We Seven

A Narnia & Mirror, Mirror Fanfiction

Part 3

The ball at Cair Paravel following the Pevensies' coronation was the first proper party Narnia had known in a hundred years. It being always winter and never Christmas, of course there was no call, all that time, for a Christmas ball, and the witch hadn't held with unlabelled feasting, either. She called even an especially fine meal with friends among the inhabitants of Narnia gluttony, waste, and self-indulgence – and her punishments for such infractions were fierce, if not very imaginative. The fauns had nearly forgotten what it was like to dance with the dryads all night, though some of them could still recollect the music well enough to whistle the tune or play it on their reed-flutes.

Now, just like the sudden coming of spring after the thaw, here was a grand feast and dance even those thrown by Alexis's grandmother at Anvard for the most special occasions couldn't have been equal to – and his grandmother, Queen Dagmar, had been famous for her parties.

The children were all delighted, of course, because even Royce and Lucy were not told to go to bed, as surely they must have been back in their own world, at such an event as this, always reserved solely for the grownups in their own world, but now they were the guests of honour themselves.

None, however, were so pleased as Susan.

She was young yet had dreamed since she was very small of being allowed to attend a real party and wear a proper party dress and speak prettily to all the guests – now it seemed she had achieved that heart's desire.

The coronation gown of shimmery blue velvet was the most beautiful and comfortable thing she'd ever worn. All sorts of gentleman, even if they had strange-coloured hair or bowed legs or spoke funny, were kissing her hand and wishing her a long life and a lasting reign. There were fauns, like Lucy's friend Tumnus, alongside dwarfs with splendid russet beards. Handsome mermen granted legs, leave to walk on land, just for this one evening drank – deeply, and of some cloudy liquid – to her health from gleaming golden shells (sort of like elongated conches) then proceeded to smash them so no lesser toast might ever be made with them in future. Strange persons in dark blue robes with hair of gold and white (whom Aslan later told Peter were stars come down from the heavens and taking human-like form) bowed to her and, though she offered them refreshments of pheasant and roast chestnuts and many other delicacies in return, never ate anything.

It was difficult for Susan not to let it all rush to her head. Everything was so perfectly wonderful;it was such a lovely time. She was having her first taste of wine tonight as well.

And nobody was more wonderful or lovelier, she thought, than their own Prince Alexis.

He was everywhere she looked.

One moment he was introducing Peter to a dryad whose tree had not been so far from Anvard. The next he was having what appeared to be some kind of quiet counsel with Edmund in a corner. For a worrisome instant, Susan fretted he might be telling poor Edmund about what Aslan had done for him, all about the dreadful stone table, but she concluded he couldn't be, since they were both smiling and neither looked grave. If anything, he was simply drawing her brother – the one most inclined of the three now to bouts of withdrawal – out. After that, he was merrymaking with Royce and dancing with Lucy, what might be the Narnian version of a polka.

He was at the centre of attention without, so far as it looked, making any of his actions about himself.

When he'd conveyed a merry but drooping Lucy back to the dais, his attention fell – not on Susan as she'd been privately hoping it might – but rather on Jo.

Disappointed, she was, certainly, but Susan did not feel resentful. She'd noticed – as she concluded Alexis had, too – how Jo hadn't danced even once tonight. Even Royce had found a partner for the polka during which Alexis had paired up with Lucy.

She suspected that years ago, back in their own world, when they were littler and her sister was going through her lanky phase, an age at which she was all arms and legs and her natural movements were springy but also jerky, giving her the air of a sort of frog-girl, their then dance-instructor had said something to Jo so scarring, so mean, she'd never so much as pirouetted again. It was funny – though not in a laughing way – to think Jo wasn't much of a dancer. She was unarguably athletic, and Susan knew she was musical – Jo played the piano so well their mother had taken a loan from Uncle Harold in order to buy her her own.

In theory, that piano was for all of them to practice on, but Helen wouldn't have gone through so much trouble over it if not for Jo's more evident talent.

Of course, with the war, they hadn't had it tuned in ages and couldn't afford the music teacher anymore...

Regardless, it always struck Susan as a little surreal she was the one doing plies, one hand balanced on the bar their father installed for her in front of their bedroom mirror, while her elder sister – who had an endless case of the jumpies and couldn't keep still under most circumstances – sat like a statue on her bed, a cross-legged gargoyle absorbed in her sketchbook.

It was very nice indeed of Alexis to offer Jo his hand and say, "Come, show me how you dance."

"There's no way in the world I'm going to do that," Jo laughed, shaking her head.

He lingered, hand still outstretched, his blue eyes wholly uncomprehending.

"I don't dance," she clarified. "I don't know how."

Susan watched a smile light up his face. "Then I can teach you." He seemed to be burbling and gurgling less already – clearly Alexis was a fast learner. Perhaps he would prove just as skilled a teacher.

Jo took his hand in the end, as the musicians struck up a reedy waltz. "I'll try not to step on your feet."

"Just follow me."

She did very well. Susan was impressed that, in addition to not stepping on his feet, Jo managed to follow Alexis's lead without trying even once to take over. She watched them have their dance, thinking – when it was over – it would be her turn to dance with Alexis, but Jo was hesitant to relinquish him.

Apparently after years of refusing to dance with anyone, she'd enjoyed dancing with this kind prince so much she was eager to continue.

"May I have the pleasure of this dance?" She asked him the moment she was certain there would be another song, that the fauns and talking animals were not about to put their instruments away for a break. "In our world, it's perfectly all right for girls to ask boys for a dance."

Susan was not altogether sure that was true – she thought she should be mortified if ever she was reduced to requesting a man dance with her, instead of the other way around, as it ought to be – but Alexis grinned and declared it would be an honour.

"Oh, he is so good!" she cried.

"Who's good?" Edmund – who'd been passing by eating a dainty he'd thought was chocolate but in reality was some manner of dryad food that made him cough and splutter until he'd spat it into a handkerchief he buried deep inside the pocket of his velvet tunic – asked her.

"Prince Alexis." And she pointed.

"It'll be Lord Alexis, if he really stays on here, you know," he said. "Peter will give him a title and lands, so he can be a proper Narnian lord. But what makes you say he's good? I mean, he is" – he'd saved him from the witch's dungeon after all – "but I can't think he's done anything special for you. Given any reason you should say he's good. He hasn't spoken to you in over two hours, if I'm not mistaken."

"He's got Jo to dance," she tried to explain. "He's danced with her twice now. Isn't it good of him? He's like an angel."

Edmund – in the way of younger brothers – did not see the correlation. "He's not dancing with her in order to be good."

Susan – in the way of elder sisters – ignored the implication. Boys didn't know anything about dashing noblemen and courtly graces. She imagined Edmund would learn quickly enough, but for now he understood so little about it.

He must understand next to nothing, if he really did not see what was good about Alexis dancing with Jo!

"He likes dancing with Jo," tried Edmund, though he would have tried harder, if he'd really understood where his sister's train of thought came from; he would have wanted to spare her.

"I'm sure he does," said Susan, bright and oblivious. "He loves to dance with everyone. He is so good."

"You sure are a girl of one idea tonight, Su," Edmund sighed, running a prickly tongue over his soiled teeth. Patting her hand, "But, yeah, he is a good chap. I never said he wasn't. Anyhow, I'm going to get this earthy loam off my teeth if it's the last thing I do. It sticks so!"

Her opinion of Alexis's goodness was solidified when, after his second dance with Jo, she asked him if he wasn't too tired for a turn about the room with her next, and his response was, "I'm not too tired for you." She thought – she was near certain – she heard a slight emphasis on you, though it might have been – and more likely was – him trying not to burble.

Susan was convinced, was certain, he thought well of her.

She was certain, at least, if not quite that, he thought of her.

That the whole notion of her very existence left his mind the moment their dance ended and his thoughts could return – without being rude – to his actual preoccupation never came into her head at all.

The gentle queen would never have guessed – when they all retired to their beautiful silken tapestry-draped bedrooms to sleep, the sun nearly rising – Alexis murmured the name, "Josephine," in his sleep.

Ten Months Later

"The moles have made us such a marvellous garden," declared Susan, as she walked on Alexis's arm through this aforementioned wonderland of flowers and herbs. "I cannot help feeling glad every time the weather is fine and I can enjoy it. Especially in such good company. Lucy says the moles have promised that, in a few more years, we shall have an orchard as well. For apples."

"Was it Lilygloves?" Alexis smiled at the mental imagine conjured up of the silky little mole leaning on his spade. "Who promised you the apples, I mean."

"Yes." Susan smiled, too, and clung a little more tightly to his arm. "He is their chief."

"I like him," Alexis told her. "He plays chess against me sometimes, and he is one of the very few who is a proper challenge and does not let me win."

Susan's cheeks heated, going a bit pink. She wasn't a Talking animal, in particular she was not a mole, but she was guilty of letting Alexis win at chess, and at other games. She hated to see him unhappy and thought he might be so if he lost. Now she regretted it. But at least Lucy and Jo never let him win, though he usually beat them anyway. Regarding archery, she could hold her head high, because she had no mercy there – neither on Alexis or on anyone else – only it was difficult to make herself feel competitive over a game set on a chequered board the way she did when a target and an arrow was involved.

"Edmund is the best chess player in our family." If you didn't mind the annoyance of how he took an inordinate amount of time between his moves, considering each one at length until you wanted to beg him to decide sometime before the century was out. "But Lilygloves – even if he is a mole – must be a better opponent than our dear Jo, anyway," Susan managed at last. "She's impulsive, not strategic."

"She ought to command a real army, I think. Not a miniature one made out of gold and rubies," Alexis joked. His laugh was like a rich gurgle. "Jo has such energy; she would have the whole troop marching home by teatime."

"Well, as long as she didn't have to march them over any bodies of water. We know she's overconfident about water these days."

She was referencing an incident which had occurred when Jo'd gone too far out into the water on the beach. The tide had been in, and the waves were choppy, and none of them was really used yet to swimming with the extra weight of their Narnian clothes. Of course, Jo stripped down to her underthings to swim, said it made it much easier, but comfortable as they were, these articles were still – at least when they were wet – heavier than their bathing costumes back in England. Susan was the strongest swimmer of the Pevensies, and when Jo had – inevitably – gotten swept out to sea, she'd kicked off her slippers and dove to the rescue. By the time Edmund and Peter had followed (Royce had been too far away, and Lucy could hardly swim at all), both girls – Susan's aching arms wrapped tightly around a shivering Jo – had collapsed back onto the shore, spluttering and coughing up salt water.

Alexis still smiled, but his eyes were graver, gone a darker blue, as he said, "Yes, I was very frightened for her that day, when I heard what happened. I'm sure she is most grateful to you for what you did."

"And to you as well," said Susan magnanimously. "For keeping her entertained when she caught a cold. Silly girl – I told Peter to set her by the fire straightaway, and to make certain she stayed, but she would make such a fuss going about all of Cair Paravel on a thousand different errands before she was properly dry!"

Alexis was surprised. "Did I entertain her? This, I do not remember."

"You did – you let her draw you while she sat indoors propped up on cushions for a week, red-nosed and sneezing, while we five were merry outside because the weather was so agreeable." She sighed. "I recall thinking it must have been a great trial for you. Jo's more demanding – when it comes to her sketching – than any royal portrait artists."

"I think you have had a very... How do you say? Nar-rooow? Narrow," he struggled, rolling his rs, as he was prone to do when he was trying not to burble, "sampling of portrait artists. Jo's far sweeter than any of them. We had one in Archenland who insisted I wear the most... I don't know the word to describe them in your English." He shrugged one shoulder. "Well, at any rate, breeches I did not like. And his painting supplies were strong-smelling and made me cough. Jo is not like this at all."

"Alexis?"

"Yes?"

Susan inhaled and then slowly released her breath. "You understand us – me – pretty well now, don't you?"

"How do you mean?"

"I mean, when we first met you, we talked so differently, you didn't always know what we were saying. But it's been nearly a year, and your accent is not so thick as it was, and you seem to know what I'm talking about easily enough when we have our walks like this."

"Oh," he said; "yes."

They'd come to a stop by a bed of blue and pink hyacinths, and it was such a lovely spot, Susan couldn't think of a better one at which to have the conversation she was contemplating. She would have preferred, greatly, if this could be a subject he broached, as it seemed the proper way, him being the boy and all, but she was also a queen and there had been a kind of language barrier between them before...and it had been months...

"If I wished to speak to you on a... A very dear matter..." She turned to look at him, staring up into his face. "Well, I was wondering if you think you would be able to understand me all right."

His brow furrowed. She was losing him a bit; she was not making this sudden speech of hers very easy for him to follow, perhaps because she was rather nervous. He nodded politely anyway.

Encouraged, she went on. She told him she cared for him, indeed had cared for some time, and would not be opposed to any expressions of his reciprocation if she was correct in her guess and he felt the same way.

Curiously, he did not understand.

The words – most of them, anyway – were clear enough, all words he had heard before in other contexts, but her meaning was not. He hadn't the slightest idea what she was trying to say. He shook his head at her, declared her soliloquy "very strange," and – as the sun vanished overhead and he glanced up at the gathered clouds – remarked it looked like rain.

Susan deflated, disappointed. This was not going entirely to plan. By this point, she had anticipated him taking her hand in his and – perhaps – even bending forward to kiss her. She'd never had a kiss before.

Instead, he was remarking on the weather and, as if his offhanded comments were oracular, a grey-tinted raindrop landed on the end of her nose before a steady drizzle began. Susan groaned. Her hair would frizz, she was certain it would. "Oh, pooh!" And she hugged herself, rubbing at her arms.

Alexis took off his cape and put it around her shoulders, patting it down in place.

"Thank you." Chivalry wasn't dead, at least.

"We should go inside."

"Yes," she agreed reluctantly. "Ten to one it'll clear in an hour, but until then..." And they began down the path at a brisker pace, side by side, Susan holding the cape by the clasp and lapel, closed at the throat. "Alexis, you understood some of what I said just then, didn't you?"

"Some."

She was uncertain what to make of that answer.

But it was progress, surely?

When King Lune arrived for his first diplomatic visit – familial, in the case of Alexis, though neither cousin, it must be admitted, had especially strong recollections of the other – he brought gifts for the Pevensies, for the four new kings and queens and for the Lady Josephine and Sir Royce. He brought them silks and furs and – not knowing Jo's hair was too short to make use of them – he brought pearl-handled gold hair-combs for all the girls.

Lune brought silks and furs for his cousin as well, but also two things he thought would please Alexis a great deal more.

One was the boy's own dog, a brown-and-cream spaniel called Happy he hadn't seen in over three years. Catching the sight and scent of his old owner, the poor spaniel – whose nose had been near drooping to the marble floor of the great hall – suddenly seemed to lose years and ran to Alexis in a very puppy-like fashion. After their reunion, Lucy – who at seeing the spaniel and his silky ears – had been dying to cuddle him, forced herself to be very dignified and asked him how he did and offered her hand, knowing by then how Talking animals hated to be cooed over, no matter how objectively darling their appearance might be. She had a shock when – though he gave her his paw very nicely – he only whined, rather than say any sort of greeting. Alexis explained his spaniel was not, in fact, a Talking dog. Lucy had a good laugh over this, pointing out she could hardly have guessed, since even Edmund's horse Philip could talk, and Peter's unicorn.

"But Susan's horse can't, Lu," Peter reminded her. "So you knew there were some ordinary animals in Narnia."

And Lucy nodded and scratched the dog's left ear.

The other thing Lune brought was small and slipped – unseen by the others – into Alexis's hand with a low murmur, a brief whisper of explanation, that brought tears to the former prince's eyes.

Susan was not to discover what this was until after Lune's departure, when she found Jo sitting on the edge of the raised dais at an hour when the great hall was usually empty, something clenched in her closed left fist and a dazed – but not unhappy – look on her face as she stared, rather dreamily, at a row of dust motes swaying in the late-day sunlight.

Jo said nothing as Susan walked over and sat down beside her. "What's up, Jo?" She added, "You look–" stopping because, honestly, she hadn't any idea what her sister looked like.

She'd never seen her look this way before.

Jo's thin shoulders were shaking and – for an instant – Susan thought she'd had a real shock, even a terrible one, and was crying, before she realised there were no tears on her face and her lips were curving upward. She turned and stared – with wholly-dazzled dark eyes that took in nothing – at Susan by her side as if just now discovering she was there.

"You're glad," Susan said, rather relieved.

"Yeah, I guess." Her fingers unfolded, uncurled like the petals of a flower, and – at the centre of her palm – was a diamond ring. "It was his mum's," she said, when Susan said nothing. "Her engagement ring. He said he wanted me to have it." She swallowed hard. "He wants to marry me as soon as I'm old enough."

"K-king Lune does?" stammered Susan, befuddled. "He's a great deal too old for you, Jo. Even if you wait several years yet, he shan't become any younger in the meanwhile." And, for some reason, she'd thought he was already married...

"What? No! Not King Lune!" Jo was indignant. She blinked in disgust at her sister, who she couldn't believe would think her dumb enough to accept a marriage proposal from a man old enough to be her father she'd just met a handful of days earlier. "Don't be thick, Su."

That was when she knew. Knew absolutely. Well before Jo's lips formed the name, "Alexis," Susan realised, and so she knew.

"Alexis wants to marry you?" she croaked, her throat gone dry. "But that doesn't–" That doesn't make sense.

Of course it did, though.

All of it made sense now.

Alexis's very real fear over Jo nearly being drowned; his endless 'tolerance' for spending copious amounts of time with her even when her siblings got bored and abandoned her for more pressing duties and interesting occupations; the countless glances in her direction Susan had always written off as concern or confusion depending on the occasion...

It had always been Jo he fancied, from that first night at the coronation ball, when he'd danced with her twice before he ever deigned to remember Susan was in the same room with them.

Perhaps – and Susan's heart sank as it struck her – even the daisy he'd given her, the day Aslan introduced them, had been intended for her sister and he'd been too polite to take it back from her hands and correct the mistake.

Edmund had seen it; probably the others, too.

A drooling half-wit could have seen what was going on.

Susan herself could have, easily, if she'd wanted to.

Only she hadn't wanted to.