Voyage of the Dawn Treader 3/?
Title: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Summary: Lucy and Edmund are not the only Pevensie children to return to Narnia after all.
Characters/Pairings: Caspian/Susan, Peter, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, etc.
Rating: K+ // PG-13
Author’s Note: I still don't own most of the plot or dialogue. Sorry about the delay. College started and I’m ridiculously exhausted from having to get up at 6:30 to drive to campus.
Chapter Three:
Susan and Lucy had asked where they could find Caspian and the others and were directed to the captain’s quarters. Inside they found, Caspian, Peter, Edmund, and presumably the captain.
“Ah, there you are,” Caspian said as the girls walked in. “We were waiting for you. This is my captain, the Lord Drinian.”
The dark haired man went down on one knee and first kissed Susan’s hand, then Lucy’s.
“Where’s Eustace?” Lucy asked.
“In bed,” Edmund said.
“He’s being miserable,” Peter said.
“Meanwhile we want to talk,” Caspian said.
“By Jove we do,” Edmund said.
“It’s been a year for us,” Peter added. “How much time has passed for you?”
“Exactly three years,” Caspian said.
“And everything’s going well?” Lucy asked.
“I wouldn’t have left otherwise,” Caspian told her. “It couldn’t be better, in fact. There’s no trouble at all now between the Telmarines, Dwarves, Talking Beasts, Fauns, and the rest. And we gave those troublesome giants on the frontier such a good beating last summer that they pay us tribute now. And I had an excellent person to leave as Regent while I’m away - Trumpkin, the Dwarf. You remember him?”
It seemed that being King had done wonders for Caspian as well as Narnia herself, Susan mused.
“How could we forget?” Peter asked.
“Dear Trumpkin,” Lucy said. “You couldn’t have made a better choice.”
“Loyal as a badger, Ma’am, and valiant as - as a Mouse,” Drinian said, amending the end of his statement as he noticed Reepicheep’s intense stare. Susan smiled fondly at the mouse.
“Where are we headed?” Edmund asked.
“Well, that’s a rather long story,” Caspian said. He glanced at them all, though Susan noticed that he glanced past her instead of at her.
“Perhaps you remember that when I was a child Miraz got rid of seven friends of my father’s - who might have taken my part - by sending them off to explore the unknown Eastern Seas beyond the Lone Islands,” Caspian continued.
“None of them ever came back,” Susan said. All eyes slid to her, including Caspian’s for once. “Are you looking for them?”
“Right. Well, yes,” Caspian said awkwardly, almost like it was painful to look in her eyes. “With Aslan’s approval I swore that I would sail east for a year and a day to either find them or avenge their deaths if I could. They were the Lords Revilian, Bern, Argoz, Mavramorn, Octesian, Restimar, and - oh, that other one who’s so hard to remember.”
“The Lord Rhoop, Sire,” Drinian said with a smile that said that Caspian forgot that Lord quite often.
“Rhoop, Rhoop, of course,” Caspian said to himself. “Finding the seven Lords is my main intention. But Reepicheep has an even higher hope.”
“As high as my spirit,” Reepicheep said proudly. “Though perhaps as small as my stature. Why should we not come to the very Eastern end of the world? And what might we find there? I expect to find Aslan’s own country. It is always from the East, across the sea, that the great Lion comes to us.”
“I say, that is an idea,” Edmund said with a thoughtful expression.
“But do you think that Aslan’s country would be the sort of country that you could sail to?” Lucy mused.
“Back in our world, the world’s round,” Peter said.
“Round?” Caspian asked, sounding excited. “I’ve heard stories of round worlds and always wanted to go.”
“I think it’s unnatural,” Drinian sniffed.
“Many from our world would say that Narnia is unnatural,” Susan smiled. “And for a long while it was thought that our world was flat. And Peter, things are different here. The world probably is flat. It’s not like we’ve Dryads and Nyads back home.”
“We might if someone listened to them once in a while,” Lucy grumbled. She always had been partial to the trees of Narnia.
“I do not know the answer to any of your questions,” Reepicheep said. “But there is this. When I was in my cradle, a wood woman, a Dryad, spoke this verse over me:
Where sky and water meet,
Where waves grow sweet,
Doubt not, Reepicheep,
To find all you seek,
There is the Utter East.
I do not know what it means. But the spell of it has been on me all of my life,” Reepicheep continued.
After a moment Lucy asked, “And where are we now, Caspian?”
“The Captain can tell you better than I can,” Caspian said.
Drinian got a chart out and spread it across the table. He laid his forefinger on a spot. “That’s our position, or it was at noon today. We had a fair wind from Cair Paravel and stood a little North for Galma, which we made on the next day. We were in port for a week, for the Duke of Galma made a great tournament for His Majesty and there he unhorsed many knights --,”
“And got a few nasty falls myself, Drinian. Some of the bruises are still there,” Caspian added.
“-And unhorsed many knights,” Drinian repeated with a grin. “We thought the Duke would have been pleased if the King’s Majesty would have married his daughter, but nothing came of that-,”
Caspian looked thoroughly embarrassed and all eyes were focused elsewhere as the King said, “She’s sweet, but she’s not for me.”
Drinian seemed confused by the sudden tension in the room and the five royals’ inability to look at one another. Susan knew the moment he realized the cause of the tension. His eyes widened, as if he’d remembered something, and his gaze darted from Susan, to Caspian, and back again.
He coughed and continued, but Susan was only half listening. Drinian continued to explain their journey so far as Susan continued to stare at the wall. She had known that Caspian would move on. It would be strange for him not to. Yet the idea of him marrying the unnamed and faceless daughter of the Galman Duke made her heart clench painfully. It clenched even more when she realized that she hadn’t gotten over Caspian - not by a long shot - and might actually have even stronger feelings for him than when she left Narnia.
This was going to be a most unpleasant trip.
“And where do we head after the Lone Islands?” Peter asked, bringing Susan out of her mind.
“No one knows, Majesty, unless the Lone Islanders themselves can tell us,” Drinian said.
“They couldn’t in our day,” Edmund said.
“Then it is after the Lone Islands that the adventure really begins,” Reepicheep said, a glow in his eyes.
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