Into Something Rich and Strange for snacky
Title: Into Something Rich and Strange
Author: edenfalling / Elizabeth Culmer
Recipient: snacky
Rating: G
Content/Warnings: Nothing major, but this might not be the best story to read if you are claustrophobic or particularly afraid of either drowning or the dark.
Summary: "The siren is a creature of reflections, born of lightning on the winter sea," the mer-woman said, her tail fins twitching in signs Susan had no skill to read. "Cold and light feed its power and no being born of the sea can gainsay its command, though we who are female can at the least resist its lure. You are a Daughter of Eve, born of dreams and flesh. Your power comes from the warmth of blood and the darkness of the beating heart; the siren has no strength against that magic. You must close your eyes and dream the enemy into the final dark."
Author's Notes: I tried to combine a story about Susan fixing things and an ocean story about the merpeople; hopefully I have succeeded. My heartfelt thanks to [redacted] for her awesome beta-reading, without which the story would be much shallower.
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Into Something Rich and Strange
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The Eastern Door of Cair Paravel opened directly onto the sea, so the saying went, but this was not strictly true. For one thing, Cair Paravel sat a good hundred feet above the water even at high tide, and for another, building a door onto the sea is only asking for storm damage. Instead the door of the great hall (which was not the same as the banqueting hall, for castles built by magic do not have to follow logic and economy the way normal castles do) opened onto a narrow parapet walk over a cliff at the edge of the promontory upon which the castle sat. At the north end of that walk, a narrow, twisting stair led down the salt-stained rocks to the jagged shore, where the sea dashed itself heedlessly against the land with nary a strip of sand to gentle its blows.
A little cupola had been carved at the foot of the stair, paved with slate and ringed with granite merlons between which a person could dangle his or her feet to feel the lick of waves at high tide and the misty spray when the sea retreated.
Susan Pevensie, Queen of Narnia, stood there mid-morning on a late autumn day with her feet bare and her hair in a simple plait. Seabirds wheeled and cried in the cloudless sky, searching for the fishing folk they were wont to follow, but all the fishing boats were at anchor or dragged up on the shore. The streets of the harbor village, across the river mouth, were strangely empty, as were the guard posts on the castle wall above.
Susan paid these signs no mind, her attention trained downward upon the woman of the mer-folk who had come to the castle at dawn to offer a bargain.
"Are you sure the magic will work?" she asked, trying hard not to bite her lip or clutch her hands in her dress and give away her nerves.
The mer-woman smiled with her sharp teeth and said, in her high, silvery voice, "Our power follows the tides. Until the ocean ebbs, the spell will hold and water will be your air. You can meet the siren in its lair. Or have you changed your mind?"
"No," said Susan, stung. "I gave my word." She might not be Lucy, to whom truth and trust came so effortlessly, but she had always done her best to be reliable, to be the support her family needed. She wouldn't disgrace herself.
Nobody knew where the siren had come from, nor why it had settled at the mouth of Narnia's Great River, but while the first signs of its presence had merely been fishing boats distracted from a day's work by a sourceless song, this past week had seen a Terebinthian crown ship sent careening full speed into the breakwater around the harbor. Twelve sailors had drowned, and the ambassador and his wife had lost all their luggage and the draft of the new alliance treaty, clothes and papers hopelessly spoilt by salt and stones. Three days ago a Galmian trade clipper had narrowly avoided a similar fate and her captain had sent word to the Duke of Galma equesting an embargo if any of his countrymen perished when they put back out to sea. Yesterday half a party of dwarfs come to scavenge for driftwood had walked senseless into the waves and drowned, the lone dwarfess unable to wrestle more than a pair of her companions safely back to shore. Last night a castle guard had nearly leapt to his death from a tower, saved only by a change in the wind that carried the siren's song back out to sea.
The mer-woman claimed her people knew a way to fight it, but they could not manage the feat alone. The mer-folk were not Narnians, though they followed Aslan and had agreed to guard the harbor in return for gold and precious gems. They had kept that promise faithfully this year, and the islanders swore that the mer-folk held bargains akin to holy writ. A bargain was no true stay against the wildness of the sea, they said, but each new bond would hold for a season until the true anchor was found.
Susan put little stock in proverbs, but Narnia could not afford the siren to remain and the mer-folk had proven themselves trustworthy. So she had promised her aid.
Now she took off her crown and began to unlace her clothes, stepping out of the blue woolen dress and then the gray linen shift underneath until she stood naked as the day she was born, shivering as the fitful wind kissed the sea-spray from her skin. She wished, fruitlessly, that her siblings were able to accompany her, but Lucy was in Anvard to support Queen Elwen through the birth of her first child and her brothers were, for obvious reasons, unsuited to the task, even had they been in Cair Paravel rather than tracking reports of werewolves near Lantern Waste. This problem was hers alone to face and resolve.
So many problems were hers alone to shoulder these days. She wondered how much longer she could carry the weight of an entire nation.
"Come into the water, my lady," the mer-woman called, beckoning with one clawed hand. "High tide falls at noon this day, low tide at sunset. The more you delay, the less time before the shadows grow long, your breath runs out, and both our peoples are lost."
Susan bit her lip to hide the chatter of her teeth. Slowly, she lowered her legs over the edge. Chill water slapped and sucked at her feet, then her shins, then her knees. Her bones felt like liquid ice. She could barely sense her toes, though a judder of pressure told her they must have struck stone.
She clung to the shore for one breath, and another, and one breath more, before a larger wave sent water crashing over her head and tore her grip away.
The mer-woman caught her as she fell and drew her close and down, beneath the raging surf. Under the water the light was dim and greenish-gray, broken by clouds of sand and bubbles, but the mer-woman's eyes shone silver-bright like beacons as she bent her face toward Susan.
"The sea is deeper magic than the land, little sister," she said, her voice echoing off the jagged stones as if she sang a round and fugue with herself. "Blood is made of salt and water, and we all breathe without lungs in the womb. I will teach you to remember. Breath and blood, flesh and bone, the ocean claims all in the end."
She prized Susan's mouth open and slipped something small and hard onto her tongue.
"Swallow," she said. "Then breathe."
Convulsively, Susan obeyed.
Water rushed down her throat and she tensed, anticipating the choking, tearing ache... but none came. Instead a warm flutter spread along her sides, and when she spread her arms she saw gills lining the gaps between her ribs. The water no longer felt cold; instead it was refreshing like a bath after a long summer's day of travel. The salt no longer stung her eyes. But she was still human in many ways.
"Did the spell stop halfway? I haven't any tail," Susan noted, kicking one leg by way of demonstration. Her voice sounded dull and flat; it woke no singing echoes from the stones.
The mer-woman's mouth twisted in a bitter smile. "I cannot make you one of us. That is beyond my power, something only the Deep Magic or Aslan himself can change. You are merely a guest in the sea, here and gone like a change in the weather, and that is what will give you power over the siren. I would not have bargained with you otherwise, for while we bear the land no ill will, we have always won our victories alone. Now give me your hand. You swim well for a landling, but our errand calls for speed."
Susan clasped the mer-woman's offered hands and let herself be carried through the turbulent shallows where the river joined the bay, out past the spears of stone and the clumps of weed that sheltered a hundred kinds of fish and little scuttling beasts. The new breakwater loomed dark and distant to her right, then fell away in the murk. The stones that lined the shore subsided, their sharp bones covered by pale sand that reflected the distant sun up to dance on the underside of the water's surface.
To her left, Susan saw the city of the mer-folk, rising from a patch of bare, dark ground. Vast columns of basalt had been carved into towers, decorated with shells and gold and streamers of colored seaweed. People swam in and out of the many windows, some carrying stone tablets, others carrying spears, and still others heading purposefully toward the harbor to guide sailors around the rocks and reefs that lay in wait to tear the bellies of unwary ships. Shoals of fish darted here and there, herded by mer-folk and the dolphins they kept as companions.
It was beautiful, in an other-worldly way.
It was also wrong, Susan realized, for all the people she saw were female, and those with spears kept them aimed inward toward their own city rather than outward to defend against the myriad predators of the sea. No wonder the mer-folk had been so eager to enlist her aid. The siren preyed on them as surely as on the folk of the air and land.
"It took my brother this past fortnight," the mer-woman said, following Susan's gaze. "We marked its lair by the pile of bones that grows beside the entrance to the cave. When you are done, we will bring them home for funeral rites."
Her voice still echoed like music, but it was silvery no longer: like iron, rather, or the heavy finality of lead.
Susan swallowed and thought she tasted blood.
They swam on, Susan kicking and twisting as best she could to aid the mer-woman on their way, and presently they came to an upthrust ridge of basalt with a gaping, black crevice in one side. Broken spears and bones were strewn in careless heaps about the cave mouth, with bits of tattered flesh still clinging to the joints. The water was strangely still and clear; no fish or crabs moved to scavenge the feast. The siren's power kept all other life away.
Susan felt that inimical magic seeping from the cave on a cold, slithery current. It coiled around her chest and throat, reminding her how unnatural for a human to be undersea, to breathe water in place of air. It threaded between her fingers and toes, chilling the joints to the point of pain. It weighed heavy on her head and eyes, blurring her vision and her thoughts.
"You must enter and face it alone," the mer-woman said, letting go of Susan's hands and chafing her own fingers together for warmth. "I will wait until low tide to carry you to the surface, but no longer."
Susan hesitated. The cave mouth was very dark, and she had never liked adventures. Was it absolutely necessary to go inside?
"Is there any way to force the siren into the light?" she asked.
"The siren is a creature of reflections, born of lightning on the winter sea. We had thought them gone when Aslan broke the net the White Lady used to bind the waves, but either this one hid beyond his reach or fled north to the ever-winter and has only now returned," the mer-woman said, her tail fins twitching in signs Susan had no skill to read. "Cold and light feed its power and no being born of the sea can gainsay its command, though we who are female can at the least resist its lure. You are a Daughter of Eve, born of dreams and flesh. Your power comes from the warmth of blood and the darkness of the beating heart; the siren has no strength against that magic. You must close your eyes and dream the enemy into the final dark. Look not upon its illusions nor listen to its words."
"I've heard tales of sirens before. I'm not silly enough to think the beauty of its song worth the loss of my life," Susan said. She bent double in the water, reaching down to grasp an unbroken spear.
The mer-woman interposed her hand, claws firm around Susan's wrist. "No. You cannot use the tools of flesh to kill what is not flesh. This is a battle of magic. You carry naught but your heart and your will to set against temptation."
Susan looked at her empty hands, then down at her naked body. Her skin seemed ghostly in the underwater light, pebbled with goosebumps against the cold. She looked at the cave, and the tattered bones of the siren's victims.
She was only fourteen, she thought. Not yet two years in this new world, still scrambling to find her place and carry the weight of a throne she had not asked for and often felt she did not deserve. She did not want to die so young.
The mer-woman released Susan's arm. "I will not force you to fight unwilling. There are other Daughters of Eve."
Susan thought about Lucy, tiny and brilliant, who would hurl herself forward on nothing but faith. She thought of the women and girls who had petitioned to reclaim their family lands since the Witch's death, and the heartfelt joy on their faces when Susan had welcomed them home. She thought of the pearl-divers of Terebinthia, who had taken her swimming in the oyster beds and danced upon the shore, tattered skirts whipping about their legs, when Susan had found a single, misshapen pearl. She thought of the wind-weavers from Seven Isles who listened to the wind and strung nets of feathers and shimmering wire to catch fortune for their ships, and who had offered to teach Susan and Lucy their ways.
There were other Daughters of Eve indeed.
But Susan shook her head. "I will keep my word."
She swam into the dark.
The cave mouth vanished from view faster than she thought natural, though her path neither twisted nor dipped. First the sandy floor of the cave shone pale in the green-gray twilight; then it became dim and ashy; then it was swallowed by the crushing black. After a moment Susan pushed downward until her feet touched the sand, wanting some solid point of reference to counter her sudden fancy that she had swum through a gate into the very abyss itself. She took several steps that way, blinking her eyes furiously to dispel the phantom swirls and sparks of color her mind tried to conjure against the utter dark, before her toe stubbed against something smooth and round, and she realized with an icy jolt that she had trod upon a bone.
She kicked off the floor and swam sideways, orienting herself with a hand reached out to graze the wall instead.
She never knew, after, how long or how far she swam before she began to hear a strange, pulsating croon. She kicked forward, struggling to breathe the frigid, fetid water, and then realized the grayish haze at the bottom of her field of vision was not a phantom but the actual sand, now dimly visible once more in the siren's self-reflected light.
Susan closed her eyes and swam onward, aided now by a grasping current as if the cave itself were breathing in. The croon grew louder, more complex; it split into two voices, then three, then a full choir, singing harmony and counterpoint all to that eerie, pulsing beat, exactly the rhythm of a sleeping heart. The light grew likewise stronger until the inside of Susan's eyelids seemed yellow-bright, as if she were facing into the midday summer sun.
The rough stone under her hand vanished.
"You can open your eyes, child," a sweet voice said, warm with the memory of tea and honey and bedtime stories. "I will do you no harm."
A gentle hand reached out of the light and stroked the curve of Susan's cheek the way her mother had done before the war, telling her she'd done well, that her family was safe, that she could rest.
Susan flinched.
"No," she said. "You broke ships beyond repair. You scared the fishers away from the sea. You killed my people and my guests. You will kill again unless I stop you. I count that harm."
"Oh, child," the siren said. "Open your eyes. Whatever the fish-folk told you was a lie. I have naught to do with terror. Here in my home, there is only light and peace. You have no need to fight. You can lay your burden down and rest for a time. I will guard your dreams." The singing choir had faded, but a ghost of melody still drifted around the warm, honeyed voice and that pulsing, dragging beat throbbed through Susan's bones, weighting her limbs and sapping her will.
"My dreams are my own," Susan struggled to say. Her job wasn't done. She couldn't let go. But fighting hurt -- fighting was wrong; all wars were wrong -- and responsibility was so heavy.
"All children share each other's dreams. Such pretty, little baubles, so delicate and sweet. Look, here is a mother's touch and a father's pride. Here is the comfort of knowing someone else will resolve your woes. Here is a snug bed and a kiss goodnight. Here are your siblings safe and sound." The siren laughed. The light grew brighter and the images the voice described seemed to paint themselves on the backs of Susan's eyelids, moving pictures for an audience of one. That soft, gentle hand stroked her cheek again, drew her close for an embrace.
"That's it, that's right. You were not made for battle, child. You were not made to think but to feel. You were not made to lead but to follow. Let your worries drop like stones; they only wound you. Let your burdens drift away on the tide. Listen to my voice, open your eyes, look into my light. I will bring you the peace that lasts forever."
Peace, Susan thought. Oh, how she wanted peace. Her old world had been torn apart and Narnia was no respite from that wound, beset by enemies within and without despite the Witch's death.
She had grown so sick of wars.
Her eyes began to open. The siren's dazzle was blinding, too close and bright to see what it concealed, but as she blinked her mother's face began to coalesce out of the glare.
"I have missed you for so long," her mother said, with joy in her eyes, and her hands reached forth to join the siren's touch.
Susan slammed her eyes closed and tore the phantom hand from her body. It melted into water in her grip, numbing her fingers, and she realized how slow her heart had become, how cold her body had grown. The siren's light was only a mirror, she realized, only a mirage; it carried no warmth like the true light of the sun.
"I am more than a child," she said. "I am a queen of Narnia, and I will bear that burden gladly until the end of time. And my mother would never ask me to break my word."
"Not break, child, never break, merely set aside for a time. Even a queen may claim an idyll," the siren said in that honey-warm voice, but Susan was done with listening.
"You are nothing," she said. "You are an illusion, a phantasm. Lightning dies in the moment it is born, and its reflection is just as fleeting. You have no right to exist. I deny you. Let the darkness swallow you as it should have done long ago."
"Child, stop. This is no time to be over-hasty. Breathe, let the water hold you, let me take your pain--"
"You are nothing," Susan said again. "You are a sickness of the mind and I deny you. You have no voice. You have no light. You are a nightmare of the sea and it's time for the sea to wake and forget you." She swam forward through a tangle of desperate hands and phantom faces -- her mother, her father, her siblings -- and thought of nothing but darkness. Dark sky, dark sea, stretching endless in all directions. Dark earth, dark stone, solid and eternal. The darkness that devoured light and left no trace of its passing.
"Child, please--"
"You are nothing!" Susan shouted, and brought her arms together to embrace the heart of the light.
They closed on naught but frigid water, and then even that was gone, the cold melting away like a faded dream in the morning sun. Even the sea seemed fresher, filled her lungs with life instead of decay despite the depth of the cave.
Susan opened her eyes to blackness.
The siren was gone.
Then she had a moment of blind panic when she realized she had lost her sense of direction. What if this was not the end of the cave? What if it continued onward for miles and she drowned in the lonely depths when the tide ebbed and the mer-woman's spell unraveled? Susan thrashed desperately through the water, flailing her arms and legs until she lost even her sense of which way was up.
Her hand scraped against a stone, skin peeling back in ragged strips. Susan forced herself to stillness. "This is a wall," she said. "That is up, that is down. Panic wastes time." She cradled her wounded hand to her chest and set the other lightly upon the wall. In a maze, the only sure way to find an exit was to trace one wall the whole way through. The sooner she started, the sooner she would find the mouth of the cave.
As with the journey in, Susan could never afterward measure how far or how long she swam. She never did know if the siren's lair had been a cul-de-sac or if she had merely made a giant loop and hit the same opening by lucky chance. But whatever the truth of the matter, as she reached the end of her strength she saw a dim light in the distance and renewed her effort to reach open water.
The mer-woman caught her by the shoulders and stroked upward toward the surface as the spell failed, Susan's gills vanished, and water rushed down her aching throat.
"Breathe, my lady!" the mer-woman said as she heaved Susan up through the long, rolling waves. "Breathe!" She struck Susan on the back to force water from her lungs.
Susan coughed and vomited, a long rush of bile and water. She thought she saw something round and shining -- a pearl, perhaps, or a polished shell -- fall down through the water, casting reflections as it sank, but the mer-woman made no mention of it. Its virtue had gone, washed out with the tide and the ending of the spell.
"The siren is gone," she said when she could speak again through the pain and the shaking as the ocean's chill seeped into her unprotected bones. "I kept my word."
"So you did, little sister," the mer-woman said as she swam headlong for the cliff and the little cupola where Susan had left her clothes. "I can feel the shift in the currents already. Tomorrow we shall hold a wake for those we have lost. If you wish, you may come. That is an honor no landling has ever been offered before."
Susan bit her lip.
The sea cared nothing for those of the land, and had nearly killed her many times this day. And yet, that glimpse of the mer-folk's city had been beautiful. The shallows had gleamed and shimmered with light and life. And she did love the water.
"I will come," she said through frozen lips.
Then they were at the cliff, the surge and roar of the waves beating at her icy limbs. The mer-woman held Susan steady as she dragged herself onto the rocky shore, now visible in a slippery, narrow band where the tide had ebbed away. "You will have to climb on your own from here," she said. "Meet me tomorrow at dawn. Bring a pearl for the spell."
"I will," Susan said. She paused, her good hand raised to rest on the paving stones between two merlons, and asked, "Might I have the honor of your name?"
The mer-woman shook her head, dark hair spreading in tangles on the surface of the sea. "Our names cannot be said above the water, and so we never share them. But I will make you this promise, on my authority as keeper of my city: before this day we followed Aslan alone and every bargain with landlings was made anew each year, but now my people will swear fealty to Narnia so long as you and yours shall reign, and in your memory we will guard the shores of Cair Paravel until this world's ending."
All that for one siren? "You do me too much honor," Susan said, feeling the weight of another duty settle on her shoulders.
The mer-woman smiled with her sharp teeth. "Perhaps I do. There have been other sirens and other Daughters of Eve to fight them, though none so young as you, and always those who would not be missed should they fail. But at the dawn of time, Aslan commanded us to seek an anchor against the currents and I think I have found it at last. You are stronger than you would wish to be, Susan of Narnia. You can bear this obligation as you bear all others. Until tomorrow, my queen." She pushed back from the shore with a stroke of her silvery tail and vanished under the waves.
Susan closed her eyes for a long moment, thinking of light and peace, and burdens set aside.
Then she heaved herself out of the sea and put on her crown.
Narnia was waiting.
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End of Story
Original Prompt that we sent you:
What I want:
Any of these, take your pick or mix and match:
• stories about Caspian during his reign - fighting the giants, rebuilding Cair Paravel, settling in Narnia with Ramandu's Daughter, anything!
• stories about Susan during the Golden Age - what lead her to Calormene in HHB? She never rode to wars, so what was her role during them? Her role in the politics of Narnia maybe? A story where everything has gone wrong, and it must be fixed, and she is the one to do it.
• ocean travel stories - they don't have to be on the Dawn Treader! Maybe a story about the merpeople!
• Travel stories of all kinds - I love seeing characters (the Pevensies during their reign) exploring outside of Narnia, or maybe finding their way between worlds?
• For shipping, I love Caspian/Peter, and I like Peter/Susan, but if that's not your thing, no worries.
• I also love post-Narnia stories about Susan - what direction did her life take her after the events of the The Last Battle? But nothing tragic, I don't want her wishing she'd died.
• I like AUs of all kinds! And I like certain crossovers - LOTR or Game of Thrones; or if you're writing an England story, maybe a crossover with the books "The Montmaray Journals" or "Code Name Verity", if you're familiar with those fandoms. But please no crossovers with Doctor Who or Sherlock or Supernatural.
Prompt words/objects/quotes/whatever: Banter, laughter, fun, horses, found family, and deep connections.
Susan and Lucy were queens, and they ruled well and proudly
They honored their land and their lord, rang the bells long and loudly
-- Wicked Girls, Seanan McGuire
As someone long prepared for the occasion;
In full command of every plan you wrecked -
Do not choose a coward’s explanation
that hides behind the cause and the effect.
--Alexandra Leaving, Leonard Cohen
And I am waiting
For life to begin
And I am waiting
To set sail for happiness.
-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Author: edenfalling / Elizabeth Culmer
Recipient: snacky
Rating: G
Content/Warnings: Nothing major, but this might not be the best story to read if you are claustrophobic or particularly afraid of either drowning or the dark.
Summary: "The siren is a creature of reflections, born of lightning on the winter sea," the mer-woman said, her tail fins twitching in signs Susan had no skill to read. "Cold and light feed its power and no being born of the sea can gainsay its command, though we who are female can at the least resist its lure. You are a Daughter of Eve, born of dreams and flesh. Your power comes from the warmth of blood and the darkness of the beating heart; the siren has no strength against that magic. You must close your eyes and dream the enemy into the final dark."
Author's Notes: I tried to combine a story about Susan fixing things and an ocean story about the merpeople; hopefully I have succeeded. My heartfelt thanks to [redacted] for her awesome beta-reading, without which the story would be much shallower.
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Into Something Rich and Strange
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The Eastern Door of Cair Paravel opened directly onto the sea, so the saying went, but this was not strictly true. For one thing, Cair Paravel sat a good hundred feet above the water even at high tide, and for another, building a door onto the sea is only asking for storm damage. Instead the door of the great hall (which was not the same as the banqueting hall, for castles built by magic do not have to follow logic and economy the way normal castles do) opened onto a narrow parapet walk over a cliff at the edge of the promontory upon which the castle sat. At the north end of that walk, a narrow, twisting stair led down the salt-stained rocks to the jagged shore, where the sea dashed itself heedlessly against the land with nary a strip of sand to gentle its blows.
A little cupola had been carved at the foot of the stair, paved with slate and ringed with granite merlons between which a person could dangle his or her feet to feel the lick of waves at high tide and the misty spray when the sea retreated.
Susan Pevensie, Queen of Narnia, stood there mid-morning on a late autumn day with her feet bare and her hair in a simple plait. Seabirds wheeled and cried in the cloudless sky, searching for the fishing folk they were wont to follow, but all the fishing boats were at anchor or dragged up on the shore. The streets of the harbor village, across the river mouth, were strangely empty, as were the guard posts on the castle wall above.
Susan paid these signs no mind, her attention trained downward upon the woman of the mer-folk who had come to the castle at dawn to offer a bargain.
"Are you sure the magic will work?" she asked, trying hard not to bite her lip or clutch her hands in her dress and give away her nerves.
The mer-woman smiled with her sharp teeth and said, in her high, silvery voice, "Our power follows the tides. Until the ocean ebbs, the spell will hold and water will be your air. You can meet the siren in its lair. Or have you changed your mind?"
"No," said Susan, stung. "I gave my word." She might not be Lucy, to whom truth and trust came so effortlessly, but she had always done her best to be reliable, to be the support her family needed. She wouldn't disgrace herself.
Nobody knew where the siren had come from, nor why it had settled at the mouth of Narnia's Great River, but while the first signs of its presence had merely been fishing boats distracted from a day's work by a sourceless song, this past week had seen a Terebinthian crown ship sent careening full speed into the breakwater around the harbor. Twelve sailors had drowned, and the ambassador and his wife had lost all their luggage and the draft of the new alliance treaty, clothes and papers hopelessly spoilt by salt and stones. Three days ago a Galmian trade clipper had narrowly avoided a similar fate and her captain had sent word to the Duke of Galma equesting an embargo if any of his countrymen perished when they put back out to sea. Yesterday half a party of dwarfs come to scavenge for driftwood had walked senseless into the waves and drowned, the lone dwarfess unable to wrestle more than a pair of her companions safely back to shore. Last night a castle guard had nearly leapt to his death from a tower, saved only by a change in the wind that carried the siren's song back out to sea.
The mer-woman claimed her people knew a way to fight it, but they could not manage the feat alone. The mer-folk were not Narnians, though they followed Aslan and had agreed to guard the harbor in return for gold and precious gems. They had kept that promise faithfully this year, and the islanders swore that the mer-folk held bargains akin to holy writ. A bargain was no true stay against the wildness of the sea, they said, but each new bond would hold for a season until the true anchor was found.
Susan put little stock in proverbs, but Narnia could not afford the siren to remain and the mer-folk had proven themselves trustworthy. So she had promised her aid.
Now she took off her crown and began to unlace her clothes, stepping out of the blue woolen dress and then the gray linen shift underneath until she stood naked as the day she was born, shivering as the fitful wind kissed the sea-spray from her skin. She wished, fruitlessly, that her siblings were able to accompany her, but Lucy was in Anvard to support Queen Elwen through the birth of her first child and her brothers were, for obvious reasons, unsuited to the task, even had they been in Cair Paravel rather than tracking reports of werewolves near Lantern Waste. This problem was hers alone to face and resolve.
So many problems were hers alone to shoulder these days. She wondered how much longer she could carry the weight of an entire nation.
"Come into the water, my lady," the mer-woman called, beckoning with one clawed hand. "High tide falls at noon this day, low tide at sunset. The more you delay, the less time before the shadows grow long, your breath runs out, and both our peoples are lost."
Susan bit her lip to hide the chatter of her teeth. Slowly, she lowered her legs over the edge. Chill water slapped and sucked at her feet, then her shins, then her knees. Her bones felt like liquid ice. She could barely sense her toes, though a judder of pressure told her they must have struck stone.
She clung to the shore for one breath, and another, and one breath more, before a larger wave sent water crashing over her head and tore her grip away.
The mer-woman caught her as she fell and drew her close and down, beneath the raging surf. Under the water the light was dim and greenish-gray, broken by clouds of sand and bubbles, but the mer-woman's eyes shone silver-bright like beacons as she bent her face toward Susan.
"The sea is deeper magic than the land, little sister," she said, her voice echoing off the jagged stones as if she sang a round and fugue with herself. "Blood is made of salt and water, and we all breathe without lungs in the womb. I will teach you to remember. Breath and blood, flesh and bone, the ocean claims all in the end."
She prized Susan's mouth open and slipped something small and hard onto her tongue.
"Swallow," she said. "Then breathe."
Convulsively, Susan obeyed.
Water rushed down her throat and she tensed, anticipating the choking, tearing ache... but none came. Instead a warm flutter spread along her sides, and when she spread her arms she saw gills lining the gaps between her ribs. The water no longer felt cold; instead it was refreshing like a bath after a long summer's day of travel. The salt no longer stung her eyes. But she was still human in many ways.
"Did the spell stop halfway? I haven't any tail," Susan noted, kicking one leg by way of demonstration. Her voice sounded dull and flat; it woke no singing echoes from the stones.
The mer-woman's mouth twisted in a bitter smile. "I cannot make you one of us. That is beyond my power, something only the Deep Magic or Aslan himself can change. You are merely a guest in the sea, here and gone like a change in the weather, and that is what will give you power over the siren. I would not have bargained with you otherwise, for while we bear the land no ill will, we have always won our victories alone. Now give me your hand. You swim well for a landling, but our errand calls for speed."
Susan clasped the mer-woman's offered hands and let herself be carried through the turbulent shallows where the river joined the bay, out past the spears of stone and the clumps of weed that sheltered a hundred kinds of fish and little scuttling beasts. The new breakwater loomed dark and distant to her right, then fell away in the murk. The stones that lined the shore subsided, their sharp bones covered by pale sand that reflected the distant sun up to dance on the underside of the water's surface.
To her left, Susan saw the city of the mer-folk, rising from a patch of bare, dark ground. Vast columns of basalt had been carved into towers, decorated with shells and gold and streamers of colored seaweed. People swam in and out of the many windows, some carrying stone tablets, others carrying spears, and still others heading purposefully toward the harbor to guide sailors around the rocks and reefs that lay in wait to tear the bellies of unwary ships. Shoals of fish darted here and there, herded by mer-folk and the dolphins they kept as companions.
It was beautiful, in an other-worldly way.
It was also wrong, Susan realized, for all the people she saw were female, and those with spears kept them aimed inward toward their own city rather than outward to defend against the myriad predators of the sea. No wonder the mer-folk had been so eager to enlist her aid. The siren preyed on them as surely as on the folk of the air and land.
"It took my brother this past fortnight," the mer-woman said, following Susan's gaze. "We marked its lair by the pile of bones that grows beside the entrance to the cave. When you are done, we will bring them home for funeral rites."
Her voice still echoed like music, but it was silvery no longer: like iron, rather, or the heavy finality of lead.
Susan swallowed and thought she tasted blood.
They swam on, Susan kicking and twisting as best she could to aid the mer-woman on their way, and presently they came to an upthrust ridge of basalt with a gaping, black crevice in one side. Broken spears and bones were strewn in careless heaps about the cave mouth, with bits of tattered flesh still clinging to the joints. The water was strangely still and clear; no fish or crabs moved to scavenge the feast. The siren's power kept all other life away.
Susan felt that inimical magic seeping from the cave on a cold, slithery current. It coiled around her chest and throat, reminding her how unnatural for a human to be undersea, to breathe water in place of air. It threaded between her fingers and toes, chilling the joints to the point of pain. It weighed heavy on her head and eyes, blurring her vision and her thoughts.
"You must enter and face it alone," the mer-woman said, letting go of Susan's hands and chafing her own fingers together for warmth. "I will wait until low tide to carry you to the surface, but no longer."
Susan hesitated. The cave mouth was very dark, and she had never liked adventures. Was it absolutely necessary to go inside?
"Is there any way to force the siren into the light?" she asked.
"The siren is a creature of reflections, born of lightning on the winter sea. We had thought them gone when Aslan broke the net the White Lady used to bind the waves, but either this one hid beyond his reach or fled north to the ever-winter and has only now returned," the mer-woman said, her tail fins twitching in signs Susan had no skill to read. "Cold and light feed its power and no being born of the sea can gainsay its command, though we who are female can at the least resist its lure. You are a Daughter of Eve, born of dreams and flesh. Your power comes from the warmth of blood and the darkness of the beating heart; the siren has no strength against that magic. You must close your eyes and dream the enemy into the final dark. Look not upon its illusions nor listen to its words."
"I've heard tales of sirens before. I'm not silly enough to think the beauty of its song worth the loss of my life," Susan said. She bent double in the water, reaching down to grasp an unbroken spear.
The mer-woman interposed her hand, claws firm around Susan's wrist. "No. You cannot use the tools of flesh to kill what is not flesh. This is a battle of magic. You carry naught but your heart and your will to set against temptation."
Susan looked at her empty hands, then down at her naked body. Her skin seemed ghostly in the underwater light, pebbled with goosebumps against the cold. She looked at the cave, and the tattered bones of the siren's victims.
She was only fourteen, she thought. Not yet two years in this new world, still scrambling to find her place and carry the weight of a throne she had not asked for and often felt she did not deserve. She did not want to die so young.
The mer-woman released Susan's arm. "I will not force you to fight unwilling. There are other Daughters of Eve."
Susan thought about Lucy, tiny and brilliant, who would hurl herself forward on nothing but faith. She thought of the women and girls who had petitioned to reclaim their family lands since the Witch's death, and the heartfelt joy on their faces when Susan had welcomed them home. She thought of the pearl-divers of Terebinthia, who had taken her swimming in the oyster beds and danced upon the shore, tattered skirts whipping about their legs, when Susan had found a single, misshapen pearl. She thought of the wind-weavers from Seven Isles who listened to the wind and strung nets of feathers and shimmering wire to catch fortune for their ships, and who had offered to teach Susan and Lucy their ways.
There were other Daughters of Eve indeed.
But Susan shook her head. "I will keep my word."
She swam into the dark.
The cave mouth vanished from view faster than she thought natural, though her path neither twisted nor dipped. First the sandy floor of the cave shone pale in the green-gray twilight; then it became dim and ashy; then it was swallowed by the crushing black. After a moment Susan pushed downward until her feet touched the sand, wanting some solid point of reference to counter her sudden fancy that she had swum through a gate into the very abyss itself. She took several steps that way, blinking her eyes furiously to dispel the phantom swirls and sparks of color her mind tried to conjure against the utter dark, before her toe stubbed against something smooth and round, and she realized with an icy jolt that she had trod upon a bone.
She kicked off the floor and swam sideways, orienting herself with a hand reached out to graze the wall instead.
She never knew, after, how long or how far she swam before she began to hear a strange, pulsating croon. She kicked forward, struggling to breathe the frigid, fetid water, and then realized the grayish haze at the bottom of her field of vision was not a phantom but the actual sand, now dimly visible once more in the siren's self-reflected light.
Susan closed her eyes and swam onward, aided now by a grasping current as if the cave itself were breathing in. The croon grew louder, more complex; it split into two voices, then three, then a full choir, singing harmony and counterpoint all to that eerie, pulsing beat, exactly the rhythm of a sleeping heart. The light grew likewise stronger until the inside of Susan's eyelids seemed yellow-bright, as if she were facing into the midday summer sun.
The rough stone under her hand vanished.
"You can open your eyes, child," a sweet voice said, warm with the memory of tea and honey and bedtime stories. "I will do you no harm."
A gentle hand reached out of the light and stroked the curve of Susan's cheek the way her mother had done before the war, telling her she'd done well, that her family was safe, that she could rest.
Susan flinched.
"No," she said. "You broke ships beyond repair. You scared the fishers away from the sea. You killed my people and my guests. You will kill again unless I stop you. I count that harm."
"Oh, child," the siren said. "Open your eyes. Whatever the fish-folk told you was a lie. I have naught to do with terror. Here in my home, there is only light and peace. You have no need to fight. You can lay your burden down and rest for a time. I will guard your dreams." The singing choir had faded, but a ghost of melody still drifted around the warm, honeyed voice and that pulsing, dragging beat throbbed through Susan's bones, weighting her limbs and sapping her will.
"My dreams are my own," Susan struggled to say. Her job wasn't done. She couldn't let go. But fighting hurt -- fighting was wrong; all wars were wrong -- and responsibility was so heavy.
"All children share each other's dreams. Such pretty, little baubles, so delicate and sweet. Look, here is a mother's touch and a father's pride. Here is the comfort of knowing someone else will resolve your woes. Here is a snug bed and a kiss goodnight. Here are your siblings safe and sound." The siren laughed. The light grew brighter and the images the voice described seemed to paint themselves on the backs of Susan's eyelids, moving pictures for an audience of one. That soft, gentle hand stroked her cheek again, drew her close for an embrace.
"That's it, that's right. You were not made for battle, child. You were not made to think but to feel. You were not made to lead but to follow. Let your worries drop like stones; they only wound you. Let your burdens drift away on the tide. Listen to my voice, open your eyes, look into my light. I will bring you the peace that lasts forever."
Peace, Susan thought. Oh, how she wanted peace. Her old world had been torn apart and Narnia was no respite from that wound, beset by enemies within and without despite the Witch's death.
She had grown so sick of wars.
Her eyes began to open. The siren's dazzle was blinding, too close and bright to see what it concealed, but as she blinked her mother's face began to coalesce out of the glare.
"I have missed you for so long," her mother said, with joy in her eyes, and her hands reached forth to join the siren's touch.
Susan slammed her eyes closed and tore the phantom hand from her body. It melted into water in her grip, numbing her fingers, and she realized how slow her heart had become, how cold her body had grown. The siren's light was only a mirror, she realized, only a mirage; it carried no warmth like the true light of the sun.
"I am more than a child," she said. "I am a queen of Narnia, and I will bear that burden gladly until the end of time. And my mother would never ask me to break my word."
"Not break, child, never break, merely set aside for a time. Even a queen may claim an idyll," the siren said in that honey-warm voice, but Susan was done with listening.
"You are nothing," she said. "You are an illusion, a phantasm. Lightning dies in the moment it is born, and its reflection is just as fleeting. You have no right to exist. I deny you. Let the darkness swallow you as it should have done long ago."
"Child, stop. This is no time to be over-hasty. Breathe, let the water hold you, let me take your pain--"
"You are nothing," Susan said again. "You are a sickness of the mind and I deny you. You have no voice. You have no light. You are a nightmare of the sea and it's time for the sea to wake and forget you." She swam forward through a tangle of desperate hands and phantom faces -- her mother, her father, her siblings -- and thought of nothing but darkness. Dark sky, dark sea, stretching endless in all directions. Dark earth, dark stone, solid and eternal. The darkness that devoured light and left no trace of its passing.
"Child, please--"
"You are nothing!" Susan shouted, and brought her arms together to embrace the heart of the light.
They closed on naught but frigid water, and then even that was gone, the cold melting away like a faded dream in the morning sun. Even the sea seemed fresher, filled her lungs with life instead of decay despite the depth of the cave.
Susan opened her eyes to blackness.
The siren was gone.
Then she had a moment of blind panic when she realized she had lost her sense of direction. What if this was not the end of the cave? What if it continued onward for miles and she drowned in the lonely depths when the tide ebbed and the mer-woman's spell unraveled? Susan thrashed desperately through the water, flailing her arms and legs until she lost even her sense of which way was up.
Her hand scraped against a stone, skin peeling back in ragged strips. Susan forced herself to stillness. "This is a wall," she said. "That is up, that is down. Panic wastes time." She cradled her wounded hand to her chest and set the other lightly upon the wall. In a maze, the only sure way to find an exit was to trace one wall the whole way through. The sooner she started, the sooner she would find the mouth of the cave.
As with the journey in, Susan could never afterward measure how far or how long she swam. She never did know if the siren's lair had been a cul-de-sac or if she had merely made a giant loop and hit the same opening by lucky chance. But whatever the truth of the matter, as she reached the end of her strength she saw a dim light in the distance and renewed her effort to reach open water.
The mer-woman caught her by the shoulders and stroked upward toward the surface as the spell failed, Susan's gills vanished, and water rushed down her aching throat.
"Breathe, my lady!" the mer-woman said as she heaved Susan up through the long, rolling waves. "Breathe!" She struck Susan on the back to force water from her lungs.
Susan coughed and vomited, a long rush of bile and water. She thought she saw something round and shining -- a pearl, perhaps, or a polished shell -- fall down through the water, casting reflections as it sank, but the mer-woman made no mention of it. Its virtue had gone, washed out with the tide and the ending of the spell.
"The siren is gone," she said when she could speak again through the pain and the shaking as the ocean's chill seeped into her unprotected bones. "I kept my word."
"So you did, little sister," the mer-woman said as she swam headlong for the cliff and the little cupola where Susan had left her clothes. "I can feel the shift in the currents already. Tomorrow we shall hold a wake for those we have lost. If you wish, you may come. That is an honor no landling has ever been offered before."
Susan bit her lip.
The sea cared nothing for those of the land, and had nearly killed her many times this day. And yet, that glimpse of the mer-folk's city had been beautiful. The shallows had gleamed and shimmered with light and life. And she did love the water.
"I will come," she said through frozen lips.
Then they were at the cliff, the surge and roar of the waves beating at her icy limbs. The mer-woman held Susan steady as she dragged herself onto the rocky shore, now visible in a slippery, narrow band where the tide had ebbed away. "You will have to climb on your own from here," she said. "Meet me tomorrow at dawn. Bring a pearl for the spell."
"I will," Susan said. She paused, her good hand raised to rest on the paving stones between two merlons, and asked, "Might I have the honor of your name?"
The mer-woman shook her head, dark hair spreading in tangles on the surface of the sea. "Our names cannot be said above the water, and so we never share them. But I will make you this promise, on my authority as keeper of my city: before this day we followed Aslan alone and every bargain with landlings was made anew each year, but now my people will swear fealty to Narnia so long as you and yours shall reign, and in your memory we will guard the shores of Cair Paravel until this world's ending."
All that for one siren? "You do me too much honor," Susan said, feeling the weight of another duty settle on her shoulders.
The mer-woman smiled with her sharp teeth. "Perhaps I do. There have been other sirens and other Daughters of Eve to fight them, though none so young as you, and always those who would not be missed should they fail. But at the dawn of time, Aslan commanded us to seek an anchor against the currents and I think I have found it at last. You are stronger than you would wish to be, Susan of Narnia. You can bear this obligation as you bear all others. Until tomorrow, my queen." She pushed back from the shore with a stroke of her silvery tail and vanished under the waves.
Susan closed her eyes for a long moment, thinking of light and peace, and burdens set aside.
Then she heaved herself out of the sea and put on her crown.
Narnia was waiting.
---------------------------------------------
End of Story
Original Prompt that we sent you:
What I want:
Any of these, take your pick or mix and match:
• stories about Caspian during his reign - fighting the giants, rebuilding Cair Paravel, settling in Narnia with Ramandu's Daughter, anything!
• stories about Susan during the Golden Age - what lead her to Calormene in HHB? She never rode to wars, so what was her role during them? Her role in the politics of Narnia maybe? A story where everything has gone wrong, and it must be fixed, and she is the one to do it.
• ocean travel stories - they don't have to be on the Dawn Treader! Maybe a story about the merpeople!
• Travel stories of all kinds - I love seeing characters (the Pevensies during their reign) exploring outside of Narnia, or maybe finding their way between worlds?
• For shipping, I love Caspian/Peter, and I like Peter/Susan, but if that's not your thing, no worries.
• I also love post-Narnia stories about Susan - what direction did her life take her after the events of the The Last Battle? But nothing tragic, I don't want her wishing she'd died.
• I like AUs of all kinds! And I like certain crossovers - LOTR or Game of Thrones; or if you're writing an England story, maybe a crossover with the books "The Montmaray Journals" or "Code Name Verity", if you're familiar with those fandoms. But please no crossovers with Doctor Who or Sherlock or Supernatural.
Prompt words/objects/quotes/whatever: Banter, laughter, fun, horses, found family, and deep connections.
Susan and Lucy were queens, and they ruled well and proudly
They honored their land and their lord, rang the bells long and loudly
-- Wicked Girls, Seanan McGuire
As someone long prepared for the occasion;
In full command of every plan you wrecked -
Do not choose a coward’s explanation
that hides behind the cause and the effect.
--Alexandra Leaving, Leonard Cohen
And I am waiting
For life to begin
And I am waiting
To set sail for happiness.
-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti