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

[jackfrostbite]

"And would you lock me in your dungeon and destroy the key, or would you try very hard to kill me?"

[deepest_magic]

"I'd have to talk that over with James. But if this conversation has made it sound like I have some serious objection to you dying then you're very much mistaken."

[jackfrostbite]

"I do not merely need you to allow that it may happen. I need you to pursue it with every resource at your disposal - you, or your husband."

He sets Isabella down on the floor, which is made of rough chilly stone.

"But I do not want to kill you," he adds, softly.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella quietly pats the stone surrounding her, investigating its dimensions and possible sharp protrusions.

"Even we could run out of ideas eventually."

[jackfrostbite]

The stone is rough and uneven but mostly blunt. There are no obvious walls within quiet-patting distance, just more floor.

"And so you see why I might prefer you to be as strongly motivated as possible," says Winter.

[deepest_magic]

"There are only so many things around. It is fairly unrealistic that we will come up with a Narnian space program to launch you into the sun within our lifetimes. And I'm concerned you might drown the sun even if there were conventional physics at work here, which I'm not sure of. ...Why haven't you tried going back to Earth? Have you?"

[jackfrostbite]

"You ask why I haven't and then ask if I have?"

[deepest_magic]

"Well, I was first assuming that if you'd tried you'd likely have managed it, but then I wasn't sure."

[jackfrostbite]

"I have tried, and failed. But even if I went back..." He trails off.

[deepest_magic]

"Then you'd be some kind of ice monster on Earth. But Earth has more possibilities for trying to kill you if you found being a live ice monster there disagreeable. Walk into Chernobyl. Investigate industrial chemicals."

[jackfrostbite]

"And try, and fail, and try, and fail some more..."

A faint rustle of clothing, as of someone pacing in the dark. His voice moves with the sound.

"This is all I am," he says. "This is all I know. To be the scourge of kingdoms, to bring fear to the hearts of good creatures, to be hated. I would - it would be the same game on a bigger board. Do you wish that on them? Do you want to see me try to make the people of Earth very desperate to kill me?"

[deepest_magic]

"No. But they have a better chance than I do of launching you into space. And - I don't know exactly how long ago in Narnian years you came here. But it couldn't have been much more than a century, that I know. And declaring that you can't learn to be anything else before you've even learned to be a hundred and fifty seems too pessimistic."

[jackfrostbite]

"Does it?" He's pacing faster now. "Does it, Daughter of Eve? You who have never tasted the fruit of the garden, never felt its curse? You, who have never spent one year as her majesty's creature, let alone a hundred? You would tell me I am too pessimistic?"

[deepest_magic]

"Fruit?"

[jackfrostbite]

"Come in by the gold gates or not at all," he recites, "take of my fruit for others or forbear; for those who steal or those who climb my wall shall find their heart's desire and—find—despair." He half-growls, half-sobs the last word, and it sounds like he also punches a cave wall.

[deepest_magic]

[jackfrostbite]

"My queen commanded that I journey to the garden and eat of its fruit, that I might live forever in her service." Pace. "I did not refuse." Pace. "I read the verse, and went in by the gate, and ate three apples." Pace pace. "And I was happy, for a time, and did not think much on the words I read at the gate." Pace pace pace. "I have found despair now, you may be sure."

[deepest_magic]

"I had noticed."

[jackfrostbite]

He laughs bitterly.

[deepest_magic]

"If you quoted it right," she says, "it doesn't say it's permanent."

[jackfrostbite]

"It also claimed I would find my heart's desire, and I have not. But I do not care to wait for it any longer."

[deepest_magic]

"Do you know what it would be?"

[jackfrostbite]

"Not this. Not any of this. Not anything I have ever done or had or felt in my life, most especially not since I came to Narnia. Though my mortal life was no bright summer's day either."

[deepest_magic]

"I bet James could figure it out."

[jackfrostbite]

"And when she tells me my heart's desire is to be dead, which I assure you it currently is, what then?"