Serafina's Answer

"What are you thinking, Serafina?" Roland whispered softly into his wife's ear. Her back was to him, and she was snuggled back against his chest quietly. If he hadn't known her so well, he would have sworn she was already asleep.

"Whether I'm going to miss you or not," She replied softly.

Roland came up on one elbow to see her face a little better in the dim light of their bedroom.

"And by that you mean…" He had a sinking feeling.

"I'm deciding whether or not I'm going with you," She whispered, and he sighed.

"So you've already decided that I'M going, you're now just focused on yourself," He toyed with a loose strand of her hair and wound it around one finger. "I thought we were supposed to make these decisions together, as a team."

"You had already decided," Finn said seriously, "you just needed me to support your decision."

"That's news to me," Roland raised his eyebrows, but realized he had been distinctly leaning in the direction of going. If Titania had come back in some form, he needed to fight her.

"Mmm I'm not sure it is," Finn rolled towards him and smiled. "At least, not about yourself. You're as torn about me going as I am."

He lowered his head and kissed her softly.

"There are definite advantages of having you with me," He teased quietly, and she giggled, delighted that her husband could still find her attractive after her body had warped and labored and brought forth three tiny people into the world.

"But disadvantages too," She reminded, not wanting to sway him against the idea, but also not fully convinced in her own mind.

The logistics alone of moving three babies so far, getting set up in a home there… it was not a small undertaking.

"Yes, if there is danger there, I don't want you or our children nearby." Roland sighed.

"I promise not to tackle any danger without you," Finn offered a little cheekily.

"That better be a forever-promise, not just a seaside one." He nuzzled her playfully.

"Forever," She agreed easily. "So am I going or staying?"

"I thought you were trying to decide, not waiting for me to." He replied.

"Well, both," Finn sighed. "What about this? You go ahead, and get a place all set up. If you resolve everything and solve all the mysteries, hurry home to me. If it's taking longer than both of us would like, I'll come out with the babies and Mrs. Sherman, and the wet nurse if I can't learn to do without her, and meet you there."

It seemed a reasonable plan to him, and gave him extra motivation to get the job done quickly, if possible.

"You're more beautiful than you've ever been, did you know?" He kissed her cheek.

"I don't believe that for a moment, but I'm glad you think it's true," She smiled at him and yawned.

"My poor wife, I've kept you awake. Sleep now," Roland whispered, laying fully back down and pulling her against his chest once more.

She sighed in contentment at being there and drifted off quickly.

______

Caspian sat in a chair at the foot of his father's bed early in the morning with a stern look on his face. Haf sat up, propped by several pillows, while Cora tended to him.

"Tell me what you told Naomi, when you woke the first time," Caspian's voice wasn't demanding, but still held enough tension to brook no argument.

"I can't remember, exactly," Haf said slowly. "I was concerned about the journey to the other world."

"Did you say you didn't trust Edmar?" Caspian asked directly. Naomi had been fairly certain of what she'd heard, but whether Haf had been in his right mind at the time was less sure.

"That was wrong of me," The Commodore grimaced. "Edmar had been talking about a discovery. He said he had come up with a way to attract Leviathan to make our journeys into other worlds more frequently. I forbade it.

"The leviathan are magical, and intelligent, and have always come and gone as they pleased. It seemed wrong to me to summon them as beasts of burden rather than wait for them to come to us."

"What method was this?" Caspian wondered.

"He did not say, and I did not listen." Haf's face scrunched up. "A leader should always listen. I failed in that respect."

"When you fell on the ship," His son switched to a new line of questioning, "What happened? I've never seen you fall in my life."

"I slipped, strangely. There must have been something on deck." Haf raised a hand to his forehead, rubbing it gently. "My memory isn't clear." 

"Ishmael said you slipped on an oily substance." Caspian provided, wanting to lay all his information out before Edmar's inevitable visit. He didn't want his older brother's version of events to color their parents' opinion just yet.

"Oh?" Cora tilted her head.

"The nets, also, were soaked and coated in some kind of strange, gritty oil. When I cut a piece to show him as a comparison, he confirmed that it looked the same." Caspian had lost that piece during his plunge into the ocean, and did not have a chance to cut a new one in his urgency to get Haf and Naomi to safety.

"Call Ishmael, I want to talk to him." Haf commanded.

"He was killed when the gargoyles attacked," The younger man's face fell. Ishmael was a good man.

His parents stared at him in silence. This was grave news, especially since the man had information about Haf's fall.

"Poor fellow. We lost several good men that day," Edmar strode in and took a seat on the bed by his father's feet, his back towards Caspian. "Not like my heroic younger brother, there, who jumped on a gargoyle to stab it. Did you hear that story, mother?"

"No, I didn't," Cora looked surprised.

"It was amazing! That monster broke through the hold into the place where my dear sister-in-law was being hidden and snatched her from Caspian's grasp. It had just taken flight to haul her away forever, when out of nowhere, my brother leapt from the deck and grabbed the fiend's other leg, stabbing it until it flung the young lovers into the sea!

"Thankfully, I saw the whole thing and had the old net lowered in case they were close enough to grab hold of the thing, and the strategy worked! They held on through the portal and we pulled them up on this side. That must make Naomi the only woman to have been in the oceans of two worlds!"

The rest of his family stared at Edmar with varied expressions. His upbeat retelling of the grand adventure made it all sound like great fun, rather than the harrowing and deadly event it was.

"Why did you go?" Cora asked. "I heard you gave the order to rope the leviathan."

"We were under vicious attack by whales!" Edmar defended himself. "Much longer and they would have smashed the ship to pieces and killed us all. The leviathan was the only way to escape!"

Caspian frowned decidedly, but couldn't argue the point.

"Did you lure the leviathan?" Haf asked weakly.

"Well…" Edmar's jovial expression faded slightly, "I just wanted to see if it worked. I did not intend to rope the beast, especially with my sister-in-law on board. The discovery that we could lure them would be plenty of excitement without actually going anywhere!"

"How?" The Commodore's face was dark and expressionless.

"Well, I had this theory about them. The rumors said that the Rhone went to their world using herbs, and I wondered if there were some kind of undersea plant that helped leviathan do so, or maybe that lured it to our world. Anyway, I gathered all the deep sea plants that washed ashore after the last large storm, and ground them up with oil.

"It was a random guess, and I didn't have a lot of hope that it would actually work, but I put the oil on the fishing nets we were to use—that was before I knew Naomi would be coming aboard!--and, well, it seems to have worked." He shrugged self-deprecatingly.

"I specifically told you not to try to lure the creatures," Haf's face grew dark. "You disobeyed my orders."

"But think of all the good it can do now!" Edmar said. "If ever we go somewhere and get stuck, we can get our way back again!"

"So why didn't we do that immediately when we got there?" Caspian challenged his older brother. "You left us in that world for a week while Father suffered and Naomi was in danger."

"She was in no danger, and there wasn't medicine here that would help Father one way or another. At least, not that I knew about," He amended. "I also couldn't tell whether the whales were also attracted by the stuff. What if I accidentally attracted something even worse in that world?? But when we were in danger, I acted quickly to get us home."

"I thought you said you lowered the nets because you saw us flung overboard," Caspian murmured, but no one paid him attention. 

"Why didn't you tell us all this from the beginning?" Haf asked. "Why wait until you were confronted?"