Susan's Horn Becoming This Great Magical Thing Of Legend That Summons, Essentially, Narnia's Saints Back

"battle cries" | the amazing devil (insp.)

i sit alone in the dark and i try to remember the words you spoke when you summoned the ender you chained my life to an ancient master will the curse be reversed if i say it backwards

The ache will go away, eventually. 

That was what the Professor told them, the day they got back. When they tumbled from the wardrobe in a heap of tangled limbs, and found that the world had been torn from under their feet with all the kindness of a serpent. 

They picked themselves off of the floorboards with smiles plastered on child faces, and sat with the Professor in his study drinking cup after cup of tea. 

But the smiles were fake. The tea was like ash on their tongues. And when they went to bed that night, none of them could sleep in beds that were too foreign, in bodies that had not been their own for years. Instead they grouped into one room and sat on the floor and whispered, late into the night. 

When morning came, Mrs. Macready discovered the four of them asleep in Peter and Edmund’s bedroom, tangled in a heap of pillows and blankets with their arms looped across one another. They woke a few moments after her entry and seemed confused, lost even, staring around the room with pale faces, eyes raking over each framed painting on the wall and across every bit of furniture as if it was foreign to them. “Come to breakfast,” Mrs. Macready said as she turned to go, but inside she wondered. 

For the children’s faces had held the same sadness that she saw sometimes in the Professor’s. A yearning, a shock, a numbness, as if their very hearts had been ripped from their chests.

At breakfast Lucy sat huddled between her brothers, wrapped in a shawl that was much too big for her as she warmed her hands around a mug of hot chocolate. Edmund fidgeted in his seat and kept reaching up to his hair as if to feel for something that was no longer there. Susan pushed her food idly around on her plate with her fork and hummed a strange melody under her breath. And Peter folded his hands beneath his chin and stared at the wall with eyes that seemed much too old for his face. 

It chilled Mrs. Macready to see their silence, their strangeness, when only yesterday they had been running all over the house, pounding through the halls, shouting and laughing in the bedrooms. It was as if something, something terrible and mysterious and lengthy, had occurred yesterday, but surely that could not be. 

She remarked upon it to the Professor, but he only smiled sadly at her and shook his head. “They’ll be all right,” he said, but she wasn’t so sure. 

They seemed so lost. 

Lucy disappeared into one of the rooms later that day, a room that Mrs. Macready knew was bare save for an old wardrobe of the professor’s. She couldn’t imagine what the child would want to go in there for, but children were strange and perhaps she was just playing some game. When Lucy came out again a few minutes later, sobbing and stumbling back down the hall with her hair askew, Mrs. Macready tried to console her, but Lucy found no comfort in her arms. “It wasn’t there,” she kept saying, inconsolable, and wouldn’t stop crying until her siblings came and gathered her in their arms and said in soothing voices, “Perhaps we’ll go back someday, Lu.” 

Go back where, Mrs. Macready wondered? She stepped into the room Lucy had been in later on in the evening and looked around, but there was nothing but dust and an empty space where coats used to hang in the wardrobe. The children must have taken them recently and forgotten to return them, not that it really mattered. They were so old and musty and the Professor had probably forgotten them long ago. But what could have made the child cry so? Try as she might, Mrs. Macready could find no answer, and she left the room dissatisfied and covered in dust. 

Lucy and Edmund and Peter and Susan took tea in the Professor’s room again that night, and the next, and the next, and the next. They slept in Peter and Edmund’s room, then Susan and Lucy’s, then Peter and Edmund’s again and so on, swapping every night till Mrs. Macready wondered how they could possibly get any sleep. The floor couldn’t be comfortable, but it was where she found them, morning after morning. 

Each morning they looked sadder than before, and breakfast was silent. Each afternoon Lucy went into the room with the wardrobe, carrying a little lion figurine Edmund had carved her, and came out crying a little while later. And then one day she didn’t, and went wandering in the woods and fields around the Professor’s house instead. She came back with grassy fingers and a scratch on one cheek and a crown of flowers on her head, but she seemed content. Happy, even. Mrs. Macready heard her singing to herself in a language she’d never heard before as Lucy skipped past her in the hall, leaving flower petals on the floor in her wake. Mrs. Macready couldn’t bring herself to tell the child to pick them up, and instead just left them where they were. 

More days and nights went by. One day it was Peter who went into the room with the wardrobe, bringing with him an old cloak of the Professor’s, and he was gone for quite a while. Thirty or forty minutes, Mrs. Macready would guess. When he came out, his shoulders were straighter and his chin lifted higher, but tears were dried upon his cheeks and his eyes were frightening. Noble and fierce, like the eyes of a king. The cloak still hung about his shoulders and made him seem almost like an adult. 

Peter never went into the wardrobe room again, but Susan did, a few weeks later. She took a dried flower crown inside with her and sat in there at least an hour, and when she came out her hair was so elaborately braided that Mrs. Macready wondered where on earth she had learned it. The flower crown was perched atop her head as she went back down the hall, and she walked so gracefully that she seemed to be floating on the air itself. In spite of her red eyes, she smiled, and seemed content to wander the mansion afterwards, reading or sketching or making delicate jewelry out of little pebbles and dried flowers Lucy brought her from the woods. 

More weeks went by. The children still took tea in the Professor’s study on occasion, but not as often as before. Lucy now went on her daily walks outdoors, and sometimes Peter or Susan, or both of them at once, accompanied her. Edmund stayed upstairs for the most part, reading or writing, keeping quiet and looking paler and sadder by the day. 

Finally he, too, went into the wardrobe room. 

He stayed for hours, hours upon hours. He took nothing in save for a wooden sword he had carved from a stick Lucy brought him from outside, and he didn’t come out again. The shadows lengthened across the hall and the sun sank lower in the sky and finally Mrs. Macready made herself speak quietly to Peter as the boy came out of the Professor’s study. “Your brother has been gone for hours,” she told him crisply, but she was privately alarmed, because Peter’s face shifted into panic and he disappeared upstairs without a word. 

Mrs. Macready followed him silently after around thirty minutes and pressed an ear to the door of the wardrobe room. Voices drifted from beyond. Edmund’s and Peter’s, yes, but she could also hear the soft tones of Lucy and Susan. 

“Why did he send us back?” Edmund was saying. It sounded as if he had been crying.  

Mrs. Macready couldn’t catch the answer, but when the siblings trickled out of the room an hour later, Edmund’s wooden sword was missing, and the flower crown Susan had been wearing lately was gone, and Peter no longer had his old cloak, and Lucy wasn’t carrying her lion figurine, and the four of them had clasped hands and sad, but smiling, faces. 

Mrs. Macready slipped into the room once they were gone and opened the wardrobe, and there at the bottom were the sword and the crown and the cloak and the lion. An offering of sorts, almost, or perhaps just items left there for future use, for whenever they next went into the wardrobe room.  

But they never did, and one day they were gone for good, off home, and the mansion was silent again. And it had been a long time since that morning that Mrs. Macready had found them all piled together in one bedroom, but ever since then they hadn’t quite been children, and she wanted to know why.

She climbed the steps again to the floor of the house where the old wardrobe was, and then went into the room and crossed the floor to the opposite wall. 

When she pulled the wardrobe door open, the four items the Pevensie children had left inside of it were missing. 

And just for a moment, it seemed to her that a cool gust of air brushed her face, coming from the darkness beyond where the missing coats used to hang.

The Cailleach | Scottish Folklore

The story of the Cailleach can change drastically depending on what area of Scotland you are in, making her a hard figure to pin down as one thing or another.

In some stories, she transforms each year at Tobar na Cailleach(well of the Cailleach) from an old woman into youth, and the change of seasons depict her cycle from youth into elderly age.

In other stories, the Cailleach is more of a villainous figure, that either stubbornly fights back the forces of spring(and is ultimately overcome by the united forces of the sun, dew, and rain), or the Cailleach holds spring prisoner in the form of a beautiful young woman named Bride. Bride is eventually rescued by a young man named Aengus, and their union brings forth spring.

To again bring on winter, she washes her great plaid in the whirlpool of Corryvreckan, a spectacle that heralds the onset of winter storms.

The Corryvreckan Whirlpool

Thanks to her winter and storm association, it is perhaps no surprise mountains named after her, such as Beinn na Cailleach, often become engulfed in storm-clouds during the winter months.

However, there are also stories that reflect a side of the Cailleach that goes beyond her association with winter.

“-… it is undoubted that the Cailleach is the guardian spirit of a number of animals. ‘The deer have the first claim on her. They are her cattle; she herds and milks them and often gives them protection against the hunter. Swine, wild goats, wild cattle and wolves were also her creatures. In another aspect she was a fishing goddess. “ A Encyclopedia of Fairies by Katharine Briggs (1976)

Sometimes, she is a guardian of sacred wells, demonstrated in Alasdair Alpin MacGregor’s “The Peat-Fire Flame” which recounts a tale where the Cailleach’s failure to cover a spring with a stone results in a catastrophic flood and the forming of Loch Awe.

“But one day, weary with hunting the corries of Cruachan, she fell asleep on the sunny hillside. Not until the third morning did she awaken; and by that time her heritage lay beneath the waters of the loch that since then has been known as Loch Awe.” The Peat-Fire Flame: Folk-Tales and Traditions of the Highlands and Islands by Alasdair Alpin MacGregor (1937)

Othertimes, she is a source of healing, such as at the ancient shrine of Tigh nam Bodach(sometimes also called Tigh na Cailleach), which is associated with the Cailleach, the Bodach (Old Man), and their daughter Nighean(who is not always mentioned).

“The Tigh na Cailleach near Glen Lyon in Perthshire, Scotland”

At the shrine, there are stones known as healing stones, and they are carefully taken care of. Historically, someone had to put them inside on the first day of November, and take them out on the first day of May. As well as that, they were to be give a fresh bed of straw on winter festival days.

“In what is believed to be the oldest uninterrupted pre-Christian ritual in Britain, the water-worn figures from the River Lyon are taken out of their house every May and faced down the glen, and returned every November. The ritual marked the two great Celtic fire festivals of Beltane(Summer) and Samhain (Winter)and the annual migration of Highland cattle on and off the hills.” Highland Perthshire

So who is the Cailleach? She is the changing of seasons, sometimes a protector of sacred wells and animals, and can even be a source of healing. Basically, she is likely the most complicated subject to study from Scottish Folklore.

Further Reading:

The Folk-lore Journal, Volume 6; Volume 21: The Folk-Lore Of Sutherlandshire  by Miss Dempster

The Celtic Review, Vol 5 (1905): Highland Mythology by E. C. Watson

The Peat-Fire Flame: Folk-Tales and Traditions of the Highlands and Islands by Alasdair Alpin MacGregor (1937)

A Encyclopedia of Fairies by Katharine Briggs (1976)

The Folk-Lore of the Isle of Man by A. W. Moore[1891]

Carmina Gadelica, Volume 2, by Alexander Carmicheal, [1900]

Highland Perthshire (website with a blog post)

Historic Audio Recordings

Healing stones at Taigh na Caillich (Track: ID SA1964.72.A24, Date: 1559) “There were healing stones in a house in Gleann na Caillich; the shepherds looked after them. Talk about shepherds in the glen.”

Anecdote regarding Beinn na Caillich and Gleann na Caillich. (Track ID: SA1964.017.B6, Date: 1964) “An old woman and an old man lived in a house in Gleann na Caillich. The shepherd had to put them inside on the first day of November, and take them out on the first day of May. He also had to thatch their house each year.”

Information about St Fillan’s healing stones at Killin. (Track ID: SA1964.71.A5, Date: 1964) There were stones, known as the bodach and cailleach, in a house in Gleann na Caillich in Glen Lyon. Discussion about St Fillan’s stones at Killin. Different stones healed different diseases. The miller was in charge of them. They had to be freshly bedded with straw thrown up by the river on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve. This is still done [in 1964]. The person in charge of St Fillan’s relics was known as An Deòrach and he had a croft in a place called Croit an Deòir.

3rd of October: Durin's Day / An Treasamh Latha dhen Dàmhair: Là Dhurin

English Translation:

In the early years after the dragon came, the Dwarves of Erebor set their eyes on survival. Much was lost to them during this time, cultural and religious customs they failed to sustain in their wanderings.

As soon as they had homes once again, mines to work in and forges to fire, Thorin looked to these things for the final missing piece in their lives. His nephews, growing fast, had never experienced Durin's Day in any way other than that of the Blue Mountains.

He heard Erebor in their speech, saw it in the style of their clothes, and even in the weapons they favoured, but so much of his nephews' cultural references lay elsewhere. He wished for them to understand Durin's Day through the eyes of their own culture.

Thus, ten years since Erebor had seen its last Durin's Day, her people put on a feast in Thorin's Halls the like of which was rarely seen. They worked tirelessly to have everything right: musicians woke up old ballads, bakers brought back old delicacies, and the elders gathered to pass their folktales onto the new generations. The exiles.

Another wound was healed that night, another wrong put right. Thorin watched over the festivities as Fili and Kili learnt how to sing a traditional Erebor hymn and thought of his own childhood.

Finally, everyone came together on the stone slopes before the gates of their halls to watch the last vestiges of the sunset fade from the sky behind them and the autumn moon rise in the eastern horizon. For a precious few minutes, both lights lingered together, before the sun was overcome at last.

Thorin stood with his arm around Dis and the boys by their legs, wide-eyed with their first Durin's Day beads braided carefully in their hair. They were't likely to sleep tonight.

The towering stature of the Misty Mountains blocked it from view, but Thorin knew - could see - beyond their white peaks lay Erebor, bathed in the silver light of Durin's moon.

Maybe he started it, or perhaps they all did so at the same time, but slowly and quietly, their low Dwarven voices rose into the sky with a song of home-sickness on their lips. A mourning song.

Oh, far over the Misty Mountains cold...

Scottish Gaelic Translation:

Anns na bliadhnaichean a chaidh seachad as dèidh don nathair-sgiathach tighinn, thoirt na Troichean Erebor an sùilean air mairsinneach. Chaill iad tòrr tron àm seo, nòsan cultarach is creideamh nach do chùm iad beò anns am fuadan aca.

Cho luath ‘s a bha dachaighean aca a-rithist, mèinnean a bhith ag obair anns agus ceàrdaichean a chuir teinne anns, chaidh Thòrin don rudan seo a’ sireach am pìos mu dheireadh air fhàgail bho am beathannan sa Bheinn Ònaranach. A’ fàs cho àrd a-nist, cha robh na mic a pheathar eòlach idir air an dòigh dhen Là Dhurin ach an dòigh na Beanntan Ghorm.

Chuala e Erebor san dòigh-bhruidhinn aca, san stoidhle aodach, eadhon san arm a bha an dithis measail air. Ach leis na rudan beaga, chunnaic e gun robh sin a’ tighinn bho àitichean eile. Bha e airson ‘s gum biodh iad a’ tuigsinn Là Dhurin tron shùilean an cultar aca fhèin.

Air an adhbhar sin, deich bliadhna seach gun do chunnaic Erebor an Là Dhurin mu dheireadh, chuir an t-sluaigh aice seòin air dòigh nach fhaca iad gu tric anns na Tallachan Thòrin. Dh’obraich iad gu cruaidh airson a h-uile rud a bhith ceart: dh’èirich ceòladairean seann balantan, rinn bèicearan seann biadh fìnealta, agus chruinneach na daoine aosmhor ri chèile airson am beul-aithris aca a thoirt don ghinealaichean ùra. Na fògraich.

Shlànaich gort eile an oidhche sin, rud eile a chuir ceart. Choimhead Thòrin air an subhachas mar a dh’ionnsaich Fìli is Kìli laoidh traidiseanta Erebor a sheinn agus smaointeach e air na làithean anns an robh e fhèin beag.

Mu dheireadh thall, thàinig a h-uile duine ri chèile a-mach air na slèibhtean mu bheul an geata nan tallachan. Choimhead iad air dol fodha na grèine san speur air an cùlaibh, an solas a’ dol às beag air bheag. Agus gealach an foghair a’ tighinn suas san fàire Ear. Airson beagan mionaidean prìseil, dh’fhuirich an dà sholas anns an speur ri chèile mus do dh’fhalbh a’ ghrian.

Sheas Thòrin le a gàirdean timcheall a phiuthar, Dìs, agus na bhalaich ri taobh nan casan. Bha na sùilean drileach aca a’ coimhead mòr, agus bha a’ chiad grìogagan Là Dhurin a bh’ aca air pleatach anns am falt. Cha bhiodh e comasach gun cadail iad a-nochd.

Cha b’ urrainn dha a’ faicinn tro na Beanntan Àird a’ Cheò, ach bha fios aige gun robh Erebor air a seasamh dìreach thar air na mullaichean gheala, lannrach anns an t-solas ghealach Dhurin.

Is docha gun do thoiseach esan e, no ‘s docha gun do rinn iad uile e aig an aon am, ach gu slaodach agus gu samhach, chaidh na guthan ìosal troiche dhan speur le òran chianalais air an bilean.

Ò thar na Beanntan Àird fhuar a’ Cheò...

Mourning Bucky After His Death in 1945

(Inspired by^ this channel is wonderful, their ambiences always get my head in the right place for writing: beware, angst)

You got the news late, when the Commandos came back from the mission...and there was one missing. They didn't need to say a thing - the gap in their ranks, and the look on Steve's face, said it all.

Being a nurse, you couldn't stop to feel the pain or even really process it. But once the rush ended, and you stepped into the quiet street, everything fell on you at once. Tears poured, and your heart felt like it could burst. Bucky usually picked you up when your breaks came. His absence hit you like a truck.

Instead, you walked along the street in a thin army uniform and shivered all the way. A bitter wind blew through Brooklyn this time of year, but the cold you felt had little to do with the weather.

Somehow, your feet brought you to the old docks where Bucky worked through the summers. That was years ago, now, and seemed like a different life. You couldn't help but smile, recalling the laughter and choice language that used to fill the air.

Once, when you began to realise the full extent of your feelings, you came to the docks and watched him for the whole day. Instead of hiding away how you felt, you relished in it.

Sixteen was a hell of an age to fall in love, especially in the thirties. But reciprocated love...it blossomed and bloomed so beautifully. With Steve, your brother, you and Bucky built a life together.

It was always Steve who talked about their future...without him. The sickly boy never expected to live past thirty, and, despite how painful the idea was, neither did they.

Never in a million years did you imagine Bucky going first.

You couldn't hold it anymore. The sobs ripped out, and you sank to the ground by the water. One hand tightly clasped the other, a cold, glinting ring pressing into your skin. A promise, a commitment...now nothing but a memory. The life you talked about, planned so dreamily, even in the face of the war, gone. Destroyed in an instant.

Deep hatred and a desire for vengance reared its head in you. Bucky always said you and Steve were too alike. But the decision already cemented itself in your mind.

When Steve crashed the Valkyrie, no one was left behind. Two days before, you had vanished on a mission in Switzerland - presumed dead. He had nothing, not even Peggy, really, to keep him on Earth.

Little did he know, that the two sweethearts had been reunited. And Hydra would make good use of them both.

I can't believe the horse is back in the fucking hospital

D E V O T I O N

I'm torn between a desperate want for the Pevensies to have lived out their lives in Narnia air fad, and the absolute beauty people come up with when writing about their return to earth. This is brilliant. Everything I love!

thoughts on the Pevensies returning home

Peter Pevensie was a strange boy. His mind is too old for his body, too quick, too sharp for a boy. He walks with a presence expected of a king or a royal, with blue eyes that darken like storms. He holds anger and a distance seen in veterans, his hand moving to his hip for a scabbard that isn't there - knuckles white. He moves like a warless soldier, an unexplained limp throwing his balance. He writes in an intricate scrawl unseen before the war, his letters curving in a foreign way untaught in his education. Peter returned a stranger from the war, silent, removed, an island onto himself with a burden too heavy for a child to bear.

Only in the aftermath of a fight do his eyes shine; nose burst, blood dripping, smudged across his cheek, knuckles bruised, and hands shaking; he's alive. He rises from the floor, knighted, his eyes searching for his sisters in the crowd. His brother doesn't leave his side. They move as one, the Pevensies, in a way their peers can't comprehend as they watch all four fall naturally in line.

But Peter is quiet, studious, and knowledgeable, seen only by his teachers as they read pages and pages of analytical political study and wonderful fictional tales. "The Pevensie boy will go far," they say, not knowing he already has.

His mother doesn't recognize him after the war. She watches distrustfully from a corner. She sobs at night, listening to her son's screams, knowing nothing she can do will ease their pain. Helen ran on the first night, throwing Peter's door open to find her children by his bedside - her eldest thrashing uncontrollably off the mattress with a sheen of sweat across his skin. Susan sings a mellow tune in a language Helen doesn't know, a hymn, that brings Peter back to them. He looks to Edmund for something and finds comfort in his eyes, a shared knowing. Her sons, who couldn't agree on the simplest of discussions, fall in line. But Peter sleeps with a knife under his cushion. She found out the hard way, reaching for him during one of his nightmares only to find herself pinned against the wall - a wild look in Peter's eye before he staggered back and dropped the knife.

Edmund throws himself into books, taking Lucy with him. They sit for hours in the library in harmony, not saying a word. His balance is thrown too, his mind searching for a limp that he doesn't have, missing the weight of his scabbard at his side. He joins the fencing club and takes Peter with him. They fence like no one else; without a worthy adversary, the boys take to each other with a wildness in their grins and a skillset unforeseen in beginner fencers. Their rapiers are an exertion of their bodies, as natural as shaking hands, and for the briefest time, they seem at peace. He shrinks away from the snow when it comes, thrust into the darkest places of his mind, unwilling to leave the house. He sits by the chessboard for hours, enveloped in his studies until stirred.

Susan turns silent, her mind somewhere far as she holds her book. Her hands twitch too, a wince when the door slams, her hand flying to her back where her quiver isn't. She hums a sad melody that no one can place, mourning something no one can find. She takes up archery again when she can bear a bow in her hands without crying, her callous-less palms unfamiliar to her, her mind trapped behind the wall of adolescence. She loses her friends to girlishness and youth, unable to go back to what she was. Eventually, she loses Narnia too. It's easier, she tells herself, to grow up and move on and return to what is. But her mourning doesn't leave her; she just forgets.

Lucy remains bright, carrying a happier song than her sister. She dances endlessly, her bare feet in the grass, and sings the most beautiful songs that make the flowers grow and the sun glisten. Though she has grown too, shed her childhood with the end of the war. She stands around the table with her sister, watching, brow furrowed as her brothers play chess. She comments and predicts, and makes suggestions that they take. She reads, curled into Edmund's side as his high voice lulls her to sleep with tales of Arthurian legends. She swims, her form wild and graceful as she vanishes into the water. They can't figure out how she does it - a girl so small holding her breath for so long. She cries into her sister, weeping at the loss of her friends, her too-small hands too clumsy for her will.

"I don't know our children anymore," Helen writes to her husband, overcome by grief as she realizes her children haven't grown up but away into a place she cannot follow.