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“Once upon a time, long ago, there were four rulers of Narnia: two Kings and two Queens. Two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve.”
The old professor sits atop the highest tower in all of Narnia, the young prince – heir to this beautiful, magical, dying kingdom – kicking his legs over the ramparts beside him.
“Together, these brothers and sisters – for they were family all – founded for Narnia a Golden Age that lasted for one thousand years.”
The young Caspian laughs. “Surely no-one can live for a thousand years! Not even Kings and Queens!”
The old Doctor Cornelius smiles wryly, for he is old and wise, and the prince has much to learn of Old Narnia. “Anything can happen if one has Aslan at their side.”
How long does a sunset last?
To astronomers, historians and the like, a sunset is a very measured thing. It may depend on season and location, but it is definite. Quantifiable and numerical. The sun lowers through the sky at a constant speed, and there is a definite moment when the last of it has vanished beyond the horizon. It is an abstracted, forgotten thing, lost to the realms of numbers and logic and dust, no longer residing among the living breath of a fairy tale, or the warm hug of whimsy.
When you’re watching a sunset, surrounded by friends and family, it may indeed last lifetimes. It lights up your grins, giving each face of your siblings a fresh and youthful glow, slowing the onset of the years upon them. Faces that are young may look old, and the old may look young, and for a forever-moment everything is perfect.
Golden, perhaps.
You and your siblings bask in the warmth of the setting sun until, at last, it sets. You might perhaps forget that it lasted so long at all.
Doctor Cornelius guides him well, Caspian thinks. He is a good teacher. He procures old tomes and ancient chronicles from his robes, on those cold nights at the peak of that tower. Caspian reads every yellowed page by soft candlelight, in awe of each tale he reads. It is clear by the number of books that there is a thousand years worth of histories there: for of course, four young sovereigns of a newly freed nation had much work ahead of them.
In the earliest years, there was peace. These four children travelled the lands, bringing with them prosperity and good fortune. In the eyes of the talking beasts, the dwarves, the dryads and naiads, the centaurs and the fauns and the satyrs, these children shone as bright as the sun, casting their golden light over every league of Narnia. After their travels, they returned to a beautiful cliff by the sea, where the citizens had built them a great castle in their thanks.
After Narnia regained its standing as a nation, there was war. The monarchs – not so young now, for they had grown in their time helping their people – had suddenly to contend with treaties and courtships, advisors and ambassadors and dignitaries. These kingdoms they knew nothing of, and who suddenly wanted to plunder Narnia’s golden forests for their own.
The High King Peter, the Magnificent, would never let Narnia be imprisoned again: not by any witch, nor any other kingdom besides. He was Narnia’s golden sword and gleaming shield; every faded portrait painted him so.
Queen Susan the Gentle was the utmost diplomat. She had ended a hundred wars before they even began, keeping all manner of evils that skirted Narnia’s borders at bay. It was said that a single one of her smiles could quiet any warmongering fleet, and when that failed the bow in her grip was unwavering. Tales of her kindness spread to every neighbouring kingdom until every prince and princess was vying for her hand. They were, perhaps, not the tales that represented her most clearly.
More of an enigma was King Edmund the Just. The earlier texts that the professor presses into Caspian’s hands speak little of him, but state no reason why. He fought beside the High King in all things, and for his own ends too, never wavering, never hesitating, simply planning battles and creating ingenious strategy. He handled disputes with a just hand a level head, never bowing under his crown.
Queen Lucy the Valiant was the youngest and most beloved. Her heart was large enough for every single creature in her land, and more besides. She could heal any wound with her tears, and end any life with the daggers of her glare. The might of Queen Lucy was a terrible and glorious thing indeed.
Caspian turned years as pages. Ten, fifty, two hundred: it seems these monarchs were ageless and saintlike, never wandering or wavering in their path for a better Narnia. They were ever magnificent, ever gentle, ever just, and ever valiant. They were everything Caspian aspired to be and more.
These were Narnia’s Golden Years.
There are tales missing from Doctor Cornelius’ books, of course. A hundred years of history destroyed: by time or by telmarine hands, who’s to say?
Those were Narnia’s golden years indeed. Aslan was a frequent visitor, and for a thousand years his light rose from the utter east and swept across to the mountains in the west that bordered the Western Wild.
But that can’t have been literal, can it? How can a mere lion bring the brilliant light of the sun?
There are many things that Doctor Cornelius struggles to teach the young Caspian. The prince shrugs off talk of Aslan easily: for what is a lion compared to mythical kings and queens of old? Immortal for a thousand years, then disappearing without a trace.
The professor also keeps from Caspian a great deal. He has a few other tutors that teach him of the Telmarine histories, and he dare not explain how cruel Caspian the First had been to the unfamiliar creatures of Narnia. He had explained it as best he could: how the talking beasts became silent, the dryads slept in their branch-beds, and the bubbling rivers of the naiads dried up and became quiet forlorn crevices.
Prince Caspian is not dim. He is a bright child, and he understands what the doctor does not say so clearly in words. He takes the ideas and polishes them in his mind, until they are bright and gleaming.
One day, he will make an excellent king. But not one that lives forever.
It’s all about faith.
Not so easily in any god or figure. Faith in themselves, and their people, and the ideals they followed.
Those High Kings and Queens of old had such faith in a new and better Narnia that it shone out of them and made them brilliant, and had no choice but to be true.
It is not so many years removed from those cold nights atop the tower when the Pevensies step from train platform to cave. At the end of the tunnel lies a golden light that leads to rich sands and gilded waves. It is only the knowing that they are in Narnia, that they are safe, that they are home, that makes them laugh for the first time in a year, and run to the seashore and splash like the children they haven’t been since Aslan placed crowns upon their young heads.
This is all it takes for the ruins of Cair Paravel to shine a little brighter in the sun, and for all of forgotten Narnia to breathe in a new breath of hope.
Caspian looks upon these miraculously revived kings and queens, and cannot quite place them as those faded, gilded pictures that decorated the pages of his childhood history books. These siblings are… young. Children. Younger than him, even. The eldest barely looks the same age as Caspian. None of their clothes fit properly, and the fabric is worn and old and of a hideously outdated style.
But the looks on their faces, the bearing of their statures… they’re royalty, alright.
The eldest is indeed good enough at swordplay to disarm Caspian himself, though he seems out of practice, and strong.
The elder girl is ready enough to draw her bow on him for holding a sword to her brother’s throat. She seems angry; she does not seem at all gentle.
The younger boy is unassuming; at first Caspian doesn’t see him, though he wields his own sword and seems ready enough to use it.
The youngest is a bleeding heart; if she truly is Queen Lucy the Valiant, Caspian can suddenly see how she captured the heart of the nation. Her kindness seems to shine out of her at every moment, stayed only by the wariness of her elder siblings.
And, indeed, in his hand lies Rhindon, the lost sword of the High King, and at the elder girl’s side there is a carven quiver, the patterns of which had been drawn in his history books as the quiver of Queen Susan the Gentle.
He looks back to the eldest boy, who indeed has golden hair and a royal bearing.
“High King Peter,” he whispers, awed.
The High King lifts his chin, baiting him. “I believe you called.”
He looks the High King from golden head to muddy toe. “I thought you’d be older,” Caspian says.
They tell him, these Kings and Queens of old, of Narnia’s golden years. They tell him of their travels around Narnia, rejoicing with its people for the end of the Long Winter, and the death of the White Witch. They tell him of bloody battles, and of securing their aurelian thrones, and then, after some time, they tell him of peace.
Peace sounds, to Caspian’s ears, golden.
Caspian tells them of Narnia’s story after their exit; Narnia’s sunset years, now bereft of Kings and Queens, swiftly invaded by Archenland, and then the Calormine Empire, and eventually the Telmarines. Narnia was in the depths of a dark night, Caspian tells them, from which he feared they would never return.
“How long was your reign, really?” Caspian asks, as they prepare for war.
The High King barely spares him a glance as he tightens his armour. “Long enough for us to grow up,” says Peter.
“How long was your reign, really?” Caspian asks, as they organise their archers on the mound.
Susan barely glances at him as she readies her bow. “No time at all,” says Susan.
“How long was your reign, really?” Caspian asks, as they set aside cots and healers for the wounded, before the battle has even begun.
Lucy looks up at him, hope lighting up her face. “It was all the time I ever needed,” says Lucy.
It is Edmund who gives Caspian the answer he needs. “A thousand years, almost to the day. I counted every day Aslan gave me, and I never forgot a single one,” says Edmund.
And then he pauses, considering. “Although, I’m not sure how much my siblings remember; we all took the loss quite hard. We spent a long time trying to forget.”
“Forget?” Caspian asked incredulously. “How could you forget Narnia? Forget being Kings and Queens?”
Edmund smiled at him like a cloud passing before the sun. “The same way a sailor forgets the shore. The same way a mother forgets the smile of a child that is lost. The same way one forgets the sun once it has set, and the long night has set in.” Edmund hefted his sword, held it up to check its balance and its edge. “We didn’t forget. It just hurt to think about, that’s all.”
“Did you really think we were like that?” Peter says as they celebrate their victory, rather too bitter for a banquet. Then again, Narnia’s sunshine wine was a pleasure that they had all missed greatly, and their tolerances were not quite so high as they were a thousand years and a year before. “Perfect and, what, immortal? We were only in our thirties when we left. Not – not ancient. Not like the trees, not like the rivers. We made mistakes in those early years.”
Edmund raises his eyebrows. “But we stopped making mistakes, after a while.”
Caspian nods. “After the first century, you were quite proficient. Not a single dispute for a hundred years, as my tutor told it. By the fifth century, there were barely any wars at all. Only every decade or so when a new ruler would step up with grandiose ideas of conquering the unconquerable Narnia.”
Three ancient monarchs stare at him, and Edmund stares at them.
“What?” Edmund says, incredulous. “A Golden Age lasts a darn sight longer than twenty years. Weren’t you counting?”
Edmund is blunt, but not incorrect. Leaving the wardrobe had dulled the children’s memories, as well as their spirits. Perhaps they tried to forget purposefully, or in the cloudy skies of Spare Oom – England, Edmund insists – could not quite remember how many sunsets they had watched together, sitting on the grand terraces of Cair Paravel.
But Edmund had counted them, each and every one. He remembers, better than his siblings, how bitterly cold the final year of the Long Winter had been, for he had spent it in the capture of the White Witch, while his siblings had spent it wrapped warm with the beavers and the talking beasts.
And so, Edmund sits with Caspian on the ramparts of Caspian’s castle, and tells him of their history.
He speaks of a wounded kingdom, brittle and untrusting after such a long time under the White Witch’s thumb. It took more than a hundred years to undo that pain and mistrust, but eventually their kingdom softened, and even the most stubborn dwarves rejoiced for their brilliant Kings and Queens.
He speaks of a gilded kingdom, rich and shining with hope and prosperity. A kingdom where none were without a warm meal or a cosy bed, and where the ill were tended with all speed and efficiency, and where the armies that were mustered returned safely to their homes when the battles were done.
He speaks of a wise kingdom. After a thousand years of peace, its people had learned of kindness, and of trust. They had learned that the nights may be long, and the road may be hard, but the sun would always greet them in the end.
Narnia learned that the warmest sunrise can melt even the longest of winters.
Narnia had one thousand Golden years.