[Fic] "Go Forth To Meet the Future" -- Chronicles of Narnia
Summary: The first time Jill Pole met Polly Plummer was nine days after her return from Narnia, once the initial hubbub about an escaped circus lion had died down and all the real muck about the Head and the general disastrous state of Experiment House was starting to come to light. (1,900 words)
Note: Written for
marmota_b, in response to the prompt: Wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey with Polly and Jill? Somehow, they meet out of time, or they do some dimension hopping, or both... It is also a fill for the
ladiesbingo square wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey: time travel.
(Say hello to the accidental setup for a novella I am not going to write. *headdesk*)
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Go Forth To Meet the Future
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The first time Jill Pole met Polly Plummer was nine days after her return from Narnia, once the initial hubbub about an escaped circus lion had died down and all the real muck about the Head and the general disastrous state of Experiment House was starting to come to light.
Jill had been keeping her head down and avoiding the school inspectors, but on Tuesday afternoon her luck ran out. A prefect corralled her into an empty mathematics classroom with a perfunctory explanation of, "Some old lady reporter wants to interview people who had run-ins with Them. For heaven's sake, don't be dramatic or the inspectors might shut down the school for the rest of term, and nobody needs that kind of mess."
Jill, who was serious about her education and whose family budget was stretched to its limit to pay her tuition and board and would most likely burst under the strain of having to support her at home without a refund (and she highly doubted any refund would be forthcoming), agreed completely and decided she'd say as little to the reporter as she could politely get away with.
('Politely' was important. It wouldn't help anyone if the reporter put it about that she might have done anything to deserve Their attentions. Jill would much rather not need to bite her tongue, but needs must.)
The reporter was, as advertised, an older woman, but not in a soft, grandmotherly way. Her gray hair was neatly braided and coiled into a bun, and she gave off the air of someone who had been everywhere, seen everything, done most anything worth doing, and would see no difference between a fishmonger and the king of England himself. She was sitting behind the teacher's desk, back straight as a ruler and a ballpoint pen clenched between her teeth like a cigarette, shuffling papers to and fro as if hunting for an exam answer.
"Ma'am," Jill said in her best Polite Company voice.
The lady reporter looked up with keen, dark eyes, very nearly the shade of the chalkboard behind her. "Ah, another," she said, reaching up to pluck the pen from her mouth. "Come in, shut the door, and take a seat. I shan't bite."
"Ma'am," Jill said again as she obeyed the instructions. She smoothed her hands over the itchy wool of her uniform skirt, missing the finer fabrics of Narnia and the way they had never caught on her now-lost calluses or ragged nails.
"I like to make expectations clear at the outset. It saves time and arguments later on," the reporter said, twirling the pen between her fingers. Her brows drew downward in a faintly puzzled frown, as if Jill were an equation that wouldn't come out right. "My name is Polly Plummer and I'm here on behalf of the Sunday Times to write a human interest story about life as a student under Head Teacher Somerset's administration. I'll ask a few questions about teaching methods, a few about official discipline policy, and a few about interactions among students. If you don't wish to answer any of the questions, don't lie. Simply say, "I don't wish to answer that," and I'll move on. Are we clear?"
"Yes, Mrs. Plummer," Jill said.
"Only by the old usage," the reporter said with a quick smile that briefly lit her round face with an interior radiance. "I am a mistress of my craft and a businesswoman in my own right. As I am also unmarried and times have changed, however, I've resigned myself to remaining Miss Plummer regardless of my age. But let's set that aside or we'll rapidly descend into the kind of tedious hair-splitting only a philosopher could enjoy. I am Polly Plummer, and you are--?"
"Jill Pole, ma'am," Jill said. "Year five."
The reporter -- or Miss Plummer, as Jill supposed she ought to think of her with her proper name -- straightened even further in her chair, which by all rights should not have been possible.
"Jill Pole, friend of Eustace Scrubb?"
Jill forced herself not to clench her hands. "Yes, ma'am," she said, and ventured a blend of her Polite Company smile and the bubbly mask she'd put on for the Harfang giants. "Scrubb and I get on all right." She clamped her mouth shut before she could volunteer anything further.
"I thought you looked familiar," Miss Plummer said, inexplicably, with an air of satisfaction. "It's a pleasure to meet another Friend of Narnia. And on a more personal note, I should tell you that while this may be your first time meeting me, it is not the first time that I have met you."
"What," Jill said blankly.
"Time doesn't run evenly between worlds," Miss Plummer said, "and I've been known to leap into dangerous situations -- such as, for example, fairy circles -- without looking as carefully as some folk would prefer me to do. Many years ago (at least by my reckoning), you happened upon me while I was stuck in the consequences of an incautious leap. I shan't tell you anything further, both because it's not healthy to know one's own future in too much detail and because I am here to gather material for a newspaper article, not to discuss our mutual personal history."
"That's-- but-- how on earth am I meant to talk about teachers and bullies when you've gone and dropped time travel on my head!" Jill exclaimed.
"I expect you shall manage in much the same way that I managed to explain a rather intricate magically-binding contract right after you dropped time travel on my head," Miss Plummer said. She tapped her pen against her lips and smiled. "Goodness, this is much more amusing from the other side. I suppose I ought to preemptively apologize for being such a pestering nuisance when I was younger."
Jill managed to shove her surprise into a box and slam down the lid hard enough to clear space for thought in her head. And what she thought was, if Miss Plummer had been (or would be) a pestering nuisance to Jill in their joint past-and-future, Jill certainly had the right to be a pestering nuisance here and now.
"You can apologize if you like, but I shan't accept it until I've experienced your annoyances and can judge them for myself," Jill pronounced, folding her arms across her blouse. "And I won't answer any of your questions, either, until you tell me why you know about Narnia. I think that's only fair."
Miss Plummer gave Jill a very stern look, but Jill was used to weathering much worse looks both from teachers and from some of Them, and stared past Miss Plummer's ear at a half-erased algebra equation until the reporter blinked.
"Fair enough," Miss Plummer said. "To make a very long story short, my friend Digory Kirke had a wicked uncle who dabbled in magic he didn't understand. This uncle made some magic Rings that could transport people to a place between worlds, and from there into any world in the universe." She paused and shot Jill a questioning look. "Any questions?"
Thousands, but voicing any of them right now would give Miss Plummer the victory. "Not yet," Jill said.
Miss Plummer shrugged and continued. "Digory and I visited a dying world and accidentally brought an evil witch back to London with us. It was a horrible mess. We tried to take her back to her dead world, but instead we fell into Narnia right as Aslan started to sing that world into life."
Jill sat on her hands and bit her tongue to stop herself from interrupting.
"We got home without the witch after some more mess and adventure, and promptly stole and hid the Rings so nobody could misuse them -- and to stop Digory's uncle from making anything worse. I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but he was a horrible, petty man and we're all lucky he wasn't a whisker more competent." Here Miss Plummer grimaced in a close cousin to the expression most Experiment House students wore when talking or thinking about the Head. "We've kept an eye out for magic ever since, which is more common than you might think, but we hadn't heard anything about Narnia until Eustace Scrubb's cousins found their way into that world through a wardrobe in Digory's house."
"That sounds like utter nonsense," Jill said. It was even worse, somehow, than the muddle Scrubb had tried to feed her behind the gym before They had come hunting. Probably it was the breezy confidence with which Miss Plummer delivered her tale -- Scrubb's awkward fumbling had had the ring of sincerity, while Miss Plummer's words felt more like a breathless tabloid yarn that everyone knew was at least half lies.
"Most magical experiences sound absurd when summarized," Miss Plummer said in an agreeable tone. "I daresay yours would too, if you stuck to the bones and left out all the bits that make it live. Regardless, I've told you my story, which means it's now your turn to answer my questions."
For a moment, Jill considered saying that she didn't want to talk about any of it. After all, Miss Plummer herself had said at the start of the interview that she'd prefer that to any lies, and Jill hadn't technically agreed to answer questions in return for Miss Plummer's story. But that seemed mean-spirited and she was trying to be a better person than before Narnia -- to be someone Puddleglum would respect, someone worthy of a quest to rescue a lost prince and save a country from an evil witch.
Someone who might one day rescue a girl named Polly from what sounded like a badly worded bargain with wicked fairies.
"Fair deal," Jill said. "Just try not to make things sound so awful that the inspectors decide to close down the school for the rest of term. A lot of us haven't anywhere to go if that happens."
"I shall endeavor to strike a balance between 'Something must be done!' and 'Raze Carthage and salt the earth,'" Miss Plummer said, readying her pen. "Now, I'd like you to start by telling me your first impression of Experiment House so I have a foundation from which to direct my inquiries."
Jill smoothed her hands over her skirt once more, feeling the familiar snag of wool under her fingertips. England wasn't Narnia, wasn't the kind of place where a schoolgirl on scholarship could save a whole country. But there was magic in England, hidden in odd corners and old forests and strange rings -- there had to be, in order for anyone to reach Narnia in the first place -- and even without magic, she could still find ways to make this world better, one inch at a time.
"I met Adela Pennyfather -- one of Their ringleaders -- on the train before my first term," she said, "and by the time we reached the station, I knew it was going to be a horrible year."
Miss Plummer's pen dashed across her paper, noting down Jill's words as if they mattered. As if people would listen and pay attention. As if they could change the world.
Even if Miss Plummer's article couldn't get rid of the Head, at least she was trying her best. Jill could hardly do less in return.
She took a deep breath and spoke the future she wanted into life.
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End of Fic
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The historical British school system is such a pain in the neck to research, and I'm sure I've still gotten things wrong. Point out any errors you see, please? If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
Note: Written for
marmota_b, in response to the prompt: Wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey with Polly and Jill? Somehow, they meet out of time, or they do some dimension hopping, or both... It is also a fill for the
ladiesbingo square wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey: time travel.
(Say hello to the accidental setup for a novella I am not going to write. *headdesk*)
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Go Forth To Meet the Future
---------------------------------------------
The first time Jill Pole met Polly Plummer was nine days after her return from Narnia, once the initial hubbub about an escaped circus lion had died down and all the real muck about the Head and the general disastrous state of Experiment House was starting to come to light.
Jill had been keeping her head down and avoiding the school inspectors, but on Tuesday afternoon her luck ran out. A prefect corralled her into an empty mathematics classroom with a perfunctory explanation of, "Some old lady reporter wants to interview people who had run-ins with Them. For heaven's sake, don't be dramatic or the inspectors might shut down the school for the rest of term, and nobody needs that kind of mess."
Jill, who was serious about her education and whose family budget was stretched to its limit to pay her tuition and board and would most likely burst under the strain of having to support her at home without a refund (and she highly doubted any refund would be forthcoming), agreed completely and decided she'd say as little to the reporter as she could politely get away with.
('Politely' was important. It wouldn't help anyone if the reporter put it about that she might have done anything to deserve Their attentions. Jill would much rather not need to bite her tongue, but needs must.)
The reporter was, as advertised, an older woman, but not in a soft, grandmotherly way. Her gray hair was neatly braided and coiled into a bun, and she gave off the air of someone who had been everywhere, seen everything, done most anything worth doing, and would see no difference between a fishmonger and the king of England himself. She was sitting behind the teacher's desk, back straight as a ruler and a ballpoint pen clenched between her teeth like a cigarette, shuffling papers to and fro as if hunting for an exam answer.
"Ma'am," Jill said in her best Polite Company voice.
The lady reporter looked up with keen, dark eyes, very nearly the shade of the chalkboard behind her. "Ah, another," she said, reaching up to pluck the pen from her mouth. "Come in, shut the door, and take a seat. I shan't bite."
"Ma'am," Jill said again as she obeyed the instructions. She smoothed her hands over the itchy wool of her uniform skirt, missing the finer fabrics of Narnia and the way they had never caught on her now-lost calluses or ragged nails.
"I like to make expectations clear at the outset. It saves time and arguments later on," the reporter said, twirling the pen between her fingers. Her brows drew downward in a faintly puzzled frown, as if Jill were an equation that wouldn't come out right. "My name is Polly Plummer and I'm here on behalf of the Sunday Times to write a human interest story about life as a student under Head Teacher Somerset's administration. I'll ask a few questions about teaching methods, a few about official discipline policy, and a few about interactions among students. If you don't wish to answer any of the questions, don't lie. Simply say, "I don't wish to answer that," and I'll move on. Are we clear?"
"Yes, Mrs. Plummer," Jill said.
"Only by the old usage," the reporter said with a quick smile that briefly lit her round face with an interior radiance. "I am a mistress of my craft and a businesswoman in my own right. As I am also unmarried and times have changed, however, I've resigned myself to remaining Miss Plummer regardless of my age. But let's set that aside or we'll rapidly descend into the kind of tedious hair-splitting only a philosopher could enjoy. I am Polly Plummer, and you are--?"
"Jill Pole, ma'am," Jill said. "Year five."
The reporter -- or Miss Plummer, as Jill supposed she ought to think of her with her proper name -- straightened even further in her chair, which by all rights should not have been possible.
"Jill Pole, friend of Eustace Scrubb?"
Jill forced herself not to clench her hands. "Yes, ma'am," she said, and ventured a blend of her Polite Company smile and the bubbly mask she'd put on for the Harfang giants. "Scrubb and I get on all right." She clamped her mouth shut before she could volunteer anything further.
"I thought you looked familiar," Miss Plummer said, inexplicably, with an air of satisfaction. "It's a pleasure to meet another Friend of Narnia. And on a more personal note, I should tell you that while this may be your first time meeting me, it is not the first time that I have met you."
"What," Jill said blankly.
"Time doesn't run evenly between worlds," Miss Plummer said, "and I've been known to leap into dangerous situations -- such as, for example, fairy circles -- without looking as carefully as some folk would prefer me to do. Many years ago (at least by my reckoning), you happened upon me while I was stuck in the consequences of an incautious leap. I shan't tell you anything further, both because it's not healthy to know one's own future in too much detail and because I am here to gather material for a newspaper article, not to discuss our mutual personal history."
"That's-- but-- how on earth am I meant to talk about teachers and bullies when you've gone and dropped time travel on my head!" Jill exclaimed.
"I expect you shall manage in much the same way that I managed to explain a rather intricate magically-binding contract right after you dropped time travel on my head," Miss Plummer said. She tapped her pen against her lips and smiled. "Goodness, this is much more amusing from the other side. I suppose I ought to preemptively apologize for being such a pestering nuisance when I was younger."
Jill managed to shove her surprise into a box and slam down the lid hard enough to clear space for thought in her head. And what she thought was, if Miss Plummer had been (or would be) a pestering nuisance to Jill in their joint past-and-future, Jill certainly had the right to be a pestering nuisance here and now.
"You can apologize if you like, but I shan't accept it until I've experienced your annoyances and can judge them for myself," Jill pronounced, folding her arms across her blouse. "And I won't answer any of your questions, either, until you tell me why you know about Narnia. I think that's only fair."
Miss Plummer gave Jill a very stern look, but Jill was used to weathering much worse looks both from teachers and from some of Them, and stared past Miss Plummer's ear at a half-erased algebra equation until the reporter blinked.
"Fair enough," Miss Plummer said. "To make a very long story short, my friend Digory Kirke had a wicked uncle who dabbled in magic he didn't understand. This uncle made some magic Rings that could transport people to a place between worlds, and from there into any world in the universe." She paused and shot Jill a questioning look. "Any questions?"
Thousands, but voicing any of them right now would give Miss Plummer the victory. "Not yet," Jill said.
Miss Plummer shrugged and continued. "Digory and I visited a dying world and accidentally brought an evil witch back to London with us. It was a horrible mess. We tried to take her back to her dead world, but instead we fell into Narnia right as Aslan started to sing that world into life."
Jill sat on her hands and bit her tongue to stop herself from interrupting.
"We got home without the witch after some more mess and adventure, and promptly stole and hid the Rings so nobody could misuse them -- and to stop Digory's uncle from making anything worse. I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but he was a horrible, petty man and we're all lucky he wasn't a whisker more competent." Here Miss Plummer grimaced in a close cousin to the expression most Experiment House students wore when talking or thinking about the Head. "We've kept an eye out for magic ever since, which is more common than you might think, but we hadn't heard anything about Narnia until Eustace Scrubb's cousins found their way into that world through a wardrobe in Digory's house."
"That sounds like utter nonsense," Jill said. It was even worse, somehow, than the muddle Scrubb had tried to feed her behind the gym before They had come hunting. Probably it was the breezy confidence with which Miss Plummer delivered her tale -- Scrubb's awkward fumbling had had the ring of sincerity, while Miss Plummer's words felt more like a breathless tabloid yarn that everyone knew was at least half lies.
"Most magical experiences sound absurd when summarized," Miss Plummer said in an agreeable tone. "I daresay yours would too, if you stuck to the bones and left out all the bits that make it live. Regardless, I've told you my story, which means it's now your turn to answer my questions."
For a moment, Jill considered saying that she didn't want to talk about any of it. After all, Miss Plummer herself had said at the start of the interview that she'd prefer that to any lies, and Jill hadn't technically agreed to answer questions in return for Miss Plummer's story. But that seemed mean-spirited and she was trying to be a better person than before Narnia -- to be someone Puddleglum would respect, someone worthy of a quest to rescue a lost prince and save a country from an evil witch.
Someone who might one day rescue a girl named Polly from what sounded like a badly worded bargain with wicked fairies.
"Fair deal," Jill said. "Just try not to make things sound so awful that the inspectors decide to close down the school for the rest of term. A lot of us haven't anywhere to go if that happens."
"I shall endeavor to strike a balance between 'Something must be done!' and 'Raze Carthage and salt the earth,'" Miss Plummer said, readying her pen. "Now, I'd like you to start by telling me your first impression of Experiment House so I have a foundation from which to direct my inquiries."
Jill smoothed her hands over her skirt once more, feeling the familiar snag of wool under her fingertips. England wasn't Narnia, wasn't the kind of place where a schoolgirl on scholarship could save a whole country. But there was magic in England, hidden in odd corners and old forests and strange rings -- there had to be, in order for anyone to reach Narnia in the first place -- and even without magic, she could still find ways to make this world better, one inch at a time.
"I met Adela Pennyfather -- one of Their ringleaders -- on the train before my first term," she said, "and by the time we reached the station, I knew it was going to be a horrible year."
Miss Plummer's pen dashed across her paper, noting down Jill's words as if they mattered. As if people would listen and pay attention. As if they could change the world.
Even if Miss Plummer's article couldn't get rid of the Head, at least she was trying her best. Jill could hardly do less in return.
She took a deep breath and spoke the future she wanted into life.
---------------------------------------------
End of Fic
---------------------------------------------
The historical British school system is such a pain in the neck to research, and I'm sure I've still gotten things wrong. Point out any errors you see, please? If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)