𝐒𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 || Narnia x The Hunger Games Crossover

Chapter Seventeen

The sun slipped into the western sky over a world of sizzling stone, and a wilted flower crown slipped over Lucy's eyes. She pushed it back up into place, leaves brittle in the dry heat, and doubled her pace to catch up with Caspian, striding easily over the rough hillocks with his infuriatingly long legs.

They'd camped in another sparse patch of forest last night, much drier than the first, but their traps had still produced a squirrel and another large bird none of them could name, and Lucy had dug up more roots that proved edible when roasted, if a bit tasteless.

Jill had braided the tubers' flowering stems into a chain, her practiced, intelligent fingers working without thinking as she'd asked Lucy for another story.

Even Edmund hadn't argued with this request, so Lucy repeated from memory as best she could the story of Moonwood the Hare, who had such ears that he could sit by Caldron Pool under the thunder of the great waterfall and hear what men spoke in whispers at Cair Paravel.

"That's not even possible," said Edmund.

"Only if you don't account for magic," said Lucy.

"I think he sounds like a dear," said Jill, and Edmund rolled his eyes.

Jill pressed for more, and Lucy and Caspian took turns reciting whatever they could remember, stories of ancient giants in far off northern lands, of small woodland creatures and their quaint ways, of realms below the earth descending away beyond human knowledge.

Caspian told Deathwater again, and only then did Edmund visibly prick up, undoubtedly catching the similarity between the story and the poisoned pool in the caves.

By the end, Jill offered Lucy her finished flower crown, tiny white lily-like flowers flecking its leafy shape, and Lucy hadn't taken it off since.

Edmund proved an early riser and a great deal more aware of their surroundings than the rest of them, as if he carried a map of the entire arena in his head, and he took the lead as they trekked across the stony wasteland once again toward where he guessed the stone table would be.

"We must be getting close now," he sighed as the burning sun hung heavy on their left.

"We better be," said Caspian, "We'll need to camp again before long, and I haven't seen so much as a shrub since we crossed the river this morning."

"That's why I think we're going the right way," snapped Edmund, as if it should have been obvious.

Caspian shot Lucy a dry look, and eventually Jill said "Tell another story."

Lucy almost argued that she was far too tired and too hot to talk, but then watched as Jill struggled over a gap in the stone, shouldering the backpack now stuffed full of provisions, and thought better of it.

She jogged another few steps to catch up to Caspian, and racked her mind for a simple story she hadn't already told.

"Okay," she sighed. "Once upon a time, a voyaging knight set out from his home to travel the eastern seas. He had many strange adventures, slaying evil beasts and meeting all manner of creatures from distant shores as league by league his ship carried him closer to the world's edge."

"The world is round," muttered Edmund up ahead, but Lucy ignored him.

"At last, he reached a lonely island, and when at sunset he let down his anchor and came on shore, he found a beautiful woman lying like a statue upon a table of stone. An old man soon came out to meet him, a wizard by his look, and the wary knight asked what had happened to the woman. She sleeps under a spell, said the man as one who is grieved, cursed by the man who wished to marry her, but whom she denied in her wisdom for his cold and cruel heart. The knight looked upon the woman with sadness, and asked whether anything could be done to free her."