Further Up & Further In

Poppies and Primroses

"In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row..."

Remembrance Day was hard on children. It was hard because it was too quiet, and too solemn, and too grown-up. Even children living in war could not yet grasp the significance of it, but every rule has its exception, and this exception was the four Pevensie children. They were solemn, too. They were too old for their bodies. They looked like they remembered more than was possible.

In every minute of silence they looked as if they were reliving their own battles, mourning their own friends, and honouring their own fallen. They were too quiet. Too solemn. Too grown-up.

"We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie..."

Peter Pevensie bore his own crosses. The other children didn't know of his magical land; couldn't know of his impossible wars. They thought him silly. The grown-ups, of course, thought him refined. He was neither.

Or maybe he was both. He didn't wonder.

Peter Pevensie was a protector, a leader, a brother, and a friend. He held his silence longer than was called for. He stood rigid, nearly at attention, for The Last Post. But as they wore their blood-red poppies, he felt hidden in a bloodstain - a nightmare that wasn't his own. This was not his war, (though he'd have fought it if they called for him. He was too young. Too young, and yet too old.) So the flower pinned above his heart meant little to him. It was too red. Too sad. The flower of their graves. The colour of their blood.

This was not his war, and so these remembrances were not his own. The silence let him think. The Last Post called him home the way Susan's horn used to. But the poppy he wore was not his. 

So Peter yearned to honour this world's fallen the way he'd like to honour his own. He searched elsewhere for something that looked less like a grave. He looked for something more like the sun; bright and powerful and hopeful. In time, he found it.

The primrose, the first-rose, the symbol of spring. 

He'd first noticed them in Narnia - only 13, but almost a king. It was one of the first flowers of the spring: the spring that conquered always-winter: the spring that conquered death. And in his mind, the primrose was a reminder of Aslan: of his strength, of his impossibility, and yet of his steadfastness. It was He, after all, who conquered winter. It was He who brought spring again.

When Peter got older, even years after the war had ended, he would collect primroses, and he would place them on the memorials and cenotaphs and gravestones of London. A primrose for the fallen, for the valiant, for the lion-like soldiers who fought. The ones who conquered death. The ones who brought spring again. 

"For Aslan," he would whisper. "For his bared teeth, and golden mane."

"For a loving God," he'd continue. 

Poppies were England's way of remembering. Primroses were Peter's.