CHAPTER SIXTEEN
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FAREWELL TO SHADOWLANDS IF one could run without getting tired, I dont think one would often want to do anything else. But there might be special reasons for stopping, and it ecial reason which made Eustace presently shout: "I say! Steady! Look what were ing to!”And well he might. For now they saw before them Caldron Pool and beyond the Pool the high unclimbable cliffs and, p down the cliffs, thousands of tons of water every sed, flashing like diamonds in some places and dark, glassy green in others, the Great Waterfall; and already the thunder of it was in their ears.
"Dont stop! Further up and further in," called Farsight, tilting his flight a little upwards.
"Its all very well for him," said Eustace, but Jewel also cried out: "Dont stop. Further up and further in! Take it in your stride.”
His voice could only just be heard above the roar of the water but moment everyone saw that he had plunged into the Pool. Aer-skelter behind him, with splash after splash, all the others did the same. The water was not biting cold as all of them (and especially Puzzle) expected, but of a delicious foamy ess. They all found they were swimming straight for the Waterfall itself.
"This is absolutely crazy," said Eustaund.
"I know. A -" said Edmund.
"Isnt it wonderful?" said Lucy. "Have you noticed one t feel afraid, even if one wants to? Try it.”
"By Jove, her one ," said Eustace after he had tried.
Jewel reached the foot of the Waterfall first, but Tirian was only just behind him. Jill was last, so she could see the whole thier thahers. She saw something white moving steadily up the face of the Waterfall. That white thing was the Uni. You couldnt tell whether he was swimming or climbing, but he moved on, higher and higher.
The point of his horn divided the water just above his head, and it cascaded out in two rainbow-coloured streams all round his shoulders. Just behind him came King Tirian. He moved his legs and arms as if he were swimming but he moved straight upwards: as if one could swim up the wall of a house.
What looked fu was the Dogs. During the gallop they had not been at all out of breath, but now, as they swarmed and9９ｌiｂ? wriggled upwards, there lenty of spluttering and sneezing among them; that was because they would keep on barking, and every time they barked they got their mouths and noses full of water. But before Jill had time to notice all these things fully, she was going up the Waterfall herself. It was the sort of thing that would have been quite impossible in our world. Even if you hadnt been drowned, you would have been smashed to pieces by the terrible weight of water against the tless jags of rock. But in that world you could do it. You went on, up and up, with all kinds of reflected lights flashing at you from the water and all manner of coloured stones flashing through it, till it seemed as if you were climbing up light itself - and always higher and higher till the sense of height would have terrified you if you could be terrified, but later it was only gloriously exg. And then at last one came to the lovely, smooth green curve in which the water poured over the top and found that one was out on the level river above the Waterfall. The current was rag away behind you,
but you were such a wonderful swimmer that you could make headway against it. Soon they were all on the bank, dripping buthappy.
A long valley opened ahead and great snow-mountains, now muearer, stood up against the sky.
"Further up and further in," cried Jewel and instantly they were off again.
They were out of Narnia now and up into the Western Wild whieither Tirian nor Peter nor even the Eagle had ever seen before. But the Lord Digory and the Lady Polly had. "Do you remember? Do you remember?" they said - and said it in steady voices too, without panting, though the whole party was now running faster than an arrow flies.
"What, Lord?" said Tirian. "Is it then true, as stories tell, that you two journeyed here on the very day the world was made?”
"Yes," said Digory, "and it seems to me as if it were only yesterday.”
"And on a flying horse?" asked Tirian. "Is that part true?”
"Certainly," said Digory. But the Dogs barked, "Faster, faster!”
So they ran faster and faster till it was more like flying than running, and even the Eagle overhead was going no faster than they. And they went through winding valley after winding valley and up the steep sides of hills and, faster than ever, down the other side, following the river and sometimes crossing it and skimming across mountainlakes as if they were living speed-boats, till at last at the far end of one long lake which looked as blue as a turquoise, they saw a smooth green hill. Its sides were as steep as the sides of a pyramid and round the very top of it ran a green wall: but above the wall rose the branches of trees whose leaves looked like silver and their fruit like gold.
"Further up and further in!" roared the Uni, and no one held back. They charged straight at the foot of the hill and then found themselves running up it almost as water from a broken wave runs up a rock out at the point of some bay. Though the slope was nearly as steep as the roof of a house and the grass was smooth as a bowling green, no one slipped. Only when they had reached the very top did they slow up; that was because they found themselves fag great golden gates. And for a moment none of them was bold enough to try if the gates would open. They all felt just as they had felt about the fruit "Dare we? Is it right? it be meant for us?”
But while they were standing thus a great horn, wonderfully loud and sweet, blew from somewhere ihat walled garden and the gates swung open.
Tirian stood holding his breath and w who would e out. And what came was the last thing he had expected: a little, sleek, bright-eyed Talking Mouse with a red
feather stu a circlet on its head and its left paw resting on a long sword. It bowed, a most beautiful bow, and said in its shrill voice: "Wele, in the Lions name. e further up and further in.”
Then Tirian saw Kier and King Edmund and Queen Lucy rush forward to kneel down and greet the Mouse and they all cried out "Reepicheep!" And Tirian breathed fast with the sheer wonder of it, for now he khat he was looking at one of the great heroes of Narnia, Reepicheep the Mouse who had fought at the great Battle of Beruna and afterwards sailed to the Worlds end with King Caspian the Seafarer. But before he had had much time to think of this he felt tw arms thrown about him a a bearded kiss on his cheeks and heard a well remembered voice saying: "What, lad? Art thicker and taller since I last touched thee!”
It was his own father, the good King Erlian: but not as Tirian had seen him last when they brought him home pale and wounded from his fight with the giant, nor even as Tirian remembered him in his later years when he was a grey-headed warrior. This was his father, young and merry, as he could just remember him from very early days when he himself had been a little boy playing games with his father in the castle garden at Cair Paravel, just before bedtime on summer evenings. The very smell of the bread-and-milk he used to have for supper came ba.
Jewel thought to himself, "I will leave them to talk for a little and then I will go and greet the good King Erlian. Many a bright apple has he given me when I was but a colt." But moment he had something else to think of, for out of the gateway there came a horse so mighty and hat even a Uniight feel shy in its presence: a great winged horse. It looked a moment at the Lord Digory and the Lady Polly and neighed out "What, cousins!" and they both shouted "Fledge! Good old Fledge!" and rushed to kiss it.
But by now the Mouse was again urging them to e in. So all of them passed in through the golden gates, into the delicious smell that blew towards them out of that garden and into the ixture of sunlight and shadow uhe trees, walking on springy turf that was all dotted with white flowers. The very first thing which struck everyone was that the place was far larger than it had seemed from outside. But no one had time to think about that for people were ing up to meet the newers from every dire.
Everyone you had ever heard of (if you khe history of these tries) seemed to be there. There was Glimfeather the Ouddleglum the Marshwiggle, and King Rilian the Disented, and his mother the Stars daughter and his great father Caspian himself.
And close beside him were the Lord Drinian and the Lord Berne and Trumpkin the Dwarf and Truffle-huhe good Badger with Glenstorm the taur and a huher heroes of the great War of Deliverance. And then from another side came Cor the King of Arland with King Lune his father and his wife Queen Aravis and the brave prince Thunder-Fist, his brother, and Bree the Horse and Hwin the Mare. And then
- which was a wonder beyond all woo Tirian - there came from further away in the past, the two good Beavers and Tumnus the Faun. And there was greeting and kissing and hand-shaking and old jokes revived, (youve no idea how good an old joke sounds when you take it out again after a rest of five or six hundred years) and the whole pany moved forward to the tre of the orchard where the Phoenix sat in a tree and looked down upon them all, and at the foot of that tree were two thrones and in those two thrones a King and Queen so great aiful that everyone bowed down before them.
Ahey might, for these two were King Frank and Queen Helen from whom all the most a Kings of Narnia and Arland are desded. And Tiria as you would feel if you were brought before Adam and Eve in all their glory.
About half an hour later - or it might have been half a hundred years later, for time there is not like time here - Lucy stood with her dear friend, her oldest Narnian friend, the Faun Tumnus, looking dowhe wall of that garden, and seeing all Narnia spread out below. But when you looked down you found that this hill was much higher than you had thought: it sank down with shining cliffs, thousands of feet below them and trees in that lower world looked no bigger than grains of green salt. Theurned inward again and stood with her back to the wall and looked at the garden.
"I see," she said at last, thoughtfully. "I see now. This garden is like the stable. It is far bigger ihan it was outside.”
"Of course, Daughter of Eve," said the Faun. "The further up and the further in you go, the bigger everythis. The inside is larger thaside.”
Lucy looked hard at the garden and saw that it was not really a garden but a whole world, with its own rivers and woods and sea and mountains. But they were not strange: she khem all.
"I see," she said. "This is still Narnia, and more real and more beautiful then the Narnia down below, just as it was more real and more beautiful than the Narnia outside the stable door! I see... world within world, Narnia within <s></s>Narnia...”
"Yes," said Mr Tumnus, "like an onion: except that as you go in and in, each circle is larger than the last.”
And Lucy looked this way and that and soon found that a new aiful thing had happeo her. Whatever she looked at, however far away it might be, once she had fixed her eyes steadily on it, became quite clear and close as if she were looking through a telescope. She could see the whole Souther and beyond it the g.. city of Tashbaan: to Eastward she could see Cair Paravel on the edge of the sea and the very window of the room that had once been her own. And far out to sea she could discover the islands, islands after islands to the end of the world, and, beyond the end, the huge mountain which they had called Aslans try. But now she saw that it art of a great of mountains which ringed round the whole world. In front of her it seemed to e quite close. Then she looked to her left and saw what she took to be a great bank of
brightly-coloured cloud, cut off from them by a gap. But she looked harder and saw that it was not a cloud at all but a real land. And when she had fixed her eyes on one particular spot of it, she at once cried out, "Peter! Edmund! e and look! e quickly." And they came and looked, for their eyes also had bee like hers.
"Whys" exclaimed Peter. "Its England. And thats the house itself - Professor Kirks old home in the try where all our adventures began!”
"I thought that house had beeroyed," said Edmund.
"So it was," said the Faun. "But you are now looking at the England within England, the real England just as this is the real Narnia. And in that inner England no good thing is destroyed.”
Suddenly they shifted their eyes to another spot, and theer and Edmund and Lucy gasped with amazement and shouted out and began waving: for there they saw their own father and mother, waving back at them across the great, deep valley. It was like when you see people waving at you from the deck of a big ship when you are waiting on the quay to meet them.
"How we get at them?" ?said Lucy.
"That is bbr></abbr>easy," said Mr Tumnus. "That try and this try - all the real tries - are only spurs jutting out from the great mountains of Aslan. We have only to walk along the ridge, upward and inward, till it joins on. And listen! There is King Franks horn: we must all go up.”
And soon they found themselves all walking together and a great, bright procession it was - up towards mountains higher than you could see in this world even if they were there to be seen. But there was no snow on those mountains: there were forests and green slopes and sweet orchards and flashing waterfalls, one above the oing up forever.
And the land they were walking on grew narrower all the time, with a deep valley on each side: and across that valley the land which was the real England grew nearer and nearer.
The light ahead was growing stronger. Lucy saw that a great series of many -coloured cliffs led up in front of them like a giants staircase. And then she fot everything else, because Aslan himself was ing, leaping down from cliff to cliff like a living cataract of power ay.
And the very first person whom Aslan called to him uzzle the Donkey. You never saw a donkey look feebler and sillier than Puzzle did as he walked up to Aslan, and he looked, beside Aslan, as small as a kitten looks beside a St Bernard. The Lion bowed down his head and whispered something to Puzzle at which his long ears went down, but then he said something else at which the ears perked up again. The humans couldnt hear what he had said either time. Then Aslan turo them and said:
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