Work Text:
It’s the lions that first catch Peter's eye.
National Service is every bit as awful as his siblings had warned him it would be, damn fool orders from damn fool commanders, enforced with the threat of prison or worse. A lot of threatening people who’ve done nothing but demand freedom, so far as he can tell. A lot of heat.
India is strange, and beautiful, and more colourful than the Tisroc’s palace. He loves it, in a way he hasn’t loved any place since Cair Paravel.
But more than all of it, more than the heat and the colours and the smells, it is the lions which catch his eye.
They are the symbol of Sihkism, he is told, of a faith of warriors charged with protecting all those who cannot protect themselves. With feeding those who cannot feed themselves.
He writes to Lucy about it first, and later Edmund and Susan as well. Lucy says that she and Ed had encountered Him in the form of a lamb, but as Peter points out, he never had so that may not apply to him.
Edmund says that Peter must do whatever he feels is right, and trust in the Lion to guide him if he strays from the true path.
Susan says that if they were not meant to question such things, they should have been given clearer guidance. Susan is always practical about things. It’s one of the things which makes her so very relaxing to be around.
Captain Singh does a very good job of pretending he is not baffled and more than a little wary of the fresh-faced English luitenant who turns up at his door asking to be taught about his faith, but he is a gentle man in many ways, and so he does not turn Peter away. He invites him in, and does his best to answer all Peter’s many and varied questions over the course of several weeks. When he finds his own knowledge exhausted, he gives Peter the names of learned men who can tell him more.
When Peter returns home from his first tour of duty teetotal and vegetarian, his parents are alarmed, his siblings amused. When he returns from his second tour wearing a kara and waking before the others to meditate, his siblings hold a conference to decide what is to be done.
Ultimately they agree that it is up to Peter, and the Lion, to determine God’s path for him, and that that path might just as likely be the Kalsa as the Army.
Susan doesn’t talk about her faith in front of the others. Theirs has never shaken, not for a moment, and she doesn’t wish to deprive them of that certainty.
But the fact of it is that, while she has never doubted for a second that God exists, whether He can be trusted, whether He truly loves all His creation, is a matter she is less and less certain about.
There is so much wonder and beauty in the world, but there is also so much horror, and neither Lucy nor Peter’s holy books have offered her much in the way of answers, at least not ones she finds satisfying.
The decision to duck into a synagog comes quite unexpectedly, except that she feels she has exhausted all other avenues of enquiry.
She’s never been in one before, and stepping inside brings with it that peculiar sort of apprehension that is unique to entering a spiritual place not your own.
She is wearing a scarf around her neck, real silk from before the war, and she unfastens it and ties it over her hair, unsure whether that is the correct thing but not wanting to cause offense.
She nearly turns and leaves when an elderly woman who had been sweeping comes to ask in halting English whether she is alright, but something stops her. Something that feels, faint and confused, like a paw upon her shoulder.
“I wanted to talk to someone,” she admits. “About God.”
The woman guides her to sit in one on one of the benches, and Susan doesn’t know where to begin, and what ends up coming out of her mouth quite without her meaning it to, is, “I used to know His will for me, absolutely. Without question. But that was in a different life, and now I’m here, and everything is so grey and awful, and nothing is quite like I remember it, and I can’t feel Him anymore, and I can’t talk to my sister about it because He never left her and she doesn’t understand.”
“It is hard,” the woman says. “Sometimes it is very hard. You are Christian, yes?”
“I suppose so,” Susan says. “I mean, mum and father are, and my sister and brother are. My other brother is a sikh. I don’t know what I am anymore.”
“You were raised to be a Christian. Doing as you are told, yes? Always doing as you are told, never asking question, never arguing. The dead are in Hell or they are in Heaven, and either way you should not be sad.” She patted Susan’s cheek gently. “You have lost people. I see it in your eyes. You have lost many people.”
“More than I can count. I think one of them was me.”
“I have lost much also. I came here, to England, with my granddaughter, but many people I loved… We have lost so much, all of us in this shull, and it is hardest of all when there is no body to bury.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean, I mean, I know that you have lost far more…”
“Hush. Pain is not a race. You must mourn for what was taken from you.”
“I don’t know how. To mourn I mean. If someone is killed, if there’s a body to bury, I know how to do that. Christian or Nar… But this is different.”
“No, no. A loss is a loss. And so. We will say the mourner’s kaddish, and then you will tell me of those you have lost, and we will remember together. You will make a kind of shiva for yourself, a time to mourn and remember and heal. And when the mourning period is over, then you will try again to see the Lord’s will for you. Then you will wrestle with God.”
Edmund had never much liked church. Sometimes the sermons seemed like they were going to get interesting, but inevitably the rector would give up right before getting to the really interesting bit, and they never wanted to answer his questions afterwards either. What sort of troops did Joshua have, and how much information? What type of sling was David using? What political power did the Queen of Sheba hold in the region? Vicars never seemed to know, and only wanted to talk about God, which Edmund at the wise old age of thirteen wasn’t much interested in.
Since returning from Narnia for the last time though, he had come to dislike them a good deal more. Mostly because he was paying more attention.
The God they described, he wasn’t any God Edmund recognised. He had talked with Aslan a good deal, as these things went, and always, even at his most infuriating, there had been a respect for all living beings that seemed to Edmund entirely lacking in the bible the priests described.
The God they spoke of, who turned Lot’s wife into salt, who destroyed Sodom and Garmorah (not for buggery, he was relieved to find when he read the Bible for himself, but for refusing to provide hospitality), that was not a God Edmund recognised.
But Peter had found the Lion in Sikhism, and Susan had found peace in Judaism, so he begins to wonder whether he should be looking outside the church for his answers.
He writes to the Professor, asking for recommendations of books on comparative religion, and receives a suitcase by return mail, stuffed full of books on everything from the Venerable Dunns Scotus to Chinese Daoism.
Many of the books are unreadably dull, though he ploughs through them all the same. Many more contain all the same problems he had had with the Bible.
The book on Islam is one of the last in the trunk, and he almost doesn’t read it at all. But he has set himself a task, and he is not one to give up before a job is done.
He knows almost straight away that this is something different.
He reads the story of the Night Journey, and here, here is the God he recognises, here is the God who listens to his creation, who makes allowances for human frailty. Here there is no original sin, no punishment of sons for the sins of their fathers. Here is a faith where every man stands or falls on his own merits, his own faithfulness and honour.
He is quieter about it that Peter had been, telling only his siblings. He buys a copy of the Qu’ran in English, and begins teaching himself Arabic from books. Peter, bless his overzealous heart, goes out and finds an Imam who speaks English, and is willing to answer any questions Edmund writes to him.
He’s far from the Ummah, but by the time he’s nineteen he’s certain about his decision. Lucy and Susan witness him saying the Shahadah, and for the first time in a long time, he feels that he is on the right path.
Lucy learns to be careful who she talks to about her faith. It is not just that she loves and accepts her siblings and the choices they have made, though that is scandalous enough in the eyes of most. It is that she knows and loves the small gods, the spark of divine light that dwells in rivers and in trees, it is that she sees and acknowledges the light and love of Aslan in every living thing, and most especially in people, no matter who or what they are.
If forced to answer the question of what religion she follows, she would say that she is a Christian. That Aslan and Jesus are one and the same, she has no doubt.
But the truer answer, the answer she can give to none but her siblings, is that she is a Narnian.
And because she is a Narnian, she must speak up against injustice, fight against oppression, give all she can to help anyone who needs it, especially when the injustice is being perpetrated in Aslan’s name.
Her mother asks her, rather tiredly, whether she wouldn’t rather do something normal for a change, instead of attending yet another rally, and it hits her, as it sometimes does, just how different the paths they are on really are.
“God gave me a voice for a reason,” she says, knowing she won’t get through, hoping that this time she’s wrong. “How can I do anything else but use it?”
“I just worry,” her mother says. “I don’t want you to turn into one of those dry joyless women who don’t care or think about anything outside their cause. I just want you to be happy.”
And Lucy wants to say that of course she’s happy, she’s happy as much and as often as she can be, because she’s not a Christian, she’s a Narnian, and that means feeling everything, and living life to its fullest, appreciating the beauty of every moment, not just the holy ones but all the other ones as well because all of them are holy if you are walking the right path. But she can’t say that, not to anyone but her siblings, so instead she says, “I’ll never forget how to be happy.”
Her mother strokes her hair. “I hope that’s true, darling.”
“I promise it is. I know my path, more clearly every day, and it is one of love. Jesus is with me, and he guides me, and the world is full of so much wonder and light. How could I be anything else?”
Her mother smiles at her, rather sadly, and Lucy wishes she could make her understand. Christian is not the same as Narnian, not for most people, but it ought to be, and maybe one day it will be. By Aslan’s grace.