Work Text:
Six days from Redhaven[1]
Edmund had been in Narnia less than an hour and already he felt a sense of adventure and excitement he never had in England. Technically, although the Lone Islands paid tribute to Narnia, the waters in between were not property of the Narnian crown, even during the days of his own reign. But although Narnia-the-country was special, Narnia-the-world was still full of magic, even Calormine and these isolated waters.
It would be nicer, though, if Eustace hadn’t been brought along, as well. “I don’t know how you can be so proud of this dinky little boat,” grumbled Eustace, careful to stand on the other side of Lucy when he made his remark so as to avoid another jab in the side from Edmund’s elbow. Caspian continued to give them a tour of the Dawn Treader, as though he hadn’t heard Eustace, and brought them to the poop, where Rhince and another man was at the tiller.
Eustace, as always, was unable to take a hint, and continued complaining. “Where are your instruments? Your radio? Your compass?” His eyes seemed to bulge out at the last, as though just being hit with the sheer primitiveness of the set-up, and said, “We’re all going to die,” with absolute certainty.
“Do you mean the compass rose? Drinian should have the maps. And radio?” asked Caspian, having learned already to mine Eustace’s ravings for what nuggets of information about England and the rest of his world and ignore the insults. Eustace, for once, didn’t snatch the opportunity to show off, but continued to mutter about doom.
In his place, Lucy answered, “I don’t think compasses work here, but a radio lets you hear things from far away. They’ll play music or the news or a program in one town, and you can hear it in another.”
“Fascinating! How does it work?” asked Caspian, eager to add another stroke to his mental image of their world.
“Er, actually I’m not sure. They broadcast the sound through the air and then there are these machines that let you hear it. Edmund?” said Lucy, looking towards him for help.
“Oh, who cares,” dismissed Edmund, annoyed that even now Eustace could derail things to focus on England yet again.
Nineteen days from Narrowhaven[2]
Edmund marveled that even after rowing all day on a half-ration of water, on a ship in tatters after a storm, and not knowing if they would ever find land again, a day in Narnia was better than even the holidays in England. This was even true with Eustace sulking in the corner after Edmund made him quit pestering Lucy for her share of dinner.
In the downtime, when off the rowing shifts, they told stories to keep their spirits up. Caspian had told the story of the first skirmish against the Ettinsmoor giants, Edmund had told of the Battle of Anvard and Prince Rabadash the Donkey, and Reepicheep told the story of Corin Thunder-fist and the Lapsed Bear of Stormness (much to the delight of Lucy and Edmund, who wondered what had happened to their old friends.)
When it was Lucy’s turn, Caspian asked for a story from England, Lucy obliged with the story of Sleeping Beauty. Caspian listened to her so raptly that Edmund felt obligated to explain that it was only a fairy tale.
“There’s no magic where we come from. Our world isn’t anything special, really. It’s nothing like Narnia,” finished Edmund.
Edmund would have expected Eustace to speak up in defense of his home, but perhaps he was still too sulky, so it was Lucy instead who spoke. “You know, in our world, there is a type of stone that points to the true north. We call it the lodestone. However you turn or shake it, if you let it go free, it always remembers. But it isn’t the stone alone that has this property, but our entire world, and the stone is simply aligning itself to the turnings of our world. It doesn’t work in Narnia. Peter tried to use it to help us travel to Caspian’s camp from Cair Paravel when we came back to Narnia last time, to no avail, though perhaps we still would have gotten lost given how much the land had changed since we reigned. In the world we come from, just as we do here, we use the sun and stars for navigation, but even lost in the densest forest or out at sea on a night filled with clouds, we can still find the north.”
Everyone sat silent, engrossed at Lucy’s words. Then, Eustace broke the spell. “You know, there's a difference between magnetic and geographic north.”
Edmund rolled his eyes, relieved at the interruption. “Shut up, Eustace.”
Six days from Burnt Island[3]
Although Eustace was very much improved since leaving Dragon Island, a day of rain and losing two games of chess to Reepicheep was trying for his newly developing character. “No, I don’t want to play again,” snapped Eustace to Reepicheep, and he walked over to where Lucy, Caspian and Edmund were watching the sea and said, “I swear he just likes rubbing it in, and he knows there’s absolutely nothing else to do on this boat but go back to him and lose again. What I would give to have a map so at least I’d know how much longer it would be.”
“What are ships like in your world?” asked Caspian, pouncing on the opening Eustace provided.
"Well, there’s none of this aimless drifting, hoping we run into an island. They’ve got the world more or less charted out, at least the parts of it that are of any use to anybody. In our world, there are ships that move without sails, so there’s no worry about calms or wind direction or rowing. There are ships that are so large that they’re almost like floating pieces of land, with all the conveniences of modern life, like bathrooms. I miss bathrooms. And you don’t get the feeling that you’re cut off from the rest of civilization, since there’s always the radio. So, the ship’s crew could call for help if something happened."
Caspian’s face lit up at the mention of the radio. “Lucy told me about those. I don’t know why Edmund insists there is no magic in your world, since that is powerful indeed.”
“Actually, Edmund’s right, it’s not magic. I could tell you how radios work if you want,” offered Eustace, and soon they were engrossed in discussion, as if they were kindred spirits meeting at long last.
Edmund felt a perverse sense of annoyance at how well Caspian and Eustace were getting along, and instead of joining them, he turned to Lucy, who still gazed out at the sea.
“Why are we here?” he asked, giving voice to some of the irrational frustration that had been simmering during the trip. “No one needs us this time. I love Narnia, but it’s just going to make leaving her once again worse. I wish we could have gone to America with Susan instead.”
“Maybe Aslan didn’t bring us here Narnia’s sake this time. Maybe it was for ours,” Lucy speculated.
Edmund followed her gaze over to where Eustace was gesturing his hands to try to demonstrate to Caspian how airplanes worked. He smiled ruefully and admitted, “I guess I have no place to complain considering what happened when we first entered Narnia. He’s changed a lot, hasn’t he.”
“I didn’t just mean him,” said Lucy.
Two days from Ramandu’s island[4]
Edmund didn’t understand how Caspian could be so thrilled at the thought of a round world, not when they were drinking the waters of the last sea, not when they were sailing straight towards the literal edge of the world, but he couldn’t bring himself to dim the excitement in Caspian’s eyes.
Instead, he let Caspian marvel and turned to Lucy instead. “Did you ever figure out why you were brought here this time?” asked Edmund.
“I think so. I saw Him - Aslan - at Coriakin’s house.” Lucy fell silent, and Edmund, knowing his own shames, didn’t ask what she had realized there.
“You’ve seen Aslan. Eustace saw him. I guess I just need to wait for a revelation of my own” said Edmund, half-joking.
“I don’t think you need Aslan for that,” said Lucy. When Edmund nodded at her to go on, she continued, “I think back in England you decided that you were a stranger and a pilgrim on earth waiting to go back to your own country, and then you finally came here, and there was Eustace and Caspian, constantly reminding you about England. You see Eustace, with his dead beetles pinned on cards and dry books full of diagrams, and you think that’s all the magic in our world, and it disappoints you. You’re wrong, though. Maybe you should have gone to America with Susan, because it was she and Peter who explained it to me that there are wonders in our world too, to those with eyes to see.”
“But what if I can’t see it?” asked Edmund.
“Have you tried?” replied Lucy in return.
He stood with her in silence and meditation until the too large sun set and the stars came out, the stillness of the last sea working on them already. Then, Edmund went to the stern cabin he shared with Caspian and Eustace and pulled Caspian by the hand from there to the deck where Lucy still stood to look at the stars.
Still clasping Caspian’s hand in his, Edmund squeezed Lucy’s hand with his other and said, “When we were on Ramandu’s Island, Eustace said that in our world, stars are huge balls of flaming gas. They’re unimaginably large, far larger than even a thousand of our Earths put together. In our world, it is not just the stars which dance the celestial dance. Earth does too. And when you look out at night, you can look backwards to the beginning of time itself.”
Notes
[1] It’s madness to come out into the sea in a rotten little thing like this. Not much bigger than a lifeboat. And, of course, absolutely primitive indoors. No proper saloon, no radio, no bathrooms, no deck-chairs. I was dragged all over it yesterday evening and it would make anyone sick to hear Caspian showing off his funny little toy boat as if it was the Queen Mary. I tried to tell him what real ships are like, but he’s too dense. E. and L., o f course, didn’t back me up. I suppose a kid like L. doesn’t realize the danger and E. is buttering up C. as everyone does here.
-Chapter Two: On Board the Dawn Treader
[2] “And what are we to do about the Sleepers?” asked Caspian. “In the world from which my friends come” (here, he nodded at Eustace and the Pevensies) “they have a story of a prince or a king coming to a castle where all the people lay in an enchanted sleep. In that story he could not dissolve the enchantment until he had kissed the Princess.”
“But here,” said the girl, “it is different. Here he cannot kiss the Princess till he has dissolved the enchantment”
- Chapter Thirteen: The Three Sleepers
[3] For some five days they ran before a south-south-east wind, out of sight of all lands and seeing neither fish nor gull. Then they had a day when it rained hard till the afternoon. Eustace lost two games of chess to Reepicheep and began to get like his old and disagreeable self again, and Edmund said he wished they could have gone to America with Susan.
-Chapter Eight: Two Narrow Escapes
[4] “But look -here,” said Eustace, “this is all rot. The world’s round - I mean, round like a ball, not like a table.”
“Our world is,” said Edmund. “But is this?”
“Do you mean to say,” asked Caspian, “that you three come from a round world (round like a ball) and you’ve never told me! It’s really too bad of you. Because we have fairy-tales in which there are round worlds and I always loved them. I never believed there were any real ones. But I’ve always wished there were and I’ve always longed to live in one. Oh, I’d give anything - I wonder why you can get into our world and we never get into yours? If only I had the chance! It must be exciting to live on a thing like a ball. Have you ever been to the parts where people walk about upside-down?”
Edmund shook his head. “And it isn’t like that,” he added. “There’s nothing particularly exciting about a round world when you’re there.”
-Chapter Fifteen: The Wonders of the Last Sea