I Did Not Try To See The Moon
The Chronicles of Narnia, Caspian/Edmund, R.
Author's Note: Quotes in Tränenregen, and indeed the title, are from Die schöne Müllerin, translations adapted by me from the Lied and Art Song Texts Page; quotes in To dream again are from The Tempest; and the title of part three, Ogni speranza, is from Inferno. None of these belong to me, and neither do the Narnia books.
Very Important Warning, Please Read: This story is by no meansexplicit,but I think it's important for me to mention that it contains a character who engages in implied sexual relations with another man whilst below the legal age. (Edmund has actually already grown up, during his pervious sojourn in Narnia, and is a child for the second time.The relationship is absolutely not intended to be paedophiliac, it is an exploration of the post-Narnia years with the added element of a m/m love story between two people of equal emotional maturity, but if you think it's likely to squick you, then please do not read. I don't want to upset anyone.)
Tränenregen
Edmund is fourteen, and he wakes up in the dormitory, it is just past two, his alarm-clock is barely visible in the dim light that falls past the curtains, the light of a waning moon. His face is inexplicably covered with tears, but he does not remember dreaming, much less dreaming anything so sad that it could make him weep. It is cold in the dormitory, and at first he is so busy tucking the blankets round himself as much as possible that he does not hear it, it is only when he is lying down again, shivering, that he hears it – singing, a young man singing in German, scratchy, it must be a gramophone record. It's probably old Banshurst, by far the most peculiar master. His son was shot down somewhere in France, so rumour has it, and he never speaks, except in lessons. They often hear his music floating across the quad during the evenings – but never at night, and it is never German music.
Edmund does not know very much German, but he concentrates and thinks he understands some of it: I did not try to see the moon. The whole heavens. There murmured the brook. Then my eyes filled with tears, And made the mirror ripple. Edmund remembers that Eustace, after the change, had liked more than anything to sit out on the deck when the moon was full. Edmund is not sure why the music should bring Narnia to him so vividly, because it is not an air that he ever heard there, and he is doing his best not to think about Narnia too much. He is looking for Aslan in his own world.
To dream again
Edmund is sixteen, and he eschews the classical side – to Peter's horror – because he wants to do Shakespeare. Everyone is surprised, because he had always liked Latin and been good at it. One day in div., in the summer term, they had been reading The Tempest – he was only half-awake, wondering if he'd be chosen for the second eleven, for Saturday's match - and Pennington Major's rough voice broke into his reverie: Be not afeared. The isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. The roughness had not sounded wrong at all, quite the contrary, it had turned the words from something to be groaned at and acted reluctantly once a year – last time he was a Roman soldier in a sheet, and did he look a guy – turned them into something real, brought into the warm, dusty div. room the echoes of hoarse voices, of sailors confronted with all the strange sights and astonishing sounds of the scattered islands.
Edmund remembers that when Eustace was not in the cabin he had talked to Caspian in quite a different way. There was a sort of awkwardness, sometimes, between them: Edmund felt very old, and part of him wanted to be very tender towards Caspian, who was brave and tall, but who was still uncertain of exactly how to be a good king, which was what he wanted to do more than anything else, with the exception of having adventures. Edmund wanted to comfort Caspian.
But at the same time he was not old – he had lived far longer than Caspian, but he was still a boy; he had been a great king, but although Caspian accorded him the title it did not quite fit, because Narnia was more complicated than it had been, and Edmund was only thirteen, only a child. Caspian was the real king. This meant that there was a sort of awkwardness when anyone else was with them, a slight difficulty of precedence – Edmund did not know what Caspian felt, but he only felt that they could really talk when they were quite alone, the waves regular and quiet against the side of the ship, the man's voice and the boy's voice only just audible, (but it doesn't matter because there is nobody listening to them).
And of course, the night came when they talked about love. Edmund had already grown up once, so he was not particularly shy of such matters – less shy, in fact, than Caspian, who had been far too busy trying to heal all the old wounds of Narnia to worry about such things before. Edmund thought he could feel the heat radiating from Caspian's face, although he could not see it in that darkness. When he heard the tremor in the king's voice he felt older than he ever had before, because although his body was that of a child, he would never have again that shy innocence of unknowingness, and he longed for it, and knew in the longing that there was only absence.
Ogni speranza
Edmund is eighteen, and he leaves school with no answers at all. Everything he has looked for has been only an echo – Edmund has searched the words of songs barely understood, and spent two years memorising Paradise Lost for matric. because of one afternoon when he half-thought Pennington Major was a sailor on an island, where everything was new. He sat through evening chapel every night, even though they called him the chaplain's pet boy, Pevensie Pi, saint of the school.
He is eighteen, and for five years he has been marking time and waiting to go back to Narnia. But there has been nothing at all, and he tells himself that, by now, Caspian is dead.
Edmund remembers that night – it was not the night of the day when they found the enchanted pool, or the day when blackness descended and the passed through nightmares, or the day when Eustace did not come back, or the day when Lucy had to go upstairs to the magician. It was just the night that followed a day at sea, the night of no day in particular. Edmund said, No, don't be ashamed. This is not wrong, Caspian. Nothing that you truly do from love can be wrong. Let me light the candle; sit beside me; I care little for moonlight. Edmund-who-is-old was enchanted by this youth and goldenness in his arms in the candlelight, and Edmund-who-is-young thrilled fearfully and wonderfully to know such a man, so closely. (The next morning, they started to notice the clearness of the water.)
For the last days, Caspian was everything to Edmund, although they hardly spoke, did not need to speak or even to touch one another, as that clearness seemed to overcome their eyes and minds and hearts: all of life, all of love, and understanding, and calm, and kindness, and all of sleep, and all of waking, and all of hope – Caspian was everything to Edmund.
Edmund knew even then that Caspian would have given him up in an instant, if Aslan had only asked. But Edmund was a boy from another world, and he did not feel the same. He could not, would not renounce – he could only be torn away, and at eighteen he knows that that is what happened, although at the time he was not sure, because Aslan balmed him with so much love that he did not fall dead with his heart cleft in two, and he even thought the wound was not too deep, that he would come back to his own world, and look for Aslan there, and be untroubled there.
He has found no answers, and the tearing-away has never healed, he thinks. All these years the joy has been just slowly bleeding out of him, as every echo resounded, prodded at the wounds, re-opened them. Every echo that he could not reject, could not push away, even when they proved false as the dew melting at sunrise, lost as a boat in a starless night.
FINIS
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