The Voyage of Dawn's Treader

Chapter 4

Night fell across the ship and nearly all slept soundly. The odd sailor, including Rhince, were still on deck as needed but very few. The water was dark, almost black, reflecting the sky above it, though it was filled with glittering stars, a map from the heavens for sailors to navigate.

The Dawn Treader cut through the water soundlessly and gently. The water curling around the wood of the ship but was otherwise quite still.

The moon was bright over head, the only source of light, stretching across the dark, surface of the water and to the ship. It was almost full and would be so in a few days time.

Dawn gazed up at the stars and the moon, curiously.

Back during the Golden Age, Dawn read in an old scroll that the Stars that they saw over head could come to the land if they wished, some of them at least, and only for certain reasons. Otherwise they must always remain in the same spot. Unmoving.

Yet Dawn recalled the first time she ever showed Aslan her powers, she had willed the stars to dance for them. Had she forced them or did they do it willingly? She had always wondered and hoped one day to meet a star so she could ask those questions and several more.

She hadn't bothered to change yet, still wearing the silver dress that fell around her and moved gently in the soft breeze, her hair along with it. Her staff was back in Caspian's quarters which he had given up to Lucy and her to use while he chose to sleep with the men in one of the sleeping quarters further into the ship with Edmund and Eustace and apperantly others such as Reepicheep. He had sworn that they would be comfortable there and that he would prefer if she and Lucy took his cabin as it was proper. Dawn had merely shook her head and laughed but went along with his wishes.

Lucy was back in the cabin, already fast asleep. Edmund, Eustace and Caspian had all retired to their quarters aswell. She supposed they were asleep.

Staring out across the water she began to sing, softly and quietly. The sailors still on deck fell completely silent so they could hear her voice as the wind seemed to carry it to all corners of the ship.

Down in the crew's quarters where Eustace sat writing in his journal on his hammock. He stopped writing for a moment to glare at the tail of Reepicheep which had fallen into his face from where the mouse was sleeping in his own hammock above him.

Just at that moment the musical voice of his elder female cousin drifted into the room.

"In a perfect World,

One we've never known

We would never need

to face the world alone."

Her voice was calm, beautiful and haunting and Eustace froze for a moment to listen to it. He had heard her singing back in England, especially when they first arrived as it helped keep her two siblings calm and relaxed but here it had an almost magical quality to it that made you almost have to listen. He had called her a witch earlier when he saw her use her magic to help some of the sailors. The look on her face was heartbreaking and Eustace was terrified that the sailors, the Captain Drinian and the King, Caspian were going to kill him. If looks could have killed, he would have been dead and buried a hundred times over in one second flat.

Edmund had set him straight, telling him how the term, 'Witch' was insulting especially when speaking of Dawn and even more so among Narnians who remembered the tales of the White Witch, Jadis. Dawn was to have no where near a similar title to a person who caused so much destruction. Eustace swore never to utter the word again if this was how it would end for him.