queen of narnia

[charning]

Jadis is enraged. Aslan, back! Confirmed by the deputy of her own Maugrim, who died on the sword of the very child she thought she'd caught! Maugrim, dead. She paces. She comes too close to Winter for her liking on one of her passes through her throne room and rather than turn an instant before she means to she backhands him out of her way into the nearest wall. She paces and fumes and roars.

Finally she spins on her toe to face Winter, who may still be on the floor in his careless way but has surely recovered from the blow by now. "You," she says, "must go to the lion, and tell him that I desire safe conduct to treat with him on a matter of as much importance to him as to me. Go peacefully, I do not mind if you alarm the pitiful creatures who side with him but do not harm them while I seek parley. Do you understand, my Winter?" She bends to crook her first two fingers under his chin to turn his head up for frigid eye contact, inspecting him, thinking furious thoughts to which he's only an accessory. "I think the lion may be unnerved to see you. We will see."

Comments

[deepest_magic]

When James doesn't get growled at for this presumption, Bella imitates her.

And so they walk.

[alicornucopia]

And so they walk back to the hill.

When they come to the last tree between them and the Stone Table, Aslan says:

"Oh, children, children, here you must stop. And whatever happens, do not let yourself be seen. Farewell."

[deepest_magic]

Bella darkens her scepter and bursts into tears and buries her face in his mane.

[neverbeatme]

James hugs the great lion too, although she isn't crying while she does it.

[alicornucopia]

He lets them pet him and fuss over him for a minute, but then gently shakes them off and finishes his climb.

[charning]

There is a great crowd of the Witch's people, all around the stone table, many carrying smoky torches. Wolves and ogres and minotaurs and hags and incubuses and wraiths and the spirits of wicked trees and -

[jackfrostbite]

- a lost son of Adam.

[charning]

Most of the creatures, whatever they were expecting, are alarmed to see Aslan in the flesh walking towards them, but soon they're rallied when the Witch exclaims:

"The fool! The fool has come. Bind him fast."

[jackfrostbite]

Winter is, by a considerable margin, the first of her creatures to set to this task. It's not that he's less afraid than they are; it's that he doesn't see why that should stop him.

[charning]

But soon he has help, and there is a swarm of them all over the lion, with ropes, delighted to find that he makes no move to resist them at all.

When they start to drag him to the Stone Table with all his paws bound together, the Witch says, "Stop!" and her creatures look to her and she grins wickedly and says, "Let him first be shaved."

[jackfrostbite]

Winter doesn't get caught up in the excitement with the rest of them. But when the Queen commands that the lion be shaved, he produces a knife and gets to it, quite carefully and gently so that not a single nick mars the skin under the mane as it falls away.

[deepest_magic]

Pointless. Pointless and repulsive and cruel. But not, yet, injurious. Maybe this is all she wants to do. Maybe this was so irresistable that she'd give up her thread of a claim to James? Bella's holding her breath.

[charning]

The Witch's creatures find it no end of hilarious to see the shaved Lion, smaller and far less imposing without the great mass of gold around his head, and tease him, offering him saucers of milk and marveling that they were ever afraid of him at all.

"Muzzle him!" cries the witch.

[jackfrostbite]

Winter assists in that effort, too. But he doesn't taunt or laugh. He's... quiet.

[neverbeatme]

James is really not sure what to make of this Winter character.

[charning]

Aslan never moves while the muzzle goes on, and the creatures are very much emboldened by this, kicking him, spitting on him, pinching him while they cooperate to heave his great body up onto the Stone Table. All of this amuses the Witch very much.

The creatures snug the cords around his paws. Addenda are made to the mass of them until there's barely any lion left visible.

And the Witch draws a wicked knife and a whetstone and begins to sharpen her blade.

[jackfrostbite]

(Perhaps no one will notice the way Winter puts his hand on Aslan's great shoulder, just for a moment, before he turns away to make room for the Witch at his head. Perhaps even Aslan won't notice. Jadis certainly won't; he is very careful to conceal it from her.)

[charning]

The Witch makes a slow, dramatic, drawn-out approach, knife in hand, eyes alight with excitement.

"And now who has won?" she sneers at Aslan. "Fool, did you think that by all this you would save the human girl? Now I will kill you in her stead as our pact requires and so the Deep Magic will be appeased. But who will protect her when you are dead? Who will take her out of my hand then? Understand that you have given me Narnia forever, you have lost your own life and you have not saved hers. In that knowledge - despair, and die."

[neverbeatme]

James is now completely certain that Aslan is planning something. There is nothing else that could be going on. Even if the thing he's planning is just for James and Bellla to win the fight, he has to have some reason to believe absolutely that they will. Because it's so obvious that he would have seen this coming, if his rules allow for it at all.

[charning]

Whether that is true or not - the knife plunges down.

[alicornucopia]

And the lion dies.

[charning]

"Now! Follow me all and we will set about what remains of this war! It will not take us long to crush the human vermin and the traitors now that the great Fool, the Cat, lies dead."

And with a burst of motion she's off, followed by a great crowd of creatures spreading out to have room to run after her.

[jackfrostbite]

Winter doesn't move with the crowd at first; he spends a second or two gazing down at Aslan's body with a look of quiet sadness, and then just as the last of the horde streams past him and none are left to see him do it, he undoes the muzzle over the lion's mouth and drops it on the ground.

As he turns to follow the rest of Jadis's creatures, his eyes pass over James and Bella's hiding place with barely a pause. He doesn't stare or cry out or indicate in any other way that he saw them; he just starts after the trailing end of his Queen's army, slower than the rest of them but still quite fast enough to be gone in the space of a breath.

[deepest_magic]

"He saw us."

[neverbeatme]

"I think he decided not to see us," James murmurs. "Didn't you see him, that whole time? His heart couldn't have been less in it. I just can't figure out why."