“Ride?” said Strawberry. “Oh, I remember now. That means sitting on my back. I remember there used to be a little one of you two-leggers who used to do that long ago. He used to have little hard, square lumps of some white stuff that he gave me. They tasted—oh, wonderful, sweeter than grass.”
“Ah, that’d be sugar,” said the Cabby.
“Please, Strawberry,” begged Digory, “do, do let me get up and take me to Aslan.”
“Well, I don’t mind,” said the Horse. “Not for once in a way. Up you get.”
“Good old Strawberry,” said the Cabby. “’Ere, young ’un, I’ll give you a lift.” Digory was soon on Strawberry’s back, and quite comfortable, for he had ridden bare-back before on his own pony.
“Now, do gee up, Strawberry,” he said.
“You don’t happen to have a bit of that white stuff about you, I suppose?” said the Horse.
“No. I’m afraid I haven’t,” said Digory.
“Well, it can’t be helped,” said Strawberry, and off they went.
At that moment a large Bulldog, who had been sniffing and staring very hard, said:
“Look. Isn’t there another of these queer creatures over there, beside the river, under the trees?”
Then all the animals looked and saw Uncle Andrew, standing very still among the rhododendrons and hoping he wouldn’t be noticed.
“Come on!” said several voices. “Let’s go and find out.” So, while Strawberry was briskly trotting away with Digory in one direction (and Polly and the Cabby were following on foot) most of the creatures rushed towards Uncle Andrew with roars, barks, grunts, and various noises of cheerful interest.
We must now go back a bit and explain what the whole scene had looked like from Uncle Andrew’s point of view. It had not made at’ all the same impression on him as on the Cabby and the children. For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.
Ever since the animals had first appeared, Uncle Andrew had been shrinking further and further back into the thicket. He watched them very hard of course; but he wasn’t really interested in seeing what they were doing, only in seeing whether they were going to make a rush at him. Like the Witch, he was dreadfully practical. He simply didn’t notice that Aslan was choosing one pair out of every kind of beasts. All he saw, or thought he saw, was a lot of dangerous wild animals walking vaguely about. And he kept on wondering why the other animals didn’t run away from the big Lion.
When the great moment came and the Beasts spoke, he missed the whole point; for a rather interesting reason. When the Lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, he had realized that the noise was a song. And he had disliked the song very much. It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel. Then, when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a lion (“only a lion,” as he said to himself) he tried his hardest to make believe that it wasn’t singing and never had been singing—only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world. “Of course it can’t really have been singing,” he thought, “I must have imagined it. I’ve been letting my nerves get out of order. Who ever heard of a lion singing?” And the longer and more beautiful the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring. Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. Uncle Andrew did. He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan’s song. Soon he couldn’t have heard anything else even if he had wanted to. And when at last the Lion spoke and said, “Narnia awake,” he didn’t hear any words: he heard only a snarl. And when the Beasts spoke in answer, he heard only barkings, growlings, bayings, and howlings. And when they laughed—well, you can imagine. That was worse for Uncle Andrew than anything that had happened yet. Such a horrid, bloodthirsty din of hungry and angry brutes he had never heard in his life. Then, to his utter rage and horror, he saw the other three humans actually walking out into the open to meet the animals.
“The fools!” he said to himself. “Now those brutes will eat the rings along with the children and I’ll never be able to get home again. What a selfish little boy that Digory is! And the others are just as bad. If they want to throw away their own lives, that’s their business. But what about me? They don’t seem to think of that. No one thinks of me.”
Finally, when a whole crowd of animals came rushing towards him, he turned and ran for his life. And now anyone could see that the air of that young world was really doing the old gentleman good. In London he had been far too old to run: now, he ran at a speed which would have made him certain to win the hundred yards’ race at any Prep school in England. His coattails flying out behind him were a fine sight. But of course it was no use. Many of the animals behind him were swift ones; it was the first run they had ever taken in their lives and they were all longing to use their new muscles. “After him! After him!” they shouted. “Perhaps he’s that Neevil! Tally-ho! Tantivy! Cut him off! Round him up! Keep it up! Hurrah!”
In a very few minutes some of them got ahead of him. They lined up in a row and barred his way. Others hemmed him in from behind. Wherever he looked he saw terrors. Antlers of great elks and the huge face of an elephant towered over him. Heavy, serious-minded bears and boars grunted behind him. Cool-looking leopards and panthers with sarcastic faces (as he thought) stared at him and waved their tails. What struck him most of all was the number of open mouths. The animals had really opened their mouths to pant; he thought they had opened their mouths to eat him.
Uncle Andrew stood trembling and swaying this way and that. He had never liked animals at the best of times, being usually rather afraid of them; and of course years of doing cruel experiments on animals had made him hate and fear them far more.
“Now, sir,” said the Bulldog in his business-like way, “are you animal, vegetable, or mineral?” That was what it really said; but all Uncle Andrew heard was “Gr-r-rarrh-ow!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
DIGORY AND HIS UNCLE ARE BOTH IN TROUBLE
You may think the animals were very stupid not to see at once that Uncle Andrew was the same kind of creature as the two children and the Cabby. But you must remember that the animals knew nothing about clothes. They thought that Polly’s frock and Digory’s Norfolk suit and the Cabby’s howlet hat were as much parts of them as their own fur and feathers. They wouldn’t have known even that those three were all of the same kind if they hadn’t spoken to them and if Strawberry had not seemed to think so. And Uncle Andrew was a great deal taller than the children and a good deal thinner than the Cabby. He was all in black except for his white waistcoat (not very white by now), and the great grey mop of his hair (now very wild indeed) didn’t look to them like anything they had seen in the three other humans. So it was only natural that they should be puzzled. Worst of all, he didn’t seem to be able to talk.
He had tried to. When the Bulldog spoke to him (or, as he thought, first snarled and then growled at him) he held out his shaking hand and gasped “Good Doggie, then, poor old fellow.” But the beasts could not understand him any more than he could understand them. They didn’t hear any words: only a vague sizzling noise. Perhaps it was just as well they didn’t, for no dog that I ever knew, least of all a Talking Dog of Narnia, likes being called a Good Doggie then; any more than you would like being called My Little Man.
Then Uncle Andrew dropped down in a dead faint.
“There!” said a Warthog, “it’s only a tree. I always thought so.” (Remember, they had never yet seen a faint or even a fall.)
The Bulldog, who had been sniffing Uncle Andrew all over, raised its head and said, “It’s an animal. Certainly an animal. And probably the same kind as those other ones.”
“I don’t see that,” said one of the Bears. “An animal wouldn’t just roll over like that. We’re animals and we don’t roll over. We stand up. Like this.” He rose to his hind legs, took a step backwards, tripped over
a low branch and fell flat on his back.
“The Third Joke, the Third Joke, the Third joke!” said the Jackdaw in great excitement.
“I still think it’s a sort of tree,” said the Warthog.
“If it’s a tree,” said the other Bear, “there might be a bees’ nest in it.”
“I’m sure it’s not a tree,” said the Badger. “I had a sort of idea it was trying to speak before it toppled over.”
“That was only the wind in its branches,” said the Warthog.
“You surely don’t mean,” said the Jackdaw to the Badger, “that you think its a talking animal! It didn’t say any words.”
“And yet, you know,” said the Elephant (the She Elephant, of course; her husband, as you remember, had been called away by Aslan). “And yet, you know, it might be an animal of some kind. Mightn’t the whitish lump at this end be a sort of face? And couldn’t those holes be eyes and a mouth? No nose, of course. But then—ahem—one mustn’t be narrow-minded. Very few of us have what could exactly be called a Nose.” She squinted down the length of her own trunk with pardonable pride.
“I object to that remark very strongly,” said the Bulldog.
“The Elephant is quite right,” said the Tapir.
“I tell you what!” said the Donkey brightly, “perhaps it’s an animal that can’t talk but thinks it can.”
“Can it be made to stand up?” said the Elephant thoughtfully. She took the limp form of Uncle Andrew gently in her trunk and set him up on end: upside down, unfortunately, so that two half-sovereigns, three halfcrowns, and a sixpence fell out of his pocket. But it was no use. Uncle Andrew merely collapsed again.
“There!” said several voices. “It isn’t an animal at all, It’s not alive.”
“I tell you, it is an animal,” said the Bulldog. “Smell it for yourself.”
“Smelling isn’t everything,” said the Elephant.
“Why,” said the Bulldog, “if a fellow can’t trust his nose, what is he to trust?”
“Well, his brains perhaps,” she replied mildly.
“I object to that remark very strongly,” said the Bulldog.
“Well, we must do something about it,” said the Elephant. “Because it may be the Neevil, and it must be shown to Aslan. What do most of us think? Is it an animal or something of the tree kind?”
“Tree! Tree!” said a dozen voices.
“Very well,” said the Elephant. “Then, if it’s a tree it wants to be planted. We must dig a hole.”
The two Moles settled that part of the business pretty quickly. There was some dispute as to which way up Uncle Andrew ought to be put into the hole, and he had a very narrow escape from being put in head foremost. Several animals said his legs must be his branches and therefore the grey, fluffy thing (they meant his head) must be his root. But then others said that the forked end of him was the muddier and that it spread out more, as roots ought to do. So finally he was planted right way up. When they had patted down the earth it came up above his knees.
“It looks dreadfully withered,” said the Donkey.
“Of course it wants some watering,” said the Elephant.
“I think I might say (meaning no offence to anyone present) that, perhaps, for that sort of work, my kind of nose—”
“I object to that remark very strongly,” said the Bulldog. But the Elephant walked quietly to the river, filled her trunk with water, and came back to attend to Uncle Andrew. The sagacious animal went on doing this till gallons of water had been squirted over him, and water was running out of the skirts of his frock-coat as if he had been for a bath with all his clothes on. In the end it revived him. He awoke from his faint. What a wake it was! But we must leave him to think over his wicked deed (if he was likely to do anything so sensible) and turn to more important things.
Strawberry trotted on with Digory on his back till the noise of the other animals died away, and now the little group of Aslan and his chosen councillors was quite close. Digory knew that he couldn’t possibly break in on so solemn a meeting, but there was no need to do so. At a word from Aslan, the He-Elephant, the Ravens, and all the rest of them drew aside. Digory slipped off the horse and found himself face to face with Aslan. And Aslan was bigger and more beautiful and more brightly golden and more terrible than he had thought. He dared not look into the great eyes.
“Please—Mr Lion—Aslan—Sir,” said Digory, “could you—may I—please, will you give me some magic fruit of this country to make Mother well?”
He had been desperately hoping that the Lion would say “Yes”; he had been horribly afraid it might say “No”. But he was taken aback when it did neither.
“This is the Boy,” said Aslan, looking, not at Digory, but at his councillors. “This is the Boy who did it.”
“Oh dear,” thought Digory, “what have I done now?”
“Son of Adam,” said the Lion. “There is an evil Witch abroad in my new land of Narnia. Tell these good Beasts how she came here.”
A dozen different things that he might say flashed through Digory’s mind, but he had the sense to say nothing except the exact truth.
“I brought her, Aslan,” he answered in a low voice.
“For what purpose?”
“I wanted to get her out of my own world back into her own. I thought I was taking her back to her own place.”
“How came she to be in your world, Son of Adam?”
“By—by Magic.”
The Lion said nothing and Digory knew that he had not told enough.
“It was my Uncle, Aslan,” he said. “He sent us out of our own world by magic rings, at least I had to go because he sent Polly first, and then we met the Witch in a place called Charn and she just held on to us when—”
“You met the Witch?” said Asian in a low voice which had the threat of a growl in it.
“She woke up,” said Digory wretchedly. And then, turning very white, “I mean, I woke her. Because I wanted to know what would happen if I struck a bell. Polly didn’t want to. It wasn’t her fault. I—I fought her. I know I shouldn’t have. I think I was a bit enchanted by the writing under the bell.”
“Do you?” asked Asian; still speaking very low and deep. .
“No,” said Digory. “I see now I wasn’t. I was only pretending.”
There was a long pause. And Digory was thinking all the time, “I’ve spoiled everything. There’s no chance of getting anything for Mother now.”
When the Lion spoke again, it was not to Digory.
“You see, friends,” he said, “that before the new, clean world I gave you is seven hours old, a force of evil has already entered it; waked and brought hither by this son of Adam.” The Beasts, even Strawberry, all turned their eyes on Digory till he felt that he wished the ground would swallow him up. “But do not be cast down,” said Aslan, still speaking to the Beasts. “Evil will come of that evil, but it is still a long way off, and I will see to it that the worst falls upon myself. In the meantime, let us take such order that for many hundred years yet this shall be a merry land in a merry world. And as Adam’s race has done the harm, Adam’s race shall help to heal it. Draw near, you other two.”
The last words were spoken to Polly and the Cabby who had now arrived. Polly, all eyes and mouth, was staring at Aslan and holding the Cabby’s hand rather tightly. The Cabby gave one glance at the Lion, and took off his bowler hat: no one had yet seen him without it. When it was off, he looked younger and nicer, and more like a countryman and less like a London cabman.
“Son,” said Aslan to the Cabby. “I have known you long. Do you know me?”
“Well, no, sir,” said the Cabby. “Leastways, not in an ordinary manner of speaking. Yet I feel somehow, if I may make so free, as ’ow we’ve met before.”
“It is well,” said the Lion. “You know better than you think you know, and you shall live to know me better yet. How does this land please you?”
“It’s a fair treat, sir,” said the Cabby.
&nbs
p; “Would you like to live here always?”
“Well you see sir, I’m a married man,” said the Cabby. “If my wife was here neither of us would ever want to go back to London, I reckon. We’re both country folks really.”
Aslan threw up his shaggy head, opened his mouth, and uttered a long, single note; not very loud, but full of power. Polly’s heart jumped in her body when she heard it. She felt sure that it was a call, and that anyone who heard that call would want to obey it and (what’s more) would be able to obey it, however many worlds and ages lay between. And so, though she was filled with wonder, she was not really astonished or shocked when all of a sudden a young woman, with a kind, honest face stepped out of nowhere and stood beside her. Polly knew at once that it was the Cabby’s wife, fetched out of our world not by any tiresome magic rings, but quickly, simply and sweetly as a bird flies to its nest. The young woman had apparently been in the middle of a washing day, for she wore an apron, her sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and there were soapsuds on her hands. If she had had time to put on her good clothes (her best hat had imitation cherries on it) she would have looked dreadful; as it was, she looked rather nice.
Of course she thought she was dreaming. That was why she didn’t rush across to her husband and ask him what on earth had happened to them both. But when she looked at the Lion she didn’t feel quite so sure it was a dream, yet for some reason she did not appear to be very frightened. Then she dropped a little half curtsey, as some country girls still knew how to do in those days. After that, she went and put her hand in the Cabby’s and stood there looking round her a little shyly.
“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 their enemies when enemies arise. And enemies will arise, for there is an evil Witch in this world.”
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