Knock On All Doors And Enter Nowhere by Signe commentary by Eva
Title: Knock On All Doors And Enter Nowhere
Author: oxoniensis
Fandom: Narnia
Commentator :
evelynlela
C/N: I hope I've formated this correctly.
Title: Knock On All Doors And Enter Nowhere
Author: Signe
Fandom: Narnia (books)
Rating: G
Characters: Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy.
Word count: ~ 2,300
Beta: Huge thanks to the fantabulous hackthis, who always makes me better. And also to ice_crystal for her encouragement.
A/N: Written for Vivien in the yuletide NYR 2006. You can either read the story on the site , or below.
"Professor Kirk," Lucy pipes up one afternoon when she runs into him accidentally (on purpose) I like that it’s arranged to be natural/accidental on the stairway outside his study. "Why did you have a wardrobe full of fur coats?"
"Ah, Lucy, that is a smart question. And one I believe you know the answer to, if you think hard enough."
Clearly the Professor likes her better than her siblings, he’d just comment on the fact that school has taught them nothing.
Lucy screws her face up in concentration.
"You don't have lots of visitors, do you?" she says. "Besides us - and the tour parties who aren't proper visitors - of course."
"No, I don't," the professor replies, as Lucy takes his hand and they walk down the hallway together, Lucy not quite running to keep up with his longer stride.
"Then I think-I think you must have known someone would need them one day."
Which of course is the real question, ‘how did you know we’d need them?’
The professor smiles down at her, a creaky smile that speaks of lack of practice, but is genuine nonetheless.
"One can rarely know anything for certain, young Lucy, but it is unlikely to have been a coincidence that they were there when you needed them."
Ah all hail the return of the evasive Professor.
"I'm sorry we lost them though."
Persistent isn’t she, still driving at the answer.
"They had served their purpose by then, and that is all we can ask of any material possession. Now, why don't you forget about them, and go and ask Margaret to bring us a pot of tea and some cakes?"
Which is his way of saying, “Yes they were for you. Yes I did know, no I won’t tell you how I knew but I did.”
"Thank you, Professor." And Lucy skips off, thoughts of lost coats soon gone from her mind.
Fair enough because he’s allowed to be a mysteriously powerful figure for a child
*
They talk about it afterwards, huddled together in the girls' room so they can hear each other's whispers. They all have different memories of the moment they fell back through the wardrobe, out of Narnian life and back into these (almost) familiar bodies.
Like story time, a whispered tale of the truth that can’t be brought to light because it would never be believed.
Peter says he felt cool air on his face: it must have been his beard disappearing. Occasionally Susan catches him rubbing his chin, as though he's not sure if he has a beard now or not. No one teases him about it.
So matter of fact. Because matters of fact are observed and not acknowledged.
Edmund says it was like losing something inside, and when pushed, just shrugs and says he can't put it any better than that. And he doesn't need to, because Susan understands.
Losing something inside but having to keep it inside as well must be odd.
Lucy won't talk about it at all, not without crying. Susan thinks it must be hardest for her: she's gone through the wardrobe three times now, more than any of them, and each of the previous times she'd had the hope of going straight back. But Susan's seen her coming out of the wardrobe room, and she knows Lucy's been trying to get back again, even though the Professor said it wouldn't work like that again.
Poor Lucy, I’d try too. Susan’s more easily resigned to the reality the unfantastic, she already has it in terms of how many times Lucy left, the reassertion of this world as the one that counts. For Lucy it’s how many time she came back.
Susan doesn't say much about that moment, midday between worlds, either. But she can still feel what it was like, returning to a child's body. Even though she can't quite remember the exact moment when her breasts became merely half-formed and her hips straight, all the same, it's too awkward for her to speak of, to the boys at least.
And that focus, what she was, an adult, the return to childhood, the knowledge that if she waits she will regain what she lost, as the others cannot.
*
It isn't that Peter forgets exactly. The memories of Narnia are all still there, layered between memories of England, like the chocolate and vanilla layers in the marble cake mother used to make before the war and rationing. When Peter was very little, he used to like to peel the cake apart so that he could eat all the vanilla parts first, and save the chocolate until last.
Like Susan his comparisons, analogy’s are this world based but you can see that Narnia are his chocolate memories, what makes it rich.
So he remembers playing cricket and climbing trees and bathing last week, and playing Hide and Seek when the weather turned bad. Yet, at the same time, he has clear memories of entertaining a large delegation from Archenland, who arrived riding elephants and spoke with a strange accent and unfamiliar words.
And for him both have their place, these memories belong.
He remembers leaving London and mother, heading south on a crowded train, arriving at a house in the middle of nowhere and meeting the Professor (Lucy had been scared by him at first, and Peter had had to keep kicking Edmund to stop him laughing at the Professor's wild mop of hair). He also recalls pouring over designs for a grand new ship to head their growing fleet, and journeying to the Rush River to deal with complaints from some dwarves that the fauns and naiads were making too merry. The dwarves were never much good at having fun. He pictures Susan rejecting yet another smitten suitor and laughing with the others afterwards about his flowery speech ("He said I have eyes like a summer rain shower and hair like gossamer." "What is gossamer, anyway?" "Well, it's nothing like Susan's hair.").
Gossamer = sheer fabric or flim of cobwebs although the suitor probably meant that it was delicate and light. But I like how the memory is separated from the details.
He can list the wars they all fought in, cleaning up Narnia and making it safe again. The Battle of Stormness Gap, the Battle of Ettinsmoor when they finally drove the wild giants across the border, the Battle of Great River where Edmund was fatally wounded and Lucy healed him once more. Yet he knows he hid under the table in the front room, helpless, as the air raid sirens howled across London.
Such a difference between the two worlds, in one he is powerful in the other he is a child, unlike Susan the difference will not change as he ages.
Occasionally, even when she was busy on bake day, mother would get distracted, staring out of the kitchen window at the sky as though she could see something other than blue sky and clouds. She'd mix the marble cake batter too much, and Peter has the shameful memory of crying once because he couldn't separate the layers and had to eat the chocolate and vanilla all mixed up together.
Being able to separate them is what enables him to be a peace with the difference.
Sometimes he can only separate the Narnia memories from the England memories by logic. If there were bears, and they weren't in a zoo, then it must be a Narnia memory. If there were bombs and planes, it must be an England memory.
Simple deduction.
There are some memories and memory fragments that he can't place so easily though - late night conversations, the feel of wind in his hair - they could have been anywhere, anytime.
It would help if some memories felt more real than others, or if some were like dreams, or things that might have happened to someone else. But memories don't layer in that way - they're all just there, together. And sometimes it can be awkward, because Lucy might start to say 'remember when', and Susan and Peter will have to look and see if Mrs Macready or Ivy (who's most likely to clean their rooms) or Betty (who's the quietest of all the servants, and the one they're most likely to not notice) is around.
It isn't that he forgets either past, here or there, but he's not King Peter now. None of them are who they were in Narnia anymore. He's not grown-up, and even if it feels odd at times to be fourteen years old and remember ruling a land and fighting battles and falling head over heels in love with an oread, Peter is still a child and he knows that.
His mind knows that.
It's just that his heart forgets sometimes.
Ok the lack of commentary in the above is due to the gushingness that would have resulted, all I could do was nod ‘exactly right’ and compare it to memories I have and how I deduce where I was and how I can’t sometimes and at those times the worlds I’ve lived in blur.
*
Edmund's eyelashes feel heavy, snowflakes piling up on them as though winter has decided it's time for him to close his eyes and sleep. He shakes his head, chilly strands of the long scarf Susan knitted him for Christmas slapping against his coat and adding more snow to that already falling.
He doesn't like the snow. Never has, at least not since-
And for Edmund it’s meanings, it’s what the other world meant to him and how he still carries it, what he didn’t lose and how it changes him now.
He tramps morosely after Lucy, regretting the loss of his cosy spot right in front of the fire ("She shouldn't go out alone Edmund, and Susan and I are busy.").
Again the instructions separate from the actions, I just really love this technique.
"Aren't you getting cold yet?" he asks, hopefully.
"Don't be silly, it's not that cold." She tramps on across through the wood, the lawn almost out of sight now, then suddenly plumps herself down in the snow, tilts her head back and starts catching snowflakes on her tongue.
You can see that Lucy wants the magic of the other world to come into this world to turn it into something that can be worth it.
"Taste it," she calls back to Edmund, "you've got to taste it."
"Now who's being silly?" he replies. "Snow doesn't taste of anything."
"It does too." Lucy's mouth turns down. Edmund knows she was a grown-up woman once, not so long ago, and then she would have laughed off such a minor disagreement, but she's only eight years old in England, and she still acts like an eight year old. He understands. He's got the memories, like she has, but he doesn't feel like an adult anymore.
Whereas Peter can feel like an adult but knows he’s not and Susan simply knows that she will be an adult and is waiting for that time to arrive again.
"Okay Lu, I'll try it. See," Edmund says as he pokes his tongue out as far as it will go, "tasting it now."
Lucy is easily mollified. She bounces around in the snow, making big holes with her borrowed Wellington boots that are two sizes too big. She's already grown out of the boots she brought from home.
"It tastes different from Narnia snow," she says in a stage whisper, though she knows full well that the trees aren't listening to them, can't listen to them.
Edmund bites down on another 'don't be silly' and tastes some more snow. And Lucy's right: it does taste different, though he'd be hard pressed to explain how.
"You're right," he says, and he's glad he does because Lucy's face lights up at the simple acknowledgement. She's always been as easy to please as she has been to hurt. And one thing Edmund has learned is that hurting her doesn't make him feel any better than making her happy. And while he doesn't always remember that, he does so often enough that Peter noticed and slapped him on the back and told him he was a good sort. Surprisingly, Edmund didn't mind, and he didn't tell Peter to stop pretending he was their father.
This just sort of shows, like stories are meant to show not tell, how Edmund has changed and how he can get along with others and make life easier for himself without exactly wanting the difference.
Some things will never be the same again, but that's all right.
Acceptance.
*
They haven't played Hide and Seek since they returned. It hasn't been a conscious decision-nobody has said anything, they just haven't played. For some reason I just really like those two sentences and what they say about the children. There are usually plenty of other things to do, after all, but it's been a long winter, and even though the snow has melted it's cold and wet and miserable outside. They've all become fidgety from playing quiet games, so Edmund is counting to a hundred in the corner of their living room, and Peter has just clambered up into the attic, looking for a good corner to hide in.
There's a lot of junk up here, the usual sort of dusty boxes which look exciting but probably aren't, and a few broken things that no doubt someone intended to mend one day but never got around to. But behind a particularly ugly bed frame is something that looks a lot more promising: an old rag rug - still brightly coloured, and looking out of place among all the shabbiness - is draped over something, and Peter thinks there might be room for him to squeeze underneath the rug and hide. So he lifts it up, and then-
Then he stops.
It's a painting. But it's not ordinary painting, no English country scene. There's a mountain range, and Peter recognises it. And in the foreground, resting on a rocky outcrop, is an oread.
Edmund finds him there, sitting cross-legged and wet-eyed, staring at the painting. It isn't her of course, not his love, but the likeness is close enough, and the loss is sharp.
Because Peter knows the difference. Knows it and cares. But just like for Lucy this world can never be that world and he can’t see the one in the other and not feel the complexities of knowledge, emotion and try to reconcile them to reality.
*
Susan's always been the pragmatic one. Someone has to be, after all.
Someone does not have to be, but it’s better to say that they do better to think that her pragmatism has a place and embrace the distance she can put between the worlds.
It's really not sensible to keep trying to hold onto memories of adulthood when it's all been taken away. So she doesn't. Doesn't try, that is, but that doesn't mean the memories disappear. Even a year later, the memories are still clear.
Susan doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to remember what she can’t have, better to think that it’s in the future not a part of her past.
She tries not to be resentful, or to get angry at thinking of all they lost when they were thrown back here without warning. Most of the time she succeeds in putting it out of her mind. They've been able to explore further afield over the summer, setting off early in the morning and getting back just before dark. One of the local farmers has a son Peter's age, so they've helped with the harvests. And she can take an interest because she’s never been courted by princes, never had sonnets written in her honor, never never... Huge sweet purple-golden Victoria plums first, and then the apples, crisp Cox's Orange Pippins and Russets, as good as anything they've ever eaten. She throws that in the face of the knowledge that she’s attended feasts, been offered the best fruits by lovesick suitors. Some evenings they stay and eat dinner at a big trestle table in the orchard with all the land girls. It's been new, and interesting, and Susan likes the life here, the freedom they never had in London. The freedoms she had as Queen, the activities, the sport, the hunt, didn’t happen this world is where it’s at and absolutely nothing can change it so why try? The days have passed quickly, no time for brooding, and they've been tired by the evening, so sleep has come easily.
But the others won't let go so easily, not even Peter, and Susan had always thought he was more sensible than this. Lucy's the worst: she won't stop talking about Aslan, so Susan has taken to going to bed later and later (Mrs McCready doesn't notice, thankfully) to avoid having to listen to Lucy.
She doesn’t want to remember and Lucy doesn’t want to forget.
It doesn't work. Lucy's usually asleep when Susan gets into bed, but she wakes up most nights, crying, and Susan isn't heartless. So she ends up curled beside Lucy in Lucy's bed, while she sobs about how much she misses Aslan and Mr Tumnus and all their old friends.
Just one time, Susan starts to say that she thinks Aslan was cruel, giving them the life in Narnia and then taking it all away again. Because it's much easier when you've never had something that good, that wonderful, and don't know what you're missing. But having it and losing it, that's unbearable.
Because being bitter means that the memory can be ignored as too painful rather than returned too and the real pain experienced.
Lucy is horrified.
"How can you say that about Aslan? He's perfect," she cries out, and then she gets up and runs out of the room, bare feet slapping on the wooden floor.
Susan finds her in the wardrobe room, of course, sitting against the wall, shivering in her flannelette nightdress and sobbing still.
"I'm sorry, Lu," she says. "I didn't mean it." It's only a white lie.
And it's all right. Lucy forgives her, because Lucy doesn't understand that having knowledge isn't the same as having faith.
Lucy forgives and forgets both her and Edmunds transgressions as these words, these lies, don’t matter, aren’t important. But she remembers the friends the magic and tries to find it here because it does matter it is important.
*
Notes: I've never written notes on a story before - I'm adding them this time because I find them interesting on other people's stories. But don't feel obliged to read them, or to change the way you read the story based on the notes.
This was originally going to be a story about how the four Pevensie children are not quite one thing or the other anymore - not adults, certainly, but not simple children as they were before they went to Narnia. But, somehow, it evolved into a story about the different ways in which Narnia affected them. I see Peter as the one least altered - he already had many of the qualities that he needed in Narnia - being a king there just heightened them. But I could see him worrying about having to lie to his mother when he next sees her, and being concerned about the need for them to be careful what they say all the time. I also thought that at least one of them would have fallen in love in Narnia, hence Peter's oread (mountain nymph). While I don’t think Peter would have been the one to fall in love, that rather it would have been Lucy or Edmund because they both feel more strongly, I see Peter and Lucy as being the most attached to Narnia for what it was, like loving one’s home country. It was to them where they belonged I think.
Edmund learned a lot about himself and his family, and how much they meant to him, so I could see that coming out in little ways, like his being kinder to Lucy. I see Edmund’s memory of Narnia coloured in terms of the changes to him. It’s more of a vacation in the sense that he went there he learned and he could take that back with him. Lucy, we know, is the one with most faith, so I felt she would be the one trying to keep the memories of Aslan alive. I see her wanting to bring Narnia here, to where she is now to see it around her to will it into reality and crying at night when the fact that she can’t actually keep it here dawns. And then we come to Susan, who never makes it to the New Narnia, at least not within the timeframe of the books (though my only other Narnia story involved Susan's redemption). I wanted to explore the beginning of Susan's becoming someone about whom Lewis says 'she is no longer a friend of Narnia'. Susan I see her as having liked the world resigned to how it functions capable of making it work for her and really annoyed that she had to find a place she liked better and couldn’t stay. Like so many when she can’t have what she wants then she’s jealous and because of that she makes it pale, not worthy of her, just a ‘game’ just ‘magic’ not real, not worth it.