𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐏𝐘 || A Narnian Autumn Writing Challenge (Oneshot Book)

5. Anachronism

england // september 10, 1940
prompt: "candles"
word count: 2,091

xXx

Ten candles.

Edmund counted them again, though he'd been expecting no more and no less. He'd simply never known ten to look like such a small number before, flickering in multicolored wax and melting the chocolate icing of the birthday cake that Lucy and Susan had so lovingly decorated that morning with their delicate child fingers.

"What are you wishing for?" whispered Lucy loudly, leaning in with her round face upturned and her wide eyes searching his, looking almost too big and too blue for her tiny form.

"Shush, I can't tell you," he hissed, "that's not how wishes work."

But he wasn't wishing. In fact, until she'd said it, he hadn't even remembered that was what one ought to do with birthday candles, and he quickly bent down and blew them out before his staring began to look suspicious.

Lucy clapped, and Susan cut the cake.

Even the Professor had come down from his study to pay regards to the occasion, graciously accepting a piece of cake when the girls offered it to him, and Peter declared that it was the best Susan had baked yet.

"Ivy and Betty helped," she muttered humbly, but blushed with pleasure nonetheless.

Edmund smiled eagerly as his brother talked about the animals they should search for in the forest that afternoon, as his sisters debated which book they should take out to their favorite reading tree, running his fingers over the shiny new pocket knife Peter had gifted him that very morning, taking a second helping of cake and even arguing for a third.

But ten candles still seemed like too few.

How could he think otherwise, when his last birthday had been his twenty-fourth?

Not that the months since they'd tumbled back out through the wardrobe had been bad ones. The summer had burned itself out into the beginnings of a glorious autumn, the Professor had turned out to be a great deal more than initially met the eye, and they were certain never to run out of conversation topics on rainy days for the rest of their lives.

But still something felt out of place. As if in moments like these he found himself play-acting some kind of role—pretending to be Edmund from Finchley, when he really felt a great deal more like Edmund from Cair Paravel.

Peter and Susan helped Margaret clear away the dishes, and Lucy piped "Oh, Edmund! You ought to bring your compass out so we can play explorers! You have it, don't you?"

"It's in my room," he said. "I'll fetch it and come back. Don't go off exploring without me!"

Lucy giggled, and Edmund jogged out into the hall and up the stairs, taking several turns along maze-like hallways toward the room he shared with Peter, where the compass his father had given him on his ninth birthday lay tucked away in a drawer beside his bed.

To think, his ninth had been exactly a year ago. It could have been yesterday or an echo from another lifetime.

The thought almost made him dizzy, but the old, dark paneled halls afforded a level of comfort that he had found in nothing else since his return to England. They seemed to belong both to this life and the old one, some mystical quality buried deep inside them that almost reminded him of the way Cair Paravel had felt when they first began living there, seemingly infinite rooms and passages connected in unexpected and secret ways, always promising more to explore.

He tugged the handle of his nightstand drawer and pulled out the silver compass, tucking it into his pocket and turning back toward the door before a book on the edge of his bed caught his eye—bound in blue, his tasseled bookmark laying unused on top of it. He'd finished reading last night but hadn't yet had a chance this morning to return it to the Professor's collection.