[au] Narnia and the North

[the_seafarer]

There's a chill bite to the air, these days. The horses have been growing out their winter coats, and they look shaggy and plump as Caspian turns them out into the paddocks. Behind the stables, in the makeshift woodshop he'd cobbled together, the sleigh from his drawings is starting to come together. 

He hopes he'll have it finished by Christmas. With a little luck, and maybe some assistance, he thinks it should be possible. The tack, he's largely left up to Susan's devices, though he'd commission Gimli the dwarf for the various buckles and other metal pieces they'll need.

Once the horses are turned out, he gets to his other morning chores with a will, whistling cheerfully as he does. The stable stays strangely quiet around him. It takes him the better part of an hour to realize the strangeness is because he's become accustomed to Susan's cheerful presence working alongside him, talking or humming or simply working in companionable silence. 

Caspian pauses in his task – refilling the grain chest – and looks around. Susan's nowhere to be seen, and when he later wanders through the stables, checking each stall and outside, he can't find her there, either.

Comments

[the_seafarer]

Cornelius comes forward to take her hands in his, beaming at her from behind his long gray beard. He's shorter than her, and much rounder than them both, and his eyes are as clear and twinkling as Caspian remembers. "Susan," he says. "An auspicious name, in these lands. Welcome, welcome. Come in, if you like. There are a good many stairs to climb to get to this room; take your ease a moment."

[sai_delgado]

"Only if we'd not be disturbing ye," she says, to be polite, although she's certain-sure that Caspian'd love to spend a while with this man, and suspects Cornelius feels the same. "Ye looked busy, through the door."

[the_seafarer]

Caspian guides her politely to an overstuffed armchair and stands nearby, while Cornelius sits back down at his desk and chuckles. "Oh, I have all the time for dusty academics and research I could wish for, here. But to meet someone new, that is a rare pleasure."

[sai_delgado]

Susan peers up at Caspian and pats the arm of the chair in invitation, then glances around for another. Surely he doesn't intend to hover over them?

"I'll try to live up to yer hopes then, sai," she laughs.

[the_seafarer]

Caspian takes a seat on the arm of her chair and winks down at her, while Cornelius looks fascinated. "Never have I heard an accent such as yours," he marvels. "From which land have you come? The Lone Islands?"

[sai_delgado]

"Further than that, I wot," Susan tells him. "I've crossed here from another world entire, do'ee ken? From Mid-World. I'm of a town called Hambry, the seat o'barony for the Barony of Mejis."

She says it all easily, not allowing herself to dwell on any of the unhappy things, but instead focusing on the pleasure of sharing her world with another so.

[the_seafarer]

"Well, the Lion says 'all times are soon,'" his old tutor muses. "So perhaps 'all worlds are one. Or near enough, at any rate, once the bonds of reality have lifted."

His bright eyes twinkle at her. "You know, his Majesty there was desperate for stories of other worlds as a child."

[sai_delgado]

"Other worlds than these," she agrees, pleased at the thought of not having to lose those she's come to care for from worlds beyond her own.

"We've a similar saying - 'time is a face on the water,' and I've always found it so, say true."

There's clear mischief in the glance she tosses at Caspian, then. "Were he? Aye, and I can see it. I'd love to hear what he were like as a boy, if ye'd not mind the telling."

[the_seafarer]

"Shall I step outside?" Caspian teases, laughing. "So you may talk in peace?"

Cornelius winks at Susan, then leans forward, conspiratorial. "To be honest, he was quite a quiet lad," he tells her. "Always daydreaming. His old nurse told me he used to try to get the castle pets to speak to him."

[sai_delgado]

Susan wrinkles her nose at Caspian. "Thee are braver than that," she teases, before turning back to the doctor. Fog-gray eyes widen in true surprise.

"Quiet? Do'ee say so? Say true?"

[the_seafarer]

Caspian leans an arm on the back of the chair, his smile tinged slightly wry, as Cornelius laughs. "Never would guess it now, would you? But he was a good and curious scholar, a dutiful Prince, and a kind lad, which was worth more than all the rest."

[sai_delgado]

Realization strikes her all of an instant. Of course Caspian's youth in his uncle's house would have been different. She reaches for his free hand, unthinking, and as she holds to it she brushes her thumb over the inside of his wrist in apology and comfort both.

"He's still curious, and kind, and good," she replies. "But ye know that already." Seeking to shift the topic just a little, she adds, "He told me ye taught him of magic, sai?"

[the_seafarer]

He laces his fingers with hers and squeezes them, gently. "Only the theory," Cornelius tells her. "Miraz didn't think it appropriate for a Prince to learn anything else."

To himself, Caspian thinks his uncle wasn't likely to have him be taught anything that Miraz himself did not already know, in order to mitigate any threat from his young nephew. But Cornelius goes on. "I myself only dabble in the stuff. Tricky business, magic."

[sai_delgado]

"Tricky indeed," Susan says, and oh, but she can't keep her tone from being a little wry. "But mayhap safer here in sai Aslan's Country than elsewhere."

[the_seafarer]

"This is a place of Deep Magic," Cornelius agrees, solemn. "Deep Magic from before the dawn of time. And of only the good sort, my dear. Never fear."

Caspian looks down at her. "Doctor Cornelius here was the one who found Queen Susan's Horn," he says. "Which turned the tide of our rebellion."

[sai_delgado]

"I'd not, never in life," she hastens to assure Cornelius, worried that she's offended him somehow. "Not here, say true, and not with - with His Majesty, ever."

Susan tips her head back to look up at Caspian, curiosity alight. "The - thee've told me of this, haven't ye? The one thee used to call them?" She doesn't wait for the answer before looking back to Cornelius. "However did'ee find it?"

[the_seafarer]

"Through much trial and trouble and complex spellcraft," Cornelius replies. "And it took me many months, wandering through dangerous parts of the country – for all of Old Narnia had been driven into hiding, in those days. But find it I did, deep in the woods of Lantern Waste."

[sai_delgado]

Lantern Waste, she repeats, silently. Not a desert, nay, but a waste land all the same, it seems.

(the road of trials)

"It were very brave of ye," she murmurs.

[the_seafarer]

"I was young and foolhardy," Cornelius tells her, kindly. "But it was all worth it, in the end."

"And more," Caspian puts in. "If you had never found the horn, Doctor, I doubt we might have won the war."

[sai_delgado]

"Ka like a wind," Susan murmurs, even as a flicker of wonderment passes through her thoughts.

Roland had had a horn as well. The Horn of Eld; the Horn o'Deschain. Blown by Cuthbert at Jericho Hill, and lost there, until Joe and the door and a number of things had happened. He has it now, again, still, wherever he is, and--

He reaches it, Moiraine had said.

Susan shakes her head, pushes the near-idle thoughts aside, and beams a bright smile at them both. "It must have been a wonder to hear."

[the_seafarer]

"Like nothing I'd ever heard before or since," Caspian agrees. "Sweet and clear and still strong enough to make the hillsides ring."

[sai_delgado]

As Caspian speaks, she tries to imagine it, and wonders if the call of the horn sounds anything like the song of the rose Eddie had told her of.

“And ye knew what would happen?” she asks them both. “When ye winded it?”

[the_seafarer]

"Not precisely," Cornelius tells her. "Legend only said that if the horn was winded in our darkest hour, help would come. It did not specify what form that help would take."

"Some thought it might bring us an army," Caspian says. "Others, that it might call Aslan Himself to our aid. Doctor Cornelius believed it likely to call back the High King and his brethren, and he was correct."

[sai_delgado]

“How wise ye are,” Susan tells Cornelius, admiration in her look and tone. “And how clever to discover it all.”

[the_seafarer]

The good Doctor chuckles. "A lifetime spent in study of Old Narnia did then bear fruit," he agrees, modestly.

"But we weren't certain where the help would arrive, if it would come directly to us on the battlefield or somewhere else. I surmised that if it were the High King and his consorts, they might appear where they'd been lost – in Lantern Waste – or where they'd lived – here, in the castle of Cair Paravel. So his Majesty dispatched Pattertwig the Squirrel to Lantern Waste and the Dwarf Trumpkin to what was left of the castle, and determined to blow the horn at dawn the next morning."