deepest_magic | the second occasion

"Why?" Bella asks.

The beaver's whiskers twitch nervously.

"It's hard to explain. I just - I get a sense of people, and the sense I get of this beaver is that he's okay."

"Okay," says Bella.

"And -" says the beaver. "They say Aslan is on the move."

A curious sensation comes over Bella at the name Aslan. As though she has a tremendous quantity of interesting things to do, no end in sight, and time to do all of it yet without ever running out of time or activity.

And she smiles.

The feeling Elizabeth gets is different. A kind of contemplative excitement - like she's about to do something challenging and fascinating, expects to be able to handle it, and anticipates good results.

She smiles, too. And starts a file on Aslan, with that feeling as the first item listed.

"Do you know what's happened to Tumnus?" Bella asks.

"Oh - not here, I must bring you somewhere safe where we can talk properly," says the beaver, wringing his paws. "And dinner."

"Sounds good," says Elizabeth. "Lead the way."

The beaver nods and scurries off, leading them through the trees until they have come to a frozen river, across which has been built a dam now thoroughly frosted with icicles. In the middle of the dam is a sort of house, with smoke coming out of the chimneytop.

"Oh," says Bella, admiringly. "This looks nice."

"Very cozy," says Elizabeth.

"And it looks like Mrs. Beaver is expecting us. I'll lead the way; you step carefully and don't slip."

"Erm," says Bella. "I'm practically guaranteed to slip - maybe I'd do better on my hands and knees, I suppose."

"As you like," agrees the beaver, and he leads them across the top of the dam to the house.

Bella sighs and crawls, glad of her mittens.

Elizabeth follows behind Bella, prepared to catch her in case of accident.

Bella makes it to the house without incident except for dampening the knees of her jeans on the ice.

In the house is a second beaver, sitting at a sewing machine with a thread in her mouth. She stops sewing as soon as the girls have entered. "So you've come at last!" she exclaims. "At last! To think I should have lived to see this day. The potatoes are boiling and the kettle's singing and I daresay Mr. Beaver will get us some fish."

"That I will," agrees the beaver, and he goes back out again with a pail.

Bella sits down, looking around at the onions and hams hanging from the ceiling and the general not-a-century-of-winter-ness of the provisions available.

It's interesting, that's for sure. As is Mrs. Beaver and her sewing machine. Elizabeth looks curiously at what she was working on.

She appears to have been putting a patch in a dishtowel.

"Here, if you'd be so kind as to help me we'll have supper in a jiffy," says Mrs. Beaver, and she directs the girls to various kitchen tasks. Mr. Beaver is back soon with fish, which are presently sizzling away.

"Can I ask you something?" Bella says to Mrs. Beaver.

"Of course."

"I can guess where the fish is coming from, because fish can live under ice, but where'd the rest of the food come from?"

"The ham was a trade for some fish - there are some dwarves a bit west who grow mushrooms deep underground where it's cool but not so terribly frigid, and the pigs can eat those and a few scraps and be quite happy about it and then there are hams - and the vegetables and the butter and so on are all from the cornucopia, which visited us just last month and if the cold does us no other favors at least it will let things keep."

"...A visiting cornucopia," repeats Bella.

"Oh, without it more of us would be working for the Witch's promises of provisions," shudders Mrs. Beaver. "Not us, we'd never, but the odd soul might."

"I see," murmurs Elizabeth. "It's a good thing there is one, then - is there just one, or are there more? How are the visits arranged?"

"Only one. It was the Last Present," sighs Mr. Beaver. "There's a sort of a schedule, but it's variable because of course the Witch's agents are always chasing the bearer."

"The Last Present?" asks Bella, sensing capital letters.

"Before there was no Christmas anymore."

"You know, that's confusing, too," says Bella. "You obviously don't care to do what the Witch says. Why not just celebrate Christmas on some day or other even if there isn't an official one, if you like?"

The beavers blink at her in confusion.

"I think they do Christmas differently here," says Elizabeth. "At home people give each other presents, things we buy or make, but it sounds like the Last Present came from somewhere."

"Oh, people used to give each other presents, too, on Christmas," sighs Mrs. Beaver, "but what it means for there to be no Christmas is that Father Christmas hasn't been able to come."

"Father Christmas," says Bella. "Like - Santa?"

"Is that what you call him in your country?" inquires Mr. Beaver.

"Yes," says Elizabeth. "They call him Father Christmas in another country nearish ours, but in ours we call him Santa Claus, and nobody's ever really seen him that I know of. It seems like Narnia has a lot of things that we only knew as stories before we came here."

"Nobody to have seen Father Christmas! My goodness," says Mrs. Beaver.

"So he gave someone the cornucopia, the last time there was a Christmas, and it's been letting you all stay reasonably fed on things besides mushrooms, animals - that I assume don't talk? - which eat mushrooms, and I suppose pinecones, and fish?" says Bella.

"There are a few things that will grow by themselves in the winter," says Mr. Beaver, "some berries and some roots if you're careful not to kill the whole plant, but yes, that's about right. And of course the pigs don't talk."

"The robin that led us to you didn't speak either, but was smart enough to do it," says Bella.

"Well, there are a few in-between animals, but you needn't worry about the pigs, they're quite mute and simple," Mr. Beaver says. "Same as the fish."

"If you say so," says Bella.

"So... what are we supposed to do, exactly? To bring Father Christmas back and end the winter and all that?"

Mr. Beaver peers out the window.

"Ah," he says. "It's snowing again. Then we shan't have any visitors and your tracks will be covered up soon enough... Right. There's no saving Mr. Tumnus. I'm certain he's been taken to her house, and whether he's been locked up or turned to stone or given over to be her assassin's plaything I'm sure I couldn't guess, but even if you had some idea of it, it's no good. But now that Aslan is on the move -"

Bella leans forward; the name keeps stealing over her like the most glorious lifelong forecast of all time.

Elizabeth doesn't react so visibly, but she observes that the name seems to be doing the same thing to Bella that it is to her, although she suspects the details might be different.

"Who is Aslan?" Bella asks.

"Aslan! Why, how could you not know - he's the King. Lord of the whole wood, but not often here, you understand - not in my time or my father's time. But he's come back. He's in Narnia, right at this moment. He'll put things to rights, he'll settle with the White Witch, he'll save Mr. Tumnus and all her other victims."

"And I take it he's quite safe from being turned to stone himself," says Bella.

"Turn Aslan to stone! If she can look him in the eye without falling to the ground it will be more than I expect of her."

"Does that mean all we have to do is wait for Aslan to fix it? I have a feeling it doesn't," says Elizabeth.

"Well, I'm meant to take you to meet him," says Mr. Beaver. "Tomorrow, if possible, at the Stone Table. We do need you too, Daughters of Eve - there's an old rhyme about it - When Adam's flesh and Adam's bone / sits at Cair Paravel in throne / the evil time will be over and done."

"...Are you saying we're supposed to sit on thrones? Does that mean only as a - physical trigger for some kind of magic, or as a symbol that will be useful for some reason, or - the conventional reason people sit on thrones?"

"You'll want to speak to Aslan about that," says Mr. Beaver.

"And the Witch, is she not human herself?"

"She's been known to claim it," he says. "She'd like us to think it, it's how she bases her claim to the throne, but no, she's Jinn on one side, giant on the other. Not a drop of real human blood. That's why she's so wrong clear through - things that look like humans and aren't, or used to be and stopped, they're not to be trusted. There's good Dwarfs, but the ones that are the least like men, not the ones that could be mistook."

"I see," says Bella, politely dubious.

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