[Fic] "Have Dominion" -- Chronicles of Narnia

[edenfalling]

syrena_of_the_lake said: I'd like to claim the Names/Naming spot on your bingo card for a Narnia ficlet (Magician's Nephew): when Helen was just a girl, it had been so easy to dream up endless names for some future child; now, she had no idea where to start with a veritable zoo of creatures all awaiting names of their own.

Note: So this got rather more philosophical than I'd planned. What can I say: these are the hazards of attempting to write canon-compliant Narnia fanfic while simultaneously expressing ethical and theological disagreement with C. S. Lewis. In other words, I brought it upon myself. *wry* (1,075 words)

[ETA: The AO3 crosspost is up!]

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Have Dominion
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"Good morning, Helen," said a nasal, snorty voice as Helen lifted the latch and swung open the door of the little outhouse she and Frank had built to tide themselves over while the dwarfs and various nature spirits argued over the location and dimensions of their eventual castle.

A castle! It still sounded impossible, and also somewhat daunting: castles, unlike palaces, were built to withstand armies. Which implied their new world might not stay peaceful for long, despite the Tree's protection. Helen didn't like that thought.

She also didn't like being surprised at her personal business, but for all that they were adult in shape and intelligence, the people of Narnia were still new in their understanding of the world. And she found herself reluctant to weight them down with shame over things that were, presumably, as natural and right for them as they had been for Eve and Adam in the garden. The Beasts, after all, were not the ones who had brought evil into this world.

And so Helen gathered her breath and said, calmly, "Good morning, Fledge. What brings you around so early? Shall I wake Frank?"

She glanced around the open meadow as she spoke, still dew-damp and drenched in shadows, the sun not yet risen above the nearby trees, and spotted several other Talking Beasts watching her with badly concealed interest. Only a week ago she might have screamed at the sheer number of fangs and claws on display, but now these were her people, to teach and protect. Somehow that notion was harder to accept than the idea of animals that reasoned and spoke.

Fledge shook his head (how strange, still, to see human gestures copied on such varied bodies) and said, "No, let him sleep. We want to ask you for a favor." He paused, rolled one eye back to glance at his fellow supplicants as if waiting for one of them to speak up.

Eventually one of the Ravens flitted forward and landed on Fledge's withers. "You said, yesterday, that we ought to choose names," said the Raven in her scratchy voice. "And you were quite right that once we have hatchlings and cubs and so on, we can't simply call them She-Raven and He-Raven. That would be dreadfully confusing. But the only names we know already belong to people and it would be just as confusing to use them a dozen times over."

"I see," said Helen, though she didn't actually, and fiddled with the tie of her dressing-gown for lack of anything further to say.

"I don't remember much about London," said Fledge before the resulting silence grew too long or awkward, "but I do recall there were astounding numbers of Humans, horses, dogs, and other creatures, and most of them had names. So we thought you must know a lot of names, enough to give one to each Beast and a bushel more for our children."

"And Aslan did say you and King Frank should name us. I remember him saying that," added a Badger, sounding rather surprised at her own courage for speaking up."

"Oh, gracious," said Helen. "He did say that, didn't he?"

What an awful responsibility. Surely Queen Victoria never had to deal with anything like this!

She'd imagined names for imagined children, of course (children who'd never come, in London, though perhaps Narnia was a more forgiving land in that respect), but faced with a hundred expectant eyes, Helen found her mind curiously blank.

"I think," she said, slowly, so as to buy time to unearth her own thoughts, polish them, and string them in proper order, "that regardless of Aslan's words, I have no right to give you names. We give names to infants, or to dumb beasts, because they can't choose their own. But you aren't infants or dumb beasts. And I shouldn't like to take that choice away from you."

A low murmuring rose in the meadow as the various Beasts considered this.

Then Fledge said, "But Aslan gave me a name. When he gave me wings."

Another murmur.

Helen bit her lip. "So he did. And if you like that name, all is well. But--" and how to say this? How to put a wispy, cotton-shred feeling into words without speaking ill of the king these bright, new people so adored, who had given them life and thought and speech, but also without planting the notion that might could ever possibly make right? That a king was above the law rather than its embodiment?

She lifted her head to meet Fledge's large, liquid eye: he held her gaze steadily where once, dumb and tired and unhappy in London's cobbled confines, he would have shied away. "But I think he didn't order you to change your name," she said. "Instead, he offered a new one, as a gift, the same way he offered you all the chance to be Talking Beasts. And you accepted. However, not all gifts are safe or pleasant. Some are offered as a test, and I think the chance to name all of you is one that Frank and I should not accept. If we are to be your king and queen, we should begin as we mean to go on, and give you guidance rather than commands."

Helen turned, addressed the assembly at large. "Names should always be gifts, not decrees. And I believe the best gift of all is the chance to name yourselves -- to create yourselves -- for we are all, Beasts and Beings and Humans alike, made in the image of a Creator and are happiest when continuing that work. You don't need me to tell you what is or isn't a name. Pick any sound or word you like, something that has meaning or something that simply sounds pleasant, and make it yours."

There was a sense of expectant but confused silence as the Beasts thought this over, and then a Jackdaw said, "I think I'd like to be named Joke, because I was the first joke. Is that all right?"

"Absolutely," said Helen.

"And I'd like to be Grrrrarf!" said one of the Dogs.

"Also an excellent name," Helen agreed, after which the meadow rapidly descended into cheerful cacophony as the Beasts tried out names and learned themselves and each other anew.

In the east, the sun crested the emerald roof of the forest and drenched the world in gold. Helen raised her face to its joyful warmth, and smiled.

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Hmm. Not a part of canon I'd ever written before! Now I just need to take a stab at something in the era between VDT and TLB, for the sake of completeness...

Comments

[alexseanchai]

\o/

[edenfalling]

:D

[branchandroot]

Oh, that worked out beautifully!

[edenfalling]

Thank you!

The more I thought about Aslan's "You shall rule and name all these creatures," line, the more ethically appalling I found it. Like, I know it's an echo of Genesis. Obviously. The whole back half of MN is built of blatant Genesis-echoes. But it's one thing to name animals that aren't people in their own right (and even there, I think the idea is that Adam hands out species names rather than personal names), and another entirely to name adults as if they were infants and had no preferences of their own. So I figured I might as well invoke yet another Genesis-echo and reinterpret that command as a temptation, which Helen (operating as an Eve-who-doesn't-screw-up*) duly refuses. :)

[*The argument about whether Eve actually screwed up -- about which I have Strong Opinions that I am quite sure clash with Lewis's views -- can be tabled for another day.]

[branchandroot]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Lewis didn't go for the Fortunate Fall, or at least didn't take it to its logical conclusion (which is that Eve didn't screw up). Amazing how often theologians miss that implication. /end heavy sarcasm

But I really like Helen's point about how not all gifts are accepted, and /that's okay/.

[norwich36]

I loved this.

[edenfalling]

Thanks! :)

[issenllo]

Excellent! (And yeah, having to think up hundreds of names? No thanks.) ^_^

[edenfalling]

Thank you! (And oh my god, trying to come up with several hundred names all at once? Yikes!)

[watersword]

...now I want to go back and re-read the scene in Diane Duane's HIGH WIZARDRY where the problem of names is confronted, and see how she solves it. (This is a compliment. I love Duane's moral universe.)

[edenfalling]

Thank you! (I am not entirely convinced by Duane's (subtextual?) equation of entropy and evil. I mean, entropy and death, sure, but I don't really think entropy is a moral force. It's just kind of there, like the freezing and boiling points of water are just kind of there. But I like a lot of her other points, and I am definitely impressed by the thought and care she puts into her world-building. And one doesn't need to agree with an author's views to love their work -- as should be made obvious by my abiding passionate love affair with Narnia. *wry*)

[autumnia]

Lovely! And I love how Helen managed to make such a difficult decision amid all those creatures waiting expectantly in front of her. She's definitely well on her way to being a good Queen and leader.

[edenfalling]

Thank you! I figure that Helen and Frank are both very can-do personalities -- after all, they moved from the country to London with apparently very little besides a horse, and seemed to be getting by fairly well -- and one of her few canonical actions is to speak with Polly when the narrative is ignoring them and ensure that Polly joins Digory on the apple quest, so I assume she's probably decent at thinking on her feet and trying to include people/be considerate of their feelings.

[bewize.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed this. Thank you. :)

[edenfalling]

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it. :)