The Chronicles of Narnia Complete 7-Book Collection with Bonus Book

by C. S. Lewis

  The children got out of the boat and waded—not toward the wave but southward with the wall of water on their left. They could not have told you why they did this; it was their fate. And though they had felt—and been—very grown-up on the Dawn Treader, they now felt just the opposite and held hands as they waded through the lilies. They never felt tired. The water was warm and all the time it got shallower. At last they were on dry sand, and then on grass—a huge plain of very fine short grass, almost level with the Silver Sea and spreading in every direction without so much as a molehill.

  And of course, as it always does in a perfectly flat place without trees, it looked as if the sky came down to meet the grass in front of them. But as they went on they got the strangest impression that here at last the sky did really come down and join the earth—a blue wall, very bright, but real and solid: more like glass than anything else. And soon they were quite sure of it. It was very near now.

  But between them and the foot of the sky there was something so white on the green grass that even with their eagles’ eyes they could hardly look at it. They came on and saw that it was a Lamb.

  “Come and have breakfast,” said the Lamb in its sweet milky voice.

  Then they noticed for the first time that there was a fire lit on the grass and fish roasting on it. They sat down and ate the fish, hungry now for the first time for many days. And it was the most delicious food they had ever tasted.

  “Please, Lamb,” said Lucy, “is this the way to Aslan’s country?”

  “Not for you,” said the Lamb. “For you the door into Aslan’s country is from your own world.”

  “What!” said Edmund. “Is there a way into Aslan’s country from our world too?”

  “There is a way into my country from all the worlds,” said the Lamb; but as he spoke, his snowy white flushed into tawny gold and his size changed and he was Aslan himself, towering above them and scattering light from his mane.

  “Oh, Aslan,” said Lucy. “Will you tell us how to get into your country from our world?”

  “I shall be telling you all the time,” said Aslan. “But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder. And now come; I will open the door in the sky and send you to your own land.”

  “Please, Aslan,” said Lucy. “Before we go, will you tell us when we can come back to Narnia again? Please. And oh, do, do, do make it soon.”

  “Dearest,” said Aslan very gently, “you and your brother will never come back to Narnia.”

  “Oh, Aslan!!” said Edmund and Lucy both together in despairing voices.

  “You are too old, children,” said Aslan, “and you must begin to come close to your own world now.”

  “It isn’t Narnia, you know,” sobbed Lucy. “It’s you. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?”

  “But you shall meet me, dear one,” said Aslan.

  “Are—are you there too, Sir?” said Edmund.

  “I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”

  “And is Eustace never to come back here either?” said Lucy.

  “Child,” said Aslan, “do you really need to know that? Come, I am opening the door in the sky.” Then all in one moment there was a rending of the blue wall (like a curtain being torn) and a terrible white light from beyond the sky, and the feel of Aslan’s mane and a Lion’s kiss on their foreheads and then—the back bedroom in Aunt Alberta’s home in Cambridge.

  Only two more things need to be told. One is that Caspian and his men all came safely back to Ramandu’s Island. And the three lords woke from their sleep. Caspian married Ramandu’s daughter and they all reached Narnia in the end, and she became a great queen and the mother and grandmother of great kings. The other is that back in our own world everyone soon started saying how Eustace had improved, and how “You’d never know him for the same boy”: everyone except Aunt Alberta, who said he had become very commonplace and tiresome and it must have been the influence of those Pevensie children.

  THE SILVER CHAIR

  Dedication

  To Nicholas Hardie

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One: Behind the Gym

  Chapter Two: Jill Is Given a Task

  Chapter Three: The Sailing of the King

  Chapter Four: A Parliament of Owls

  Chapter Five: Puddleglum

  Chapter Six: The Wild Waste Lands of the North

  Chapter Seven: The Hill of the Strange Trenches

  Chapter Eight: The House of Harfang

  Chapter Nine: How They Discovered Something Worth Knowing

  Chapter Ten: Travels Without the Sun

  Chapter Eleven: In the Dark Castle

  Chapter Twelve: The Queen of Underland

  Chapter Thirteen: Underland Without the Queen

  Chapter Fourteen: The Bottom of the World

  Chapter Fifteen: The Disappearance of Jill

  Chapter Sixteen: The Healing of Harms

  Chapter One

  Behind the Gym

  IT WAS A DULL AUTUMN DAY AND JILL POLE WAS crying behind the gym.

  She was crying because they had been bullying her. This is not going to be a school story, so I shall say as little as possible about Jill’s school, which is not a pleasant subject. It was “Co-educational,” a school for both boys and girls, what used to be called a “mixed” school; some said it was not nearly so mixed as the minds of the people who ran it. These people had the idea that boys and girls should be allowed to do what they liked. And unfortunately what ten or fifteen of the biggest boys and girls liked best was bullying the others. All sorts of things, horrid things, went on which at an ordinary school would have been found out and stopped in half a term; but at this school they weren’t. Or even if they were, the people who did them were not expelled or punished. The Head said they were interesting psychological cases and sent for them and talked to them for hours. And if you knew the right sort of things to say to the Head, the main result was that you became rather a favorite than otherwise.

  That was why Jill Pole was crying on that dull autumn day on the damp little path which runs between the back of the gym and the shrubbery. And she hadn’t nearly finished her cry when a boy came round the corner of the gym whistling, with his hands in his pockets. He nearly ran into her.

  “Can’t you look where you’re going?” said Jill Pole.

  “All right,” said the boy, “you needn’t start—” and then he noticed her face. “I say, Pole,” he said, “what’s up?”

  Jill only made faces; the sort you make when you’re trying to say something but find that if you speak you’ll start crying again.

  “It’s Them, I suppose—as usual,” said the boy grimly, digging his hands farther into his pockets.

  Jill nodded. There was no need for her to say anything, even if she could have said it. They both knew.

  “Now, look here,” said the boy, “there’s no good us all—”

  He meant well, but he did talk rather like someone beginning a lecture. Jill suddenly flew into a temper (which is quite a likely thing to happen if you have been interrupted in a cry).

  “Oh, go away and mind your own business,” she said. “Nobody asked you to come barging in, did they? And you’re a nice person to start telling us what we all ought to do, aren’t you? I suppose you mean we ought to spend all our time sucking up to Them, and currying favor, and dancing attendance on Them like you do.”

  “Oh, Lor!” said the boy, sitting down on the grassy bank at the edge of the shrubbery and very quickly getting up again because the grass was soaking wet. His name unfortunately was Eustace Scrubb, but he wasn’t a bad sort.

  “Pole!” he said. “Is that fair? Have I been doing anything of the sort this term? Didn�
�t I stand up to Carter about the rabbit? And didn’t I keep the secret about Spivvins—under torture too? And didn’t I—”

  “I d-don’t know and I don’t care,” sobbed Jill.

  Scrubb saw that she wasn’t quite herself yet and very sensibly offered her a peppermint. He had one too. Presently Jill began to see things in a clearer light.

  “I’m sorry, Scrubb,” she said presently. “I wasn’t fair. You have done all that—this term.”

  “Then wash out last term if you can,” said Eustace. “I was a different chap then. I was—gosh! what a little tick I was.”

  “Well, honestly, you were,” said Jill.

  “You think there has been a change, then?” said Eustace.

  “It’s not only me,” said Jill. “Everyone’s been saying so. They’ve noticed it. Eleanor Blakiston heard Adela Pennyfather talking about it in our changing room yesterday. She said, ‘Someone’s got hold of that Scrubb kid. He’s quite unmanageable this term. We shall have to attend to him next.’”

  Eustace gave a shudder. Everyone at Experiment House knew what it was like being “attended to” by Them.

  Both children were quiet for a moment. The drops dripped off the laurel leaves.

  “Why were you so different last term?” said Jill presently.

  “A lot of queer things happened to me in the hols,” said Eustace mysteriously.

  “What sort of things?” asked Jill.

  Eustace didn’t say anything for quite a long time. Then he said:

  “Look here, Pole, you and I hate this place about as much as anybody can hate anything, don’t we?”

  “I know I do,” said Jill.

  “Then I really think I can trust you.”

  “Dam’ good of you,” said Jill.

  “Yes, but this is a really terrific secret. Pole, I say, are you good at believing things? I mean things that everyone here would laugh at?”

  “I’ve never had the chance,” said Jill, “but I think I would be.”

  “Could you believe me if I said I’d been right out of the world—outside this world—last hols?”

  “I wouldn’t know what you meant.”

  “Well, don’t let’s bother about worlds then. Supposing I told you I’d been in a place where animals can talk and where there are—er—enchantments and dragons—and—well, all the sorts of things you have in fairy-tales.” Scrubb felt terribly awkward as he said this and got red in the face.

  “How did you get there?” said Jill. She also felt curiously shy.

  “The only way you can—by Magic,” said Eustace almost in a whisper. “I was with two cousins of mine. We were just—whisked away. They’d been there before.”

  Now that they were talking in whispers Jill somehow felt it easier to believe. Then suddenly a horrible suspicion came over her and she said (so fiercely that for the moment she looked like a tigress):

  “If I find you’ve been pulling my leg I’ll never speak to you again; never, never, never.”

  “I’m not,” said Eustace. “I swear I’m not. I swear by—by everything.”

  (When I was at school one would have said, “I swear by the Bible.” But Bibles were not encouraged at Experiment House.)

  “All right,” said Jill, “I’ll believe you.”

  “And tell nobody?”

  “What do you take me for?”

  They were very excited as they said this. But when they had said it and Jill looked round and saw the dull autumn sky and heard the drip off the leaves and thought of all the hopelessness of Experiment House (it was a thirteen-week term and there were still eleven weeks to come) she said:

  “But after all, what’s the good? We’re not there: we’re here. And we jolly well can’t get there. Or can we?”

  “That’s what I’ve been wondering,” said Eustace. “When we came back from That Place, Someone said that the two Pevensie kids (that’s my two cousins) could never go there again. It was their third time, you see. I suppose they’ve had their share. But he never said I couldn’t. Surely he would have said so, unless he meant that I was to get back? And I can’t help wondering, can we—could we—?”

  “Do you mean, do something to make it happen?”

  Eustace nodded.

  “You mean we might draw a circle on the ground—and write in queer letters in it—and stand inside it—and recite charms and spells?”

  “Well,” said Eustace after he had thought hard for a bit. “I believe that was the sort of thing I was thinking of, though I never did it. But now that it comes to the point, I’ve an idea that all those circles and things are rather rot. I don’t think he’d like them. It would look as if we thought we could make him do things. But really, we can only ask him.”

  “Who is this person you keep on talking about?”

  “They call him Aslan in That Place,” said Eustace.

  “What a curious name!”

  “Not half so curious as himself,” said Eustace solemnly. “But let’s get on. It can’t do any harm, just asking. Let’s stand side by side, like this. And we’ll hold out our arms in front of us with the palms down: like they did in Ramandu’s Island—”

  “Whose island?”

  “I’ll tell you about that another time. And he might like us to face the east. Let’s see, where is the east?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jill.

  “It’s an extraordinary thing about girls that they never know the points of the compass,” said Eustace.

  “You don’t know either,” said Jill indignantly.

  “Yes I do, if only you didn’t keep on interrupting. I’ve got it now. That’s the east, facing up into the laurels. Now, will you say the words after me?”

  “What words?” asked Jill.

  “The words I’m going to say, of course,” answered Eustace. “Now—”

  And he began, “Aslan, Aslan, Aslan!”

  “Aslan, Aslan, Aslan,” repeated Jill.

  “Please let us two go into—”

  At that moment a voice from the other side of the gym was heard shouting out, “Pole? Yes. I know where she is. She’s blubbing behind the gym. Shall I fetch her out?”

  Jill and Eustace gave one glance at each other, dived under the laurels, and began scrambling up the steep, earthy slope of the shrubbery at a speed which did them great credit. (Owing to the curious methods of teaching at Experiment House, one did not learn much French or Maths or Latin or things of that sort; but one did learn a lot about getting away quickly and quietly when They were looking for one.)

  After about a minute’s scramble they stopped to listen, and knew by the noises they heard that they were being followed.

  “If only the door was open again!” said Scrubb as they went on, and Jill nodded. For at the top of the shrubbery was a high stone wall and in that wall a door by which you could get out on to open moor. This door was nearly always locked. But there had been times when people had found it open; or perhaps there had been only one time. But you may imagine how the memory of even one time kept people hoping, and trying the door; for if it should happen to be unlocked it would be a splendid way of getting outside the school grounds without being seen.

  Jill and Eustace, now both very hot and very grubby from going along bent almost double under the laurels, panted up to the wall. And there was the door, shut as usual.

  “It’s sure to be no good,” said Eustace with his hand on the handle; and then, “O-o-oh. By Gum!!” For the handle turned and the door opened.

  A moment before, both of them had meant to get through that doorway in double quick time, if by any chance the door was not locked. But when the door actually opened, they both stood stock still. For what they saw was quite different from what they had expected.

  They had expected to see the gray, heathery slope of the moor going up and up to join the dull autumn sky. Instead, a blaze of sunshine met them. It poured through the doorway as the light of a June day pours into a garage when you open the door. It made the drops of water
on the grass glitter like beads and showed up the dirtiness of Jill’s tear-stained face. And the sunlight was coming from what certainly did look like a different world—what they could see of it. They saw smooth turf, smoother and brighter than Jill had ever seen before, and blue sky, and, darting to and fro, things so bright that they might have been jewels or huge butterflies.

  Although she had been longing for something like this, Jill felt frightened. She looked at Scrubb’s face and saw that he was frightened too.

  “Come on, Pole,” he said in a breathless voice.

  “Can we get back? Is it safe?” asked Jill.

  At that moment a voice shouted from behind, a mean, spiteful little voice. “Now then, Pole,” it squeaked. “Everyone knows you’re there. Down you come.” It was the voice of Edith Jackle, not one of Them herself but one of their hangers-on and tale-bearers.

  “Quick!” said Scrubb. “Here. Hold hands. We mustn’t get separated.” And before she quite knew what was happening, he had grabbed her hand and pulled her through the door, out of the school grounds, out of England, out of our whole world into That Place.

  The sound of Edith Jackle’s voice stopped as suddenly as the voice on the radio when it is switched off. Instantly there was a quite different sound all about them. It came from those bright things overhead, which now turned out to be birds. They were making a riotous noise, but it was much more like music—rather advanced music which you don’t quite take in at the first hearing—than birds’ songs ever are in our world. Yet, in spite of the singing, there was a sort of background of immense silence. That silence, combined with the freshness of the air, made Jill think they must be on the top of a very high mountain.

  Scrubb still had her by the hand and they were walking forward, staring about them on every side. Jill saw that huge trees, rather like cedars but bigger, grew in every direction. But as they did not grow close together, and as there was no undergrowth, this did not prevent one from seeing a long way into the forest to left and right. And as far as Jill’s eye could reach, it was all the same—level turf, darting birds with yellow, or dragonfly blue, or rainbow plumage, blue shadows, and emptiness. There was not a breath of wind in that cool, bright air. It was a very lonely forest.