Under Cover 1/2 - for makinhistory
Title: Under Cover
Author: rthstewart
Recipient: makinhistory
Rating: PG-13
Summary: “I’m more concerned about a decent night’s sleep than I am about a silly school reputation, Scrubb.”
AN: Thanks to my beta.
Part 1
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Autumn Term, Experiment House, 1942
Eustace Scrubb stared glumly at the clipboard in front of him and the neat sheet of paper clipped to it; they felt strange in his hands. He tried to ignore the weary patience of the police matron looming over him and offering him a pencil. Jill Pole was at his elbow, silent and staring at the foreign-seeming objects.
There are no pencils in Narnia. No clipboards. No well-meaning Bobby trying to gently prod him into identifying who should be contacted to come and collect him from the chaos of Experiment House and its raving Head and her gang ranting about escaped convicts, broken walls suddenly repaired, bright swords, and loose lions.
Next to him, Pole giggled. She was a bit overwrought and, if pushed too far, she’d burst into tears or start babbling. The Bobby talking to her was trying to probe where Pole should go while Experiment House closed for the inquiry. Pole’s father was, last they’d heard, in North Africa as part of the British spearhead moving west with the joint Anglo-American Operation Torch. Her mother was somewhere doing something with codes and had not left a forwarding address.
By the Lion, he’d been through this transition before and had had the High King of Narnia to help him through those rough waters of the first days back. But Pole shouldn’t have to be putting up this rot when the miracle of Narnia was still in them, when he could still feel the power of Aslan in her. They should be celebrating and crying and writing letters and sending telegrams, not sitting on a kerb talking to police officers.
The thought of going back to Cambridge and Harold and Alberta was too awful. He didn’t want to see his mother and father now. Eustace still wasn’t sure about this whole organized COE thing - a lifetime with Harold and Alberta made him wary of priests and smells and bells and Jesus and whatnot. But he believed in Aslan and that was just the sort of nonsense that his parents didn’t hold with at all. He’d be drinking cod liver oil and Chinese herb tonics for a week as Alberta tried to medicate him back into a dragon.
He and Pole needed somewhere to go where they could be together; he knew she needed him, and he remembered enough of the return only three months ago to know that he needed Pole, too. They needed to go somewhere that the well-meaning police would release them to. That meant they could not go to someone who was still in school, which ruled out his cousins. They needed an adult who could come and get them or meet them at a railway station, and that person needed to be close to Experiment House and have a house or a flat for privacy.
No sooner did he think it than Aslan gave him the answer.
“Officer, I should like you to contact a family friend who can come and collect me and Miss Pole here,” Eustace told the police matron, jerking his head in Pole’s direction. He tried to imitate the sort of authority that his cousins used in speaking. Caspian had had that command, too, and Eustace pushed away for the moment the pain of losing his friend. He would grieve for Caspian later.
“Miss Polly Plummer, Bedford.”
Aunt Polly even had a telephone on the exchange. Eustace wrote the name and number with a flourish. “If Miss Plummer is not at home she might be reached at her place of work, the Whipsnade Zoo, where she is an assistant curator.”
The police matron took back the clipboard with a smirk. “Perhaps we should have Miss Plummer here to advise us on the escaped lion?”
“Miss Plummer is, of course, very knowledgeable about lions,” Eustace replied with dignity. “I am certain she would be happy to assist in your inquiry.”
At this point, keeping serious was impossible for Pole and she burst out into a laugh hinting at hysteria.
Eustace reached out and clasped her hand, while using his free hand to search his pockets for a humbug. Bother that, of course they were long gone.
It took a few hours but, eventually, Aunt Polly marched on to the Experiment House grounds, spaniel at her heels, and the milling constabulary of Aylesbury parting before her. She very, very carefully inspected the outer wall and door for signs of escaped lions and other circus animals. She announced that she, an expert in African wildlife identification and management, saw nothing but bird droppings. English songbird droppings, to be precise. Eustace could see her mouth twitching as she said it, but no one dared cross Aunt Polly, especially when she spoke so convincingly and threatened to swing her carpet bag.
Declaring Experiment House free of lions, Aunt Polly swept him and Pole to the car park to her little roadster. Eustace thanked her for using a week’s worth of petrol ration to come and get them.
“No problem at all,” Aunt Polly assured them. “I shall declare this as an official consultation for necessary zoo and police business. I merely need to fill out the correct paperwork to receive an additional allotment.”
The spaniel, Simon, the carpet bag, and the bags he and Pole had packed, settled in the front passenger seat. He and Pole squeezed onto the back ledge, cheek to jowl, and elbow to knee.
From her carpet bag, Aunt Polly produced sandwiches, a tin of biscuits and a canteen filled with white wine. “You’re famished, I expect,” Aunt Polly said briskly, as they turned out on to the motorway. “Eat before you drink that wine, or you’ll get silly or sick, and I won’t have either.”
Pole’s eyes got very big. She did not realize that once you were a Friend of Narnia, the others all treated you like a grown up. Sometimes, this was awkward because, unlike his cousins, Eustace had not spent years and years in Narnia so he wasn’t really that much older than ten. Maybe eleven, or twelve at most. But, he usually did not want to remind them of the discrepancy as it often had its advantages, like now.
“Very sensible of you to ring me up, Eustace,” Aunt Polly said. “Aslan called you this morning?”
“Yes,” Eustace said, his mouth full of egg sandwich.
“How long were you there?”
Eustace looked at Pole. She shrugged, her shoulder bumping his chin since they were so close. “Two months?” Pole said tentatively. “Maybe three, or four?”
“How much time had passed there, Eustace, since your journey on the Dawn Treader?”
“Fifty years,” Eustace whispered. Caspian was dead. His friend. And Caspian had had such a wretched life, with his wife murdered, and son missing, and he never was able to return to the End of the World and sail the Sweet Sea and see again the wall of lilies and water. Eustace found tears springing in his eyes.
“I know it is an adjustment,” Polly said, so very kindly Pole started sniffling too. “Your cousins are all in school, so we’ll send them telegrams straight off, but you probably won’t be able to see them until the holidays. I sent a wire to Digory; he is teaching right now but he shall give some excuse and we’ll all spend the next few days together.”
Eustace unscrewed the cap on the dusty canteen. From what he knew of Aunt Polly, it was probably dust that had collected, not in her attic, but during some expedition to Africa. He took a sip of the sweetish wine and handed the canteen to Pole.
“Now, tell me everything.”
It was very late when they finally arrived at Aunt Polly’s row house in Bedford. He and Pole unfolded from the cramped back of the roadster and stumbled into her parlor, too spent to do more than stare at the unusual decor. Eustace had never been here before, though Edmund had told him of it. “African tribal masks and drums; Indian art; Chinese silks; photographs of her expeditions. You can spend hours just looking at her walls and albums.”
The spare bedroom was on the first floor, adjoining her parlor. He and Pole bickered over who would get the bed in the bedroom and who would get the blanket and pillow on the divan in the parlor.
Aunt Polly hugged them both, inhaling deeply of the scent of Narnia. “The Lion is still in you! So, stop arguing, split the difference if you cannot agree, and get some sleep!” With another hug, she went upstairs to her own bedroom. Simon gave them both a good night lick and then followed Polly up the stairs.
“You take the bed tonight, Pole, and I’ll take it tomorrow?”
“Agreed.” They shook hands on it then took turns in the washroom.
It felt very odd, changing into pyjamas, brushing his teeth, and doing all those ordinary things that he had done only yesterday and then not for three months or more. Peter had said not only did time pass differently between Narnia and here, but time took longer in Narnia. A day was hours longer, and weeks, months and years were measured in tens and hundreds, not sevens and twelves. How long were three Narnia months? He didn’t know, but it felt like six months, or eight here.
They murmured their good nights and it felt strained, though Eustace couldn’t pinpoint why. Pole shut the bedroom behind her and he tried to get settled on the divan in the parlor.
It was all a relative thing. The divan was nicer than anything he had slept upon in Narnia. But, he kept tossing about and it just wasn’t comfortable. Maybe that was the problem, he decided. It was too comfortable. There weren’t the rocks poking him in the sides. There weren’t the sounds of the insects buzzing and the frogs croaking, and Puddlegum snoring. There wasn’t the smoky smell of peat and cooked eel.
There was no Pole next to him, sharing the one warm blanket between them.
Eustace realized that what was really wrong about the whole arrangement was that Pole was not at his back and, just then, the door to the spare room opened.
“Scrubb?”
He sat up and looked over the back of the divan. She was in the bedroom doorway, looking as out of sorts as he felt. “Can’t sleep either?” he asked.
“No.” She shuffled toward him, tying her dressing gown around her. “The bed is too soft.”
“It’s too quiet too.”
She nodded. “And, I keep rolling over expecting to pull the blanket back from you.”
“I was not the blanket thief. You were,” he retorted. They always argued about this.
She scowled. “Fine. Be that way,” and turned to go back to the bedroom.
Eustace flailed out of the divan, grabbing the pillow and trailing blanket. “Pole?”
She pivoted back with a questioning look, taking in the pillow and blanket he was clutching.
“Maybe we could kip out? On the floor of your room? Like in Narnia? I mean it’s not the same of course, but it might help us sleep.”
Pole brightened and, bouncing on her toes, pushed the door of her room wider. Through the doorway he could see that her pillow and blanket were already on the floor.
There were no rocks, but it was a good, hard floor. There was a real pillow and the blankets didn’t smell of smoke and travel. After months of practice, it was routine. First Pole set the ground cover out just so, since she didn’t like sleeping on the bare ground (or floor) if she could help it. Then she lay down, curled on her side, facing outward, and it was his turn. Eustace threw the blanket over her and she grasped the corner while he crawled underneath it. He settled next to her, side by side, back to back, and pulled the blanket up to their heads. It was just as they had done it so very many times before, but under Narnian stars instead of Aunt Polly’s plaster ceiling of her spare room.
“Thanks, Scrubb.”
“I’m glad you were there, Pole. Thanks.”
And as it had been all those other nights before, for weeks and weeks, in the place where time was different and slower and longer, Eustace fell asleep to the rhythm of Jill Pole’s breathing.
When Professor Kirke joined them later in the week, they went over the whole journey again. The Professor and Aunt Polly were both very interested in their descriptions of the Lady of the Green Kirtle.
“She might have been Jadis,” Polly, said, explaining their concern. “The Empress of Charn who followed us into Narnia and who became the White Witch.”
“But Aslan killed her,” Eustace argued.
“And her followers tried to bring her back in King Caspian’s time,” Professor Kirke said, gravely stroking his beard. “Jadis did not live as mortals on Charn. Even after killing her entire world and everything in it, she preserved her existence with magic. She was at Narnia’s birth and she ate from the Tree of Youth. So, perhaps she remains so bound to Narnia that she continues to endure even if Aslan did kill her.”
“She may do so by changing form,” Polly said. She tapped a finger smartly on her tea saucer. “This Green Witch you describe is very different from Jadis. If possible, she sounds even worse.”
“Her methods were very different,” the Professor said slowly. “Though there are some similarities as well. That is what makes me think they might be the same being, or related by some magical succession.”
At this, Polly and the Professor exchanged a serious, knowing sort of look. Eustace shivered and Pole sniffed a little. The atmosphere of the kitchen table became strained and uncomfortable.
“We’ll just be off to bed then,” Pole announced suddenly. Together, they marched off to the spare bedroom and shut the door firmly behind them. They took turns in the washroom. Eustace had not decided if that was more or less convenient. It was, as Alberta would say, more sanitary than camping for two months or more in the rough wild, but more expectations came with things like a door you could shut and running water.
“I hope you didn’t mind,” Pole explained as she spread their blanket on top of the spare room bed. After a few nights on the floor of her room, he and Pole had moved to the bed, sleeping on top of the bed covers. They could still hear the sound of the Professor and Polly’s voices in the next room.
“I’m glad you spoke up. I didn’t want to hear them talk about the Prince and the Green Lady, either.” Eustace thought maybe Aunt Polly and the Professor were thinking about how Jadis had tricked Edmund, too. He’d not told Pole how the White Witch had lured Edmund into betraying his family with bewitched sweets because that tale wasn’t his to tell. This was one of those times when Eustace did not think he would ever be grown up enough to hear the sort of talk that Aunt Polly and the Professor were having.
“Seeing what she had done to him was bad enough,” Jill agreed, clambering into their bedroll. “I don’t need to hear others talk about it. It’s awful to think she kept Rilian for over ten years.”
Eustace slid on to the bed next to Pole, turned on to his side, with his back to her, and drew the blanket up over both of them, the way they always did now, and as they had always done.
He was having nightmares - about the Green Lady and her voice, about how her diseased magic felt in his ears and his bones, about being pawed and cooked by the Giants, and about the creak of the boat in dark water. That was another thing that was good about waking up with Pole at his back, under a warm, soft cover, and hearing the sounds of her peaceful sleep. Even though it was night in the room they shared, the dark of the Underworld faded when he was in Pole’s light.
When Eustace woke up the next morning, Pole was still asleep. The Professor had gone back to the university and Aunt Polly was making breakfast before she left for work at the Whipsnade Zoo.
“My divan is comfortable,” Aunt Polly commented dryly as she spread a little jam on her toast. “I have slept on it myself.”
“It’s not that.” Eustace was embarrassed that maybe Aunt Polly thought he was spurning her hospitality. “We just got used to sleeping together in Narnia.”
Aunt Polly looked at him very seriously over the rim of her tea cup. But she didn’t say anything more. In a vague sort of way, Eustace knew it might seem strange. He knew you shared a room with your sibling,s but he didn’t have any brothers or sisters. You shared a room with dorm or flat mates, if you had them. And, you shared a room with your wife, though Harold and Alberta had separate beds and his father usually slept in the spare room. But he and Pole were ten years old and Narnians and it seemed like some of those rules maybe did not apply or at least applied differently.
“Do you want us to stop?” Eustace felt he should ask, though he really wasn’t sure what they would stop, or if they could. They were just sleeping and they needed to do that.
“That is a decision for you and Jill,” Aunt Polly said. “But, I would recommend you find an alternative, as you eventually will be returning to school.”
It took two weeks for the inquiry and for Experiment House to reopen, which was time enough for several long letters with his cousins and many long conversations with Aunt Polly and the Professor.
The night before they went back, he and Pole followed Aunt Polly’s advice and tried splitting up. They tossed a coin and she took the floor and he took the bed. After midnight, they gave up and he joined her on the floor.
Side by side, on top of one blanket and under the cover of the other, Pole at his back. That was just the way it was.
“What do you think we’ll do, Pole?” Eustace supposed they would get accustomed to sleeping alone, eventually.
“Something will present itself, Scrubb.” Pole’s confident pronouncement ended with an uncertain, “I hope.”
The first day back was awful. Well, school was fine, for school, better than he’d even expected. Most of Them had been expelled, lots of other students had withdrawn, and their nutter of a Head was gone. The new Head started straight off with lots of assessments and tests to see just how much geography and Latin and arithmetic and European history they didn’t know. The testing took very little time, because, as all the students knew, Experiment House had been a good place to learn how to hide and move quickly and quietly away from trouble; academic success had never been an aptitude encouraged in students.
Eustace caught up with Pole during lunch. She was nodding off into her soup.
“This is not going to work, Scrubb,” she said through a yawn.
He rubbed his eyes and nodded. The potato was watery and tasteless; he shoved it away impatiently. Eustace never thought he’d miss smoked eel. “I fell asleep just as my alarm clock sounded. It’s stupid, too. All my dorm mates and the Hall Prefect are gone.”
This had been one of the other effects of the changes at Experiment House. The Head had made Them the Junior and Senior Prefects, and the Heads of the School - who had now all withdrawn or been expelled. There was no one to mete out unfair punishments, harass you, or patrol the corridors. There’d been a whole system of fagging and servitude and it was all gone because the overlords had been sent down.
Pole was resting her chin in her hands, her eyes half closed. She suddenly blinked and repeated, “You have the room to yourself?”
“For now…” Oh. “What about you?”
“Shirley Williams, that’s all.” Pole nodded decisively and she brightened. “And she’s all right. I’ll give it a go, what?”
He thought of protesting. Surely, they’d get caught and be expelled. But, why not at least try? The girls’ wing was just on the other side of the central stairway. It wasn’t that far. There wasn’t anyone to conduct patrols. And Pole was a terrific actress, too. She’d figure something out if she got caught.
Eustace nodded. “I’ll make sure the door is unlocked, just in case.”
And that night, an hour after curfew, the door to Eustace’s dormitory creaked open and Jill Pole slid into his room and bed.
“Budge over, Scrubb.”
“Any problems?”
“Not a one.”
“I set the alarm so you can get up before anyone else and slip back.”
He had already set out the blankets. Pole arranged the bottom one to her liking. Then, as always, the two of them lay together, side by side, on top of one blanket and under the cover of the other, Pole at his back.
All term and the next, Pole snuck into his rooms most nights. One weekend, when Pole’s dorm mate left, Eustace decided to make the run.
“You sure, Scrubb?” Pole asked when he whispered his plan during study hall. Experiment House had become a very serious place over the last year. When it turned out, certainly no surprise to the students, that none of them knew anything that they were supposed to know, the new Head sacked a lot of the Professors as well. There was a lot of classwork and homework, laboratories and mandatory study times. There was maybe even less supervision than before, because there wasn’t anyone to do the supervising. The Head made up for it by working them all to death, with rigorous physical education at the end of the day. They were exhausted but, all in all, it was a big improvement.
“It could be dangerous. You might get caught.”
“Oh, you know me, Pole. I laugh at danger and drop ice cubes down the vest of fear.”
“You’re brave as the Lion, Scrubb,” she agreed, laughing at his joke. “But you’re a rotten sneak.”
Eustace was caught before he even left his own hall, caned for being out after curfew, assigned an additional thirty pages of worksheets, and had to write I will not venture out of my dormitory like a thief in the night 1,000 times. In Latin.
After that, Pole made the trip. She was so good, she was only caught a few times, and each time she pretended she was sleepwalking and blubbed.
The summer hols were terrible without Pole. Alberta was stuffing nerve tonics and cod liver oil down his gullet every day. It only improved when Pole came to stay and then he went to see her, and then when they both went and stayed with Aunt Polly in Bedford. (He told Harold and Alberta he was going to stay with Pole’s Aunt. Pole told her mother that she was going to visit Scrubb’s Aunt.)
Planning ahead, Eustace badgered and whinged and became a right dragon until his parents relented and agreed to pay for him to get a single room at school. He sent an apology to Aslan for that wretched behavior. Eustace found he had to really work at it to be that awful. It would be worth it, though. A term without sleep and he and Pole would both turn into dragons.
On the return for the new term, however, he and Pole discovered that the outer door to his hall had a new lock. This proved to be no obstacle to Pole.
“I thought this might happen so I asked Susan to show me how to pick locks,” Pole explained. “And Edmund found me a set of picks.”
Eustace couldn’t figure why a King and Queen of Narnia had learned how to open locks without keys or knew where one would buy thieves’ tools.
She proudly displayed the picks. “I’m joining Girl Guides, too.”
“I don’t think you need to improve your outdoor camping and survival skills, Pole.”
Pole smacked him with her pillow. “For tracking and stealth, you prat.”
“So you can sneak into my room and steal my blanket!” Eustace crowed.
Pole smacked him again for that one. “I am not a blanket thief.”
The older they got, the easier it got. By the following year, they were both junior Prefects, Eustace continued to have his own room, and they always volunteered to patrol the dormitory halls after curfew. Patrol was a very unpopular assignment among the Prefects because all that any sensible student wanted to do was collapse in an exhausted stupor after the mandatory five mile jog before bed.
There wasn’t anything that Pole couldn’t overcome. She knew the entire floor plan of the school by heart, could pick the lock of every broom closet, and put two years worth of Girl Guides to good use. She moved as silently as a wood dryad through the school at night.
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Part two
What I want: Bookverse everything, por favor. An obscure or controversial pairing would be nice...Jill/Eustace! Lucy/Caspian! Digory/Polly! But if romance isn't your thing, I would love a fic about King Lune pre-Cor and Corin, or perhaps a bookverse about pre-Prince Caspian Caspian, or even a piece about a Golden Age-era battle or politics. I like politics and I like the nitty-gritty of history even more, so indulge me (or yourself, however it may be) and fill it up with detail. :)
Prompt words/objects/quotes/whatever: "Does it have to be this way? Our valued friendship ending with me cutting you up into strips and telling them that you walked over a very sharp cattle grid in an extremely heavy hat?" or "Well, he always says, when the going gets tough, the tough hide under the table." or even "Ha ! I laugh at danger and drop ice cubes down the vest of fear." All optional, by the way.
What I definitely don't want in my fic: Any hint of slash, incest, or Caspian/Susan.
Author: rthstewart
Recipient: makinhistory
Rating: PG-13
Summary: “I’m more concerned about a decent night’s sleep than I am about a silly school reputation, Scrubb.”
AN: Thanks to my beta.
Part 1
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Autumn Term, Experiment House, 1942
Eustace Scrubb stared glumly at the clipboard in front of him and the neat sheet of paper clipped to it; they felt strange in his hands. He tried to ignore the weary patience of the police matron looming over him and offering him a pencil. Jill Pole was at his elbow, silent and staring at the foreign-seeming objects.
There are no pencils in Narnia. No clipboards. No well-meaning Bobby trying to gently prod him into identifying who should be contacted to come and collect him from the chaos of Experiment House and its raving Head and her gang ranting about escaped convicts, broken walls suddenly repaired, bright swords, and loose lions.
Next to him, Pole giggled. She was a bit overwrought and, if pushed too far, she’d burst into tears or start babbling. The Bobby talking to her was trying to probe where Pole should go while Experiment House closed for the inquiry. Pole’s father was, last they’d heard, in North Africa as part of the British spearhead moving west with the joint Anglo-American Operation Torch. Her mother was somewhere doing something with codes and had not left a forwarding address.
By the Lion, he’d been through this transition before and had had the High King of Narnia to help him through those rough waters of the first days back. But Pole shouldn’t have to be putting up this rot when the miracle of Narnia was still in them, when he could still feel the power of Aslan in her. They should be celebrating and crying and writing letters and sending telegrams, not sitting on a kerb talking to police officers.
The thought of going back to Cambridge and Harold and Alberta was too awful. He didn’t want to see his mother and father now. Eustace still wasn’t sure about this whole organized COE thing - a lifetime with Harold and Alberta made him wary of priests and smells and bells and Jesus and whatnot. But he believed in Aslan and that was just the sort of nonsense that his parents didn’t hold with at all. He’d be drinking cod liver oil and Chinese herb tonics for a week as Alberta tried to medicate him back into a dragon.
He and Pole needed somewhere to go where they could be together; he knew she needed him, and he remembered enough of the return only three months ago to know that he needed Pole, too. They needed to go somewhere that the well-meaning police would release them to. That meant they could not go to someone who was still in school, which ruled out his cousins. They needed an adult who could come and get them or meet them at a railway station, and that person needed to be close to Experiment House and have a house or a flat for privacy.
No sooner did he think it than Aslan gave him the answer.
“Officer, I should like you to contact a family friend who can come and collect me and Miss Pole here,” Eustace told the police matron, jerking his head in Pole’s direction. He tried to imitate the sort of authority that his cousins used in speaking. Caspian had had that command, too, and Eustace pushed away for the moment the pain of losing his friend. He would grieve for Caspian later.
“Miss Polly Plummer, Bedford.”
Aunt Polly even had a telephone on the exchange. Eustace wrote the name and number with a flourish. “If Miss Plummer is not at home she might be reached at her place of work, the Whipsnade Zoo, where she is an assistant curator.”
The police matron took back the clipboard with a smirk. “Perhaps we should have Miss Plummer here to advise us on the escaped lion?”
“Miss Plummer is, of course, very knowledgeable about lions,” Eustace replied with dignity. “I am certain she would be happy to assist in your inquiry.”
At this point, keeping serious was impossible for Pole and she burst out into a laugh hinting at hysteria.
Eustace reached out and clasped her hand, while using his free hand to search his pockets for a humbug. Bother that, of course they were long gone.
It took a few hours but, eventually, Aunt Polly marched on to the Experiment House grounds, spaniel at her heels, and the milling constabulary of Aylesbury parting before her. She very, very carefully inspected the outer wall and door for signs of escaped lions and other circus animals. She announced that she, an expert in African wildlife identification and management, saw nothing but bird droppings. English songbird droppings, to be precise. Eustace could see her mouth twitching as she said it, but no one dared cross Aunt Polly, especially when she spoke so convincingly and threatened to swing her carpet bag.
Declaring Experiment House free of lions, Aunt Polly swept him and Pole to the car park to her little roadster. Eustace thanked her for using a week’s worth of petrol ration to come and get them.
“No problem at all,” Aunt Polly assured them. “I shall declare this as an official consultation for necessary zoo and police business. I merely need to fill out the correct paperwork to receive an additional allotment.”
The spaniel, Simon, the carpet bag, and the bags he and Pole had packed, settled in the front passenger seat. He and Pole squeezed onto the back ledge, cheek to jowl, and elbow to knee.
From her carpet bag, Aunt Polly produced sandwiches, a tin of biscuits and a canteen filled with white wine. “You’re famished, I expect,” Aunt Polly said briskly, as they turned out on to the motorway. “Eat before you drink that wine, or you’ll get silly or sick, and I won’t have either.”
Pole’s eyes got very big. She did not realize that once you were a Friend of Narnia, the others all treated you like a grown up. Sometimes, this was awkward because, unlike his cousins, Eustace had not spent years and years in Narnia so he wasn’t really that much older than ten. Maybe eleven, or twelve at most. But, he usually did not want to remind them of the discrepancy as it often had its advantages, like now.
“Very sensible of you to ring me up, Eustace,” Aunt Polly said. “Aslan called you this morning?”
“Yes,” Eustace said, his mouth full of egg sandwich.
“How long were you there?”
Eustace looked at Pole. She shrugged, her shoulder bumping his chin since they were so close. “Two months?” Pole said tentatively. “Maybe three, or four?”
“How much time had passed there, Eustace, since your journey on the Dawn Treader?”
“Fifty years,” Eustace whispered. Caspian was dead. His friend. And Caspian had had such a wretched life, with his wife murdered, and son missing, and he never was able to return to the End of the World and sail the Sweet Sea and see again the wall of lilies and water. Eustace found tears springing in his eyes.
“I know it is an adjustment,” Polly said, so very kindly Pole started sniffling too. “Your cousins are all in school, so we’ll send them telegrams straight off, but you probably won’t be able to see them until the holidays. I sent a wire to Digory; he is teaching right now but he shall give some excuse and we’ll all spend the next few days together.”
Eustace unscrewed the cap on the dusty canteen. From what he knew of Aunt Polly, it was probably dust that had collected, not in her attic, but during some expedition to Africa. He took a sip of the sweetish wine and handed the canteen to Pole.
“Now, tell me everything.”
It was very late when they finally arrived at Aunt Polly’s row house in Bedford. He and Pole unfolded from the cramped back of the roadster and stumbled into her parlor, too spent to do more than stare at the unusual decor. Eustace had never been here before, though Edmund had told him of it. “African tribal masks and drums; Indian art; Chinese silks; photographs of her expeditions. You can spend hours just looking at her walls and albums.”
The spare bedroom was on the first floor, adjoining her parlor. He and Pole bickered over who would get the bed in the bedroom and who would get the blanket and pillow on the divan in the parlor.
Aunt Polly hugged them both, inhaling deeply of the scent of Narnia. “The Lion is still in you! So, stop arguing, split the difference if you cannot agree, and get some sleep!” With another hug, she went upstairs to her own bedroom. Simon gave them both a good night lick and then followed Polly up the stairs.
“You take the bed tonight, Pole, and I’ll take it tomorrow?”
“Agreed.” They shook hands on it then took turns in the washroom.
It felt very odd, changing into pyjamas, brushing his teeth, and doing all those ordinary things that he had done only yesterday and then not for three months or more. Peter had said not only did time pass differently between Narnia and here, but time took longer in Narnia. A day was hours longer, and weeks, months and years were measured in tens and hundreds, not sevens and twelves. How long were three Narnia months? He didn’t know, but it felt like six months, or eight here.
They murmured their good nights and it felt strained, though Eustace couldn’t pinpoint why. Pole shut the bedroom behind her and he tried to get settled on the divan in the parlor.
It was all a relative thing. The divan was nicer than anything he had slept upon in Narnia. But, he kept tossing about and it just wasn’t comfortable. Maybe that was the problem, he decided. It was too comfortable. There weren’t the rocks poking him in the sides. There weren’t the sounds of the insects buzzing and the frogs croaking, and Puddlegum snoring. There wasn’t the smoky smell of peat and cooked eel.
There was no Pole next to him, sharing the one warm blanket between them.
Eustace realized that what was really wrong about the whole arrangement was that Pole was not at his back and, just then, the door to the spare room opened.
“Scrubb?”
He sat up and looked over the back of the divan. She was in the bedroom doorway, looking as out of sorts as he felt. “Can’t sleep either?” he asked.
“No.” She shuffled toward him, tying her dressing gown around her. “The bed is too soft.”
“It’s too quiet too.”
She nodded. “And, I keep rolling over expecting to pull the blanket back from you.”
“I was not the blanket thief. You were,” he retorted. They always argued about this.
She scowled. “Fine. Be that way,” and turned to go back to the bedroom.
Eustace flailed out of the divan, grabbing the pillow and trailing blanket. “Pole?”
She pivoted back with a questioning look, taking in the pillow and blanket he was clutching.
“Maybe we could kip out? On the floor of your room? Like in Narnia? I mean it’s not the same of course, but it might help us sleep.”
Pole brightened and, bouncing on her toes, pushed the door of her room wider. Through the doorway he could see that her pillow and blanket were already on the floor.
There were no rocks, but it was a good, hard floor. There was a real pillow and the blankets didn’t smell of smoke and travel. After months of practice, it was routine. First Pole set the ground cover out just so, since she didn’t like sleeping on the bare ground (or floor) if she could help it. Then she lay down, curled on her side, facing outward, and it was his turn. Eustace threw the blanket over her and she grasped the corner while he crawled underneath it. He settled next to her, side by side, back to back, and pulled the blanket up to their heads. It was just as they had done it so very many times before, but under Narnian stars instead of Aunt Polly’s plaster ceiling of her spare room.
“Thanks, Scrubb.”
“I’m glad you were there, Pole. Thanks.”
And as it had been all those other nights before, for weeks and weeks, in the place where time was different and slower and longer, Eustace fell asleep to the rhythm of Jill Pole’s breathing.
When Professor Kirke joined them later in the week, they went over the whole journey again. The Professor and Aunt Polly were both very interested in their descriptions of the Lady of the Green Kirtle.
“She might have been Jadis,” Polly, said, explaining their concern. “The Empress of Charn who followed us into Narnia and who became the White Witch.”
“But Aslan killed her,” Eustace argued.
“And her followers tried to bring her back in King Caspian’s time,” Professor Kirke said, gravely stroking his beard. “Jadis did not live as mortals on Charn. Even after killing her entire world and everything in it, she preserved her existence with magic. She was at Narnia’s birth and she ate from the Tree of Youth. So, perhaps she remains so bound to Narnia that she continues to endure even if Aslan did kill her.”
“She may do so by changing form,” Polly said. She tapped a finger smartly on her tea saucer. “This Green Witch you describe is very different from Jadis. If possible, she sounds even worse.”
“Her methods were very different,” the Professor said slowly. “Though there are some similarities as well. That is what makes me think they might be the same being, or related by some magical succession.”
At this, Polly and the Professor exchanged a serious, knowing sort of look. Eustace shivered and Pole sniffed a little. The atmosphere of the kitchen table became strained and uncomfortable.
“We’ll just be off to bed then,” Pole announced suddenly. Together, they marched off to the spare bedroom and shut the door firmly behind them. They took turns in the washroom. Eustace had not decided if that was more or less convenient. It was, as Alberta would say, more sanitary than camping for two months or more in the rough wild, but more expectations came with things like a door you could shut and running water.
“I hope you didn’t mind,” Pole explained as she spread their blanket on top of the spare room bed. After a few nights on the floor of her room, he and Pole had moved to the bed, sleeping on top of the bed covers. They could still hear the sound of the Professor and Polly’s voices in the next room.
“I’m glad you spoke up. I didn’t want to hear them talk about the Prince and the Green Lady, either.” Eustace thought maybe Aunt Polly and the Professor were thinking about how Jadis had tricked Edmund, too. He’d not told Pole how the White Witch had lured Edmund into betraying his family with bewitched sweets because that tale wasn’t his to tell. This was one of those times when Eustace did not think he would ever be grown up enough to hear the sort of talk that Aunt Polly and the Professor were having.
“Seeing what she had done to him was bad enough,” Jill agreed, clambering into their bedroll. “I don’t need to hear others talk about it. It’s awful to think she kept Rilian for over ten years.”
Eustace slid on to the bed next to Pole, turned on to his side, with his back to her, and drew the blanket up over both of them, the way they always did now, and as they had always done.
He was having nightmares - about the Green Lady and her voice, about how her diseased magic felt in his ears and his bones, about being pawed and cooked by the Giants, and about the creak of the boat in dark water. That was another thing that was good about waking up with Pole at his back, under a warm, soft cover, and hearing the sounds of her peaceful sleep. Even though it was night in the room they shared, the dark of the Underworld faded when he was in Pole’s light.
When Eustace woke up the next morning, Pole was still asleep. The Professor had gone back to the university and Aunt Polly was making breakfast before she left for work at the Whipsnade Zoo.
“My divan is comfortable,” Aunt Polly commented dryly as she spread a little jam on her toast. “I have slept on it myself.”
“It’s not that.” Eustace was embarrassed that maybe Aunt Polly thought he was spurning her hospitality. “We just got used to sleeping together in Narnia.”
Aunt Polly looked at him very seriously over the rim of her tea cup. But she didn’t say anything more. In a vague sort of way, Eustace knew it might seem strange. He knew you shared a room with your sibling,s but he didn’t have any brothers or sisters. You shared a room with dorm or flat mates, if you had them. And, you shared a room with your wife, though Harold and Alberta had separate beds and his father usually slept in the spare room. But he and Pole were ten years old and Narnians and it seemed like some of those rules maybe did not apply or at least applied differently.
“Do you want us to stop?” Eustace felt he should ask, though he really wasn’t sure what they would stop, or if they could. They were just sleeping and they needed to do that.
“That is a decision for you and Jill,” Aunt Polly said. “But, I would recommend you find an alternative, as you eventually will be returning to school.”
It took two weeks for the inquiry and for Experiment House to reopen, which was time enough for several long letters with his cousins and many long conversations with Aunt Polly and the Professor.
The night before they went back, he and Pole followed Aunt Polly’s advice and tried splitting up. They tossed a coin and she took the floor and he took the bed. After midnight, they gave up and he joined her on the floor.
Side by side, on top of one blanket and under the cover of the other, Pole at his back. That was just the way it was.
“What do you think we’ll do, Pole?” Eustace supposed they would get accustomed to sleeping alone, eventually.
“Something will present itself, Scrubb.” Pole’s confident pronouncement ended with an uncertain, “I hope.”
The first day back was awful. Well, school was fine, for school, better than he’d even expected. Most of Them had been expelled, lots of other students had withdrawn, and their nutter of a Head was gone. The new Head started straight off with lots of assessments and tests to see just how much geography and Latin and arithmetic and European history they didn’t know. The testing took very little time, because, as all the students knew, Experiment House had been a good place to learn how to hide and move quickly and quietly away from trouble; academic success had never been an aptitude encouraged in students.
Eustace caught up with Pole during lunch. She was nodding off into her soup.
“This is not going to work, Scrubb,” she said through a yawn.
He rubbed his eyes and nodded. The potato was watery and tasteless; he shoved it away impatiently. Eustace never thought he’d miss smoked eel. “I fell asleep just as my alarm clock sounded. It’s stupid, too. All my dorm mates and the Hall Prefect are gone.”
This had been one of the other effects of the changes at Experiment House. The Head had made Them the Junior and Senior Prefects, and the Heads of the School - who had now all withdrawn or been expelled. There was no one to mete out unfair punishments, harass you, or patrol the corridors. There’d been a whole system of fagging and servitude and it was all gone because the overlords had been sent down.
Pole was resting her chin in her hands, her eyes half closed. She suddenly blinked and repeated, “You have the room to yourself?”
“For now…” Oh. “What about you?”
“Shirley Williams, that’s all.” Pole nodded decisively and she brightened. “And she’s all right. I’ll give it a go, what?”
He thought of protesting. Surely, they’d get caught and be expelled. But, why not at least try? The girls’ wing was just on the other side of the central stairway. It wasn’t that far. There wasn’t anyone to conduct patrols. And Pole was a terrific actress, too. She’d figure something out if she got caught.
Eustace nodded. “I’ll make sure the door is unlocked, just in case.”
And that night, an hour after curfew, the door to Eustace’s dormitory creaked open and Jill Pole slid into his room and bed.
“Budge over, Scrubb.”
“Any problems?”
“Not a one.”
“I set the alarm so you can get up before anyone else and slip back.”
He had already set out the blankets. Pole arranged the bottom one to her liking. Then, as always, the two of them lay together, side by side, on top of one blanket and under the cover of the other, Pole at his back.
All term and the next, Pole snuck into his rooms most nights. One weekend, when Pole’s dorm mate left, Eustace decided to make the run.
“You sure, Scrubb?” Pole asked when he whispered his plan during study hall. Experiment House had become a very serious place over the last year. When it turned out, certainly no surprise to the students, that none of them knew anything that they were supposed to know, the new Head sacked a lot of the Professors as well. There was a lot of classwork and homework, laboratories and mandatory study times. There was maybe even less supervision than before, because there wasn’t anyone to do the supervising. The Head made up for it by working them all to death, with rigorous physical education at the end of the day. They were exhausted but, all in all, it was a big improvement.
“It could be dangerous. You might get caught.”
“Oh, you know me, Pole. I laugh at danger and drop ice cubes down the vest of fear.”
“You’re brave as the Lion, Scrubb,” she agreed, laughing at his joke. “But you’re a rotten sneak.”
Eustace was caught before he even left his own hall, caned for being out after curfew, assigned an additional thirty pages of worksheets, and had to write I will not venture out of my dormitory like a thief in the night 1,000 times. In Latin.
After that, Pole made the trip. She was so good, she was only caught a few times, and each time she pretended she was sleepwalking and blubbed.
The summer hols were terrible without Pole. Alberta was stuffing nerve tonics and cod liver oil down his gullet every day. It only improved when Pole came to stay and then he went to see her, and then when they both went and stayed with Aunt Polly in Bedford. (He told Harold and Alberta he was going to stay with Pole’s Aunt. Pole told her mother that she was going to visit Scrubb’s Aunt.)
Planning ahead, Eustace badgered and whinged and became a right dragon until his parents relented and agreed to pay for him to get a single room at school. He sent an apology to Aslan for that wretched behavior. Eustace found he had to really work at it to be that awful. It would be worth it, though. A term without sleep and he and Pole would both turn into dragons.
On the return for the new term, however, he and Pole discovered that the outer door to his hall had a new lock. This proved to be no obstacle to Pole.
“I thought this might happen so I asked Susan to show me how to pick locks,” Pole explained. “And Edmund found me a set of picks.”
Eustace couldn’t figure why a King and Queen of Narnia had learned how to open locks without keys or knew where one would buy thieves’ tools.
She proudly displayed the picks. “I’m joining Girl Guides, too.”
“I don’t think you need to improve your outdoor camping and survival skills, Pole.”
Pole smacked him with her pillow. “For tracking and stealth, you prat.”
“So you can sneak into my room and steal my blanket!” Eustace crowed.
Pole smacked him again for that one. “I am not a blanket thief.”
The older they got, the easier it got. By the following year, they were both junior Prefects, Eustace continued to have his own room, and they always volunteered to patrol the dormitory halls after curfew. Patrol was a very unpopular assignment among the Prefects because all that any sensible student wanted to do was collapse in an exhausted stupor after the mandatory five mile jog before bed.
There wasn’t anything that Pole couldn’t overcome. She knew the entire floor plan of the school by heart, could pick the lock of every broom closet, and put two years worth of Girl Guides to good use. She moved as silently as a wood dryad through the school at night.
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Part two
What I want: Bookverse everything, por favor. An obscure or controversial pairing would be nice...Jill/Eustace! Lucy/Caspian! Digory/Polly! But if romance isn't your thing, I would love a fic about King Lune pre-Cor and Corin, or perhaps a bookverse about pre-Prince Caspian Caspian, or even a piece about a Golden Age-era battle or politics. I like politics and I like the nitty-gritty of history even more, so indulge me (or yourself, however it may be) and fill it up with detail. :)
Prompt words/objects/quotes/whatever: "Does it have to be this way? Our valued friendship ending with me cutting you up into strips and telling them that you walked over a very sharp cattle grid in an extremely heavy hat?" or "Well, he always says, when the going gets tough, the tough hide under the table." or even "Ha ! I laugh at danger and drop ice cubes down the vest of fear." All optional, by the way.
What I definitely don't want in my fic: Any hint of slash, incest, or Caspian/Susan.