Cassie wasn't looking for much; anything would do, really. Any book that looked even slightly interesting, as long as it was in English. And that's why she was at the secondhand store; they tended to have more donated English books than the new bookstores.
Bowing politely to the worker, who spoke a language she didn't understand (yet. She didn't understand yet), she made her way to the three floor-to-ceiling bookshelves at the very back. One had non-fiction on it.
One was supposed to have non-fiction on it. She stroked the dark wood and saw it was all mixed up again. But half the fun of coming here was organising the books on the shelves; she couldn't blame the part-time workers for not perfectly sorting books that weren't in their language. The cookbooks, craft books, and science textbooks were all right, but some of the history and biography got mixed up in the fiction, and that bothered her. So she spent a quick half hour making sure the non-fiction were properly categorised, before turning to the fiction bookshelves.
She couldn't help the sigh of happiness that left her as she scanned the titles, starting with the top left corner of the middle bookshelf. Percy Jackson, which she already had, the third and fourth Harry Potter, oh, and that new series her friends had said was terrible about a female fighter—
She hesitated, one finger on the spine. But every single reading friend had said it was a book that took all the tropes and made them absolutely terrible, and that the main character died at the end of the series.
That really wasn't what she wanted. Even if it was new and temptingly unread.
The next shelf had baby books, and even she wasn't that starved for English words. Perhaps she'd been wrong to say anything would do…
It was all right. There were three more shelves on this bookshelf, and the entire other bookshelf besides, and she would find something.
The next shelf held the first Harry Potter, which she grabbed with a choked-off cry of delight. Noise in public was considered very rude in this ultra-polite culture, and she didn't want to be the foreigner sticking out again.
But she had the first Harry Potter! The English version, not the American one, with Philosopher in the title. She opened it and blinked.
Word after word looked back, circled in pencil, with tiny kanji scribbled by the side. Translations? She flipped through a few more pages, seeing it from an ESL person's perspective. JK Rowling had a large vocabulary, and used it well; she hadn't noticed that before.
She slipped the book into her basket. She always brought a metal wire basket from the front, just in case.
She found two more books that looked interesting: a novel about a prince of a whale pod, and a short story about a family of terrible children in a church Christmas pageant. She wasn't sure she'd like it, but it was well written.
She moved to the second bookshelf.
There, on the top, were three books. They had similar covers, so they were probably part of a series. And they had interesting titles: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe—an odd mixture if she'd ever heard one—The Horse and His Boy, with an interesting possessive, and The Last Battle. She hesitated on the last one; she wasn't one for grim battles or dark endings. But it was a dollar-fifty for the book (if she was translating the currency right), and if she liked the first two she'd be very sad she didn't get the third one. She probably wouldn't be able to make it back for at least a month, and the book would be long gone by then. Most likely.
So she set all three in her basket and scoured the rest of the shelves. She found another history book she'd missed the first time, but it was on a Samurai legend, and only three dollars, so she decided to buy it too. She'd read the end first and make sure it wasn't a tragic ending. She found three Peter Rabbit tales as well, and they were a fun read, and she might be able to use them in her extra-curricular classes with her advanced students.
She took them all to the front and paid, smiling as she took the black plastic bag out the door. She had a three-day weekend ahead of her, and no intentions of leaving her apartment except for food.
She read Harry first. It'd been a year, at least, since she'd borrowed it from a friend's kindle, and it was just as good as she remembered. The circling of the words stopped after four chapters, and she soon lost herself in the story she knew so well. Harry went to his new world—she could feel that more now than she had as a teen—and learned all the wonder and terror of it.
But she finished it by the next afternoon, and picked up the book about the whales.
She set it down after one chapter. The writing was painfully self-conscious, and she felt no interest in any of the characters. She didn't feel like a humorous book right now, so she picked up the first of the trilogy instead.
She forgot about supper.
She forgot about life.
She forgot about anything but the adventures of the four children, of the brother she really didn't like, after his cowardly lies and gaslighting, of the little girl she wanted to hug with all her strength, and of the Faun—he'd been sorry, and he paid for it, she ached when she read about his destroyed cave.
She kept bringing the book closer to her face, until she realised the apartment was dark, and she hadn't turned on the light. Her stomach growled, her body protested as she unfolded it, and she rolled her eyes. Sometimes it wasn't any fun being an adult. Having to make responsible decisions, put down books, eat…
But she was an adult, and being irresponsible didn't have small consequences overseas, so she got off her bed and made her way towards the stove in her one-room apartment, glancing at the stack of books as she did.
Only to stop.
The Last Battle.
She hadn't been thrilled by that title before, but now—now that she knew Lucy, now that Peter had begun to win her heart by his words before Aslan and that amazing courage even when he felt sick and afraid—
"They had better not die," she told the book in her sternest voice. "I want them to stay alive."
The book did not answer, but she was used to that. Books only answered slowly, as she read them; and the answer didn't mean they listened to her. They were what they were.
And this one, this first one, was delightful. It ranked up there with Harry Potter, though an entirely different style and world. There was something fresh about it, like a fairy tale, but true as well. She was glad it was a trilogy. As she put peanut butter (an expensive luxury she'd bought for this weekend, ten dollars for a tiny jar) on bread and added honey, she wondered which boy would be in The Horse and His Boy. She hoped Peter (even though the bully seemed to get his comeuppance in this book), but she had a feeling it would be Edmund. People were just more interested in redemption stories than those of continuing heroes.
After her quick dinner, she lay stomach-down on the bed and picked the book up again.
It went places she didn't expect, like a rescue of Edmund—and while she was kind of glad he'd changed, she didn't think he was worth risking good people's lives for—and the Witch confronting Aslan? She read with bated breath, not noticing it was approaching her bedtime.
She nearly threw the book across the room when Aslan came back and the book didn't say what was going on, or what had been said. They just got ready for battle? She wanted answers!
She kept reading, shutting her alarm off and forgetting to brush her teeth.
She read with horror as Aslan made his way back to the table, taking the two girls with him. How he could do that—how he could risk them, just because he didn't want to be alone? She'd trusted him! He could handle himself, but two little girls?
But—the girls stayed safe.
And the Lion did not.
Water fell from her eyes onto the page, and she blinked, trying to keep reading—but she couldn't. She closed the book, put her head on her arm, and cried.
Edmund didn't deserve this. But Aslan had the right to make that choice, and he'd kept the girls safe, and even Edmund safe, but…
It felt like something magical had left this new world that she'd fallen deeply in love with. She didn't know what Narnia would be, without the hope Aslan brought. She rubbed her eyes dry, picked up the book again, and wept a little more. The girls' sorrow was so relatable.
And then.
She'd read of characters coming back before—one of the other teachers loved comic books, and it happened all the time there, he said a character was better off dead than maimed, there was a better chance of a normal life after that. She'd always thought it cheapened the death, giving it no power.
That hadn't happened here, somehow. Aslan's return brought overwhelming joy, because it had been a defeat. It had been hopeless.
And then he set all these others free, and the girls rode with him, and the witch died—
And Edmund had fought against her. Cassie slowed, and read that part again. A part of her wanted to say it was trite, that the author was forcing this save-the-villain arc…
But it did make sense, she admitted, that Edmund would be more fearless against the Witch than most. He had already seen her at the worst. He knew what she was.
Oh well. She read on, to the crowning, the good reign, and laughed at Mr. Tumnus as a middle-aged Faun still so excited about things—and then read the end.
She closed the book.
A moment later she rolled over, and sat with her back against the wall.
It had been a long time, since something gripped her that much. Her eyes strayed to the stack of books on the floor by her bed—The Horse and His Boy lay uppermost…
But she glanced at her phone, and jumped to realise it was two hours past her bedtime. Scowling, she went to brush her teeth, setting The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe gently on the top of her single, three-shelf bookshelf that was the only other piece of furniture in her tiny apartment.
Brushing her hair and teeth took only a few moments, and she turned off the light, crawled into bed, and closed her eyes.
But she opened them a moment later. She had to know whether The Horse and His Boy was about Peter or Edmund, she had to. Grabbing her phone and turning on the flashlight, she took the book in her other hand and opened the first page. "This is the story of an adventure that happened in Narnia and Calormen and the lands between, in the Golden Age when Peter was High King in Narnia and his brother and his two sisters were King and Queens under him." She smiled. She got to hear about all four of them! But which one had a possessive horse?
"In those days, far south in Calormen on a little creek of the sea, there lived a poor fisherman called Arsheesh, and with him there lived a boy who called him Father."
She stared at the book.
"What?" she said out loud, turning the book to the back cover. But it just had those irritating praises from magazines, and so she flipped to the end of the book, only to find it was about some boy called Cor.
"I will not throw the book across the room. I am an adult," she reminded herself under her breath. She set the book back down, turned her flashlight off, and pulled the covers over her again.
"Stupid author," she grumbled into the pillow. "I wanted more of Tumnus. And Lucy." But she already knew she'd be picking it up right after breakfast tomorrow, because the author was just that good.
And maybe she'd like Calormen too, even if it couldn't compete with Naria. She'd find out tomorrow.
Prompt 30: Someone is reading (or hearing) the Chronicles of Narnia for the first time. Can be in-canon or breaking the fourth wall.
This might, possibly, be based off of my experience in Tokyo—they had a Book Off store that I visited every time I went to Tokyo, and it made me so happy every time I made it there. Though I had read Narnia long before then!
