We Seven

A Narnia & Mirror, Mirror Fanfiction

Part 2

While it is true that Prince Alexis of Archenland spoke seven languages fluently, English – that is, English as Edmund Pevensie would have immediately understood it without straining to – wasn't technically one of them.

Oh, his mother, Lady Alix turned Queen Alexandra, was a direct descendant of Queen Helen – first Queen of Narnia – through a daughter who married a river-god, and that crew had all spoken English because they came from the other place, where the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve originated, but their use of the language had changed drastically, taken a fork somewhere, and altogether deviated from the English of London in the 1900s (let alone the 1940s).

It wasn't quite as confusing as a modern time traveller attempting to comprehend Middle English as it was generally known prior to Shakespeare, but it was confusing enough.

When a rectangular shard of ice on the floor moved and a boy's head emerged from a frosted trapdoor a few inches away from where Edmund was chained, he was stricken with bewilderment. A bewilderment which didn't lessen when the boy – perhaps Peter's age, he thought – began chattering at him incoherently.

Edmund thought he sounded a bit like a squirrel, yammering on and zipping around the length of the cell, closing the ice-door behind him and having a look about. But of course, here, squirrels could probably talk just as well as that poor little faun the witch dragged off earlier had.

Misery had a dampening effect on Edmund's spite as well as his spirits, though. It mattered very little, he reasoned, whether he could or could not properly understand the strange boy – he had betrayed his family and found himself locked in a witch's house. There wasn't any lower to sink.

The boy made a face at the iron plate of stale bread the witch's dwarf had left for him to eat, then turned back to the door. He said something Edmund didn't respond to.

He tapped his shoulder and pointed at the place where the trapdoor was.

"Oh," said Edmund, and shook his head. He jangled the chain holding him to the ice wall.

The boy considered this and proceeded to dig through his trouser pockets, pulling out a pocket-watch and a little penknife. The watch he put back carefully, but he used the tip of the knife to pick at the lock. It broke, and Edmund surprised himself by feeling a twinge of sorrow for it – a few hours earlier, and he would have coveted such a knife – but the lock snapped open at the same time the strained blade cracked in half.

Edmund's released foot felt numb, and he was as shaky as a baby deer is on new legs, quite literally Felix Salten's Bambi on ice, but he stumbled after the boy down the trapdoor without waiting for another invitation.

Sticking close to icy walls and ducking into shadows, they made their way to a stable constructed of green ice and stark, evil-looking snowflake patterns.

The boy stopped at a low stall and peeked over it, whistling until a greyish muzzle appeared. He patted it and smiled over his shoulder. "Reindeer."

Yes, Edmund could see it was a reindeer – one of the witch's, snowy-coloured and roughly the size of a Shetland. But at least it was a whole entire word he understood and not just a burbling noise that sounded like water running over rocks, like many of the others sounds the boy had been making. (Many of the words Alexis used after coming up the trapdoor did indeed have their origin with the river-god who was a many-times great grandfather to him and so could never have struck Edmund as being in any way related to English.)

"Burble-burble, sledge, burble-burble... Harness."

In spite of himself and the great guilt weighing him down, now escape seemed possible, Edmund was beginning to be properly interested in his surroundings again. Sledge and harness were real words, too. They might be able to get as far as names, if they could understand expressions related to objects and animals.

Edmund spluttered out, "E-e-edmund," while tapping himself.

The boy nodded, gestured to himself as well, and said, "Alexis."

"Did the witch feed you Turkish Delight, tell you to come to her house, and lock you up, too?"

"What, burble, is this Burble Delight?" He added something, probably to answer the other parts of the question, but to Edmund it just sounded like gargling.

"Guess not." He shrugged his stiff shoulders. "Never mind."

Alexis apparently knew how to harness the witch's reindeer and how to manage a sled. Which was good, because Edmund didn't have any idea how to drive.

If he was afraid the witch or one of her horrible wolf police, like the captain Maugrim, would give them chase and they'd be too slow, his fears were somewhat allayed by the speed at which Alexis drove.

It wasn't a guarantee, of course, but it was promising.

"Where," called Edmund with chattering teeth, "did you learn to drive like this?"

"Burble, burble bloop father's estate!"

Edmund pulled his knees to his chest. There was no point asking where that estate was. Narnia was a whole different world, and Edmund hadn't managed to win the prize for Geography at school back in his own, either. Anyway, even if he was dragging him back there to do something dreadful to him, like throw him into another prison, it couldn't be worse than being chained to an ice wall in a witch's house. There might even be something to eat besides stale bread!

Along the way, after what felt like miles and miles, after a whole day and night might have passed since they left the witch's house, Edmund blinked icicles off his frozen eyelashes, sat up straight, and pointed with excitement.

Ahead, there were five children's backs and the little furry silhouettes that looked like dots from this distance but must be the beavers.

Alexis tried to follow them, gathering Edmund knew them, but a thaw had set in and it slowed the sledge until it stuck in mud and wouldn't budge at all. And although Alexis had the common sense not to take the harness with bells on it, the sight of a sledge being driven straight towards them frightened the pedestrians. Just because it had turned out not to be the witch earlier, but rather Father Christmas bearing presents, didn't mean they expected to be so fortunate a second time. They hadn't known, either, despite the warming air, the sledge would get stuck and go no further. So they did what any sensible travelling group would have and got off the main path, making themselves scarce.

By the time it was clear the sledge would have to be abandoned, the icicles on Edmund's eyelashes had melted, too, running like tears down his face.

Alexis cut the reindeer free. At first, he tried to ride it like one might a horse and help Edmund up behind him, but the beast, skittish after the impromptu chase, wouldn't permit it, and he let it go free.

They set up a fire that night, and – as best Edmund could tell – Alexis was trying to ask him who the people they'd seen were.

"They're my brothers and sisters."

At the word sisters, Alexis brightened. "Have sisters!" He took out his pocket-watch and opened it, proudly showing a dainty miniature painted on the inside of the lid, depicting four pretty girls. "OTMA!"

"What happened to them?"

"Jadis, witch, blorb-gurgle wolves."

"The White Witch sent her wolves?"

"Yes, sent police" – he nodded – "Jadis sent Maugrim, he reads sentence." His vowels were drawn out, each word careful in the unfamiliar pronunciation he tried to mimic. "Family – father, mother, sisters – gone." He closed the watch, the low firelight making the tears shine in his eyes.

Edmund shuddered.

Could he ever have truly believed the witch's side the just and right one?

Edmund would never have understood all of Alexis's story on his own. Much less have been able to explain who he was to the others when met them, beyond his being a boy he met at the witch's house who was also a victim of her cruelty.

Fortunately, however, he didn't need to.

When they made it to Aslan's camp, upon Aslan's scouts discovering them both limping up the tall green hill (Alexis had stumbled over a low boulder and since been – Edmund thought rather disproportionately – favouring one leg over the other and Edmund himself was so tired he didn't know how much longer he could avoid collapsing face-first into a soft patch of heather unable to rise back up again), they brought him to the Lion, and it was he who did the talking when he led them into the heart of the camp, where Peter was waiting outside his tent with a wary expression on his face.

(But first he breathed on Alexis's leg, which could then bear weight again, and took Edmund apart for a conversation no one else was privy to and which was never, ever forgotten.)

Susan, Royce, Jo, and Lucy came out of their tents behind Peter's.

Lucy had to be prevented – following a delighted squeal of "Edmund!" – from running directly into her brother's arms.

It was Susan, blinking her pansy-blue eyes in astonishment at the stranger, who asked, "And who else?"

"A prince," said Aslan. "I will introduce you presently. And there is no need to talk to Edmund about what is past."

At the mention of a real-life prince, Susan smoothed her black hair behind her ears and straightened slightly. Despite a tendency to plumpness her siblings were not burdened with, she was widely considered the pretty one. And certainly her manners were very pretty as well, even though it was Jo, watching him with a beaming, open stare, a couple steps behind her, Alexis kept looking at.

As Edmund prepared to listen – in truth just as curious as the others – to Aslan's explanation regarding the prince, he noticed his siblings all had new clothes on, whereas he was still wearing the – now rather tattered – remains of what he'd had on back at the professor's house. His brothers were in comfortable-looking leather tunics, Peter's russet and Royce's a dove-grey. His sisters had long fancy dresses, even Jo, who could rarely be forced out of trousers and into a skirt except for on the very hottest days of the year. Susan's was green-and-white and very flowing, Lucy's was blue and hung straight down on her tiny frame, and Jo's was yellow with tiny embroidered flowers along the helm and sleeves. A few days earlier, Edmund might have wasted a good deal of time wondering if he'd be offered clean, fresh garments, too, but now he was past thinking so much about himself and was grateful simply to be welcomed back into the fold, so few questions asked, with only the slightest lingering trace of coldness from Peter.

Prince Alexis had had the misfortune of being the last male heir born to the throne of Archenland when Jadis and her crew took it over in a vicious coup for no better reason than its proximity to Narnia.

The royal family was detained at the witch's pleasure for a while, before her wolves, northern beings at their hearts, deigned to make the journey south.

Initially, this holding took place in their own castle, Anvard, and surprisingly little in their lives changed apart from a few restrictions on going out of doors unaccompanied and King Nicholas – Alexis's father – actually being 'in charge'. Their guards were primarily sour, black-bearded dwarfs and the spirits of trees who had gone bad – most of their own people, those with some real human blood in their veins having defected and gone south towards the Calormen border – but many of these – particularly the dryads – softened towards the family as the days went on.

Alexis's sisters had even believed they might permit them to escape before Maugrim and the others arrived.

It was not to be.

They were moved to a small mansion in the mountains further north, nearer Narnia, where they stayed for further months until the wolves were indeed at the door for them. The king, queen, and princesses were killed, but Jadis thought the son, the little prince, might make a useful political prisoner, one (should he prove tiresome) she could always turn to stone later.

Dazed and bruised after the attack on his family, lost in grief and fever-dreams, he almost hadn't known what was happening when the witch's dwarf put him on the back of her sledge and they drove all through the night.

He was no threat to Jadis on account of the prophecy – the one the beavers had explained to those of the Pevensie children who had stayed in their snug dam where they ought instead of venturing out to see the witch – regarding the four thrones waiting to be filled at the castle of Cair Paravel.

That prophesy specified Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, full humans, and Alexis, from a bloodline diluted by intermarriages with spirits of trees and supernatural water-beings, was not that. Not quite. Closer than Jadis herself – being from Lilith, Adam's first wife, and of giantesses from a place called Charn – of course, but still.

"And," Aslan told them gravely, "she thought him easy to keep confined due to a delicate state of health."

"Why?" interrupted Jo from her place kneeling (a good deal less delicately than Susan beside her) in the grass, looking past the Lion to Alexis with unconcealed curiosity. "What's wrong with you?"

A funny disease of the blood, as it turned out.

Once bleeding – under the skin from a bruise or else from an open cut or wound – his body did not clot as readily those of other boys did. He had had a bleed in his knee-joint, from his stumble, which was what Aslan had cured by breathing upon it when he'd arrived.

"You poor dear," said Susan, hands clasped in her lap. She unwound them and wrung them several times in quick succession. "How perfectly awful."

He'd lived as the witch's prisoner for over a year. Unlike Lucy's faun friend and later Edmund, Jadis had not seen much need to lock him up. She was confident in the security of her house and in the failings of his blood. He wandered through labyrinthine tunnels of ice and explored stables and took walks through that dreadful courtyard of creatures who had been turned to stone mostly unhindered. But he'd been biding his time, making plans. Little treats – when they could be got – and affectionate, if never understood, whispers had endeared even the more skittish of the witch's reindeer to him. He listened behind doors (which is not a bad habit if you are a prisoner to a witch who is plotting wicked things behind said doors) and to private counsels.

Alexis had no difficulty whatever in understanding the witch or her crew, when they plotted, because she had long ago cast a spell in her throne room to make any listener able to understand her language and that of her conspirators, as it saved time and she was not a patient ruler.

If only this spell had extended to the dungeons, there would have been no language barrier between Edmund and Alexis when they first met.

When he heard Edmund being hauled off to the dungeons – heard too the witch sending her wolves to kill somebody at the beaver's damn – and witnessed – via pressing his eye to a chink in the ice wall – the witch bent over to cuff her dwarf on the ear for repeating Edmund's message about Aslan being on the move...

Well, he had finally known it was time to act.

"It was kind of you," said Lucy, here, "to take Edmund instead of running away alone."

"Yes," Peter agreed but did not look overlong in Edmund's direction himself, though he had quite forgiven him just as Aslan instructed by this point; "we're very grateful for what you did."

"You can stick with us, as a reward for being nice," Royce added, reaching over his siblings to pat Alexis on the elbow. "Since the wolves ate up your whole family and all."

"Royce!" cried Susan and Jo together.

"What?"

"I'm sure," said Susan, colouring, "they did not eat the royal family."

"That doesn't make it better, Su," said Peter, but was loathe to say anything more because the tight-lipped look Alexis was giving him suggested the prince understood enough of this conversation to feel badly about it.

Aslan had other business, and when he was satisfied the Pevensies understood the prince's backstory well enough to work through any communication barriers with him tactfully, he padded away on his great, velveted paws and left them to see to it.

Royce and Edmund quickly fell into an unspoken agreement between them to see who could eat the most toast, and Lucy laughed and reminded them both Narnia wasn't going to run out of it.

Alexis was a fast learner and picked up several words and pronunciations he'd formerly been unfamiliar with quickly from the eldest three Pevensies. A dryad came to convey him to a tent he could rest in, just around the time the sun was setting and the tea things (along with the plates of toast crumbs left by Royce and Edmund) were being cleared away. Before he nodded his grateful consent to this arrangement, he plucked a newly sprouted daisy (it was now quite clear Narnia was in proper spring, no mere thaw) and held it out in the direction of the girls.

His intent had been to give it to Jo, but in execution he leaned too far forward and so Susan could not really be blamed for thinking she was the intended recipient. He didn't correct her when she took it from him and twirled the stem between her fingers.

"He's a very nice prince," Susan said decidedly to Jo, bringing the daisy to her nose and inhaling. "Don't you think so?"

Nice or not, they hadn't much time to discuss him before Jadis turned up demanding her rights to Edmund, claiming she had a right to every traitor in Narnia.

Jo noticed Alexis waving sarcastically to the witch as she was leaving in a hurry following Aslan's crowd-deafening roar and bit back a smirk. He caught her looking and said, "Good riddance to – how do you say? – bad burblish?"

"Rubbish," Jo corrected, hiding her pleasure.

"Yes, of course." He shook his head. "I do not understand half the words you use. You speak a very strange English."

"Hey, watch it, I speak perfect English. Like the bloody queen, I'll have you know. I'm from England. You're the one speaking, I dunno, Archenlandish or something. Technically."

"I had the burblest English tutors!" he laughed.

"I bet you did." She grinned. "The burblest – I mean, best – of everything."

He gazed at her sidelong a moment. "Not everything."

Suddenly she was very, very glad Royce had extended an invitation for this prince to stick with them; she wouldn't mind him being around.

She wouldn't mind that one single bit.

As there was no need to dwell upon Edmund's failings in betraying his family – certainly he suffered enough – there is, very probably, also little in the way of need to dwell here upon what Aslan did for him, not when it has been dwelt upon elsewhere.

Instead, we can pick up after The First Battle of Beruna, where Aslan was shaking hands – paws? – with Peter, who explained it was Edmund's cleverness in going for the wand instead of the witch that turned the tide for them.

Alexis did not fight in this battle because of his condition (though he fought with and for Peter in later scrimmages in spite of it), but – being raised at Anvard as what can best be described, a touch paradoxically, as a Spartan with the added privilege of sitting upon velvet-and-leather cushions and sipping from crystal – he was well suited to soldier's work and so was one of their scouts.

While Lucy went round with her diamond flask of healing cordial, sprinting between the wounded, Royce and Jo were doing something important to attend to the aftermath of the battle as well, only – as neither of them ever bothered to tell anyone what their gifts from Father Christmas had been – nobody was entirely certain, when the history of the whole matter was written out, what that was.

As they all made their way to Cair Paravel, in a rather sweaty and dusty procession, though they were too glad to dwell on that fact, Aslan padded alongside the seven children and told them there was a matter which must be discussed after tea.

They had this tea during the early evening hours and were all so thrilled by the beautiful hall and its surroundings they nearly forgot what they'd been told on the way over. (Royce wondered aloud how it was that the witch never wanted this to be her house! He was certain he would have, if he were her.)

All of them, but Jo especially, were so eager to get down to the beach visible beyond the tall peacock-feather patterned stained glass windows, they would have very willingly forgone any 'discussion' and rushed out there ripping their shoes and socks off, if Aslan had not blocked their path at the door and given a little growl by way of reminder.

"We have six sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve," said the Lion sombrely. "And four thrones which will be filled following your coronation. In the matter of Royce and Lucy, it is an easy thing to settle – Lucy is the elder twin by some few minutes, and so it will be hers."

Royce was delighted – he was of the sort who likes the idea of having fun over the troubles of ruling. "Besides," he said agreeably, "no one wants three kings and only one queen. It would sound rather funny. Better to split it evenly, Aslan."

"The matter of Josephine and Susan is a little different," the Lion went on.

"Jo is older," Susan sighed resignedly. "She had better take it." Same as usual, then.

"But I'm only adopted," Jo put in, brow furrowed.

"Only adopted!" exclaimed Susan, and shook her head. That certainly wasn't how their mother saw it!

"You were the sister of the others by choice," Aslan said then. "So it is by choice if you would be queen or nay."

Jo looked at the faces of her siblings, longest and hardest at Susan. "Oh, nah, she wants it." She could see the longing in her sister's expression. "Let her have it. I wouldn't want to be queen of anything anyway." She smiled at Royce, who'd cocked his head at her questioningly. "I'd rather eat your socks than have to be any sort of queen."

She missed Alexis's wince. Probably Jo would have misunderstood it even if she hadn't. "Not any sort?" he echoed. He hoped he'd misunderstood that, because of the funny English she spoke compared with his own.

Wouldn't she, he wanted to ask but did not know the right words, like to be queen of Archenland?

He was assuming, of course, the Archenlanders would want him to take the throne there, as it was his right, now they didn't have to worry about the witch's crew any longer. He'd been watching Jo carefully during the whole exchange, hoping Aslan wouldn't put her on any of the four thrones here in Narnia, so he might take her south with him. His cheeks flushed red and his shoulders slumped.

"Prince of Archenland," and Aslan placed his heavy paw on his shoulder. "You will not find an empty kingdom waiting for you in the south. You see, thy cousin Lune..." and the Lion made burbling noises the other children didn't understand.

"So my people won't want me back on the throne at Anvard?" Since they've got King Lune. "Even if I can prove who I am?"

"I don't think you'd have much fun in Archenland," Royce chimed in, as if he was some great expert on the place.

Edmund nudged him from behind and coughed.

"What?"

Alexis managed a smile at this exchange but nonetheless looked lost – all the more so as Aslan removed his paw.

Susan gave a throaty hum of sympathy at the prince's obvious bewilderment and inched nearer him, but it was Jo who said, brightly,

"If you want to stay in Narnia, Alexis, we can help."