This story was written for Adventures in Narnia 2024, Prompt 5: "After a while, the residents of the sea do not hear the sound of the waves. How bitter it is, the story of routine." -Unknown
I make no claim that this is what happened, only that it might have.
They could not agree on what to do.
They had been through much, those few sailors of the King's Pride, and the journey had been both long and far. Through miles and years, the creeping loss of shipmates to marriage, malice, and natural menace, they remained together, and the dangers and joys of those unknown seas had knit them into a unit. This last storm had well-nigh scuppered the Pride, and they had thought to make camp here on the island for a time and repair her.
But now the noblemen who had hired them from the isles near Narnia lay fast in slumber, caught in some enchantment of the strange knife. Cautiously they tasted the food, and finding it good they ate and drank both gladly and heartily, but they could not agree on the path forward.
Was it their duty as hired men—and men of honor—to remain with the lords, searching for a way to break the enchantment? Should they return to Narnia, bringing word of what had befallen? Or, having failed to adequately preserve their masters from the perils of the journey, ought they to take up the quest themselves, and continue eastward? They were only nine in number, and most vexingly, three held to each opinion.
They had seen what came of fighting at that table, and were loath to engage in it. With the skids of conversation greased by good wine, they gradually came to the consensus that for the time being, it did not truly matter whether they meant to stay or go back or go on. For any of the three paths, they would first require a seaworthy ship, if only for shelter and netting fish. Once they had a suitable vessel to hand, they could revisit the matter of direction.
Then, having settled this, they slept.
Dawn woke them with a high wild song and the brilliant white flash of wings. When the magnificent birds had departed, and the sailors had marveled at both the birds and the clearing of the table, they found still remaining an old man whose silver beard swept the floor, and at his side a fair-haired girlchild of perhaps ten summers.
They rose to their feet immediately. There was that in the man's face that spoke of nobility and greatness to be honored, and an echo of it in the child's.
"We beg your pardon, my lord," said the first mate—for the captain had been lost in the storm—and bowed. "We did not realize this was your island."
"And such it is not," the man returned mildly. "It belongs to the great Lion Aslan. I am only Ramandu, its caretaker for a time."
A few of the crew straightened at this, those hired en route from the farther islands, where Telmarines dared not go and tales of the time before Telmar's Narnia were still well-known. They looked around with newfound respect.
"Sooth," one breathed. "This is then a blessed place."
"Aye. It is by his will that this table is filled and emptied and renewed each day, so that any who have journeyed to this far land may take refreshment for as long as needful. You are not the first Children of Man to set foot here, but you are the first to arrive during my time, and the largest party."
"We had thought to dwell here until our ship was mended, and then choose our course." The first mate looked around at his comrades, then back at the silver-haired man. "My lord, he would be a fool indeed who did not see that you are wise. If it is not discourteous to ask, have you any advice for us on what that course might be? For we cannot tell whether it is better to remain here with our bespelled masters and seek a way they might be freed, or to make our way homeward that we might tell others what became of them, or to take up their quest in their stead and seek the further East."
"I cannot advise you which path is best," Ramandu replied gravely. "But I would have you know that the magic now laid upon your three lords cannot be broken save by journeying as near as you can to the End of the World. There one of you must disembark and remain forever, and the rest must make their way back hither. Then, and only then, will the lords awaken. It may be that this task is for you, and it may be that it is not. You yourselves must determine that."
"But," said the child, with a sunny (though gap-toothed) smile, "you are very welcome on this island for as long as you wish to stay."
They stayed some months. The old man (a star! they learned with awe, a star of immense age, resting that he might rise once more to the heavens) and the child who called him Father made agreeable company. The girl in particular was very curious about every small thing they did and even about themselves and the lands far to the west, and they gathered from this that she had never before encountered a speaking being other than her father and, if one counted song as speech, the great white birds. She was bright and merry and intelligent. In her company they could not help but act as behooved those in the presence of a lady, and every man grew only better for it.
During those months of work they did not speak of the future. Each considered in his own mind what course he might advance as favorable, and how best to convince the others of his choice. When the King's Pride was shipshape and well-stocked once more, and the decision could be put off no longer, they put it to a vote, and found the result astonishing: nine votes to sail on, for reasons that differed by the man.
"I've no wish to return to a land ruled by Miraz, as doubtless it now is," said one.
"I was hired on as to serve and protect their lordships, an' I figure this is the on'y way left to do that," said another.
"This island is beautiful, but I can't stay here forever," said a third. "I need solid wood under my feet, good rope running through my hands, and the crack of canvas in my ears."
"I miss the ocean," said the youngest, a lad of about nineteen, and that summed it up.
They were sailors, men of the sea. Saltwater ran in their blood and bones, and they were not born to live forever on land. Thus they bade a sober and grateful farewell to Ramandu and his daughter, and set out one clear morning just before dawn.
On their flight back to the sun, the birds circled three times above the ship, singing their wild song, and each man's heart rejoiced.
They sailed on.
None of the nine could have properly described that journey afterwards, had there been a need. A current swept them softly along an ocean calm as glass. The birds passed above them twice a morning, flying west earlier and east later every day. The sea grew fresh and then covered with lilies. The men grew quieter, til they spoke only when taking the daily sounding.
And the light, the light, the light!
Brighter, stronger, clearer, and yet they were neither blinded nor burned. They drank it from the sun with their skin, and from the sea with their buckets, and hardly needed food or sleep.
Forty days after they cast off from Ramandu's island (though no one was counting), the water grew so shallow that the King's Pride ran aground. The men looked to the east and then to each other. As one, they moved toward the lifeboats.
The current bore them on through lilies that blazed like white fire. Three days later these smaller boats too ran aground. Half a league before them the ocean hurled itself upward into a great green wave that stretched the length of the horizon, five fathoms high if it was an inch, and impossibly fixed in the air.
Behind the wave—nay, behind the very sun itself—lay not sky, but mountains high beyond telling, a-froth with leaping waterfalls and green to their unknowable heights.
It took an hour, wading through clear water and flowers up to their knees, but at last they stood together before the wave and the mountains. It was there, at the very end of the world, that they realized they had never discussed who would remain.
"I have no family," said the youngest. "No wife, no children, no one to miss me."
And they all looked round at one another, for all could say the same. Was that not the very reason why the lords had hired them years before for this voyage of unknown duration, fraught with unknown perils? Had they not wished, those seven noblemen of Telmar's Narnia, to see that no families should be left bereaved if the sailing went ill? Who then of the nine should stay? More than that, which eight could possibly bear to return now, having seen beyond the World's End?
All had the same thought at once. The navigator, a man hired in the Lone Islands, spoke it aloud.
"I must believe Aslan has another plan for restoring our masters, for I cannot find in myself the will to return. Nor, I think, can any of you. This task is not for us."
He held out his arms to the men on either side of him. Heads nodded solemnly in agreement as hands were clasped down the line.
"Onward, then," murmured the first mate.
As one, they stepped into the wave.