CHAPTER TEN
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THE RETURN OF THE LION To keep along the edge of the ge was not so easy as it had looked. Before they had gone many yards they were fronted with young fir woods growing on the very edge, and after they had tried to gh these, stooping and pushing for about ten mihey realized that, in there, it would take them an hour to do half a mile. So they came bad out again and decided to go round the fir wood. This took them much farther to their right than they wao go, far out of sight of the cliffs and out of sound of the river, till they began to be afraid they had lost it altogether. Nobody khe time, but it was getting to the hottest part of the day.When they were able at last to go back to the edge of the ge (nearly a mile below the point from which they had started) they found the cliffs on their side of it a good deal lower and more broken. Soon they found a way down into the ge and tihe jour the rivers edge. But first they had a rest and a long drink. No one was talking any more about breakfast, or even dinner, with Caspian.
They may have been wise to stick to the Rush instead of going along the top. It kept them sure of their dire: and ever sihe fir wood they had all been afraid of being forced too far out of their course and losing themselves in the wood. It was an old and pathless forest, and you could not keep anything like a straight course in it. Patches of hopeless brambles, fallen trees, boggy places and dense undergrowth would be always getting in your way. But the ge of the Rush was not at all a nice place for travelliher. I mean, it was not a nice place for people in a hurry. For an afternoons ramble ending in a piic tea it would have been delightful. It had everything you could want on an occasion of that sort - rumbling waterfalls, silver cascades, deep, amber-coloured pools, mossy rocks, and deep moss on the banks in which you could sink over your ankles, every kind of fern, jewel-like dragon flies, sometimes a hawk overhead and once (Peter and Trumpkin. both thought) an eagle. But of course what the children and the Dwarf wao see as soon as possible was the Great River below them, and Beruna, and the way to Aslans How.
As they went on, the Rush began to fall more and more steeply. Their journey became more and more of a climb and less and less of a walk - in places even a dangerous climb over slippery rock with a nasty drop into dark chasms, and the river r angrily at the bottom.
You may be sure they watched the cliffs on their left eagerly for any sign of a break or any place where they could climb them; but those cliffs remained cruel. It was maddening, because everyone khat if ohey were out of the ge on that side, they would have only a smooth slope and a fairly short walk to Caspians headquarters.
The boys and the Dwarf were now in favour of lighting a fire and cooking their bear-meat. Susan didnt want this; she only wanted, as she said, "to get on and finish it a out of these beastly woods". Lucy was far too tired and miserable to have any opinion about anything. But as there was no dry wood to be had, it mattered very little what ahought. The boys began to wonder if raw meat was really as nasty as they had always been told. Trumpkin assured them it was.
Of course, if the children had attempted a journey like this a few days ago in England, they would have been knocked up. I think I have explained before how Narnia was altering them. Even Lucy was by now, so to speak, only ohird of a little girl going to b school for the first time, and two-thirds of Queen Lucy of Narnia.
"At last!" said Susan.
"Oh, hurray!" said Peter.
The river ge had just made a bend and the whole view spread out beh them. They could see open try stretg before them to the horizon and, between it and them, the broad silver ribbon of the Great River. They could see the specially broad and shallow place which had once been the Fords of Beruna but was now spanned by a long, many-arched bridge. There was a little town at the far end of it.
"By Jove," said Edmund. "We fought the Battle of Beruna just where that town is!”
This cheered the boys more than anything. You t help feeling stronger when you look at a place where you won a glorious victory not to mention a kingdom, hundreds of years ago. Peter and Edmund were soon so busy talking about the battle that they fot their sore feet and the heavy drag of their mail shirts on their shoulders. The Dwarf was ied too.
They were all getting on at a quicker paow. The going became easier. Though there were still sheer cliffs on their left, the ground was being lower on their right. Soon it was no le at all, only a valley. There were no more waterfalls and presently they were in fairly thick woods again.
Then - all at once - whizz, and a sound rather like the stroke of a woodpecker. The children were still w where (ages ago) they had heard a sound just like that and why they disliked it so, when Trumpkin shouted, "Down, at the same moment f Lucy (who happeo be o him) flat down into the bra. Peter, who had been looking up to see if he could spot a squirrel, had seen what it was - a long cruel arrow had sunk into a tree trunk just above his head. As he pulled Susan down and dropped himself, another came rasping over his shoulder and struck the ground at his si<s>..</s>de.
"Quick! Quick! Get back! ?9９lib.Crawl!" parumpkin.
They turned and wriggled along uphill, uhe bra amid clouds of horribly buzzing flies. Arrows whizzed round them. Oruck Susa with a sharp ping and glanced off. They crawled quicker. Soured off them. Then they ran, stooping nearly double. The boys held their swords in their hands for fear they would trip them up.
It was heart-breaking work - all uphill again, back over the ground they had already travelled. When they felt that they really couldnt run any more, even to save their lives, they all dropped down in the damp moss beside a waterfall and behind a big boulder, panting. They were surprised to see how high they had already got.
They listened ily and heard no sound of pursuit.
"So thats all right," said Trumpkin, drawing a deep breath. "Theyre not searg the wood. Only sentries, I expect. But it means that Miraz has an outpost down there. Bottles and battledores! though, it was a hing.”
"I ought to have my head smacked fing us this way at all," said Peter.
"On the trary, your Majesty," said the Dwarf. "For ohing it wasnt you, it was your royal brother, King Edmund, who first suggested going by Glasswater.”
"Im afraid the D.L.F.s right," said Edmund, who had quite holy fotten this ever sihings began going wrong.
"And for another," tirumpkin, "if wed gone my way, wed have walked straight into that new outpost, most likely; or at least had just the same trouble avoiding it. I think this Glasswater route has turned out for the best.”
"A blessing in disguise," said Susan.
"Some disguise!" said Edmund.
"I suppose well have to ght up the ge again now," said Lucy.
"Lu, youre a hero," said Peter. "Thats the youve got today to saying I told you so. Lets get on.”
"And as soon as were well up into the forest," said Trumpkin, "whatever anyone says, Im going to light a fire and cook supper. But we must get well away from here.”
There is o describe how they toiled back up the ge. It retty hard work, but oddly enough everyo more cheerful. They were getting their sed wind; and the word supper had had a wonderful effect.
They reached the fir wood which had caused them so much trouble while it was still daylight, and bivouacked in a hollow just above it. It was tedious gathering the firewood; but it was grand when the fire blazed up and they began produg the damp and smeary parcels of bear-meat which would have been so very unattractive to anyone who ?had spent the day indoors. The Dwarf had splendid ideas about cookery. Each apple (they still had a few of these) was ed up in bears meat - as if it was to be apple dumpling with meat instead of pastry, only much thicker - and spiked on a sharp stid then roasted. And the juice of the apple worked all through the meat, like apple sauce with roast pork. Bear that has lived too mu other animals is not very nice, but bear that has had plenty of honey and fruit is excellent, and this turned out to be that sort of bear. It was a truly glorious meal. And, of course, no washing up - only lying back and watg the smoke from Trumpkins pipe and stretg oired legs and chatting. Everyo quite hopeful now about finding King Caspian tomorrow aing Miraz in a few days. It may not have been sensible of them to feel like this, but they did.
They dropped off to sleep one by one, but all pretty quickly.
Lucy woke out of the deepest sleep you imagine, with the feeling that the voice she liked best in the world had been calling her name. She thought at first it was her fathers voice, but that did not seem quite right. Thehought it eters voice, but that did not seem to fit either. She did not want to get up; not because she was still tired - on the trary she was wonderfully rested and all the aches had gone from her bones - but because she felt so extremely happy and fortable. She was looking straight up at the Narnian moo<big>.９９ｌiｂ?</big>n, which is larger than ours, and at the starry sky, for the place where they had bivouacked was paratively open.
"Lucy," came the call agaiher her fathers voior Peters. She sat up, trembling with excitement but not with fear. The moon was sht that the whole forest landscape around her was almost as clear as day, though it looked wilder. Behind her was the fir wood; away tht the jagged cliff-tops on the far side of the ge; straight ahead, open grass to where a glade of trees began about a bow-shot away. Lucy looked very hard at the trees of that glade.
"Why, I do believe theyre moving," she said to herself. "Theyre walking about.”
She got up, her heart beating wildly, and walked towards them. There was certainly a noise in the glade, a noise such as trees make in a high wind, though there was no wind tonight. Yet it was ly an ordinary treeher. Lucy felt there was a tune in
it, but she could not catch the tune any more than she had been able to catch the words wherees had so nearly talked to her the night before. But there was, at least, a lilt; she felt her ow wanting to dance as she got nearer. And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving moving in and out through one another as if in a plicated try dance. ("And I suppose," thought Lucy, "when trees da must be a very, very try dandeed.) She was almost among them now.
The first tree she looked at seemed at first glao be not a tree at all but a huge man with a shaggy beard and great bushes of hair. She was nhtened: she had seen such things before. But when she looked again he was only a tree, though he was still moving.
You couldnt see whether he had feet or roots, of course, because when trees move they dont walk on the surface of the earth; they wade in it as we do in water. The same thing happened with every tree she looked at. At one moment they seemed to be the friendly, lovely giant and giantess forms which the tree-people put on when some good magic has called them into full life: moment they all looked like trees again. But when they looked like trees, it was like strangely human trees, and when they looked like people, it was like strangely branchy and leafy people - and all the time that queer lilting, rustling, erry noise.
"They are almost awake, not quite," said Lucy. She knew she herself was wide awake, wider than anyone usually is.
She went fearlessly in among them, dang herself as she leaped this way and that to avoid being run into by these huge partners. But she was only half ied in them. She wao get beyond them to something else; it was from beyond them that the dear voice had called.
She soon got through them (half w whether she had been using her arms to push branches aside, or to take hands in a Great with big dancers who stooped to reach her) for they were really a ring of trees round a tral open place. She stepped out from among their shifting fusion of lovely lights and shadows.
A circle of grass, smooth as a law her eyes, with dark trees dang all round it.
And then - oh joy! For he was there: the huge Lion, shining white in the moonlight, with his huge black shadow underh him.
But for the movement of his tail he might have been a stone lion, but Luever thought of that. She opped to think whether he was a friendly lion or not. She rushed to him. She felt her heart would burst if she lost a moment. And the thing she knew was that she was kissing him and putting her arms as far round his neck as she could and burying her fa the beautiful rich silkiness of his mane.
"Aslan, Aslan. Dear Aslan," sobbed Lucy. "At last.”
The great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half sitting and half lyiween his front paws. He bent forward and just touched her h his tongue. His warm breath came all round her. She gazed up into the large wise face.
"Wele, child," he said.
"Aslan," said Lucy, "youre bigger.”
"That is because you are older, little one," answered he.
"Not because you are?”
"I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”
For a time she was so happy that she did not want to speak. But Aslan spoke.
"Lucy," he said, "we must not lie here for long. You have work in hand, and much time has been lost today.”
"Yes, wasnt it a shame?" said Lucy. "I saw you all right. They wouldnt believe me.
Theyre all so -”
From somewhere deep inside Aslans body there came the fai suggestion of a growl.
"Im sorry," said Lucy, who uood some of his moods. "I dido start slanging the others. But it wasnt my fault anyway, was it?”
The Lion looked straight into her eyes.
"Oh, Aslan," said Lucy. "You dont mean it was? How could I - I couldnt have left the others and e up to you alone, how could I? Dont look at me like that . . . oh well, I suppose I could. Yes, and it wouldnt have been alone, I know, not if I was with you. But what would have been the good?”
Aslan said nothing.
"You mean," said Lucy rather faintly, "that it would have turned out all right - somehow?
But how? Please, Aslan! Am I not to know?”
"To know what would have happened, child?" said Aslan. "No. Nobody is ever told that.”
"Oh dear," said Lucy.
"But anyone find out what will happen," said Aslan. "If you go back to the others now, and wake them up; ahem you have seen me again; and that you must all get up at ond follow me - what will happen? There is only one way of finding out.”
"Do you mean that is what you wao do?" gasped Lucy.
"Yes, little one," said Aslan.
"Will the others see you too?" asked Lucy.
"Certainly not at first," said Aslan. "Later on, it depends.”
"But they wont believe me!" said Lucy.
"It doesnt matter," said Aslan.
"Oh dear, oh dear," said Lucy. "And I was so pleased at finding you again. And I thought youd let me stay. And I thought youd e r in and frighten all the enemies away - like last time. And now everything is going to be horrid.”
"It is hard for you, little one," said Aslan. "But things never happen the same way twice.
It has been hard for us all in Narnia before now.”
Lucy buried her head in his mao hide from his face. But there must have been magi his mane. She could feel lion-strength going into her. Quite suddenly she sat up.
"Im sorry, Aslan," she said. "Im ready now.”
"Now you are a lioness," said Aslan. "And now all Narnia will be renewed. But e.
We have no time to lose.”
He got up and walked with stately, noiseless paces back to the belt of dang trees through which she had just e: and Lucy went with him, laying a rather tremulous hand on his mahe trees parted to let them through and for one sed assumed their human forms pletely. Lucy had a glimpse of tall and lovely wood-gods and wood-goddesses all bowing to the Lio moment they were trees again, but still bowing, with such graceful sweeps of brand trunk that their bowing was itself a kind of dance.
"Now, child," said Aslan, when they had left the trees behind them, "I will wait here. Go and wake the others ahem to follow. If they will not, then you at least must follow me alone.”
It is a terrible thing to have to wake four people, all older than yourself and all very tired, for the purpose of telling them something they probably wont believe and making them do something they certainly wont like. "I mustnt think about it, I must just do it,”
thought Lucy.
She went to Peter first and shook him. "Peter," she whispered in his ear, "wake up. Quick.
Aslan is here. He says weve got to follow him at once.”
"Certainly, Lu. Whatever you like," said Peter uedly. This was encing, but as Peter instantly rolled round ao sleep again it wasnt much use.
Theried Susan. Susan did really wake up, but only to say in her most annoying grown-up voice, "Youve been dreaming, Lucy. Go to sleep again.”
She tackled Edmu. It was very difficult to wake him, but when at last she had do he was really awake and sat up.
"Eh?" he said in a grumpy voice. "What are you talking about?”
She said it all ain. This was one of the worst parts of her job, for each time she said it, it sounded less ving.
"Aslan!" said Edmund, jumping up. "Hurray! Where?”
Lucy turned back to where she could see the Lion waiting, his patient eyes fixed upon her. "There," she said, pointing.
"Where?" asked Edmund again.
"There. There. Dont you see? Just this side of the trees.”
Edmund stared hard for a while ></a>and then said, "No. Theres nothing there. Youve got dazzled and muddled with the moonlight. One does, you know. I thought I saw something for a moment myself. Its only an optical what-do-you-call-it.”
"I see him all the time," said Lucy. "Hes looking straight at us.”
"Then why t I see him?”
"He said you mightnt be able to.”
"Why?”
"I dont know. Thats what he said.”
"Oh, bother it all," said Edmund. "I do wish you wouldnt keep on seeing things. But I suppose well have to wake the others.”
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