14 May 2012 @ 10:32 pm
( have no envy )  
( For a second, Edmund wonders what it would be like to step out of one of the high lancet windows lining the corridor. Perhaps he'd grow wings like Daedelus or Nerites and swoop down low until he'd be able to touch his fingertips to the sunset blaze of the ocean.(How he'd devoured the gold-edged book on Greek mythology his father, months before his deployment, had given to him!) This is Narnia, after all, where a group of four children and a ragtag bunch of Talking Beasts had defeated an army of horrors. Where he had broken the wand of the White Witch, where he'd been crowned king after proving himself a traitor.

But the whim fades with the moment. Edmund presses his forehead against the cool stone peak of the window, his eyes on the ocean below. It would be stupid to jump, really. He'd end up a bloody splatter on the cruel-looking rocky cliffs bordering the sea, and wouldn't that be the worst of it? The Great Prophecy that the Narnians were prattling on about would be broken, Aslan would have to find a fourth child to settle upon the throne, and Lucy, at least, would be inconsolable.

Edmund snorts aloud. Leave the dreaming to Lucy and Susan and Peter, who are now reveling in the warmth of an entire country's admiration. He can hear the murmur of merrymaking even here in this distant hall, where time and the elements have broken through. Dying light streams in through the holes in the walls, where an errant step could send a bird-boned ten-year-old hurtling down into the sky below.

But he's not Nerites, nor Daedalus. He's Edmund Pevensie, and he can't stand this.

Most of the Narnians, newly freed from their stone prisons, hadn't known what to make of the four children now firmly ensconced in Aslan's favour. Fewer still knew of Edmund's defection. Narnia celebrated now, but Edmund could feel the undercurrents threading through the laughter, the knowledge that tomorrow would not be so easy as today.

The wine sits heavy in his stomach, and he presses a hand to it, willing the sudden nausea to pass.

What he doesn't understand is the anger. Torrents of it, igniting within him a resentment so black and so vast that the narrow confines of his body can barely contain it. He'd felt the same joy as his siblings had when Aslan had crowned him, yes, and he'd known absolution when the Great Lion had breathed his sweet breath onto his cheeks. But now, when he's left to his own devices, he remembers the artifice that governs him — he'd fought the White Witch to prove that he was better than they all thought him to be. That he was better than Peter. That he was better than the lot of them, despite his very nature.

Edmund taps out a restless beat against the worn stone, lost in a tumble of thoughts. Time will unravel the knots that his frustration has wrought, he knows, he hopes, but it has only been a handful of days since the Witch and her legacy was buried. Edmund is twice the boy he had been before stumbling into the wardrobe, but he's yet half of what Peter is.

And that, most of all, chafes. )