the golden age

[deepest_magic]

When the party has died down, Isabella, for one, is well and truly exhausted. She explores the palace until she finds a room with a bed in it, and into this bed she flops, still in her clothes and holding her staff and carrying the cordial in her pocket. She sleeps late, because the party kept her up so late and she hadn't really slept the night before; but around noon, she stirs, and gets up, and goes looking for James and wherever her backpack may have got to. The backpack she finds in the great hall where the principal mass of the party was; some enterprising creature took both bags from the battlefield at Beruna up to the castle for them, and she only wishes she knew who it was. She takes her bag to her room and carries James's with her and continues looking for her friend.

Comments

[deepest_magic]

"I don't think I will do that, no," agrees Bella. "What the heck is your thing, besides pretty?"

[neverbeatme]

"I'm not sure yet. It looks like a puzzle." She fiddles with it. It turns out to be possible to turn the various sections relative to one another, like a Rubik's Cube, although doing so quickly causes the tetrahedron to lose its original shape.

"Okay, that's cool," says James. "And I'd say it was way too simple, but there are more colours than sides, so I'm not even sure what would count as a solution. I'll play with it, I guess."

[deepest_magic]

"Have fun," laughs Bella. "I'm gonna go to bed and in the morning I'm going to copy all my important long-term notes into my infinity notebook." She hugs it. It's white leather-bound with gold corners and an embossed gold outline of her scepter and crown on the cover, and only about an inch thick despite its reported page content. Off she traipses. "Merry Christmas!"

[neverbeatme]

"Merry Christmas!"

James fiddles with her puzzle as she heads for bed.

[deepest_magic]

Over the winter there is a flareup of ex-Witch's-minions activity, as they are more in their element and someone has either cleverly or maliciously let loose a rumor that the winter is there to stay yet again. Many of these creatures are caught - with most of their captors being quite careful to, in accordance with royal instruction, see to their safety first - and also bring them alive to Cair Paravel for James to have a look at. (Isabella talks to the captives, too, but James is the one with the sense-of-people so keenly necessary in deciding who is safe to let out on probation and who is to be kept in the inescapable dungeons to think about their life choices and be re-interviewed at later dates.)

Isabella has a bag made - the backpack doesn't keep things near enough to hand for her liking, and anyway it looks very odd against the sorts of outfits the dryad wardrobe mistress likes to put her in (whether it's breeches and boots for riding or fine queenly garb for formal occasions). The bag, painted silk (for its strength and softness both) slung messenger-style over her shoulder, has a loop to tuck her scepter into and plenty of room for infinity-notebook, pen, and cordial, as well as any incidentals she picks up.

In the spring (which is met with ecstatic relief by the populace) when it is again possible to build things, the rulers of Narnia establish a handful of schools, although unlike those they remember from Earth these neither favor specific ages (which would be quite absurd in as diverse a country as Narnia anyway) nor demand attendance from anyone who does not care to go. These are soon turned into little library-study-halls where people who know things and people who wish to know things congregate. Isabella allows a dwarf to copy bits of her notes to compile into useful books; it turns out that the infinity notebook will cooperatively open to whatever page she is looking for, but it will do this only for her, and so she doesn't much mind having it in the hands of someone else as long as she opens it to begin with to whatever she wishes to show them.

James's birthday, calculated by subjective days, turns out to fall on Narnia's May 7, and when this is announced it is summarily fused with the nearest preexisting national holiday, a celebration of consistent warmth and sunshine and full of all the usual feasting and dancing and games associated with holidays generally. It is also customary to leave anonymous baskets of small presents ranging from flowers to practical gifts on the doorsteps of neighbors on the previously existing holiday. It is renamed "Kingsday".

Isabella doesn't recalculate her birthday, even though it would have fallen at a similar date; she just "turns twelve" four months after James turns thirteen, under the changing leaves. This allows her to co-opt a harvest-and-arts-and-eating-desserts festival associated with large impromptu markets for trade and display of various crafts and other things ranging from preserves to maple syrup, which suits her just fine. She eats desserts and browses art with the best of them. It is, to match James's, called "Queensday".

The giants to the north make a little trouble not long after this holiday, sensing a soft and juicy target, but the Narnians aren't as soft as all that. A small minority of giants are willing to meet with James for diplomacy when a letter is dropped into their camp by an eagle messenger, but the rest of them have to be driven away by force; James's sword and Isabella's cordial come in handy once again, as does Isabella's unicorn bodyguard from the Battle of Beruna. Eventually the giants are routed from the borders of Narnia.

And eventually Christmas comes again.

Isabella stays up.

[neverbeatme]

James's tetrahedral puzzle turns out to conceal additional complications, magically shifting to a new shape every time she finds a solution for one of the previous ones; she quickly learns how to swap it between the five Platonic solids, but when she unlocks the small stellated dodecahedron she is temporarily stumped and only very slowly learns how to convert between this shape and the other five. She remains convinced that there are more shapes available, if only she can find them, and carries the puzzle everywhere she goes so that she can tinker with it in idle moments.

When midnight rolls around, she is busy trying to find another solution to the cube shape.

[pythbox]

And therefore misses Father Christmas's entrance, by the same side door as before.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella's thinking through a minor problem with one of the diplomacized immigrant giants - she is having some small difficulty integrating with her new neighbors that has come to royal attention and Isabella's brainstorming - but she's alert enough to look up.

"Merry Christmas!"

[pythbox]

"Merry Christmas," he says. He has a bag over his shoulder today. From it, he first withdraws a little potted shrub of some kind. Its leaves are small and dark and pointed, and it bears one or two small dark berries nestled among its tangled branches.

"Isabella, Daughter of Eve. You have been making good use of the fire-berry cordial, but its supply is not infinite. Keep this plant where it may catch the light of the rising sun, and when you see the level in the bottle begin to drop, pick one of the berries in the morning while it is still shining and put it into the bottle. They are not true fire-berries, but they will serve this one purpose very well."

Next he withdraws a smallish rectangle of card or paper, almost like a postcard. It seems like ordinary paper, if of a very high quality, all around its edges - but in the middle it is transparent, showing the texture of the paper only very faintly over a perfect view of whatever is behind it. He hands it to her along with the potted plant.

"This page will capture a picture if you look through it and wish it so. If you set it on top of ordinary paper, or any other surface that can be drawn or painted on, and wish it to copy its picture there, it will; if you hold it and wish it to clear itself so it can be used again, it will do that."

[deepest_magic]

"Oh, good, I was wondering if the cordial would last forever - and - like a camera. Thank you!"

[pythbox]

He turns to James next.

"Eve's Son, I see you are enjoying your puzzle. It has many secrets left to discover."

[neverbeatme]

"Believe me, I know."

[pythbox]

He extracts a little leather case, the size of a smallish book, from his bag.

"This map likewise has many secrets," he says, handing it to her. "Perhaps one day you will discover all of them."

[neverbeatme]

"Ooh." She takes the case, opens it, and unfolds the map within. "Thanks."

[pythbox]

"You can start by finding your second present," he adds, and turns to go.

[deepest_magic]

"You get a treasure hunt for Christmas," giggles Isabella.

[neverbeatme]

"Apparently!"

She puts her puzzle down and starts playing with the map instead. It's pretty easy to discover that it can be zoomed and panned with a touch, the ink lines flowing smoothly across the page. And then—

"Hey, roads!" she exclaims. "I mean - there were already roads, but look."

The map is zoomed in on Cair Paravel, close enough to show what she's talking about: the road that runs from the castle to the nearest small town is depicted as wide and flat and clear, not the mess of pits and rocks and tangled overgrowth and sudden narrowings that it has been up until now.

"I bet he did the whole country. That's amazing. I'd been planning to send some people out to do a proper survey and start planning repairs, but now I can skip that and get straight to organizing maintenance." She glances at the side door. "If he was still here I'd hug him."

[deepest_magic]

"I wonder if Father Christmas even lets people hug him. For that matter, I wonder what he does the rest of the year. Make presents, I suppose, but how, so many of them are magic."

[neverbeatme]

"Good question. Maybe you can ask him next year," she says, zooming the map out as far as it will go. Continent-sized is apparently it. She folds it up and tucks it in her pocket.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella nods, and goes to put her new potted berries in an east-facing window before going to bed for the night.

[neverbeatme]

James takes her puzzle back to her room, but manages to put it down and go to sleep instead of staying up to work on more solutions.

[deepest_magic]

Time wears on.

The shipbuilding project gets off the ground - the White Witch had a ship, but it is widely believed to be haunted or cursed and the Narnians won't touch it. They build their own boats, and establish regular routes between Narnia proper and overseas territories of the Narnian Empire.

The schools are very popular. Isabella takes an old lady dwarf's calligraphy class and a centaur's forestry class and learns history from an ex-statue unicorn; she tries archery and singing and leatherworking. James sits in on miscellaneous lessons and teaches a bit of math. (The puzzle present turns out, after considerable fiddling, to unfold into a simple computer, although in an abstract and extremely mathematical way that renders it near-useless to anyone but James herself.)

Isabella heals any injured or sick Narnian who makes it to Cair Paravel, and will travel considerable distances for those who can't make the journey, with her cordial; when she notices the level of the juice visibly dropping she adds a berry from her potted plant as instructed by Father Christmas, and it fizzes and dissolves and the crystal is full again.

When the weather is fine - or dramatic - or she sees a new place - or when the leaves are startling red on the morning of Queensday when she turns thirteen - she takes a picture, and pastes it into her infinity notebook. Sometimes she takes portraits of her subjects and copies them onto loose paper for them to keep, and every now and again she will loan the postcard-camera to someone who is publishing a book, so that they can paste pictures into each copy as it comes off the press and have them all illustrated in a jiffy. She reliably gets it back afterwards.

There are pictures of herself and James in the infinity notebook, too. James with an eagle messenger on her fist, hearing news from Archenland. Isabella, staff in hand, dancing with a Faun on Kingsday. James on her throne gravely hearing the dispute between a rhinoceros and a rabbit. Isabella christening a new ship for their fleet with a bottle of champagne and a grin on her face. James practicing with her magic sword, solo, guided by its enchantment into learning how to do it herself. Isabella in the wardrobe mistress's most extravagant choice of finery officiating a wedding between Acorn and an equally shy lady rabbit. The king and queen together both of them on horseback beside Isabella's sometime-bodyguard unicorn, Dewdrop, and a small contingent of centaurs and bears riding out to respond to a report of a werewolf attacking the people of a distant town. Isabella can't reasonably wish to have had the camera before the notebook to put the pictures in and the accompanying pen (the pen, it turns out, will do calligraphy tips at her whim), nor before her ability to walk and run or the cordial that saved so many lives - but she very much likes having it early, to get down all the splendor of Narnia to keep forever between the white covers of her infinity notebook.

Queensday goes by, the pumpkins are harvested, the kitchens of Cair Paravel produce stew and drinks and sweets of them, and the frost descends.

[neverbeatme]

Christmas Eve finds them in the throne room as usual. James perches on her throne and plays with the computer-mode of her puzzle, watching it click and rattle from one configuration to another.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella is quadruple-checking her list of questions to ask Father Christmas in her infinity notebook.

Is there only one of you?
Where did you come from?
How do you give presents to everyone in Narnia in one day?
What do you do the rest of the year?
Why don't you go to Earth?
Do you go anywhere else?
How do you make the presents? Can I learn to make magic things too?
Where do you go when it's not Christmas?
How do you know what to get people?

[pythbox]

In he comes, just a few minutes after midnight.

"Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas," he says. "For you, Isabella, Daughter of Eve, you will find a new bookshelf in the library that can summon any book you can identify exactly. It cannot give you more books than it has room for, but when new ones start to crowd out the old, it can always bring them back, although it cannot offer more than one copy of the same book at a time. And secondly, this." He hands her a letter - a blank envelope sealed with red wax.