Notes: I experimented with the voice of my writing to give it a more authentic feel. Narnia is one of my favorite series, so when inpiration called I simply had to answer!

Fencing Lessons

a Chronicles of Narnia fanfiction

by Celestia Craven

"Do you see the Pevensie girl?"

"Oh, her. She's not quite proper, is she?"

"Too wordy by half. And the rumor is, she's taking fencing lessons."

"Good Lord!"

Lucy Pevensie held her head stiffly, gaze straight ahead as she ignored the neighborhood gossips. She tightened her hold on her grocery basket for a moment, feeling the smooth wicker strain against her fingertips, before she relaxed again.

She refused to give the old ladies the satisfaction of a reaction. She was Lucy the Valiant, Queen of Narnia. She was an excellent healer, and a more than passible archer and swordswoman. She would not lose her temper to such idle tongues as these! She took in a breath as she opened her relatives' front gate.

Stroking her own ego was probably not the best solution to the naysayers of London, but Lucy considered it a bit justified. She was living with Aunt Alberta, who had very distinctive ideas about how a young lady should act. Little better than that was her Uncle, who was rather apathetic to the goings-on under his own roof.

The only bright spots in the whole situation were her brother, Edmund, and quite surprisingly her cousin, Eustace. Eustace had started off as the worst of all, and had received quite a shock when he had traveled with them to Narnia. After a series of events that had turned the nearly unbearable Eustace into a dragon, he had become rather a lot more like a truly decent human being.

"Oh, Lu, you're back!" Eustace greeted warmly. He looked up from the sketchbook he was balancing against his knees.

"I think Caspian's nose was a fair bit smaller than that, Eustace," Edmund commented thoughtfully from behind him.

"Agh!" Eustace shrieked, fumbling with his lead pencil. He placed his hand near his heart dramatically. "You nearly scared me to death, cousin!"

Lucy dropped her basket on the table quickly, shucking off her woolen mitts. She crept up on his other side as Eustace spoke to Edmund, who was looking far too innocent. "Ed's right, Eustace," she said, covering her smile diplomatically with her hand. "Caspian's nose is much smaller than that. I think you might've made a mistake with the scale again."

"Oh, hang this!" Eustace said. "I don't think I'm any good at it, and I'm just wasting paper!"

"Oh, please don't say that, Eustace!" Lucy begged. "Neither Edmund nor I are any good at art. We only have you to depend on!"

Edmund coughed softly to gain attention. "That, of course. And Lucy doesn't want to take another art lesson."

"And I hate fencing," Eustace said mournfully.

"So it's settled," Lucy finished, eyes bright. "Besides, you're getting better every day!"

"Certainly," Edmund agreed readily. "I could tell that it was supposed to be Caspian. It wasn't, but I didn't think it was Reep this time."

Lucy couldn't help the grin that teased the edges of her mouth as she shoved her older brother. "Ed!" she said in a scandalized voice. "You're not helping!"

— — —

"No, Lucy," their fencing instructor said, hiding his frustration poorly. "You waste too much energy, and you have no poise!"

Lucy held her tongue and tried to adjust her stance. Across the mat, Edmund gave her a sympathetic look through the metal grill of his mask.

Unused to the weight of the flimsy fencing foil, Lucy continued to act as though she were still wielding the weight of a real sword. Even the lightest swords that the Narnian blacksmiths made were far heavier than this. Her heart ached suddenly with desire for her small rapier and her Christmas dagger. Edmund had already warned her of his own mishaps, which she imagined had been even worse as he had been in the habit of wielding a broadsword twice as heavy as her rapier had been!

"Again!" their instructor commanded.

Lucy held one hand behind her back and pointed her foil upwards, and then to the side. Likewise, Edmund did the same. They met in the center of the mat, exchanging a few quiet blows, not at all like the grounding crash sound of Narnian steel, before Lucy felt a tap against her side.

"Much better, Edmund," their instructor said to a chorus of muffled sniggers from the other boys. "And I think that's enough for today. Remember to be more mindful, Miss Pevensie!"

Lucy tore off her mask with a heaving sigh as Edmund came to stand supportively at her side.

"If it's any consolation," Eustace said from the doorway, as the last young man left for the showers, "You're still far better than I ever was."

"Eustace?" Edmund questioned. "I thought you were at your art class."

"Let out early," Eustace murmured as he studied the dejected featured of his cousin Lucy.

"Agh!" Lucy suddenly growled in her throat. "I don't understand how you ever got used to this, Ed! It feels like sparring with the springy branch of a sapling — or — or — a paperclip!"

"You'll get used to it soon enough, Lu," Edmund soothed.

Lucy could only imagine the terrible state she'd gotten herself into. She remembered well how Edmund's temper and sense of helplessness had been kindled after his first lessons. She refused to act like a child, even if she looked like one.

She took a deep breath. "Care to have a real bout, Edmund?" she said cheerfully.

Edmund couldn't hide his relief. "How do you propose that?" he replied, but he already seemed interested.

"My sword was around two and one fifths pounds," Lucy remembered. "And the length," she estimated with her hands held apart, "was about yea. I'll go outside and look for a straight tree branch about that size. Then we can look for one that's about like yours. You can cut off any smaller branches with your pocket knife, and Eustace can warn us if anyone's coming."

She quickly gained permission from the others and set off. After a good while of searching, and a great deal of frozen fingers from the light cropping of snow, Lucy and Edmund found serviceable branches and cut them accordingly.

"Nothing at all like the real thing," Lucy said critically. "But far better than the foil."

"Are you ready, dear sister?" Edmund challenged, a fire lit in his gaze.

"I've been ready longer than I can say," Lucy replied honestly.

Eustace entirely forgot to keep a lookout, lost as he was watching his cousins spar. Lucy's branch managed to hold its own against Edmund's single-minded advance. They exchanged blow after blow, meeting each other with a crack of wood that began to hold its own melody.

Eustace imagined, for a moment, that they weren't wielding sticks like play-fighting children. He imaged that they were holding Narnian swords, decorated with the likeness of Aslan at their hilts, precious jewels in place of the Great Lion's eyes.

He could see it, suddenly. Lucy, caught up in bright laughter as she kept her hand in despite the peace of the Golden Age, wearing not the skirts of her office but the trousers of men, hair pinned up. Edmund grinning through his beard, jumping from foot to foot in joy at a well-executed thrust as Peter and Susan watched from the side.

Crack!

"Oh dear," Lucy said, a bit out of breath. Her eyes twinkled cheerily, even as she threw a disappointed glance at her wooden weapon.

Lucy's branch had split in two near her hands, failing to hold against a particularly forceful attack of Edmund's. One piece lay on the mat a fair distance away, the other still in her grip.

Edmund's boyish grin brightened the room. "Does that mean I win, Lu?"

"Oh," Lucy huffed, shaking out the sting of the glancing blow to her hand. "Give me the time to find another stick, and I'll show you a thing or two!"

"We don't quite have the time for that," Eustace warned. He looked at the window. "It's getting dark. Mother will be expecting us home for dinner."

"Oh well, we'll just have a rematch another day," Ed replied.

— — —

That evening, the man charged with keeping the fencing classroom clean and tidy for the private instructor pondered a sliver of wood that he found half-hidden under the edge of the mat. His bug-like eyes beheld the rough carving of a lion, lines extended from his open mouth as the symbol of a mighty roar.