[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

[sai_delgado]

This Rilian does not know me. Shock widens his eyes before it burns away into something far more grim and coldly focused.

(we've a saying - to have forgotten the face of one's father)

He remembers Roland's agony when Jake's mind had been stolen from him, both before and after he woke. It's easy to see the same agony in the man before him now, carefully controlled or not, and he understands very clearly some things which have come before.

(was it something I said?)

(if you think me some soft and sheltered fool who has never known pain and loss and grief)

They were already at a slow walk, but he reins Kiseki to a stop. It's hard to bow from saddle-back, but he manages it, hand to chest.

"I have offended, and I cry your pardon." Cuthbert straightens and meets his eyes. One hand lightly brushes the gun at his hip. "And if there's aught we can do... well, it wouldn't be the first time we've dealt with such."

(you have sinned against the White - and I consign you forever to the black)

[the_seafarer]

Caspian draws Duncan to a halt, and the look in his eyes is older by far than the face they're in: older and weary and full of grief. "Thee have not offended," he replies, falling without thinking into formality before he shakes himself out of it.

"You couldn't have known. Hardly anyone here does, except Susan and the Pevensies. I haven't had it in me to tell Reep."

It's selfish, perhaps, and weak, but he dreads having to tell that loyal and martial Mouse any part of this horrible story. "It'll break his heart."

[sai_delgado]

"I can see that. He's devoted to you."

He's seen that look before, in Roland's eyes; Roland after Susan's loss, after Gilead's loss, after the desert, after everything. He's tempted to respond with a ka-mai's instinct, but quashes it as best he can for now and makes himself try thinking around corners instead.

"What you said before," he says, finally. "No enchantment is insurmountable. I have to believe that. Around here, especially."

[the_seafarer]

"Aye," he agrees, and nudges Duncan back into that slow walk, tipping his head to Cuthbert in indication they should move on. "And I know it will be broken – eventually. What I don't know is if it can – or even should – be broken before it's meant to be."

He takes a deep breath and forces himself back at the matter at hand. "So, you see, I was relieved when Aslan's name had some effect on Susan. It had none at all on Rilian, save to confuse and dismay him."

Caspian gives Cuthbert a wry glance. "I was talking to her, you know, the night Rilian – the Knight – came in. She saw it all."

[sai_delgado]

Caspian's observation draws a grim nod from him. Sending Roland back out on the road that led to the desert was one of the hardest things he's ever had to do in his life. Afterlife. Both. He doesn't want to think what that might be like for a man with his own son.

(he has to forget)

"Are you sure it was the name?" he asks, after a moment. "Or was it that it wasn't something that fit her recollection of - of what happened?"

He blinks, then, and a sudden grin flashes. "Gods above and below, she always was trig."

[the_seafarer]

Caspian frowns at him, curious. "Go on," he says.

"What is it you've thought of?"

[sai_delgado]

"Nothing as useful as you're likely thinking." Cuthbert shrugs. "For all that the Guardians are well-known in our world, they don't hang around to say hile or anything like that. More known in old stories and rhymes, may it do ya. So if she were ... confused ... hearing the Lion's name might have reached her undermind because it wasn't expected. The part of her mind where you go when you're hypnotized, I mean, like we did earlier."

He gathers Kiseki a little as the horse's attention wanders enough to have him trying to drift off the path, then looks back at Caspian.

"I knew she knew something, because she asked me not to push you about it, but she's not really good at keeping secrets from us. Or so I thought. I guess she thought this one was important enough to keep."

[the_seafarer]

"I told her I'd tell you myself," he replies. "I didn't want her to keep my secrets from you... I ought to have told you both the story before now, I suppose."

But he hadn't wanted to, for more reasons than just the pain and grief that come hand in hand with it.

Around them, the path is slowly shifting, as it had before: there's a hint of green to the leaves, and the scent of flowers on the air. "I think you're right about the effect, too. The Lion is the only real connection I know of between my world and yours."

[sai_delgado]

"No reason you should have felt you had to." Cuthbert eyes the changing foliage. "'Other worlds than these.' Speaking of, are we tripping over the edge of the Dreaming, or were you expecting this?"

[the_seafarer]

And yet, if he had, would there have been less chance of him and Cuthbert clashing the night before? He shakes his head; impossible to know. No one is ever told any stories but their own, after all.

"I was expecting it," Caspian assures him. "We're on the way to the garden, now."

[sai_delgado]

"And this just appeared one day?" Cuthbert shakes his head. "Glad you were with her when it did."

He glances sideways at Caspian. "She tell you that I scolded her for going in? Tried, anyway."

[the_seafarer]

"What, into the garden?"

He can't quite help his surprised chuckle; both at the thought of the garden being a danger and at the mental image of Cuthbert attempting to scold a stubborn-jawed Susan. The former, he understands – hearing about such a thing, when from a world like the one the gunslingers called home, no doubt would put one on edge.

The latter, though... "Aye? And how did that fare for you?"

[sai_delgado]

"Pretty much as you're probably figuring." He sounds rueful, but there's laughter in his eyes. "She's got a temper sometimes, so she does."

[the_seafarer]

"Aye," Caspian agrees, a smile twitching at his lips. "She can be very fierce, indeed."

A good thing, as far as he's concerned. She'll need her temper before all is said and done, he thinks.

The temperature is steadily warming. Caspian loosens his scarf and points ahead. There's no very clear sign of the garden yet, aside from a haze of green ahead of them, but the trees around the path seem to be clearing, and that peaceful, loving feeling he associates with the tree-sisters is settling on him like soothing fingers. "Look," he says. "Do you see it?"

[sai_delgado]

"Yar." Perhaps strangely, Cuthbert does not look entirely soothed.

(peace of the clearing)

"Just so we're clear, you're sure this leads nowhere but a garden?"

[the_seafarer]

"Yes," Caspian promises. "I swear it. Touch the trees that line the path, Cuthbert; they're real. The garden isn't a perfect place dreamed into being, only a beloved one, where flowers may grow in the depths of winter."

[sai_delgado]

He relaxes a little and nods to Caspian. "All right. I mean, it didn't seem likely to find the clearing at the end of the path out here... but stranger things have happened. And ka or not, none of us is ready to go through that door until it's time."

[the_seafarer]

He nods back. "You won't," he says, hoping that by saying it he might make it true.

There is a clearing, of course, at the end of this path, but the magic within it is of rooted, growing things – a green magic, not white or black. Caspian walks Duncan into the garden proper, and swings off the saddle before leading the gelding to the patch of grass where he and Susan have both left the horses before.

Beyond them, the garden stretches, peaceful and warm. Birdsong trills through the air, and a fat, confused bumblebee comes bobbing near Cuthbert's ear.

And near – though not very near – he can see the birch-woman tending to a row of flowers.

[sai_delgado]

He dismounts and ground-ties Kiseki to graze before scanning the area in more than a quick glance. Cuthbert's eyes are wide as he takes in the garden around them.

He doesn't recognize all the different kinds of plants he sees, but of those he does, he's sure he's seeing them in multiple seasons of growth, strange as it may be. Among the wildflowers he spots the yellow silkflowers he'd only known in Gilead, and on the light breeze he catches the faint scent of blosswood trees in bloom.

"Tears of my mother," he breathes. "I take back any and all objections."

[the_seafarer]

Caspian waits for him to look about, and breathes deep of the flower- and fruit-scented air. It's not the same as Aslan's Country, and that's all for the better, for this. "Come," he offers, and leads Cuthbert along one of the garden's branching paths, towards where the birch-woman stands, her leaves the warm emerald green of summer.

Drawing near, he stops and bows. "Sister," he says. "We came to thank you for your help, and to beg of you a favor. This is my friend, Cuthbert Allgood."

[sai_delgado]

He bows as well, leg extended and hand in a triple-tap at his throat, as formal a bow as any he's ever given.

"Long days and pleasant nights, sai," he says. "You helped my friend Susan, and I say thankya, for that."

[the_seafarer]

Curiosity from the birch-woman. She sways as if in a wind, her branches brushing carefully over Cuthbert's bowed head. her voice comes in a half-heard murmur, like a memory tickling their minds. You are welcome, sapling.

Amusement. Her leaves brush Cuthbert's hat. The others do not wear such leaves on their heads. How strange.

[sai_delgado]

Cuthbert looks up at her with a bright grin. "You say true, and I say thankya. I've long despaired of their good sense that way," he laughs.

He tips the hat from his head and walks it deftly over his knuckles and into the palm of his hand in a tumble, then offers it up for her examination.

[the_seafarer]

He can feel the birch-woman's amusement grow, like a mother indulging a child's playfulness. Against Cuthbert's light quickness, the birch-woman seems to move even more slowly, but her leaves rustle with a light breeze that spirals around Cuthbert's hat, carrying a few petals of some bloom unknown to Caspian with it. They swirl about the gunslinger's outstretched hand like a blessing.

It is good, sapling, she tells him, then turns her regard on them both. Speak your request.

[sai_delgado]

He dons his hat, heedless of flower petals, and straightens to face her.

"Today is a year since Susan - since she left our world," he chooses, with a quick glance at Caspian. Mentioning a bonfire to a tree-being just doesn't seem quite right.

"It wasn't easy for her, and she's haunted by dreams and what we fear is ill magic as the eve approaches. We'd keep her safe--" He indicates Caspian as well as himself, then continues, "we and another friend, and stand watch with her through the night, but we seek a place of refuge in which to do so."