[Fic] The Ones Professor Lewis Forgot (fill for Challenge 6)

[pencildragon11.livejournal.com]

I sat down to write something along the lines of Five Mothers Susan Knew, but instead I ended up working over an old fic from last March. It's long on exposition and short on snappy dialogue, but I wrote it from a conviction that just because dear old Jack had mother problems didn't mean all of his characters needed to have motherlessness inflicted upon them, too.

"Another story of Narnia, children? You know them so well—all seven of the books written by the good Professor Lewis. There's the one of the Wardrobe, the Telmarines, the Quest for the Missing Lords, the Enchanted Prince, the Stolen Prince, the First Song and the Last Battle."

The children named each with her and cried, "We want a new story!"

And the eldest granddaughter—shy, almost sixteen, and not-quite-slender and the sort who inspires comments about ugly ducklings from a nastier sort of grown-up—asked if there were any stories of mothers. All the children stared at her and she ducked her head, cheeks suddenly flaming, and murmured something about there being lots of wicked stepmothers in fairy tales, and didn't Narnia have any good mothers?

Grandmother Margaret smiled. "Emma makes an important point," said she. "I have a story to tell today which may not sound much like a story at all, but gather 'round anyway, and I shall begin."

---

You remember how sternly dear Professor Kirke warned the four children to take care with the telling of their adventures, and they took his words seriously, so that when the train crash came, only a few were left who knew anything of those curious and now famous events. Of course Aunt Susan knew, but even she had not heard all of them. But Aunt Polly had written the stories in a big book, and after the train crash Aunt Susan sent the book to Professor Lewis.

Now, this Professor Lewis was a friend, you might say, of Professor Kirke. Lewis was a philologist—a man who loved words. It had, in fact, been through the discovery of a strange word that Lewis came to hear the curious story of a man who was called Dr. Ransom, another professor and friend of Professor Kirke. His story was told by Professor Lewis in some other books and I shall not tell it here, but there were some ways in which the tales of Dr. Ransom's adventures were rather like the tales of the Narnian adventures, and after the war was over Professor Kirke hosted a dinner for all the heroes and heroines to share their stories.

Aunt Susan was present at that dinner, of course, and later she sent Professor Lewis the records of Narnia, and he wrote books from them and they were published. But Professor Lewis did not himself know the Pevensie family very well, and though he told their stories very well he told them in rather his own way. Once in awhile he—not having taken lessons himself in Narnian History—made a mistake.

And of course Aunt Polly's book contained the records only of the unusual happenings, the times in Narnia, not of those days and weeks and years when life went on as it always did. Since Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie did not take part in the Narnian adventures, they did not, I am afraid, appear in the Narnian stories, and thus they have been entirely and quite sadly forgotten, even among those who know the history of Narnia quite well.

But Aunt Susan herself spoke often of her parents, nearly as often as of her brothers and sister. You think only of Peter, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, Jill, and Mr. and Mrs. Scrubb, and of course you want to know what happens to people in stories after the stories are over. But who talks of the Pevensies' grandparents?

Who remembers Grandfather Colin Pevensie, the absent-minded vicar who collected stray and sick animals? He and Grandma Susie had no children of their own until the day Colin brought home a little boy named Frank. Unable to find the boy's parents, they adopted him and loved him as dearly as if he had been their own flesh and blood. He was a quiet, studious boy, who listened to the trees and whispered to the cat, and when little golden-haired Lucie Scrubb said she'd had tea with a hedgehog he only nodded solemnly and asked the hedgehog's name.

Does anyone remember that Eleanor Lucille, like her daughter, told stories her older brothers didn't believe? Harold, only two years older, liked to rig explosions with his chemistry set just to scare her, but Charles, who was eight years older, rode her on his shoulders and buy her sweets at the sweetshop. When she went to school, she made people call her Eleanor, but to Charles she was always his little Lucie, and her eleven-year-old heart was devastated when he succumbed to the terrible Purple Death. She ran away into the fields when they told her, and it was Frankie who brought her back, tear-streaked but wearily quiet.

Eleanor was eighteen when Frank asked her to marry him. They named their first son Peter William Frank for his father's uncles and his father. They named their first daughter Susan Caroline for her father's mother and her mother's brother. The third was Edmund Randall, for his grandfathers, and the fourth was Lucy Katherine for her mother and grandmother.

It was Father who gave Peter his toy soldiers and taught him the rudiments of strategy, who showed Susan how to fit an arrow onto a string, who taught Edmund to look up words in the dictionary, and who tossed Lucy high and called her his sunshine. It was Mother who taught Peter to open doors for ladies, who wrapped yarn around Susan's small fingers and showed her to pull it through with the knitting needle, who scolded Edmund when he was mean to the little girl next door and prayed for him when he was stubbornly rebellious, and who praised the childish songs Lucy sang.

And in those peaceful evenings before the war, when the children were young and Grandma Susie lived with them, Father would work on his lectures and Mother would read aloud in her soft, gentle voice. The little girls in their nightgowns could have their dolls and the boys in their pyjamas a few soldiers, and they would quietly listen as Mother's voice spoke of heroes and mighty deeds, of St. George and the Dragon, of Treasure Island, of Sigurd and Fafnir, the Swan Knight Loehengrin, of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, of Ivanhoe and Robin Hood and Good King Richard of the Lion's Heart.

Other nights Mother would read stories of children like them, children who visited distant lands and had magical adventures with fairies who granted wishes and flying carpets and a strange and wonderful food called Turkish Delight. And Edmund would look up from the toy soldiers and say, "I wonder what Turkish Delight tastes like."

If there was no lecture to prepare, then Father would read from the Bible, from Genesis and the stories of Samuel and Samson and David, to the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles and St. Paul. Father also liked Shakespeare, and those nights were the best of all, though there was usually an argument over which play they would do.

Peter and Edmund liked the Scottish play because Peter was Macbeth and Edmund was Macduff and they had to duel to the death. (Mother and Father and Grandma took the other parts, and helped the children with their lines, but even Lucy could say "Double, double," without any help.) But Susan complained if they made her be Lady Macbeth too often, and then they'd do As You Like It. Peter would be Orlando, the mighty wrestler; Susan would be Celia, the gentle friend; Lucy could dress up in Edmund's bathrobe for a shepherd costume and be Rosalind; and Edmund was Oliver, Orlando's brother who was bad but turned good in the end.

Those evenings seemed endless. When at last bedtime came, they would kiss Father and Mother and Grandma goodnight and scurry upstairs to bed, their minds full of noble warriors and valiant deeds. In those long summer evenings, before the war came and took Father away to do work of which he could tell no one, there was time for a child to be a child, to think big thoughts and to dream big dreams of the hero he would one day become.

If the Pevensie children did indeed become heroes and heroines we surely owe no small thanks to the mother and father who first taught them the meaning of the words. King Peter the Magnificent. Queen Susan the Gentle. King Edmund the Just. Queen Lucy the Valiant. Let us also recognize King Frank the Lost, the father of Kings, who taught Narnia's restorers the meaning of honor; and let us remember Eleanor the Queen Mother, who taught them the meaning of love.

Comments

[lady_songsmith]

Oh, this is lovely! I like the way you've worked in your canon, and how Lucie talks to hedgehogs.

[pencildragon11.livejournal.com]

My canon permeates everything I do, I'm afraid.

It was a very nice hedgehog, and she gave Lucy back her three missing pocket-handkins and her pinny. :-D

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

A lovely bit of head canon and a terrific fill. I like especially the parting lines about how the parents and grandmother taught them the meaning of words, and that from these people they learned honor and love.

[pencildragon11.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I believe parents are incredibly important to what their children become, and Mr. and Mrs. P deserve a little love, too.

[edenfalling]

This is lovely!

[pencildragon11.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

That was very calm and pleasing! Sad about Lost Frank, though. :)
Who is Margaret? She speaks of "Aunt Susan" -- is that a courtesy title? Is Margaret (or the are the listening children) actually related to Susan? Is Susan maybe a sister-in-law of the grandmother telling the story?

[pencildragon11.livejournal.com]

I endeavour to provide satisfaction.

Margaret made her debut here (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7577263/1/Winter-Passed) (one of my earliest works and probably embarrassing now):

"It was early the following March, when I was eight years old, that my father got a new job in America, and we moved from London to a small town in New York State where there was lots of grass and trees and children." Two houses down lived Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Wright, and Margaret hit it off with Mrs. Wright pretty quickly. "I liked Mrs. Wright better than almost any of the neighbors we had met, perhaps because her accent sounded like home, and when my brothers headed out to play ball, she invited me to stay and make cookies with her. We were soon good friends, and she told me I could call her "Aunt Susan" if I liked."

So yes, it's a courtesy title, but Margaret heard ALL the stories straight from Susan, and so she makes a convenient character.