Underland of Narnia

TheGardener

New member
Partly because TSC is probably my favourite of the Narnia books (and I hope they don't ruin ths movie of it) and partly because I love the idea behind the world of Fallen London (although not every part of the world design), which in turn was probably inspired by TSC, I wrote a little fanfic extra epilogue to TSC.

Sailing in the Cavernsea soon became popular in northern Narnia. Soon enough (around the middle of the reign of King Rilian) a little town, or rather a pair of little towns were formed in that area. The twin towns of Cavernmouth and Cavernport, Cavernmouth above ground, around the cavern entrance in northern Narnia and Cavernport underground on the nearest shore of the Cavernsea. Being underground, Cavernport was founded and primarily populated by Dwarfs, Moles and Half-Dwarfs, while Cavernmouth had a wide variety of inhabitants.
By late in the reign of King Rilian however, Cavernport was also home to a number of badgers, mice and fawns and even some dryads. It was afterall a freshwater sea, for the most part however, dryads prefered flowing water and daylight.
Owls came visiting frequently, but very few lived there. They were comfortable in the dark, but liked to have an open sky and the nightbreezes of the overland to fly and hunt in, they said.
Suprisingly, it wasn’t until the beginning of the reign of King Edmund II (whom Rilian named after King Edmund I of the Golden Age, who had sailed with his father Caspian the Seafarer to the world’s end) that any talking bats settled in Cavernport. So it wasn’t until around the middle of the reign of Edmund II, that any bats joined the sailors. And it was only the bat’s sonar that was able to find the islands that previous sailors, Narnians and Underlanders before them, must have sailed past many times before and missed in the dark.
 
The Cone

A Narnian ship was sailing in the Cavernsea, much further west than most voyages went, but not much further north than Cavernport. Three bats were with them, although they hadn't echoed any islands recently.
Suddenly Wingsong Echo echoed something conical in the distance ahead of her. She signalled her brother Flutternote Echo and he flew over to check before they flew back to report.
“Something conical? Like a stalagmite?”
Asked the mate.
“But you don't get stalagmites in the middle of the sea…”
They turned to the direction that Wingsong and Flutternote gave them.
On the next shift, the third bat, who was called Richard Ping (a strange name for a bat, but apparently he was named after 'Uncle Richard’, a human who had been a close friend of the Ping family), flew with them to get another echo of the cone. But they still got some strange blurring in their echoes. The flight back to the ship seemed to take slightly longer than they felt it should.
After they had spent some hours discussing what the cone could be, the captain got up, stood still for a moment, and then climbed up to the forecastle and a moment later called out.
“Do you feel that? Because that's something I've never felt on the Cavernsea before. That feels like a breeze.”
 
The breeze explained why the return flight had taken the bats longer than usual. However it wasn't much use to the ship, which was built for rowing rather than sailing, as breezes were very rare on the Cavernsea.
As the ship gradually pulled closer the bats started to make a bit more sense of what they were echoing. The blurring in their echoes seemed to be mostly at the to of the cone and the mild blurring lower down could perhaps be explained by the air currents, which seemed to be getting stronger as they got closer to the cone.
 
Decades ago, a not-quite-fantasy novel came out titled something like Whalesong, about the lives of sperm whales as a community. The author described whale characters having conversations of a sort, all based on how THEY PERCEIVED objects and events around them ALL IN TERMS OF how their sonar "felt" things.
 
Well before the ship got too close to the cone, the bats found that it had beaches to land at. As they got even closer, they echoed a scattering of some mushroom tree things and even what seemed to be one or two huts.
Once the ship was close enough to see the shore of the cone island, they saw a few lights on the beach, then they noticed what looked like figures.
The figures soon seemed to notice the ship and started waving at it. When the ship got close enough, the figures helped them land, and then introduced themselves as Grog, Blog, Golg and Brundergrum, who it turned out was the daughter of Mullugutherum.
They had found, with help from the salamanders, a vent from Bism, all the way to Cavernsea or “the shallow lands” as they called it.
 
Last edited:
Bism

Soon there was a flourishing trade between Narnia and Bism via the Vent. The Narnians tasting diamond juice and the Gnomes trying overworld fruits and vegetables, as well as the existing mushroom trade continuing to grow.
The Narnians found that the diamond juice tasted partly like drinkable light and partly like drinkable hardness, the gnomes said that when it was fresher it tasted less of the hardness and more of fire. The overworld fruits, the gnomes said tasted of cold, which they enjoyed when they were working close to the River of Fire, and the salamanders apparently developed a taste for overworld grains.
 
It was later that Caspian the eldest son of Mrileen Duchess of Lantern Waste and second child of King Edmund II, who inherited his namesake's urge to explore, decided to decend the Vent and visit Bism.
With him went a dwarf, a half-dwarf, a talking lizard (they weren't many in Narnia) and a mouse, Reepicheep II, descended from Peepiceek I, brother of Reepicheep I.
“For we mice,” said he “are adaptable creatures. We can go forth into cold, or desert, or sea voyage, or decend to the fires of Bism.”
 
Half-Dwarf? With whom do you envision Narnian Dwarfs intermarrying? Tolkienian Dwar-VES are big enough to take human-size wives; or at least Tauriel thought so. But I think Mister Lewis conceived his Dwar-FS as too small to mix well genetically with humans. Now, if Narnia had some Hobbits, that would work out.
 
(Admittedly, it is hard to picture how a match like that would work in practice.... Dr. Cornelius mentions the Dwarves using high heeled boots, but I'm not quite sure that would fool most people. At least if the Pauline Baynes illustrations are right about the Dwarves' normal size.)
 
That's right, I forgot about Cornelius! But the size dilemma still remains-- for reasons I'm not allowed to bring up here on TDL!
 
Back
Top