Fic: [Narnia] The Exhaustion of Dawn

[intrikate88]

Title: The Exhaustion of Dawn
Author: intrikate88
Recipient: bedlamsbard
Rating: G
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers only for Magician’s Nephew; warnings for general depictions of mental illness.
Summary:
After coming back from the War with little more than a debilitating
case of shell shock, Digory has trouble believing that the world, which
seems to be falling apart around him, is anywhere he would want to stay.
While staying with Polly to recuperate, he investigates the rumor of
fairies that Uncle Andrew told him about, and finds more than he
expected, but perhaps exactly what he hoped for. For the Narnia Fic Exchange at narniaexchange.


And memories
When just for moments, landscapes out in France
Looked so like the English downlands that the heart
Checked and stood still…
Or then, the song and dance
Of Battalion concerts, in the shafts of light
From smoky lamps: the lines of queer, warped faces
Of men that are now dead: faces lit up
By inarticulate minds at sugary chords
From the vamping pianist beneath the bunting:
‘Until the boys come home!’ we sing. And fumes
Of wet humanity, soaked uniforms,
Wet flooring, smoking lamps, fill cubical
And wooden-walled spaces, brown, all brown,
With the light-sucking hue of the khaki… And the rain
Frets on the pitchpipe of the felted roof
Like women’s fingers beating on a door
Calling ‘Come Home’…. ‘Come Home’
Draw the long trail beneath the silent moon…
Who shall never come…

* * *

And all at once (they never knew exactly how it happened) the face seemed
to be a sea of tossing gold in which they were floating, and such a
sweetness and power rolled about them and over them and entered them
that they felt they had never really been happy or wise or good, or even
alive and awake, before. And the memory of that moment stayed with them
always, so that as long as they both lived, if ever they were sad or
afraid or angry, the thought of all that golden goodness, and the
feeling that it was still there, quite close, just round some corner or
just behind some door, would come back and make them sure, deep down
inside, that all was well. –The Magician’s Nephew

* * *

In short: Digory did not quite make it to the end of the War. Not because
he showed the white feather, which fear his uncle had used to goad him
when he was young, though it probably would have been preferable if he
had turned coward. Maybe it would have turned out better for all of his
men if he had.

Or maybe they would all have died anyway.

Digory spent three months in hospital. He probably should have stayed longer,
but he couldn’t bear seeing the haunted faces of all the other patients
and knowing he looked exactly the same. Still, he had to keep going to
doctors for stomach pains and the vision problems that just wouldn’t go
away, as well as some more unpleasant problems that didn’t bear speaking
of. It turned out that when left alone he didn’t notice days passing,
or remember to eat, or in fact get out of bed, so his mother came from
the country house to the house in London to take care of him, bringing
Uncle Andrew with her.

Digory felt even worse knowing that he was nearly forty and still needed his mother to take care of him, but
did not feel quite bad enough that it made him get out of bed, so for a
month they lived in the near-silent London house. The loudest sounds,
beside the commotion of traffic outside, were the cackles and rambling
from Uncle Andrew, who was approximately one hundred and eighty years
old, or at least ninety-five.

One afternoon, after Digory had spent the morning intermittently napping following a night spent
awake-but-with-nightmares, his mother shook him awake.

“You need some fresh air and sunshine,” she said briskly. “You’re going to sit outside with your uncle.”

“I’m too tired, Mother,” he muttered, trying to bury himself in blankets.

“And I’m going to strangle that old fool if he starts talking about Mrs. Lefay again,” Mabel announced. “Get up.”

Which
was how Digory found himself in the garden with his back against the
apple tree he had grown from a Narnian apple, with Uncle Andrew by his
side chattering animatedly about Atlantis sinking into the ocean. Digory
tried not to think about wet nights in the trenches and what he would
have given to drown in some nice fresh seawater. He chose to change the
subject with a question.

“Why does Mother dislike Mrs. Lefay so much?”

“Well, you know magic, boy,” Uncle Andrew said vaguely. “Sometimes requires
specific things that common folk don't care for. Virgin’s blood. It
turned out by that point that Letty didn’t qualify, which surprised us
all, since she was always rather plain. Mrs. Lefay finished the spell,
but Mabel raised an awful fuss, and that was Mrs. Lefay’s last time in
jail.”

Digory thought this story was missing a few details. They
were, however, details about which his interest had suddenly vanished.
It might have been the first time such a thing had happened; he was
generally interested in finding out everything about everything.

“But you may yet find a fairy godmother for your children,” Andrew continued.

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Uncle Andrew. I don’t foresee any
children in my future.” Digory said, and stared at his hands.

There would be no wife, no children. There had only ever been Polly, and he
would make as unsuitable a husband for her as she would a wife for him,
besides which she was almost too old to have children, anyway.

They had discussed it, of course; had talked about how perhaps in some other
world where she could settle down and he could remove his face from his
books long enough to know what country he was in, their children would
wild in the country house as they grew old together. But every
discussion had ended with the agreement that such a thing was impossible
for them. It wasn’t that they didn’t want that life; they just weren’t capable of wanting it more than they wanted everything else.

Digory drew himself away from the memory, and thought back over the conversation. “Fairy godmother?” he said.

“I may not be a practising magician any longer, boy, but that doesn’t mean
I do not still have ears! Fairies have been seen in the north.” Uncle
Andrew delivered the words in grave, hushed tones, as if expecting
Digory to marvel at his wisdom. Some things hadn’t changed in thirty
years.

“Is this like last week, when you took your tablet and
thought you saw German soldiers digging a tunnel from our garden into
Whitehall?” Digory asked.

Andrew glared. “Wretched boy!” He pulled a wrinkled letter from his pocket and waved it at Digory with a
shaking hand. “I heard it from Mrs. Wright, in my theosophy circle.
Listen. ‘Though no one believes them but me, they do not recant their
story. My daughter and my niece have seen fairies in the garden, and by
the stream, and though I have not seen them yet for myself I know that
what they say is true. Rest assured that I will send you proof the
moment I have it for myself.’ You see?”

Digory raised an eyebrow. Mostly at himself, because he genuinely wondered what the point was of
arguing with Uncle Andrew. “You’re basing this on the word of an
excitable mother in…” he peered at the letter, “West Yorkshire, who
probably has nothing to do with her life but roll bandages and make jam.
Hardly conclusive evidence, Uncle Andrew.”

Andrew sniffed derisively, and carefully folded the letter before returning it to his
pocket. “With that attitude, you’ll never see anything magical.”

Digory thought of adventures, of other worlds, of chill winds whipping his
hair against his skin as Polly clung to his waist and he looked down at
the ground far below and the horse’s wings next to his legs. He thought
of the hope that kept him from falling from despondency into utmost
despair, how it felt like a lion’s breath and the sound of laughter from
around the next corner.

“Maybe,” Digory said, “but I think I have already seen more magic than most people do in one lifetime.”

* * *

The next morning, a letter from Polly arrived.

D.—

So you are finally out of the hospital, and I am finally out of The Hague,
and perhaps the War will stop troubling us long enough for us to get
our first good night of sleep in what feels like years. Negotiations in
the anti-war movement went about as expected, which is to say less than
anyone wanted but at least we were there. I do not know who I am more
frustrated with sometimes, the men who do not listen or the women in my
own suffragist movement who think it is our duty to support those men,
even as they send more and more boys to the trenches.

That is  part of the reason I did not stop in London upon my return, though I
want very much to see you: the London Society for Women's Suffrage and I
are on the outs and if they didn’t stir up trouble for me I would just
stir it up myself. (I am certain, however, that whatever happened it
would have made quite the diversion for you and all your fellow patients
in hospital; remember the elephant and all the police who swore they’d
never forget us?)

I have now settled for a while in a cottage in
Bingley, to help Catherine Marshall with both continuing work on the
franchise as well as the Women’s International League. You are welcome
to come join me; I would like your company and can even put you to work
writing and researching, if you wish for diversion. Or you can sit and
stare at the clouds, if you prefer.

Just come.

All my love,

Polly

“I think you should go,” said Digory’s doctor that afternoon.

“Go to Cottingley and find out about the fairies,” said Uncle Andrew.

“You once brought back my health,” said Digory’s mother. “Go see Polly. Do something for your own health.”

Digory did not have much fight in him left. He packed his bag, and sent a
telegram to warn of his arrival. When he boarded the train to Bradford,
for the first time since he had returned to England, his head stopped
hurting.

* * *

Polly was the only person at the station
when he arrived, and so she made free to embrace and kiss him in a
shockingly unladylike fashion, or at least, in a fashion that would have
been shocking if Digory hadn’t grown up with her.

He kissed her right back, then held up the bag he had brought with him. “I come
bearing apples from our tree, and wine from France,” he said.

“Excellent.” Polly’s eyes sparkled. “Maybe I’ll bring you home with me after all.”

“I was going to stay at the New Beehive Inn,” Digory protested, heaving
his suitcase into the back of the automobile. “For the sake of your
reputation.”

Polly rolled her eyes. “I’m an active suffragist who
regularly sees the inside of a jail cell,” she pointed out. “I’m in
deepest West Yorkshire working out ideas with Catherine Marshall about
international agreement and ending the War, which most people seem to
think makes me a traitor. I really do look forward to finding out what
greater indecencies you propose to inflict upon my reputation.”

“The doctors did say there was some risk I might take off all my clothes and
wander away,” offered Digory. “Wait, never mind, that was about Uncle
Andrew. Sorry to disappoint, I’ll probably just scandalize your
neighbours by sitting around and reading all the time.”

Polly, however, still had a look of horror on her face, presumably from the
thought of a denuded Uncle Andrew, and not in regards to any
scandalizing of her neighbours, which in fact she actually rather
enjoyed doing. She had gotten a full three days of peace and quiet after
putting those African fertility statues outside her cottage door.

“How is Mr. Ketterley, anyway?” she asked. “The last time I saw him he thought I was Jadis.”

“To be fair, you were bossing around a small army of women and muttering
about invading Parliament at the time,” Digory pointed out.

That earned him a solid punch in the arm, the delivery of which caused
Polly's car to swerve just slightly, which was in turn enough for Digory
to complain both about both her driving and her treatment of poor
invalids.

It was good to see her again.

They were back  to her cottage by the time Digory finished telling Polly how Uncle
Andrew was and then the state of the rest of the family, and finished
with the rumor of fairies that Andrew had told him to investigate;
Polly, it seemed, was acquainted with the two girls, Frances and Elsie,
who had seen them. They were actually quite close, it turned out, as
Cottingley was the next village over from Bingley, and Polly’s cottage
was the last house on the street before the fields took over. Apparently
being slightly distant from the rest of the people allowed Polly to
feel a bit free to indulge in her own style of decorating.

“I like the carvings,” Digory said, peering at the statues on each side of the front door. “West African?”

“Yes, from an Umbundu village.” She pushed open the front door and ushered
Digory inside. “I helped them get rid of a pack of missionaries who were
more interested in burying them in tracts than giving them food or
doing anything about all the fourteen-year-old girls dying in
childbirth. The Portuguese weren’t very happy about it at all, but at
least there’s a qualified doctor there now.

“I still had to leave rather quickly, though, before the soldiers came. That’s how I met
Frances—she was on the ship from South Africa with me. Didn’t seem like
the most sensible girl, but she’s young. The sort that would probably
think illustrations of rabbits in waistcoats are worth emulating with
pets, but probably wouldn’t see the point in carrying a game of pretend
to the point of making trouble.”

“No unleashing jewelry-thieving amazons into the streets of London for Frances, then?” Digory asked, grinning.

“She’s still young,” said Polly, grinning back. “Give me time.”

She opened a door. “Here’s your room, and also where I keep my desk, so
please don’t hesitate to write letters for me if you find you can’t
sleep.” Digory placed his suitcase at the end of the bed, and removed
his hat and placed it on top of it. Polly reached for his hand and
pulled him towards the kitchen. “Shall we open that bottle of wine,
now?”

* * *

That first night, Digory awoke, choking on
the taste of metal and gas and gunpowder, and trying to push the
sweat-sticky twisted bedclothes away from him. He didn’t quite manage to
start breathing again until after he had switched on the light, and it
was another minute before his heart slowed down enough and he could form
a coherent thought. This had not been the usual nightmare.

There had been an army; that was usual. There had been wounded soldiers. But
they were not men he knew. They were not men, at all.

What they  were, he wasn’t sure. They were tall, too tall, too quiet. It was all
too quiet. And there was something else about them that didn’t seem
right. But they, and the brightness of the flags they carried, were all
he could remember.

He spent the rest of the night in the kitchen, drinking tea and reading.

* * *

Asking Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright about the fairies turned out to be easier than Digory expected.

As the day after Digory arrived was a gloriously sunny summer day, and
even though he hadn’t really slept, he and Polly went hiking, stopping
for a pub lunch in Haworth and ending up near Cottingley late in the
afternoon. The sun cast long shadows through the wood they walked
through, and Digory was beginning to think about supper and how very
nice it was to work up an appetite. He was realizing how good of an idea
it had been to come up to this part of the country, where life was
simple and beautiful, and even though in many ways the world had gone
mad there was still a steadily beating heart of England where one could
come and make sense of things.

At exactly that moment, a small cat in a knitted bobble hat and a lumpy pink sweater sprinted past them,
yowling ferociously and attempting to shoot hair in all directions. A
moment later there was a scream, a splash, and a girl’s voice shouting,
“ROSEBUD, RUN!”

Polly looked at Digory, and raised her eyebrows.
The cat doubled back, having lost the hat, and attempted to climb Digory
as if he were a tree. Digory defended his face and ran with Polly
towards the source of the screaming.

It turned out there were two sources, both of them young ladies with a marvellous ability to
harmonize. The first was on the bank of Cottingley Beck, attempting to
pull the second girl out of the river and not having much luck. At first
glance, Digory thought that the girl in the river must have fallen
after getting her foot stuck between two stones, but then he looked
closer and saw his mistake.

Stones did not reach out arms and pull back.

He leapt to help the girl on the riverbank, pushing the part of his shirt
where the cat clung around to the back so that the scared little thing
could sink its claws into his spine and not be in the way of the rescue.

Polly grabbed a fallen branch and began beating at the creature rising from
the churning water, but even with two people, one of them a grown man,
trying to pull the girl in the river out, they couldn’t quite win the
struggle.

At last Polly delivered a great thwacking with the
branch, and something cracked loudly. Digory and the first girl went
stumbling and falling backwards, pulling the second girl and the
creature onto the riverbank with them, drenched and coughing. The cat
decided this would be an excellent time to depart, and used Digory’s
face as a jumping-off point to leap for the nearest tree from which to
watch the proceedings.

“Elsie!” cried the half-drowned girl. “Is Rosebud alright? Did she escape the clutches of that evil… thing?”

“Er, is Rosebud the cat?” asked Digory. The girl looked at him, as if it was the first time she had noticed his existence.

“Yes, that horrid creature tried to swipe my poor kitten off the rocks and drown her!”

Digory surveyed the concerned young lady, whose hair was askew and who was
already showing bruises on her forehead, arms, and ankles, and wearing a
dress that was clearly not going to be wearable again. “Rosebud is
fine,” he said, and pointed up at the tree where she sat.

Rosebud hissed at him. Rosebud had had a very trying day.

Polly stood over the four figures, leaning on her fearsome branch. “Frances, I
can’t imagine your aunt is going to be impressed with the state of you
when I take you home.” She pushed back her Panama hat from her face and
turned her gaze to what they had pulled out of the river with Frances.
“And what to do with you?” she wondered aloud.

“I think you should keep beating it with your stick,” suggested Frances.

“Just because something tries to tear you limb from limb and eat your cat is
no reason to bludgeon it to death,” Polly said with disapproval. “It may
have simply been a misunderstanding. However, it seems to be coming
round. You may want to back up.”

Elsie and Frances scrambled back. Digory did not, but looked closer at the creature as it stirred.
It was human-shaped, but if standing, would have been too tall, and it
had green skin. Not leaf-green, but pale and tinged, as if its skin was
translucent enough to see far too many blue-green veins through it.
Digory recalled his dream with a start; that was what he couldn’t
remember. They had been green, too.

It coughed up an impressive amount of water and then rolled over onto its back. Polly poked it. Its very large eyes opened.

“You may have just scared two girls witless,” Polly said sweetly, “but I
advise you to consider taking a different approach with me.”

The green creature surveyed her, and drew back slightly. “You have faced warlords and soldiers and weapons,” it rasped.

“That’s right.” Polly said. “And you’re just a woman in a stream. Was there any
particular purpose to you grabbing my young friend?”

“And my poor little Rosebud!”

The green creature—woman, apparently, though Digory hadn’t quite seen that
until Polly had pointed it out (and perhaps it was a good thing he was
never getting married, because that was not very flattering)—sat up, and
put a hand to her head. “I am… a traveller. I move between the worlds. I
am older, now, and I wish to rest. But I cannot stay anywhere unless
someone takes my place on the other side of the gate. The cat might have
worked, but the girl fell in instead.”

She directed a baleful glance in Frances’ direction. “I would have settled for her.”

Digory looked at the girls. “Is this fairy you’ve been talking about?”

“How did you know—“ started Elsie.

“Yes,” said Frances. “One of them.”

* * *

There were more, according to the girls, and more than that, according to the
woman from the stream, who allowed them to call her Jenny Greenteeth.
Whether she was the actual Jenny from folklore, Digory had no idea, but
she certainly had some affinity for water; she never stopped dripping.
(Frances, on the other hand, did eventually stop, but Rosebud, who had
unravelled most of her sweater by this point, would only leap back and
forth between Digory and Elsie until Frances was dry.)

Jenny led the four of them through the wood to Gilstead Crags. Elsie, having grown
up in Cottingley, was the only one of them there that knew the name of
where they were. The sun had set and a bright full moon had risen by the
time they got there, and surrounding the Crags were lights and mirrors,
flashing and reflecting the moon, and white streamers, blowing in the
breeze around lanterns and the effect was that of floating ghostly
lights. A soft glow emerged from a wide crack in the rock face, and
Jenny motioned for them to follow her through it.

The cavern inside was too large to actually be in the physical location it
occupied, Digory saw immediately. This was magic. The other thing he
noticed was the multitude of people similar to Jenny: tall, with
greenish skin stretched tightly over their bones; scattered here and
there were other people, looking as if they had various degrees of human
in them. The banners and tapestries adorning the walls were the same
bright silk he had seen in his dream.

The similarities were disconcerting. His vision blurred and went dark for a moment, and then cleared, leaving him briefly dizzy.

“Look at the food!” Elsie whispered to Frances.

“Don’t touch it,” Digory said sharply. There were tables around the cavern,
covered in plates of bread, bowls of fruit, platters of meat, and all of
it looked delicious. His stomach gurgled noisily, and suddenly the idea
of having worked up an appetite didn’t seem as good as it did before.
“Traditionally,” he clarified, “in folklore from all over the world,
fairy food has a bad reputation. We should stay away from it until we
know more.”

Jenny led them through the fairy hall, which was
more subdued and quiet than such a place should be. Digory was unsure if
that was just how it was --he had the impression of a deep grief from
Jenny's people-- or if it was all for the intruders. Polly and Digory
traded glances; Frances and Elsie were silent.

There was a man in the farthest corner of the cavern; he might not be a king, and was
not wearing a crown, but it was clear that everyone else revolved around
him. He sat with only a drink in hand, while everyone around him ate.
Digory removed his hat, feeling that it was only polite.

"I see your attempts failed, Jenny," the man remarked to the fairy woman. She nodded. "But why did you bring them back?"

"We were curious," said Digory, "to see the fairies. And to see if we could help, without harming any kittens."

Rosebud agreed loudly, and then jumped on a table to fiercely attack some grilled fish.

"We've travelled between worlds, too, sir," Polly added.

He looked down at her. "A long time ago.”

"Y-yes. A very long time ago.”

“But you came home,” the fairy king said, and seemed sad. “You had a home to go back to.”

His people had lost that, he told Polly and Digory. They could always walk
in the places between the worlds, peering through the hidden doorways at
places they passed and perhaps bringing things home with them, but
never able to stay. But then there was a war in their world, one that
kept spreading.

There was always a war, Digory thought.

The fairies had fled. When they returned, their entire world was gone.

“My people are tired of drifting,” the man concluded. “Whenever we try to
settle in a new world, we cannot stay. Not unless someone from that
world stays here. It seems a balance must be preserved.” He fixed his
eyes on Jenny. “Though usually the trade is done willingly.”

“Sir,” Digory said, “have you ever gone to a world called Narnia?”

The fairy king considered. “There have been so many that I can’t remember,” he confessed. “But it sounds familiar.”

“It has lots of talking animals,” Polly prompted.

The king waved a hand at the table by him. “You could find it for yourself,
you know. The food will keep you here, and let my people stay in your
world. If you wished to see Narnia again.”

Digory looked from the king, to Polly, to the food and wine close enough to reach for. Nearly
thirty years had passed since they had been in Narnia; by now King Frank
and Queen Helen would be old, and their children would have spread out
over Narnia and Archenland and perhaps further south into that unnamed
land Digory still wondered about.

Many years of peace, Aslan had
promised that world. There were no newspapers there, or full hospitals,
or trenches scratched across barren earth, or towns empty of young men.

The opportunity was all he had been waiting for, and so Digory didn’t know
why his mouth was full of the terrible metallic taste that he had had
upon waking from his nightmare.

“The girls can’t stay,” Polly said abruptly, interrupting Digory’s thoughts. “They should have gone home already. It’s late.”

Digory wondered when Polly had become a responsible adult.

The fairy king nodded. “You are free to leave, of course; no one will stop you. You are also free to come back.”

It was just the dangerous sort of thing, Digory thought, that you expected
fairies to say. He could tell it bothered Polly, too; she hustled him
quite unmercifully as they took their leave.


* * *


“I left my hat,” Digory said.

“What?” Polly looked back at him. The girls were already farther ahead,
discussing nervously but loudly how angry Mr. Wright was going to be at
them returning so late. “Does it matter?”

“I like that hat,” he said. “Why don’t you take the girls home and I’ll meet you at the cottage after I go back for it.”

He thought he could see Polly frowning through the dark. “Fine,” she said, “do you know your way back?”

“I think I can find it.”

He had left his hat, yes, and he did very much want it back. But there was
something else in that cavern for him. It was that feeling that there
would be something better just around the corner, that if he just kept
going a little while longer he would find some better world. It was a
feeling that had sustained him through three months in hospital and had
kept alive memories that he thought were too good to be true.

One sip of fairy wine, and he could be back in the Wood between the worlds,
letting its peace drive all memories of the trenches from his head. He
smiled at Polly. “I’ll be fine. Go.”

She sighed, but nodded. They were nearly all the way back to Cottingley.

Digory turned, and walked back down the way they had come. Light clouds had
drifted over the full moon, and the breeze carried a slightly damp
chill, as if to spite the summer. There was a fairly regular trail of
pink yarn pieces to follow back to the Crags; Rosebud had shed most of
the sweater on the way. Digory felt his face; his cheek was tender,
where the kitten had raked her claws while springing upwards, and he was
somewhat grateful that his evening was not going to be spent dodging it
any longer.

Somehow, the walk back to the fairy hall seemed to
take less time than it had to leave. When he returned to the Crags, he
heard fiddle music drifting through the woods, and the sounds of
dancing. Jenny Greenteeth sat cross-legged on a boulder outside the
cavern, wearing his hat and smoking a long pipe. In the dark, she looked
almost human, perhaps one who had been sick recently.

“You forgot something,” she said.

He climbed up to sit beside her. “That happens to me a lot,” he agreed.

They were silent a moment, and Jenny passed him her pipe. When he hesitated,
she said, “There’s nothing magic about it. Not like the food and the
wine.” He thought she might be lying, since she had after all recently
tried to pull a girl into the river to bring her to the space between
worlds by force. He drew deeply on the pipe anyway, and handed it back.

“There’s a war in this world too, you know,” he said. “Like in yours. Staying here won’t change that.”

“I’m not looking for safety,” she said. “There’s a farmhouse near here, just
like the one I grew up in with my sister.” She drew her knees up to her
chest. “I could live there. I could have a home again, instead of
spending my life only looking in windows. I’ve been in hundreds of
worlds, and none of them are free of conflict or things needing fixing.
But they’re still places to be a part of.” She sighed. “I think we’ll
find a world someday. New ones begin as often as old ones end. Waiting
for things to get better takes so very long, though.”

“It does,” Digory replied. “It seems like I’ve waited too long already, most days.”
He took a deep breath. “But we could trade places. Instead of waiting
anymore.”

The argument he was waiting for didn’t come. He thought
about the stories he had read. Fairy bargains were never difficult;
that was why they sometimes ended in someone sleeping for twenty years.
He just wasn’t sure that, if everything went wrong, he minded the idea
of sleeping for twenty years and waking up when the world was a
different place.

Jenny knocked the embers out of her pipe, and
he followed her inside to sit down at a table. There was no lack of
food, and Jenny reached for an empty glass, then filled it with a white
wine. The way it swirled in the cup made Digory think it might be honey
wine. He took it when she handed it to him, and added some cheese and
what appeared to be mushrooms to his plate. Jenny sat at the next table
over, looking out across the hall and poking at the bowl of clams
(though whether this was for eating or for sport, Digory was not sure).

“Digory!” Polly’s voice rang through the cavern.

He sighed, and looked down at the amber liquid in the goblet. It smelled
like summer turning into fall, the hot smell of crisping grass and ripe
fruit and nearby water swirling around mossy stones. It was much nicer
than green and yellow rings.

“Digory, you… you can’t do this,” she said, slowly descending the steps, as if now that she had run all
the way to the Crags, she didn’t know what to do anymore. “I don’t have a
reason. But I think we would know, absolutely, if it was time for us to
go back to Narnia. I think we’d be there before we even knew how to go.
And I think that any way you might leave this world without me—“ here
she faltered, just for a moment, “—can’t be right.” She frowned. “You’re
not enchanted this time, are you?”

The corner of Digory’s mouth turned up briefly. “No. I’m not enchanted.” He set the goblet
down on the table in front of him, ignoring the small sharp intake of
breath from Jenny.

“I’m… I’m tired, Polly. The world has changed. I thought… I thought that war would be like something out of
Shakespeare, or Tennyson. That I could fight bravely for a glorious
victory and then go back to teaching and writing. But Polly, it isn’t
like that at all. Nothing will ever be the same. The sun rises over the
trenches like the sun in Charn.” He traced the cup’s pattern with his
fingers. “How can this world be one that I’m supposed to stay in?”

Polly
had made her way across the cavern to him. “It hasn’t ended yet,” she
said softly. “We’re still here. We’re still holding the little things
together, even if the rest of the world is falling apart.” She put a
hand on his shoulder, and sat beside him. “When we were children, we
flew over half the world to get the seeds of a tree that would guard
against injustice and domination in Narnia. How can we leave this world
without defending it first?” Her grip tightened. “How can you think of
leaving me here to defend it by myself?”

He laid a hand over hers. “Come with me. We could go together.”

Polly let out a short laugh, and looked down. “If you go, of course I’m
coming with you. Obviously. Someone has to keep you from ringing strange
bells. But we shouldn’t leave, and you know it.”

He didn’t  answer, but looked at Polly. She was heading rapidly for middle age, as
he was, and showed the effects of too much sun, too little exposure to
fashion or ladylike manners to perhaps be considered pretty by most
people, but she was the most beautiful and fierce woman he had ever
known. She had no regard for anyone who tried to stop her doing what was
right, and no interest in censoring herself to make people in power
feel comfortable. Digory felt as if he could see the future in her face,
wherein she was a delightfully terrifying old woman who skipped over
living with an abundance of incontinent cats, and instead went straight
for keeping tigers.

And with one sip of wine, he could lead her out of the world that needed her to keep being that woman.

He closed his eyes. Everything was too bright, and he wanted a moment to
pause before letting that hope of golden goodness that the lion had
given him all those years ago slip through his fingers.

Somehow, with his eyes closed, it hurt less than he thought it would to push the wine away.

He opened his eyes when Polly took his hands, intertwining her long,
strong fingers with his. “It will be better, one day,” she said. “We’ll
be in the world we should be. But it takes a different kind of magic.”

“I know,” he said, and was surprised to find that he did. The hope was
still there, and it convinced him of something else. He turned around,
to face Jenny. “I think there will be a world for you,” he said,
cautiously. “A new place. I saw a world born once in a day, but… I think
that some take longer.”

“Probably,” said Jenny. “But I was never
very good at patience. And a girl on another riverbank hit me with a
frying pan a few days ago. I’d like a place to settle down and not
startle people in rivers anymore.”

“I wish you the best of luck with that?” Digory said. “Thank you. For everything, even if it isn’t what I need.”

It wasn’t the most tidy of goodbyes, but Digory did not know what else
could be said. So he accepted his hat back from Jenny, nodded to the
fairy king, and, still holding Polly’s hand, let her lead him back out
into the woods.

* * *

“We can’t tell anyone about this,” Polly decided, as they sat outside her cottage later, watching the moon
move toward the horizon as the eastern sky showed the faint greyness of
approaching dawn. “There are probably people that would go, just to
escape their lives. But if they care enough to leave, they care enough
to change things here. Maybe that’s why we don’t have the ability to
visit other worlds already, because we need to make this one worth
living in, first.”

“That’s a very thoughtful and articulate sentiment, Pol,” said Digory. “Do you spend a lot of time wanting to see
Narnia again too?”

She smiled wryly at him. “Rioting in London doesn’t keep me busy every hour of the day,” she replied. “I decided a
long time ago, though, that if we weren’t supposed to be doing something
here, we would never have come back to England. And if we were supposed
to be in Narnia, we’d walk through a door and find ourselves there.
Taking control of that magic would just make us like Uncle Andrew.” She
sighed. “And, strangely, I’m just too busy to corner houseguests to tell
them about Jadis, or take off all my clothes in public.”

Digory shrugged. “I’m still an invalid. I might have that sort of time.”

Polly rolled her eyes. “Of course, the rumors about the fairies have already
spread. You won’t be the only one up here asking about them. Since you
have so much time, maybe you can stop them.”

“Does anyone in town have a camera?” Digory asked. “I brought a book of Rackham
illustrations. If Elsie and Frances took pictures with the paper
fairies, everyone would think it was all just a bad fake.”

“We
can try that.” Polly yawned. “I’ve been up all night, you didn’t sleep
last night, now that it’s nearly daylight I say we go to bed.” She
stood, stretching, and turned towards the door.

“Polly,” Digory said, unsure of what he was saying next. “You… you really would have given up everything here, to come with me?”

“Yes,” she said, without hesitation.

“I know we’re not getting married. We’re not going to ask each other for
that, again. But I thought that was why we weren’t—because we were no
good at giving up everything for each other.” It was more than he meant
to say. But he had thought going somewhere else would help him find
peace. Maybe that wasn’t the only idea that needed to be set right.

She walked back over to where he still sat, and leaned over to press a kiss
to his forehead. “We aren’t the sorts to be husband and wife. We aren’t
married because neither of us really wants to be married, to be
together like that. That’s all it ever was.” She reached out a hand and
pulled him up. “Let’s go to bed. We’ll make fairy pictures in the
morning.”

* * *

Who of us
But has, deep down in the heart and deep in the brain
The memory of odd moments: memories
Of huge assemblies chanting in the night
At palace gates: of drafts going off in the rain
To shaken music: or the silken flutter
Of silent, ceremonial parades
In the sunlight, when you stand so stiff to attention,
That you never see but only know they are there—
The regimental colours—silken, a-flutter
Azure and gold and vermilion against the sky:
The sacred finery of banded hearts
Of generations…
--Ford Madox Ford, “Footslogger”

Comments

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

I so loved this story. The voices and the use of the faeries and it's actually a wonderful companion piece to the other Polly & Digory story which has Digory helping Polly. It is such a wonderful relationship and you wrote them both so beautifully.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

:D

Thanks. God, I love these two.

[liptonrm.livejournal.com]

OMG this is fantastic. I love how you've captured Polly and Digory, your characterization of them is just incredible and I'm pretty sure it's become canon in my head. Your rendering of them and their relationship is simply terrific.

This is all around a wonderful story and I love it to pieces.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! Headcanon is the best compliment ever! :D