“Princess Cordelia. We’re going to bury the horse that was killed, if you want to come.” Cordelia glanced up from the letter she had been writing to Lucy, who stood tentatively in the doorway after knocking and being told to enter. She seemed uncertain whether her presence would be welcome, but smiled at the warm grin Cordelia gave her. It made the Alsatchian princess frown, though, that Lucy should seem so hesitant to enter. To hear her father speak of the youngest Narnian princess, Cordelia had expected by now to be on terms such that Queen Lucy would come running in and leap onto her bed to share a good story or exciting news. Her confusion at this was apparent in her letter, in which she had also detailed the attack and assured her father that the High King and King Edmund were seeing to it that things were put to right.

More important than that, though, or more comforting at least, was that Drystan had come to her room the night before, just before she began dressing for bed. In a moment of seriousness that Drystan had only proven himself capable of on a handful of occasions, he promised her he personally would see to it that she and Moira remained safe for the rest of their stay in Narnia. The sincere pledge made the girls feel slightly uncomfortable, but they certainly knew he was capable of it; Drystan was a rather good warrior, as he had proven before. Well, so long as no one left wine near him beforehand.

The letter was finished, though; Cordelia could think of nothing more to say. So to Lucy she nodded, “Yes, I do wish to come. Let me just send off this note. . .”

“Sending off a note?” Lucy inquired, stepping in closer. She saw the cooing bird in a wire cage beside the desk and leaned in for a better look ad Cordelia tenderly pulled it out. All white except for a few grey spots on its belly, the bird had a short but wide yellow beak and deep blue eyes. Its song was sweet and Lucy felt calmed just to hear a few notes in the gentle tone.

Cordelia nodded, “Yes, we use midgeons –they’re similar to pigeons, you see, but no relation to widgeons, which are a kind of duck-- to carry our messages in Alsatchia and abroad. I mean, they can’t carry anything but a letter, and it takes an awful long time to train them, but it’s certainly faster than waiting for a message to come by land. We tried to use owls, but they only liked to fly at night, and were constantly getting distracted by small rodents . . .”

“How long will it take for a response?”

“Well, I would expect the bird can fly it in three days, perhaps. Then it usually takes my father a good few day at least to decide what it is he wants to say, and then another three back. In about a week, is my guess.”

“How do they know where to go?” A sort of postal service like they had back in England: the very idea intrigued Lucy. In Narnia they simply deployed owls of the court, which, being speaking animals, could usually overcome the urge to hunt if it was an important message. But then, they did insist on only flying at night. “I mean, do you tell them?”

Cordelia held the bird firmly between her small hands so Lucy could stroke the white feathers. Its head bobbed, its sapphire eyes darting about as Cordelia explained, “No, they’re trained to go between my father and his children. I mean, these midgeons are. There are other midgeons that he trains to go to other kings, or to his generals, or whomever. I’m not sure why he hasn’t train one to come to Narnia yet. But these little birds . . . I don’t know, somehow they know.” Her look suddenly grew more distant, her expression softening and her eyes staring through the bird, through the ground, through the earth.

Lucy noticed and waited a moment before asking gently, “What is it?”

“What is what?”

“That look in your eye?”

“Oh,” Cordelia smiled, shaking her head to clear her mind. “It is just that when my brother and I were captured . . . you know about that?”

“Only that much,” Lucy nodded.

“Well, it was actually one of these little birds that found us, a little one named Dola. Elinor set him off with a note for me and no one actually thought Dola would be able to find us. No one else had been able to. But these little birds . . . I don’t know how they do it, but they find who they’re meant to find.”

“What’s this one named?”

“Nooloo.”

“It sounds like that’s what he’s saying,” Lucy giggled, and Cordelia nodded, “That’s why. I always give them soft names like that.” She smiled at the fascination in Lucy’s eyes and asked, “Do you want to set him loose?” Of course Lucy did, so carefully Cordelia handed Nooloo into Lucy’s grasp then showed her how to gently lift him into the air as she let go outside the window, giving him a small boost. After a few rapid flutters, the bird took to soaring down over the fields to the north, quickly lost against the clear sky on its way home.

They met Caedmon and Edmund in the courtyard to witness to the burying of the horse. Susan was lost in explaining her history project to Moira, and Elinor had decided to dedicate her time to finishing the book she should have finished the day before, but Caedmon had decided Cordelia would not be going anywhere out of eyesight. If something was going to happen to her, it was going to happen to him, too; that had always been the rule.

Burying a non-speaking horse wasn’t of much importance to most, and so only Cordelia and Lucy went, and Caedmon and Edmund. A clearing of land behind the orchard had been dedicated as a cemetery after the battle that began their reign, though there had been few deaths since then. By the time the children reached the burial ground, the hole had already been completed and centaurs had managed to bring the fallen beast. The horse was set into the hole, dirt was thrown in, and Lucy and Cordelia both glanced very somberly at the mound that remained in the end.

“Do you always bury animals with this much ceremony?” Caedmon whispered to Edmund on the way back, though really very little ceremony was involved. It was only the four children present and Mr. Tumnus who had joined to walk with Lucy and Cordelia, and the few centaurs that were helping with the process.

Edmund muttered back, “Only when Lucy feels it’s necessary . . . which is usually . . .”

“Delia, too. When we were little, she cried if even the smallest bird died. We have a sparrow cemetery in the garden that’s beneath her window. My father used to really worry about her, about what would happen if a person close to us died, right, because she was so upset by even a rabbit.”

“She didn’t cry over the horse, though.”

Caedmon shrugged, “When our mother died a couple of years ago, she handled it the best of all of us. It was like . . . like she knew, as a little girl, that it would happen, and she spent all those years practicing handling death. She didn’t cry when Mum died and she’s never cried since.”

“You don’t think she’s just cried in secret? “ He almost added ‘like us boys do’ but he wasn’t sure if he should. He had read the letter, that Caedmon was a sensitive boy and that his capture had affected him poorly, but he was actually liking this Caedmon chap quite a lot. Caedmon had shown him the catapult sketches and Edmund had helped make some changes utilizing the knowledge he had brought from England but which seemed revolutionary to Caedmon. They were ready to start building it, a smaller version of larger catapults which should be able to throw a cannon-ball-like weapon that would shatter and cast shrapnel over a wide area. It was very similar, and Ed mused probably the next step toward the creation of cannons, but of course no one in Narnia would have any knowledge of that. However, he had only been twelve when they had left England to come here, so his practical knowledge of weaponry and explosives was rather limited, and actually he was discovering Caedmon knew a deal more than him about physics and aerodynamics.

All this was to say, Ed thought Caedmon was his friend now, probably. He’d never really been friendly with anyone back in England; he stayed home a lot, or followed along behind Peter, or at the very most stayed on the outskirts of groups of people. But he didn’t want to go offending his friend so soon because at the very least he wanted to get their catapult built.

“No, I would know,” Caedmon insisted. “I mean, it’s not as if she’s bottling anything up, I don’t think. You saw she was still sad about the horse. She just is different about it. And then with the whole abduction event . . . She’s different in a lot of ways, but I guess that’s growing up, innit?”

“Yeah, truth,” Ed nodded, not sure what else to say. Suddenly Elinor came walking quickly towards them, her skirt whipping around her ankles and a few dark blond strands flying behind her.

“Elinor,” Caedmon greeted, and she bobbed her head to them, her cheeks flushing even brighter when Edmund gave her a slight bow.

“Prince Caedmon. King Edmund.” She turned to pass them, then spun on her heel and gasped, “No, I was looking for you, King Edmund.”

“You were?”

“I mean, rather, that High King Peter is looking for you. Something about the prisoner, or he said something or . . . oh, bother, I’ve forgotten already.”

“It’s all right,” Edmund assured her.

“I’m not really a messenger at all, only I was headed this way so I offered to fetch you . . . at any rate, High King Peter needs you.”

Edmund gave her another grin and nodded, “Right, I’ll go straight away. I’ll see you later, Caedmon.” With a final glance at Elinor, Edmund hurried off into the castle. Elinor bit her lip and watched him go, which made Caedmon laugh outright.

“What?”

“I feel I must warn you that Delia has said she won’t let you stay here, even if you and Ed fall mad in love and get married or any of that nonsense.”

Elinor blinked furiously and shook her head, demanding, “What ever would lead her to mention such a thing?”

“Well she didn’t mention it; I did. That was her reply.”

“To what question?”

“If she thought you fancied Edmund there.”

“Oh you are . . . you are terrible, Prince Caedmon,” Elinor stammered, trying to glare through the shy smile. Incapable of it, she scurried past him to Cordelia’s side, who looped their arms together without thinking twice about it.

“Elinor, we were just talking about you,” Cordelia exclaimed once Mr. Tumnus had finished his sentence.

“About me, ma’am?”

“Oh, don’t bother with the ma’am nonsense around Lucy and Mr. Tumnus here,” she insisted. “Mr. Tumnus was telling me about when he and Lucy met, how he played a Narnian flute for her, and I was saying how you know how to play the Narnian flute.”

“Yes, how did you learn? You couldn’t be from Narnia; there were no daughters of Eve here until our queens arrived.”

Elinor was clearly uncomfortable with the attention turned on her but managed to explain, “My mother taught me, when I was a little girl. She was from Archenland, but out in the mountains, and there was a family of fauns from Narnia that lived near her.”

“Fauns!” Mr. Tumnus explained. “Living in the Archenland mountains! What madness is this!”

“I was always told they fled Narnia. I don’t know why,” Elinor admitted.

“To escape the White Witch, I bet,” Lucy said to Mr. Tumnus, and he agreed that this must be quite right. “Well but how did your mother come to Alsatchia?”

Elinor smiled, proud to get to share the story, for it was rather romantic. Her father, a tradesman from the Alsatchian countryside, had been on a trip to Archenland to see if his wares might fare better there –he sold some sort of special pottery that she couldn’t ever quite understand, but assumed it must have been beautiful. On his way, he became separated from his party in the mountains in the deathly heat of the summer, and it was her mother who found him and nursed him back to health. They fell in love but her mother’s father forbid her marrying anyone not from Archenland, so her mother and her father fled together in the dead of night back to Alsatchia, where they married. Elinor had two much older sisters whom had both already married and moved away by the time she came along, a late in life surprise. Her mother had died about five years before, and her father followed soon after, most likely of a broken heart, she had decided. So her eldest sister, who was also a servant in the palace, brought her to work there. Cordelia had become close with Elinor so she became her handmaiden, and then the death of the queen only brought them even closer.

Elinor told all of this, more or less, with input towards the end from Cordelia when she looked to be running out of words.

“That is very romantic,” Lucy agreed. “And to think, now you’re in Narnia! Oh, you must play the Narnian flute for us sometime.”

“I couldn’t. I absolutely couldn’t,” Elinor laughed, shaking her head, mortified at the very idea of it. “It has been so long since I’ve played . . .”

“Perhaps if you warmed up to the audience and got in a little practice,” Mr. Tumnus offered.

Cordelia nodded, “You’re a good player, Elinor. You’ve played for me before.”

“In private!”

“Well it seems that I have some time at my disposal now. Might you join me, Miss Elinor, and become reacquainted with the Narnian flute? Then perhaps when you are comfortable we can put on quite a show.”

“Well . . . I suppose there would be no harm in it . . .” Elinor relented under the promise that it would only be she and Mr. Tumnus until she felt comfortable. And actually, in all honestly, the idea of practicing her old hobby with an actual Narnian was too wonderful an opportunity to pass up. He offered his arm and she giggled and accepted it, and Caedmon fell back to join Lucy and Cordelia in watching them wander off.

“Where are they going?” he asked.

Lucy beamed, “They’re going to practice the Narnian flute so they can put on a concert for us. Won’t that be splendid!”

“I guess. If they can actually play, that is. Otherwise it will be like when Elinor tried to teach Cordelia to play. Sounded like someone was trying to skin a cat,” Caedmon teased.

Cordelia gasped, “Oh, it was not! Well maybe the first time . . . but I played for you a few times after that and you seemed to enjoy it.”

“I had beeswax in my ears,” he admitted, then took off sprinting across the courtyard as Cordelia chased after him and Lucy after her.