Hey, I loved reading your thoughts on Prince Caspian! You’re such a fantastic writer, and your observations are really cool - now I gotta reread the books myself! Do you mind sharing more about your headcanon about the power of the Pevensie’s voices?
Hey! Thank you so much, and sure, here:
It didn’t seem like anything odd at first, the leaning in of the trees, the stirring of the water when they passed. In fact, they don’t even notice it until they begin to learn the language called High Narnian by scholars of that country.
(that is not a good name for it, really. It’s the Language, that sang the world into being, that holds the true name of all things, that makes manifest the Deep Magic and is found carved into the mountains of the sun)
they only find it at all when they go back to the Stone Table, because Edmund, when he learned, wanted to see where it had happened. His family had been watching him anxiously, but he’d only put a small finger into one of the deep-carved runes at its edge and said, what does it say?
they learn from surviving scholars of this language which had made up the lion’s song at the dawn of the world. a scholar could slave for decades and decipher just a few words. it slipped from the mind like water and would have no master.
Lucy had looked at the ink copies of the Table runes on the parchment and said, I think it says -
the sound of that language never could be described. It was like the way sun hit the water, the wind through a bird’s wing, the thousandth snowflake.
Lucy learned it first, but Peter learned it fastest. It came to him like something remembered and he could soon speak it more fluently than his first language. The other three followed quickly, and Narnians were astounded - it was unknown for the language to be tamed so.
a private language was invaluable between the Four. they learned these things - in that language, you cannot lie, and that their names would not translate. they had to find deeper, truer things to call one another. this way, they learned that the language had a rather surprising capacity for metaphor - at least, those that are true.
(later in history, this will be put as a theory for the harmony of the Four as rulers - that when they spoke thus they could not lie to one another, there was no concealment, deceit or misunderstanding. this theory had some mileage.)
they also learned that Narnia still heard and responded to the language that had shaped her. the sound of it from their mouths made the grass and the trees shiver, made the rivers leap. even whispered, Narnians and Narnian things heard it from the mouths of their foretold kings and queens. when they called, Narnia answered however she could, with her woods and winds and waters, with her denizens.
the words of the High King had a greater power - though Narnia was not compelled to obey him as it was the Lion, to everything Narnian his voice was difficult to resist, and he never ordered that which Narnia did not wish to give. when he called for the thunder, she would send it.
(though they never let him know it, as his brother and sisters became Narnian things, this became true of them also. he could influence them to nothing they did not wish. but when he said sleep, they did.)
Narnia loved all four of her rulers, and though she may not have heard the others as keenly as she did the High King, she still delighted to hear Susan whisper to the streams, Edmund murmur to the trees, Lucy laugh with the wind. eventually she learns and loves their voices so well that she hears them in any language, stirs to answer however she can.
they go quiet for a long, long time, and Narnia stops listening for them at all. until one day she’s awoken from her deep sleep by the voices she remembers, and readies herself to greet them.
Gosh I got completely carried away with that - anyway there it is!
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