Prince Caspian

by C. S. Lewis

  Somewhere close by she heard the twitter of a nightingale beginning to sing, then stopping, then beginning again. It was a little lighter ahead. She went towards the light and came to a place where there were fewer trees, and whole patches or pools of moonlight, but the moonlight and the shadows so mixed that you could hardly be sure where anything was or what it was. At the same moment the nightingale, satisfied at last with his tuning up, burst into full song.

  Lucy's eyes began to grow accustomed to the light, and she saw the trees that were nearest her more distinctly. A great longing for the old days when the trees could talk in Narnia came over her. She knew exactly how each of these trees would talk if only she could wake them, and what sort of human form it would put on. She looked at a silver birch: it would have a soft, showery voice and would look like a slender girl, with hair blown all about her face, and fond of dancing. She looked at the oak: he would be a wizened, but hearty old man with a frizzled beard and warts on his face and hands, and hair growing out of the warts. She looked at the beech under which she was standing. Ah! she would be the best of all. She would be a gracious goddess, smooth and stately, the lady of the wood.

  "Oh, Trees, Trees, Trees," said Lucy (though she had not been intending to speak at all). "Oh, Trees, wake, wake, wake. Don't you remember it? Don't you remember me? Dryads and Hamadryads, come out, come to me."

  Though there was not a breath of wind they all stirred about her. The rustling noise of the leaves was almost like words. The nightingale stopped singing as if to listen to it.

  Lucy felt that at any moment she would begin to understand what the trees were trying to say. But the moment did not come. The rustling died away. The nightingale resumed its song. Even in the moonlight the wood looked more ordinary again. Yet Lucy had the feeling (as you sometimes have when you are trying to remember a name or a date and almost get it, but it vanishes before you really do) that she had just missed something: as if she had spoken to the trees a split second too soon or a split second too late, or used all the right words except one, or put in one word that was just wrong.

  Quite suddenly she began to feel tired. She went back to the bivouac, snuggled down between Susan and Peter, and was asleep in a few minutes.

  It was a cold and cheerless waking for them all next morning, with a grey twilight in the wood (for the sun had not yet risen) and everything damp and dirty.

  "Apples, heigh-ho," said Trumpkin with a rueful grin. "I must say you ancient kings and queens don't overfeed your courtiers!"

  They stood up and shook themselves and looked about. The trees were thick and they could see no more than a few yards in any direction.

  "I suppose your Majesties know the way all right?" said the Dwarf.

  "I don't," said Susan. "I've never seen these woods in my life before. In fact I thought all along that we ought to have gone by the river."

  "Then I think you might have said so at the time," answered Peter, with pardonable sharpness.

  "Oh, don't take any notice of her," said Edmund. "She always is a wet blanket. You've got that pocket compass of yours, Peter, haven't you? Well, then, we're as right as rain. We've only got to keep on going north-west - cross that little river, the what-do-you-call-it? - the Rush -"

  "I know," said Peter. "The one that joins the big river at the Fords of Beruna, or Beruna's Bridge, as the D.L.F. calls it."

  "That's right. Cross it and strike uphill, and we'll be at the Stone Table (Aslan's How, I mean) by eight or nine o'clock. I hope King Caspian will give us a good breakfast!"

  "I hope you're right," said Susan. "I can't remember all that at all."

  "That's the worst of girls," said Edmund to Peter and the Dwarf. "They never carry a map in their heads."

  "That's because our heads have something inside them," said Lucy.

  At first things seemed to be going pretty well. They even -thought they had struck an old path; but if you know anything about woods, you will know that one is always finding imaginary paths. They disappear after about five minutes and then you think you have found another (and hope it is not another but more of the same one) and it also disappears, and after you have been well lured out of your right direction you realize that none of them were pats at all. The boys and the Dwarf, however, were used to woods and were not taken in for more than a few seconds.

  They had plodded on for about half an hour (three of them very stiff from yesterday's rowing) when Trumpkin suddenly whispered, "Stop." They all stopped. "There's something following us," he said in a low voice. "Or rather, something keeping up with us: over there on the left." They all stood still, listening and staring till their ears and eyes ached. "You and I'd better each have an arrow on the string," said Susan to Trumpkin. The Dwarf nodded, and when both bows were ready for action the party went on again.

  They went a few dozen yards through fairly open woodland, keeping a sharp look-out. Then they came to a place where the undergrowth thickened and they had to pass nearer to it. Just as they were passing the place, there came a sudden something that snarled and flashed, rising out from the breaking twigs like a thunderbolt. Lucy was knocked down and winded, hearing the twang of a bowstring as she fell. When she was able to take notice of things again, she saw a great grim-looking grey bear lying dead with Trumpkin's arrow in its side.

  "The D.L.F. beat you in that shooting match, Su," said #Peter, with a slightly forced smile. Even he had been shaken by this adventure.

  "I - I left it too late," said Susan, in an embarrassed voice. "I was so afraid it might be, you know - one of our kind of bears, a talking bear." She hated killing things.

  "That's the trouble of it," said Trumpkin, "when most of the beasts have gone enemy and gone dumb, but there are still some of the other kind left. You never know, and you daren't wait to see."

  "Poor old Bruin," said Susan. "You don't think he was?"

  "Not he," said the Dwarf. "I saw the face and I heard the snarl. He only wanted Little Girl for his breakfast. And talking of breakfast, I didn't want to discourage your Majesties when you said you hoped King Caspian would give you a good one: but meat's precious scarce in camp. And there's good eating on a bear. It would be a shame to leave the carcass without taking a bit, and it won't delay us more than half an hour. I dare say you two youngsters - Kings, I should say - know how to skin a bear?"

  "Let's go and sit down a fair way off," said Susan to Lucy. "I know what a horrid messy business that will be." Lucy shuddered and nodded. When they had sat down she said: "Such a horrible idea has come into my head, Su. "

  "What's that?"

  "Wouldn't it be dreadful if some day, in our own world, at home, men started going wild inside, like the animals here, and still looked like men, so that you'd never know which were which?"

  "We've got enough to bother about here and now in Narnia," said the practical Susan, "without imagining things like that."

  When they rejoined the boys and the Dwarf, as much as they thought they could carry of the best meat had been cut off. Raw meat is not a nice thing to fill one's pockets with, but they folded it up in fresh leaves and made the best of it. They were all experienced enough to know that they would feel quite differently about these squashy and unpleasant parcels when they had walked long enough to be really hungry.

  On they trudged again (stopping to wash three pairs of hands that needed it in the first stream they passed) until the sun rose and the birds began to sing, and more flies than they wanted were buzzing in the bracken. The stiffness from yesterday's rowing began to wear off. Everybody's spirits rose. The sun grew warmer and they took their helmets off and carried them.

  "I suppose we are going right?" said Edmund about an hour later.

  "I don't see how we can go wrong as long as we don't bear too much to the left," said Peter. "If we bear too much to the right, the worst that can happen is wasting a little time by striking the great River too soon and not cutting off the corner."

  And again they trudged on with no sound except the
thud of their feet and the jingle of their chain shirts.

  "Where's this bally Rush got to?" said Edmund a good deal later.

  "I certainly thought we'd have struck it by now," said Peter. "But there's nothing to do but keep on." They both knew that the Dwarf was looking anxiously at them, but he said nothing.

  And still they trudged on and their mail shirts began to feel very hot and heavy.

  "What on earth?" said Peter suddenly.

  They had come, without seeing it, almost to the edge of a small precipice from which they looked down into a gorge with a river at the bottom. On the far side the cliffs rose much higher. None of the party except Edmund (and perhaps Trumpkin) was a rock climber.

  "I'm sorry," said Peter. "It's my fault for coming this way. We're lost. I've never seen this place in my life before."

  The Dwarf gave a low whistle between his teeth.

  "Oh, do let's go back and go the other way," said Susan. "I knew all along we'd get lost in these woods."

  "Susan!" said Lucy, reproachfully, "don't nag at Peter like that. It's so rotten, and he's doing all he can."

  "And don't you snap at Su like that, either," said Edmund. "I think she's quite right."

  "Tubs and tortoiseshells!" exclaimed Trumpkin. "If we've got lost coming, what chance have we of finding our way back? And if we're to go back to the Island and begin all over again - even supposing we could - we might as well give the whole thing up. Miraz will have finished with Caspian before we get there at that rate."

  "You think we ought to go on?" said Lucy.

  "I'm not sure the High King is lost," said Trumpkin. "What's to hinder this river being the Rush?"

  "Because the Rush is not in a gorge," said Peter, keeping his temper with some difficulty.

  "Your Majesty says is," replied the Dwarf, "but oughtn't you to say was? You knew this country hundreds - it may be a thousand - years ago. Mayn't it have changed? A landslide might have pulled off half the side of that hill, leaving bare rock, and there are your precipices beyond the gorge. Then the Rush might go on deepening its course year after year till you get the little precipices this side. Or there might have been an earthquake, or anything."

  "I never thought of that," said Peter.

  "And anyway," continued Trumpkin, "even if this is not the Rush, it's flowing roughly north and so it must fall into the Great River anyway. I think I passed something that might have been it, on my way down. So if we go downstream, to our right, we'll hit the Great River. Perhaps not so high as we'd hoped, but at least we'll be no worse off than if you'd come my way."

  "Trumpkin, you're a brick," said Peter. "Come on, then. Down this side of the gorge."

  "Look! Look! Look!" cried Lucy.

  "Where? What?" said everyone.

  "The Lion," said Lucy. "Aslan himself. Didn't you see?" Her face had changed completely and her eyes shone.

  "Do you really mean -?" began Peter.

  "Where did you think you saw him?" asked Susan.

  "Don't talk like a grown-up," said Lucy, stamping her foot. "I didn't think I saw him. I saw him."

  "Where, Lu?" asked Peter.

  "Right up there between those mountain ashes. No, this side of the gorge. And up, not down. Just the opposite of the way you want to go. And he wanted us to go where he was - up there."

  "How do you know that was what he wanted?" asked Edmund.

  "He - I - I just know," said Lucy, "by his face."

  The others all looked at each other in puzzled silence.

  "Her Majesty may well have seen a lion," put in Trumpkin. "There are lions in these woods, I've been told. But it needn't have been a friendly and talking lion any more than the bear was a friendly and talking bear."

  "Oh, don't be so stupid," said Lucy. "Do you think I don't know Aslan when I see him?"

  "He'd be a pretty elderly lion by now," said Trumpkin, "if he's one you knew when you were here before! And if it could be the same one, what's to prevent him having gone wild and witless like so many others?"