning in with her round face upturned and her wide eyes searching his, looking almost too big and too blue for her tiny form.

"Shush, I can't tell you," he hissed, "that's not how wishes work."

But he wasn't wishing. In fact, until she'd said it, he hadn't even remembered that was what one ought to do with birthday candles, and he quickly bent down and blew them out before his staring began to look suspicious.

Lucy clapped, and Susan cut the cake.

Even the Professor had come down from his study to pay regards to the occasion, graciously accepting a piece of cake when the girls offered it to him, and Peter declared that it was the best Susan had baked yet.

"Ivy and Betty helped," she muttered humbly, but blushed with pleasure nonetheless.

Edmund smiled eagerly as his brother talked about the animals they should search for in the forest that afternoon, as his sisters debated which book they should take out to their favorite reading tree, running his fingers over the shiny new pocket knife Peter had gifted him that very morning, taking a second helping of cake and even arguing for a third.

But ten candles still seemed like too few.

How could he think otherwise, when his last birthday had been his twenty-fourth?

Not that the months since they'd tumbled back out through the wardrobe had been bad ones. The summer had burned itself out into the beginnings of a glorious autumn, the Professor had turned out to be a great deal more than initially met the eye, and they were certain never to run out of conversation topics on rainy days for the rest of their lives.

But still something felt out of place. As if in moments like these he found himself play-acting some kind of role—pretending to be Edmund from Finchley, when he really felt a great deal more like Edmund from Cair Paravel.

Peter and Susan helped Margaret clear away the dishes, and Lucy piped "Oh, Edmund! You ought to bring your compass out so we can play explorers! You have it, don't you?"

"It's in my room," he said. "I'll fetch it and come back. Don't go off exploring without me!"

Lucy giggled, and Edmund jogged out into the hall and up the stairs, taking several turns along maze-like hallways toward the room he shared with Peter, where the compass his father had given him on his ninth birthday lay tucked away in a drawer beside his bed.

To think, his ninth had been exactly a year ago. It could have been yesterday or an echo from another lifetime.

The thought almost made him dizzy, but the old, dark paneled halls afforded a level of comfort that he had found in nothing else since his return to England. They seemed to belong both to this life and the old one, some mystical quality buried deep inside them that almost reminded him of the way Cair Paravel had felt when they first began living there, seemingly infinite rooms and passages connected in unexpected and secret ways, always promising more to explore.

He tugged the handle of his nightstand drawer and pulled out the silver compass, tucking it into his pocket and turning back toward the door before a book on the edge of his bed caught his eye—bound in blue, his tasseled bookmark laying unused on top of it. He'd finished reading last night but hadn't yet had a chance this morning to return it to the Professor's collection.

A detour through the library would only take an extra minute or two.

He tucked the hefty tome under his arm and aimed for the shortest route—one he'd mapped out a few weeks ago when he began borrowing books nearly every day—cutting down short passage behind the guest wing and turning before he reached the back staircase, down another hall and into the long room hung with rows of faded old portraits.

A thin shaft of light peeked through the singular tall, curtained window, and struck the suit of armor at the far end of the room through a sea of floating dust motes.

Edmund slowed, his eyes lingering on the polished plate metal that he and Peter had been so interested in examining when they first came to live here. Never could he have guessed how familiar such a silhouette would become to him. Never could he have guessed that he would one day wear dwarf-forged mail like a second skin over broad shoulders, only again to gaze up at the ancient suit of his own world, too big even for Peter to quite fill out, and Peter was tall for thirteen.

His fingers ghosted the cold surface, tracing the groove of the breastplate which, if it had been Narnian, would have tapered into a soft point just below the chest cavity.

He didn't hear the footsteps until they reached the doorway, and he glanced up just as the Professor stopped a few paces behind him.

He drew his hand sharply back from the armor.

"Oh, by all means," said Professor Kirke, motioning toward the suit with a welcoming gesture, "I daresay you know more about such things than I."

Edmund hesitated, for a moment unsure which version of himself he was meant to act around the man, before a slight smile twitched at his lips and a swell of satisfaction bloomed in his chest at the recognition he sometimes forgot to expect from adults.

The Professor kept his own secrets from the world, after all. He wasn't exactly what one could consider an ordinary adult.

Edmund's brows knit as at last his wits caught up to him. "If you don't mind my asking, sir, how did you get here so quickly? I only just came upstairs myself."

"I decided to take the shortcut back to my study," said the Professor with a twinkle in his eye, "though it would seem these halls have a proclivity for serendipitous meetings."

Edmund smirked unabashedly this time. He motioned vaguely with his book through the far door. "I was just returning this."

"Ah, what is it that's taken your interest?"

Edmund stepped forward and handed him the book.

The Professor flipped to the title page and raised his eyebrows in a mixed expression of surprise and pleasure. "Lilith… That's some heavy material. Though I suppose you would understand it better than most. I found its propositions concerning gateways compelling, myself." He handed the book back to Edmund.

The boy shrugged. "It was interesting. But I'm not so sure I liked the ending."

"And why is that?" asked the Professor, but not in the condescending way most adults would have asked the question if a ten-year-old had tried to assert an opinion on the effects of theoretical interdimensional metaphysics. The old man crossed his arms, fixing Edmund with his undivided attention through rectangular spectacles.

"It's just…" Edmund traced the binding absently with his fingernail. "That isn't how it feels. To come back through a door from another place, I mean. When Vane comes back to his own world out of heaven, his first impulse is to doubt the whole thing. As if he could have dreamed an adventure like that. But I know I could never doubt Narnia, even if it does sometimes feel like a dream."

The Professor nodded thoughtfully. "One might argue that doubt was Mr Vane's fatal flaw. Did he not doubt the great father Adam himself?"

"Yes, but…" Edmund shook his head, trying to grasp at the thought he wanted to express. "I'm different now. I'm… I lived all that time, I had all those experiences, I was a King and a knight, and… I'm different, even if it didn't take any of this time. The person I am here and the person I was there are the same, they're both me, just as much as a tree and its roots are both part of the same organism. You can only see one part, but they're both there, and one wouldn't exist without the other. I can't doubt that. Nobody could, if they were honest with themselves. It would be like doubting my own existence."

The Professor smiled. "Well said."

Edmund blinked.

"It must be frustrating," he went on, "to find yourself back here after everything you've been through."

Edmund breathed a shallow sigh and shrugged. "I wouldn't want to say that. Father and Mother are here—in this world, I mean—and I suppose there are upsides to being young again. The carelessness, and freedom, and simplicity. All of that comes back almost at once. It's just… the rest…" He trailed off.

"You must miss it."

"With all my heart. It's hard to think… I knew Narnia longer than I've even known England. And England still feels like home, but Narnia feels like an older home. Like the house your parents sold when you were four, but you still remember the way the sunlight poured through front windows in the middle of the afternoon. You miss it like you miss the memory of a really jolly summer, and the people you spent it with, if all of them have gone away and you don't even know where to send a letter anymore."

The Professor's eyes pierced him with a depth of thought he wasn't used to evoking anymore.

How strange it must sound, to listen to a boy his age speak as if he'd lost all his best friends to the war.

But the Professor always did listen.

Edmund sighed, eyes wandering to the window. "If I was there, I would probably be out riding today… or hunting, or picnicking at Glasswater, or playing Peridan at chess out on the balconies."

"And would you be winning?"

"Hm?"

"At chess."

Edmund scoffed a short laugh of surprise. "I should think so."

The Professor smiled. "Well, I can't say I'll be of much help with the rest, but I do happen to have played quite a decent game of chess in my time. I would welcome a seasoned opponent such as yourself, if you ever felt up to the challenge."

Edmund grinned in pleasant puzzlement at the spontaneous offer. "I might just have to take you up on that. Peter always did make for rather poor sport, though I'll thank you not to tell him I said that."

The Professor chuckled. "On my honor."

Quick, light footsteps came tapping up the stairs behind them, and Lucy appeared a moment later in the doorway. "Ed!" she gasped. "There you are! I say, if you didn't want us adventuring without you then you might have thought to come back! Sorry for interrupting, Professor," she added as an afterthought.

"No need," said the man jovially, "it seems you have big plans today."

"We're playing explorers. Come on, Ed!"

"I'm coming," he laughed. "I was just putting this back." He waved the book again.

"Well, you needn't take half a century!" And she darted off down the stairs again.

Edmund glanced back at the Professor, taking a slow step backward in the direction he'd been heading in the first place. "I suppose I should be going. But I really will take you up on that game." He smiled. "And thank you."

The man simply waved him off with a grin. "I look forward to it."

Edmund tucked the book back under his arm and turned on his way, threading through the next room and several short hallways to the library, their conversation playing back in his head with a twinge of aching fondness.

Ten candles still burned in the back of his mind, but for a moment it was King Edmund who slipped the heavy book into its empty spot on the carved mahogany shelf, King Edmund who tucked his thumbs into the pockets of his knickerbockers and traced the cool metal of his father's compass as he strode back through the paneled halls.

For a moment his two lives didn't feel so very separate after all. In a place like this, they almost couldn't help but co-exist.

He hadn't made a wish.

But if he had, he might have wished for something like this.