Oh, wow. I hardly ever make anyone cry with my stories.
This one is called "Through the Sunrise". One of my insane fanfics.
“Way, way, for the Tarkaan Kalimir!”
Annoyed, I again moved to the side of the road. I was crammed between a woman holding a screaming child, and a man reeking even more of garlic and fish than most of us other Calormenes. I would be glad when I could get through Tashbaan. I had to pass through it every few weeks because of my job and so I was used to the crowd and the constant making way for Tarkaans and Tarkheenas, but today was the worst. If I felt like trying to count how many times I’d had to stop and move to the side of the road just on this street, I’d have to take off my shoes and count everything twice. On the other hand, if I decided to count how many steps I’d been able to take between each of those stops, I’d only need one hand. I growled as I saw another litter coming in sight around the bend ahead.
Then I heard a loud voice rising above the general ruckus of the crowd. It had a rather whiny tone, and I couldn’t exactly say it sounded very agreeable. When I finally made it around the corner ahead, I could see the speaker.
He would have had light skin like the people who live to the North, if it had not been so darkly tanned. I guessed he’d lived here in Calormen for many years. He was standing on a heap of stones piled against a building, and there was an interested circle of people clustered around him. I joined them.
“The sun got bigger every day, whiter and hotter, and more unbearable,” the man was saying. “The water gleamed and sparkled and sent up a heat of its own. There was no way to escape from the light. It penetrated every part of the ship. The galley, the cabins, the hold, everywhere. Every morning the white birds flew straight out of the sun and went over us, flying towards the west. A few minutes later, back they would come, singing their strange, evil song, and fly back to their home in the sun.”
I leaned over to the man next to me and asked, “Who is that?”
“He’s a sailor,” he whispered back. “He sailed to the end of the world on a voyage with the king of Narnia on the Narnian ship the
Dawn Treader years ago.”
I nodded and turned my attention again to the speaker.
“The water grew deeper, and deeper, and deeper, until you couldn’t see the bottom of the sea. And yet it grew clearer, and clearer, and clearer, and the ship raced along like the wind, yet without the wind, as there was no wind but what we made ourselves by our sailing. The magic of the last sea was pushing us relentlessly toward the edge of the world. The water flashed and glittered and the sun bore down ominously until the light and the heat were too much to bear. Before long, it became too bright to see anything. All we could see was white. But one day, the light broke and we could see each other and the ship again. Behind us was what seemed a white wall of light that fell from the peak of the sky, and we realized we’d reached the other side of the sunrise.”
Someone behind me made a stifled choking sound, but I was too spellbound by the sailor who had gone to the last sea to turn and see who it was. The speaker went on.
“But still the magic of the sea pushed us onward, faster and faster. There was no way to stop. Our sail billowed out full behind us from the speed at which we were going, but it slowed us not a bit. On and on we went. We never saw the white birds any more, because the sun never passed overhead now, but rose behind us and made its way west. The light grew dimmer every day as we got further and further from the place where it rose, and still the water grew deeper, and deeper, and deeper, until it was deeper than the world is wide.”
The person behind me snorted. I wondered how he couldn’t believe the sailor, who spoke so fervently.
“Ahead of us, the horizon continued on and on. There was no end of it, no land in sight. On and on, for days and days, caught in the last sea, endlessly sailing on and on, away from the sun, away from our homes (which by this time were thousands and thousands of leagues behind us and which we had not seen for a year), away from everything everyone has ever known. All that was there was water. Only water, and the light, which was daily growing less, and us. Just us, a small ship in an endless ocean, caught in the endless sea at the edge of the world, rushing, rushing, rushing, towards the edge of the world, unstoppable, helpless, hopeless. We were sure every day that this would be our last. But every day the magic pushed us more swiftly, until we were going so fast that the ship was barely skimming along the top of the water. Then one day, we saw ahead of us, stretching from horizon to horizon, a streak of black. It was difficult to see, for by now the light had grown so dim that we needed lights on the ship at all times except for at high noon. We tried to slow ourselves, but it was no use. The black streak thickened and grew by the minute, and we feared lest we might run against it, but there was nothing we could do. As it came nearer, we saw that it reached to the sky, just as the wall of white had, when we passed through the sunrise, yet we still could not see what this black wall was. And yet on it came, faster and faster, until the ship suddenly ceased its eastward rush and we saw (when it was but a league away) that the blackness was
nothing. It was the lack of light, darkness itself, in its solid form.”
The man behind me seemed to have gotten some smoke in his face; in any chance, he was coughing rather hoarsely. The speaker went on.
“We rowed slowly forward, until we reached the wall of nothing. They let the boat down, which those in it steered right into the wall and disappeared. They returned soon and we took them back up and rowed into the blackness. For two days and a night we continued through it, and would have seen neither each other’s faces nor anything of the ship but for the lanterns we had on the prow and stern, and we were afraid we were traveling in circles. But finally we broke out of the blackness, and ahead there lay a sea of white water, and we wondered if this was yet another last sea which we had just entered. And above us there stood another sun, which glinted off of the water and blinded us after being in the blackness. And still there was no wind. Far ahead of us we could see a crystal-blue island sitting on the horizon and—”
Suddenly the man behind me called out, “I say, friend, what happened when you turned and came back?”
The speaker, still speaking to his audience in general, said, “When we finally returned to Narnia, the king, who had promised every one of us homes, land, and gold, and an honorable place in his court, turned me away unjustly and denied ever having told me such, although he’d given the others their share. When I reminded him of his promise, he grew angry and threatened to have me imprisoned, and I was forced to flee here. I—”
Suddenly the man behind me burst into peals of laughter. I turned, irritated, to see who it was and saw a light-skinned, muscled man with his arms wrapped around his waist, bending over in fits of laughter.
The speaker looked at him and a peculiar expression crept over his face. “Rynelf!” he gasped, paling.
Rynelf looked up at him and said between laughs, “You know as well as I do, Pittencream, that you deserted at the Lone Islands on the way home and came here, and that you stopped at Ramandu’s Island and waited for us to return from the end of the world!” He laughed again. “You never even saw the last sea, you big old liar!”
“I—” began Pittencream, but Rynelf interrupted him.
“And I must say, you did a very bad depiction of the Silver Sea. And the Dark Island was
not in the last sea. And we did
not go so fast we lifted out of the water. And the sea did
not keep getting deeper and deeper; if anything, it got shallower and shallower. And where on
earth did you get the idea for the second sun?”
“I—” began Pittencream again.
“And what about food? Where did the crew on your ‘
Dawn Treader’ get food? And you know, I don’t remember being on the other side of the sunrise, with the sun getting further and further away…oh! And that Blue Island! Tell us more about the Blue Island you saw on the horizon, that you were talking about right before you stopped!”
There was no reply. I looked back at the pile of stones. There was no one standing on it. Pittencream had slipped away.