A Year with Aslan: Daily Reflections from The Chronicles of Narnia

by C. S. Lewis

  But the Dwarfs jeered back at Eustace. “That was a surprise for you, little boy, eh? Thought we were on your side, did you? No fear. We don’t want any Talking Horses. We don’t want you to win any more than the other gang. You can’t take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.”

  —The Last Battle

  What does the Dwarfs’ purpose seem to be in killing the Talking Horses? What do you think Tirian means by saying that courteous words or hard knocks are the only language of the warrior?

  OCTOBER 26

  The Most Wonderful Ride

  THEN [ASLAN] SAID,

  “We have a long journey to go. You must ride on me.” And he crouched down and the children climbed onto his warm, golden back, and Susan sat first, holding on tightly to his mane and Lucy sat behind holding on tightly to Susan. And with a great heave he rose underneath them and then shot off, faster than any horse could go, down hill and into the thick of the forest.

  That ride was perhaps the most wonderful thing that happened to them in Narnia. Have you ever had a gallop on a horse? Think of that; and then take away the heavy noise of the hoofs and the jingle of the bits and imagine instead the almost noiseless padding of the great paws. Then imagine instead of the black or grey or chestnut back of the horse the soft roughness of golden fur, and the mane flying back in the wind. And then imagine you are going about twice as fast as the fastest racehorse. But this is a mount that doesn’t need to be guided and never grows tired. He rushes on and on, never missing his footing, never hesitating, threading his way with perfect skill between tree trunks, jumping over bush and briar and the smaller streams, wading the larger, swimming the largest of all. And you are riding not on a road nor in a park nor even on the downs, but right across Narnia, in spring, down solemn avenues of beech and across sunny glades of oak, through wild orchards of snow-white cherry trees, past roaring waterfalls and mossy rocks and echoing caverns, up windy slopes alight with gorse bushes, and across the shoulders of heathery mountains and along giddy ridges and down, down, down again into wild valleys and out into acres of blue flowers.

  —The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

  Why is this ride the most wonderful thing that has happened to Susan and Lucy? When have you come closest to experiencing what Lucy and Susan feel on this ride?

  OCTOBER 27

  The Reluctant First King and Queen

  MY CHILDREN,” SAID ASLAN, fixing his eyes on both of them, “you are to be the first King and Queen of Narnia.”

  The Cabby opened his mouth in astonishment, and his wife turned very red.

  “You shall rule and name all these creatures, and do justice among them, and protect them from our enemies when enemies arise. And enemies will arise, for there is an evil Witch in this world.”

  The Cabby swallowed hard two or three times and cleared his throat.

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” he said, “and thanking you very much I’m sure (which my Missus does the same) but I ain’t no sort of a chap for a job like that. I never ’ad much eddycation, you see.”

  —The Magician’s Nephew

  What does the Cabby’s initial reluctance say about the kind of person he is? How would you react if someone selected you for an honor of this magnitude?

  OCTOBER 28

  I Should Frighten Them

  LUCY FOLLOWED THE GREAT LION out into the passage and at once she saw coming toward them an old man, barefoot, dressed in a red robe. His white hair was crowned with a chaplet of oak leaves, his beard fell to his girdle, and he supported himself with a curiously carved staff. When he saw Aslan he bowed low and said,

  “Welcome, Sir, to the least of your houses.”

  “Do you grow weary, Coriakin, of ruling such foolish subjects as I have given you here?”

  “No,” said the Magician, “they are very stupid but there is no real harm in them. I begin to grow rather fond of the creatures. Sometimes, perhaps, I am a little impatient, waiting for the day when they can be governed by wisdom instead of this rough magic.”

  “All in good time, Coriakin,” said Aslan.

  “Yes, all in very good time, Sir,” was the answer. “Do you intend to show yourself to them?”

  “Nay,” said the Lion, with a little half-growl that meant (Lucy thought) the same as a laugh. “I should frighten them out of their senses. Many stars will grow old and come to take their rest in islands before your people are ripe for that.”

  —The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

  Why would seeing Aslan frighten Coriakin’s people (the Duffers) out of their senses? What might it take for the Duffers to be “ripe” to see him? Do you think you’d be ready to see Aslan?

  OCTOBER 29

  A Beast Like the Rest of Us

  BREE,” SAID ARAVIS, who was not very interested in the cut of his tail, “I’ve been wanting to ask you something for a long time. Why do you keep on swearing By the Lion and By the Lion’s Mane? I thought you hated lions.”

  “So I do,” answered Bree. “But when I speak of the Lion, of course I mean Aslan, the great deliverer of Narnia who drove away the Witch and the Winter. All Narnians swear by him.”

  “But is he a lion?”

  “No, no, of course not,” said Bree in a rather shocked voice.

  “All the stories about him in Tashbaan say he is,” replied Aravis. “And if he isn’t a lion why do you call him a lion?”

  “Well, you’d hardly understand that at your age,” said Bree. “And I was only a little foal when I left so I don’t quite fully understand it myself.”

  (Bree was standing with his back to the green wall while he said this, and the other two were facing him. He was talking in rather a superior tone with his eyes half shut; that was why he didn’t see the changed expression in the faces of Hwin and Aravis. They had good reason to have open mouths and staring eyes, because while Bree spoke they saw an enormous lion leap up from outside and balance itself on the top of the green wall; only it was a brighter yellow and it was bigger and more beautiful and more alarming than any lion they had ever seen. And at once it jumped down inside the wall and began approaching Bree from behind. It made no noise at all. And Hwin and Aravis couldn’t make any noise themselves, no more than if they were frozen.)

  “No doubt,” continued Bree, “when they speak of him as a Lion, they only mean he’s as strong as a lion or (to our enemies, of course) as fierce as a lion. Or something of that kind. Even a little girl like you, Aravis, must see that it would be quite absurd to suppose he is a real lion. Indeed it would be disrespectful. If he was a lion he’d have to be a Beast just like the rest of us. Why!” (and here Bree began to laugh) “If he was a lion he’d have four paws, and a tail, and Whiskers! . . . Aie, ooh, hoo-hoo! Help!”

  For just as he said the word Whiskers one of Aslan’s had actually tickled his ear. Bree shot away like an arrow to the other side of the enclosure and there turned; the wall was too high for him to jump and he could fly no further. Aravis and Hwin both started back. There was about a second of intense silence. Then Hwin, though shaking all over, gave a strange little neigh, and trotted across to the Lion.

  “Please,” she said, “you’re so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I’d sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.”

  “Dearest daughter,” said Aslan, planting a lion’s kiss on her twitching, velvet nose, “I knew you would not be long in coming to me. Joy shall be yours.”

  Then he lifted his head and spoke in a louder voice:

  “Now, Bree,” he said, “you poor, proud frightened Horse, draw near. Nearer still, my son. Do not dare not to dare. Touch me. Smell me. Here are my paws, here is my tail, these are my whiskers. I am a true Beast.”

  —The Horse and His Boy

  Why is it so hard for Bree to view Aslan as a true beast? Why would Aslan want to show him the truth this way? When have you asserted something so confidently only to be proven wrong?

  OCTOBER 30

  Tirian’s Worst Nightmare

  TIRIA
N AND JEWEL walked sadly together in the rear. The King had his arm on the Unicorn’s shoulder and sometimes the Unicorn nuzzled the King’s cheek with his soft nose. They did not try to comfort one another with words. It wasn’t very easy to think of anything to say that would be comforting. Tirian had never dreamed that one of the results of an Ape’s setting up a false Aslan would be to stop people from believing in the real one. He had felt quite sure that the Dwarfs would rally to his side the moment he showed them how they had been deceived. And then next night he would have led them to Stable Hill and shown Puzzle to all the creatures and everyone would have turned against the Ape and, perhaps after a scuffle with the Calormenes, the whole thing would have been over. But now, it seemed, he could count on nothing. How many other Narnians might turn the same way as the Dwarfs?

  —The Last Battle

  After seeing the false Aslan (Puzzle the Donkey wearing a lion-skin), the Dwarfs announce that they have had enough of Aslan and of Kings. Why would realizing they’ve been fooled by a false Aslan cause the Dwarfs and other Narnians to disbelieve in the true Aslan? Have you ever been so disappointed after being let down that it affected your ability to believe or trust the next time around?

  OCTOBER 31

  A Doddering Old Man

  I SAY, SCRUBB, isn’t it all simply too exciting and scrumptious for words?”. . .

  “Oh! That’s what you think, is it?” said Scrubb: and then, after a pause, “I wish to goodness we’d never come.”

  “Why on earth?”

  “I can’t bear it,” said Scrubb. “Seeing the King—Caspian—a doddering old man like that. It’s—it’s frightful.”

  “Why, what harm does it do you?”

  “Oh, you don’t understand. Now that I come to think of it, you couldn’t. I didn’t tell you that this world has a different time from ours.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The time you spend here doesn’t take up any of our time. Do you see? I mean, however long we spend here, we shall still get back to Experiment House at the moment we left it—”

  “That won’t be much fun—”

  “Oh, dry up! Don’t keep interrupting. And when you’re back in England—in our world—you can’t tell how time is going here. It might be any number of years in Narnia while we’re having one year at home. The Pevensies explained it all to me, but, like a fool, I forgot about it. And now apparently it’s been about seventy years—Narnian years—since I was here last. Do you see now? And I come back and find Caspian an old, old man.”

  “Then the King was an old friend of yours!” said Jill. A horrid thought had struck her.

  “I should jolly well think he was,” said Scrubb miserably. “About as good a friend as a chap could have. And last time he was only a few years older than me. And to see that old man with a white beard, and to remember Caspian as he was the morning we captured the Lone Islands, or in the fight with the Sea Serpent—oh, it’s frightful. It’s worse than coming back and finding him dead.”

  —The Silver Chair

  Why is Scrubb so upset to see King Caspian as an old man?

  NOVEMBER

  NOVEMBER 1

  The Creatures Come to Aslan

  THE LIGHT FROM BEHIND THEM (and a little to their right) was so strong that it lit up even the slopes of the Northern Moors. Something was moving there. Enormous animals were crawling and sliding down into Narnia: great dragons and giant lizards and featherless birds with wings like bats’ wings. They disappeared into the woods and for a few minutes there was a silence. Then there came—at first from very far off—sounds of wailing and then, from every direction, a rustling and a pattering and a sound of wings. It came nearer and nearer. Soon one could distinguish the scamper of little feet from the padding of big paws, and the clack-clack of light little hoofs from the thunder of great ones. And then one could see thousands of pairs of eyes gleaming. And at last, out of the shadow of the trees, racing up the hill for dear life, by thousands and by millions, came all kinds of creatures—Talking Beasts, Dwarfs, Satyrs, Fauns, Giants, Calormenes, men from Archen-land, Monopods, and strange unearthly things from the remote islands or the unknown Western lands. And all these ran up to the doorway where Aslan stood. . . .

  The creatures came rushing on, their eyes brighter and brighter as they drew nearer and nearer to the standing Stars. But as they came right up to Aslan one or other of two things happened to each of them. They all looked straight in his face, I don’t think they had any choice about that. And when some looked, the expression of their faces changed terribly—it was fear and hatred: except that, on the faces of Talking Beasts, the fear and hatred lasted only for a fraction of a second. You could see that they suddenly ceased to be Talking Beasts. They were just ordinary animals. And all the creatures who looked at Aslan in that way swerved to their right, his left, and disappeared into his huge black shadow, which (as you have heard) streamed away to the left of the doorway. The children never saw them again. I don’t know what became of them. But the others looked in the face of Aslan and loved him, though some of them were very frightened at the same time. And all these came in at the Door, in on Aslan’s right. There were some queer specimens among them. Eustace even recognized one of those very Dwarfs who had helped to shoot the Horses. But he had no time to wonder about that sort of thing (and anyway it was no business of his) for a great joy put everything else out of his head. Among the happy creatures who now came crowding round Tirian and his friends were all those whom they had thought dead. There was Roonwit the Centaur and Jewel the Unicorn and the good Boar and the good Bear, and Farsight the Eagle, and the dear Dogs and the Horses, and Poggin the Dwarf.

  —The Last Battle

  What makes the creatures react to Aslan either with fear and hatred or with love? Why were they divided not by how Aslan treated them, but by how they reacted to Aslan?

  NOVEMBER 2

  Think No More of That

  I WISH I WAS AT HOME,” said Jill.

  Eustace nodded, saying nothing, and bit his lip.

  “I have come,” said a deep voice behind them. They turned and saw the Lion himself, so bright and real and strong that everything else began at once to look pale and shadowy compared with him. And in less time than it takes to breathe Jill forgot about the dead King of Narnia and remembered only how she had made Eustace fall over the cliff, and how she had helped to muff nearly all the signs, and about all the snappings and quarrelings. And she wanted to say “I’m sorry” but she could not speak. Then the Lion drew them toward him with his eyes, and bent down and touched their pale faces with his tongue, and said:

  “Think of that no more. I will not always be scolding. You have done the work for which I sent you into Narnia.”

  “Please, Aslan,” said Jill, “may we go home now?”

  “Yes. I have come to bring you Home,” said Aslan.

  —The Silver Chair

  Do you think of Aslan as always scolding? How must it feel for Jill and Eustace to hear Aslan dismiss their mistakes? Do you think Aslan would have reacted differently if Jill had not been feeling sorrow for her mistakes?

  NOVEMBER 3

  Narnia or a New Home

  NEXT DAY MESSENGERS (who were chiefly squirrels and birds) were sent all over the country with a proclamation to the scattered Telmarines—including, of course, the prisoners in Beruna. They were told that Caspian was now King and that Narnia would henceforth belong to the Talking Beasts and the Dwarfs and Dryads and Fauns and other creatures quite as much as to the men. Any who chose to stay under the new conditions might do so; but for those who did not like the idea, Aslan would provide another home. Anyone who wished to go there must come to Aslan and the Kings at the Ford of Beruna by noon on the fifth day. You may imagine that this caused plenty of head-scratching among the Telmarines. Some of them, chiefly the young ones, had, like Caspian, heard stories of the Old Days and were delighted that they had come back. They were already making friends with the creatures. These all decide
d to stay in Narnia. But most of the older men, especially those who had been important under Miraz, were sulky and had no wish to live in a country where they could not rule the roost. “Live here with a lot of blooming performing animals! No fear,” they said. “And ghosts too,” some added with a shudder. “That’s what those there Dryads really are. It’s not canny.” They were also suspicious. “I don’t trust ’em,” they said. “Not with that awful Lion and all. He won’t keep his claws off us long, you’ll see.” But then they were equally suspicious of his offer to give them a new home. “Take us off to his den and eat us one by one most likely,” they muttered. And the more they talked to one another the sulkier and more suspicious they became. But on the appointed day more than half of them turned up.

  —Prince Caspian

  Why do you think the young ones were more likely to want to stay in Narnia under new rule? Would your younger self have decided differently on such a matter than you might today? Why or why not?

  NOVEMBER 4

  Wild Aslan

  BUT AMID ALL THESE REJOICINGS Aslan himself quietly slipped away. And when the Kings and Queens noticed that he wasn’t there they said nothing about it. For Mr. Beaver had warned them, “He’ll be coming and going,” he had said. “One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down—and of course he has other countries to attend to. It’s quite all right. He’ll often drop in. Only you mustn’t press him. He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”