Burrowing, Burrowing, Burrowing - Part One - an Edmund Golden Age Fic
Maithas Bristlebrow rubs his hand down his face and wishes, very fervently, that he was dead. "Tell me again," he says evenly.
The two dwarflings, holding hands and trembling in the face of their fearless leader's reaction, press together. Someone - possibly them - has braided their beards together, so every time one of them moves the other one wobbles and they both have to screech and windmill their arms to stay up straight. "Um," says one.
"It's the burrow," says another.
They both look at each other. Neither of them are old enough to remember last year, never mind before it was winter; to them, this spring is more terrifying than anything else they know. "It flooded," says the first one timidly.
Maithas buries his head in his hands and bites down hard on the meat of his thumb.
It doesn't work.
He's still screaming.
In the aftermath of the White Witch's death, the sudden restoration of Spring leads to some unexpected issues. When the Bristlebrow burrow floods, Maithas Bristlebrow - now Chief due to the death of his brother in the final battle - reaches out to his new monarchs for aid. King Edmund the Just is quick to respond.
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The days after the coronation are exhausting; Edmund has never felt more alive.
For one thing, Cair Paravel is mostly in ruins around them. The four Pevensies sleep, therefore, underneath their regal cloaks on the floor in front of the thrones, using their arms and each other for pillows, and wearing and wearing again the clothes Aslan gave them to be crowned in. The party attendees have slept off the wine and wandered (or run) back home, for the most part; Oreius, who Edmund had come to see as part of the furniture, has returned to the remnants of the camp at the Stone Table, giving no word of return. Maybe he won't. Maybe he was a winter general, and now Spring has come he has no intention of doing anything but... whatever it is centaurs do, in their spare time.
Edmund wanders outside onto the first pavilion. His shoes are hurting him. They're uncomfortable Sunday shoes, because he'd been saving his best boots for exploring the woods in the Professor's country, back a hundred years ago (a week? two?) before he came here. Now his other hurts have gone, his shoes are back to being his primary worry, and worry he does; what if there are no shoemakers in Narnia? What if none of them want to make him any shoes?
Inside Cair Paravel, Lucy and Susan are exploring what remains of the basements. Peter is down on the beach, poking into caves, having decided that there must be smugglers somewhere. Edmund kicks listlessly at the grass. Do the other three feel as he does? They walk with a lot more purpose, even Lucy. She's found a leather belt for herself, and has looped the little vial into a free hook, draping it over her waist. It sloshes when she walks.
Edmund does not like feeling sorry for himself.
The pavilion is a pretty place. Maybe once it was roofed, but he suspects not; the tiled floor has mossed and grassed over, and the pillars are blue with salt from the sea and general neglect, but it's still a place someone loved, once.
"Oh, bally it all," Edmund mutters, kicking off his shoes. The knots have swollen with river-water, and are now impossible to unpick; he tosses them into the long grass on the other side of the pavilion and then gets down to his hands and knees, beginning at one corner, wresting thick moss and wildflower stems from between the tiles, pulling them free of the ceramics and throwing them the same way as the shoes.
It's a picture!
Tasked now, Edmund works with a frenzy for hours. Certainly long enough for the sun to rise to an apex in the watery blue sky, and set again - begin setting - with the sort of premature joy a Springtime sun feels, as though it hasn't realised yet that winter is over.
It's a picture!
When dusk is well and truly upon them, and the voices of his siblings are chattering in the Throne Room again, Edmund stands. He brushes his earthy palms against his thighs. He'll have to get up high, to properly see what the picture is.
Perhaps it's a bad idea, but he doesn't put his shoes on. He heads right for one of the curly apple trees on the edge of the pavilion, an old thing long beyond flowering, and clambers up.
"Pretty, that," says the magpie on the branch beside him, in a conversational sort of voice.
Edmund falls out of the tree.
His head aches, but not as bad as his back, where he's landed flat on a gnarled root. His heart is thundering a horse-race in his chest, and he feels stupid and afraid. "Ow."
The bird in the tree flutters down to the rock beside him, and cocks its head. It's a magpie, but it's definitely a Talking Magpie - Edmund is beginning to recognise the hallmarks, the sheen to the feathers, the size of the animal, the intelligence in the beady eyes. "You one of the yoo-mans, then?" The bird asks, still looking at the pavilion, "Damn odd thing for a yoo-man to do."
"I'm human," Edmund says. He's still lying, looking up at the stars. God, his head throbs.
"You one of the Kings or Queens?"
Edmund nods and instantly regrets it. "Queens are girls," he explains, "Kings are boys. I'm a King."
"How in damnation am I to know whether you're a girl or a boy?" The Magpie scolds him, cackling deep in its throat, "You ain't no pretty bird, so who's to tell?"
"I can't tell with you," Edmund says with considerable injury.
"Well!" The Magpie preens, looking as offended as a bird can get, "Well! That's a fine thing to say to a body, and a body what's your loyal subject and all!"
"Oh." Edmund thinks about that for a second, "Yes. Sorry. That was rude. Sorry."
"Hmph."
After a while, Edmund feels safe enough to sit up; he leans against the trunk of the apple tree, surprised enough to see the Magpie still beside him, perched on a log. "I don't want to climb up again," he confesses to the bird, "Will you... what's the picture?"
The Magpie quirks its head. "It's a pair of yoo-mans," it says, "Looking real fine. Wearing pretty feathers. Got gold and stuff on their heads, and a Pegasus with them."
"A Pegasus?"
"You dunno what a Pegasus is? Hell, maybe you is simple."
Edmund doesn't say anything. He isn't sure what to say.
"'S a flying horse," the Magpie says sullenly, after a few moments, "And I'm Maulkbone. And I'm a boy Magpie, so don't go making no assumptions, you."
"Oh," Edmund turns and grins, unable to help himself, "Maulkbone - it's lovely to meet you - I'm Edmund."
"King Edmund," says Maulkbone with a grin in his beak, "Not Queen Edmund?"
For the first time in several days, Edmund laughs and means it.
Maithas Bristlebrow still wishes he was dead, because being dead - surely, surely - would be less hassle than this.
"We have to camp, Granny," he repeats for the fiftieth time, "Because the burrow is full of water."
Granny Bristlebrow folds her arms over her chest. "I amn't going," she declares, much to the amusement of the various Bristlebrows witness to this argument, "And you amn't gonna make me, Maithas, Chief or no Chief!"
In the hours since the Bristlebrow clan has been flooded out of their burrow, a sort of refugee camp has grown in the forest near the river, higher than the floods can possibly reach. We hope. Dwarves are always prepared and many-layered; a mish-mash of tents made out of jackets, half-tanned leather, trousers, jerkins, shirts, towels, and blankets has become a sort of aboveground burrow, where Bristlebrows of all sizes now sit, feeding babies and sharpening shovels and braiding hair and generally looking about as displaced as Maithas feels. Dwarves are not made for sitting around.
"Granny," he tries again, lowering his voice, "C'mon, please. People're starting to watch."
Granny Bristlebrow just cackles, her walking stick brandished like a weapon. "I'm staying on this bank until Winter comes back or you dig me a new burrow," she says. "Yessir, Chief Bristlebrow, Sir!"
Maithas closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. His ribs are still bruised. "Granny," he says, "Until you move, we can't start digging you a new burrow."
Some murmurs of admiration among the gathered Bristlebrows at this new piece of diplomacy.
Granny Bristlebrow nods her head in acknowledgement, like a master chess player impressed at a reckless move from a rookie. "Fine, then," she says, and holds out her hand, "You can carry me up the hill if you truly must, but I ain't moving any further than that!"
Thankfully, Granny Bristlebrow weighs about as much as a sack of spuds, and Maithas is strong even for a dwarf. She still beats the backs of his knees with her stick as he walks, but that's just to keep him on his toes. "I'll kill her!" Granny says cheerfully, swinging with every step Maithas takes, "She'll die!"
"Pretty sure she died already, Granny," Maithas says, depositing his grandmother at the mouth of one of the first tents. The Bristlebrows have dispersed again, back to their pasttimes, Maithas's entertainment having left them, "I should know. I seen it, didn't I?"
She pats him on the head with her free hand. "Everyone's seen it."
"Sure, but I was there."
"I know, son," Granny Bristlebrow keeps patting him. It makes Maithas feel very young, and very un-Chiefly, "Was it that brave Son of Adam what did it?"
"No," Maithas admits, "It was..." And he finds he can't remember. He'd been Captain of the Black Dwarf team, a group of about twenty Bristlebrows, Blackbanes, Beardbraids, Ballangers, and Bluebanders; by the time the news spread, Maithas had still been wrestling with a particularly savage Red Dwarf from the other side (hence the bruised ribs, he remembers with a wince).
Granny pats him on the cheek again.
When Maithas stands, knees cracking, and surveys the hill, his heart sinks. There are maybe three hundred Bristlebrows currently lying in the woods - the burrow that flooded was the central campment, and that's not counting the cousins, uncles, aunts, siblings and distant relations still returning through Narnia. In a week, he will have five hundred dwarves to house, and nothing but watery soil to house them in, should they miraculously learn how to breathe underwater.
He wanders up the hill, lest Granny start giving him advice again. He's been Chief for - Aslan's Mane, how long ago was the battle? It can't be a week, can it? - and already he can feel the grey hairs in his beard.
"Caw! Caw!"
Stopping just below a tree, an Aunt of his - Charia Bristlebrow - and her fourteen children stirring a stew pot, Maithas squints up. The voice is familiar. "Maulky?"
Sure enough there's a Talking Magpie in the tree, although when Maithas meets his eyes the bird flutters down onto his shoulder. One of Charia's children, a little dwarfling not much older than a year, giggles.
"Pretty pickle you're in here, Bristlebrow," Maulkbone Magpie says. He chucks, an instinctive noise in the back of his throat, and starts to preen his feathers.
Maithas slumps. "I know," he says. Charia very kindly turns the children back to the stew, to let him have his breakdown in peace. "Ye gods, Maulky, what am I going to do? My burrow's flooded, and Matthein is - Matthein is-"
Maulky pecks fondly at Maithas's ear. "Sorry," he coos, "Sorry-sorry-sorry. Pretty pickle you're in here, all the same."
The dwarves up the hill a bit have started singing a mournful gold chant. So many men and women have not returned; the Bristlebrow clan is either very very young, dwarflings without hardly any beard, or very very old, hobbling around on two sticks. The very first thing Maithas has done, on becoming Chief, is make the whole bloody lot of them homeless.
Ye Gods.
"I know summat that could help," says Maulky thoughtfully. Well. Pretend-thoughtfully. The sort of thoughtful he says, sometimes, when he's scheming.
Maithas both hands on his eyes and presses until he sees stars. "What? What could possibly help?"
Magpies can't grin, but Maulky does a damn good approximation of one. "You ever make it to that funny coronation up the country, in the end?"
