CHAPTER FIFTEEN
百度搜索 PRINCE CASPIAN 天涯 或 PRINCE CASPIAN 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.
ASLAN MAKES A DOOR IN THE AIR AT the sight of Aslan the cheeks of the Telmarine soldiers became the colour of cold gravy, their knees kogether, and many fell on their faces. They had not believedin lions and this made their fear greater. Even the Red Dwarfs, who khat he came as a friend, stood with open mouths and could not speak. Some of the Black Dwarfs, who had been of Nikabriks party, began to edge away. But all the Talking Beasts surged round the Lion, with purrs and grunts and squeaks and whinneys of delight, fawning on him with their tails, rubbing against him, toug him reverently with their noses and going t<df</dfn>o and fro under his body aween his legs. If you have ever seen a little cat loving a big dog whom it knows and trusts, you will have a pretty good picture of their behaviour. Theer, leading Caspian, forced his way through the crowd of animals.
"This is Caspian, Sir," he said. And Caspia and kissed the Lions paw.
"Wele, Prince," said Aslan. "Do you feel yourself suffit to take up the Kingship of Narnia?”
"I - I dont think I do, Sir," said Caspian. "Im only a kid.”
"Good," said Aslan. "If you had felt yourself suffit, it would have been a proof that you were not. Therefore, under us and uhe High King, you shall be King of Narnia, Lord of Cair Paravel, and Emperor of the Lone Islands. You and your heirs while your race lasts. And your ation - but what have we here?" For at that moment a curious little procession roag - eleven Mice, six of whom carried between them something on a litter made of branches, but the litter was no bigger than a large atlas. No one has ever seen mice more woebegohan these. They were plastered with mud some with blood too - and their ears were down and their whiskers drooped and their tails dragged in the grass, and their leader piped on his slender pipe a melancholy tune. Oter lay what seemed little better than a damp heap of fur; all that was left of Reepicheep. He was still breathing, but more dead than alive, gashed with innumerable wounds, one paw crushed, and, where his tail had been, a baump.
"Now, Lucy," said Aslan.
Lucy had her diamond bottle out in a moment. Though only a drop was needed on each of Reepicheeps wounds, the wounds were so many that there was a long and anxious silence before she had finished and the Master Mouse sprang from the litter. His ha at oo his sword hilt, with the other he twirled his whiskers. He bowed.
"Hail, Aslan!" came his shrill voice. "I have the honour -" But then he suddenly stopped.
The fact was that he still had no tail - whether that Lucy had fotten it or that her cordial, though it could heal wounds, could not make things grow again. Reepicheep became aware of his loss as he made his bow; perhaps it altered something in his balance.
He looked over his right shoulder. Failing to see his tail, he strained his neck further till he had to turn his shoulders and his whole body followed. But by that time his hind-quarters had turoo and were out of sight. Therained his neck looking over his shoulder again, with the same result. Only after he had turned pletely round three times did he realize the dreadful truth.
"I am founded," said Reepicheep to Aslan. "I am pletely out of tenance. I must crave your indulgence for appearing in this unseemly fashion.”
"It bees you very well, Small One," said Aslan.
"All the same," replied Reepicheep, "if anything could be done... Perhaps her Majesty?”
and here he bowed to Lucy.
"But what do you want with a tail?" asked Aslan.
"Sir," said the Mouse, "I eat and sleep and die for my King without one. But a tail is the honour and glory of a Mouse.”
"I have sometimes wondered, friend," said Aslan, "whether you do not think too much about your honour.”
"Highest of all High Kings," said Reepicheep, "permit me to remind you that a very small size has beeowed on us Mice, and if we did not guard nity, some (who weigh worth by inches) would allow themselves very unsuitable pleasantries at our expehat is why I have been at some pains to make it known that no one who does not wish to feel this sword as near his heart as I reach shall talk in my presence about Traps or Toasted Cheese or dles: no, Sir - not the tallest fool in Narnia!" Here he glared very fiercely up at Wimbleweather, but the Giant, who was always a stage behind everyone else, had not yet discovere<q>..</q>d what was being talked about down at his feet, and so missed the point.
"Why have your followers all drawn their swords, may I ask?" said Aslan.
"May it please yh Majesty," said the seouse, whose name eepiceek, "we are all waiting to cut off our own tails if our Chief must go without his. We will not bear the shame of wearing an honour which is deo the High Mouse.”
"Ah!" roared Aslan. "You have quered me. You have great hearts. Not for the sake of ynity, Reepicheep, but for the love that is between you and your people, and still more for the kindness your people showed me long ago when you ate away the cords that bound me ooable (and it was then, though you have long fotten it, that you began to be Talking Mice), you shall have your tail again.”
Before Aslan had finished speaking the ail was in its place. Then, at Aslans and, Peter bestowed the Knighthood of the Order of the Lion on Caspian, and Caspian, as soon as he was knighted, himself bestowed it on Trufflehunter and Trumpkin and Reepicheep, and made Doctor elius his Lord cellor, and firmed the Bulgy Bear in his hereditary offiarshal of the Lists. And there was great applause.
After this the Telmarine soldiers, firmly but without taunts or blows, were taken across the ford and all put under lod key iown of Beruna and given beef and beer.
They made a great fuss about wading in the river, for they all hated and feared running water just as much as they hated and feared woods and animals. But in the end the nuisance was over: and then the parts of that long day began.
Lucy, sitting close to Aslan and divinely fortable, wondered what the trees were doing. At first she thought they were merely dang; they were certainly going round slowly in two circles, one from left tht and the other frht to left. Theiced that they kept throwing something down in the tre of both circles. Sometimes she thought they were cutting off long strands of their hair; at other times it looked as if they were breaking off bits of their fingers - but, if so, they had plenty of fio spare and it did not hurt them. But whatever they were throwing down, whe<s></s>n it reached the ground, it became brushwood or dry sticks. Then three or four of the Red Dwarfs came forward with their tinder boxes a light to the pile, which first crackled, and then blazed, and finally roared as a woodland bonfire on midsummer night ought to do. And everyo down in a wide circle round it.
Then Bacchus and Silenus and the Maenads began a dance, far wilder than the dance of the trees; not merely a dance for fun ay (though it was that too) but a magice of plenty, and where their hands touched, and where their feet fell, the feast came ience sides of roasted meat that filled the grove with delicious smell, and wheaten cakes and oaten cakes, honey and many-coloured sugars and cream as thick as pe and as smooth as still water, peaches, arines, pomegranates, pears, grapes, strawberries, raspberries pyramids and cataracts of fruit. Then, i wooden cups and bowls and mazers, wreathed with ivy, came the wines; dark, thies like syrups of mulberry juice, and clear red ones like red jellies liquefied, and yellow wines and green wines and yellow-green and greenish-yellow.
But for the tree people different fare rovided. When Lucy saw Clodsley Shovel and his moles scuffling up the turf in various places (which Bacchus had pointed out to them)
and realized that the trees were going to eat earth it gave her rather a shudder. But when she saw the earths that were actually brought to them she felt quite different. They began with a rich brown loam that looked almost exactly like chocolate; so like chocolate, in fact, that Edmund tried a piece of it, but he did not find it at all nice. When the ri had taken the edge off their huhe trees turo ah of the kind you see in Somerset, which is almost pink. They said it was lighter and sweeter. At the<mark>藏书网</mark> cheese stage they had a chalky soil, and the on to delicate fes of the fi gravels powdered with choice silver sand. They drank very little wine, and it made the Hollies very talkative: for the most part they queheir thirst with deep draughts of mingled dew and rain, flavoured with forest flowers and the airy taste of the thi clouds.
Thus Aslaed the Narnians till long after the su had died away, and the stars had e out; and the great fire, now hotter but less noisy, shone like a bea in the dark woods, and the frighteelmarines saw it from far away and wondered what it might mean. The best thing of all about this feast was that there was no breaking up oing
away, but as the talk grew quieter and slower, oer another would begin to nod and finally drop off to sleep with feet towards the fire and good friends oher side, till at last there was silence all round the circle, and the chattering of water over sto the Ford of Beruna could be heard once more. But all night Aslan and the Moon gazed upon each other with joyful and unblinking eyes.
day messengers (who were chiefly squirrels and birds) were sent all over the try 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 heh belong to the Talkis and the Dwarfs and Dryads and Fauns and other creatures quite as much as to the men. Any who chose to stay uhe new ditions might do so; but for those who did not like the idea, Aslan would provide another home.
Anyone who wished to go there must e to Aslan and the Kings at the Ford of Beruna by noon on the fifth day. You may imagihat this caused plenty of head- scratg 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 e back. They were already making friends with the creatures. These all decided 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 try where they could not rule the roost. "Live here with a lot of blooming perf animals! No fear," they said. "And ghosts too," some added with a shudder. "Thats what those there Dryads really are. Its not y." They were also suspicious. "I dont trust em," they said. "Not with that awful Lion and all. He wont keep his claws off us long, youll see." But then they were equally suspicious of his offer to give them a new home. "Take us off to his den a us one by one most likely," they muttered. And the more they talked to one ahe sulkier and more suspicious they became. But on the appointed day more than half of them turned up.
At one end of the glade Aslan had caused to be set up two stakes of wood, higher than a mans head and about three feet apart. A third, and lighter, piece of wood was bound across them at the top, uniting them, so that the whole thing looked like a doorway from nowhere into nowhere. In front of this stood Aslan himself with Peter on his right and Caspian on his left. Grouped round them were Susan and Lucy, Trumpkin and Trufflehuhe Lord elius, Glenstorm, Reepicheep, and others. The children and the Dwarfs had made good use of the royal wardrobes in what had been the castle of Miraz and was now the castle of Caspian, and what with silk and cloth of gold, with snowy linen glang through slashed sleeves, with silver mail shirts and jewelled sword-hilts, with gilt helmets ahered bos, they were almost tht to look at.
Even the beasts wore rich s about their necks. Yet nobodys eyes were on them or the children. The living and strokable gold of Aslans mashohem all. The rest of the Old Narnians stood down each side of the glade. At the far end stood the Telmarines.
The sun shone brightly and pennants fluttered in the light wind.
"Men of Telmar," said Aslan, "you who seek a new land, hear my words. I will send you all to your own try, which I know and you do not.”
"We dont remember Telmar. We dont know where it is. We dont know what it is like,”
grumbled the Telmarines.
"You came into Narnia out of Telmar," said Aslan. "But you came into Telmar from another place. You do not belong to this world at all. You came hither, certain geions ago, out of that same world to which the High Kier belongs.”
At this, half the Telmarines began whimpering, "There you are. Told you so. Hes going to kill us all, send us right out of the world," and the other half began throwing out their chests and slapping one another on the bad whispering, "There you are. Might have guessed we didnt belong to this place with all its queer, nasty, unnatural creatures. Were of royal blood, youll see." And even Caspian and elius and the children turo Aslan with looks of amazement on their faces.
"Peace," said Aslan in the low voice which was o his growl. The earth seemed to shake a little and every living thing in the grove became still as stone.
"You, Sir Caspian," said Aslan, "might have known that you could be no true King of Narnia unless, like the Kings of old, you were a son of Adam and came from the world of Adams sons. And so you are. Many years ago in that world, in a deep sea of that world which is called the South Sea, a shipload of pirates were driven by storm on an island.
And there they did as pirates would: killed the natives and took the native women for wives, and made palm wine, and drank and were drunk, and lay in the shade of the palm trees, and woke up and quarrelled, and sometimes killed one another. And in one of these frays six were put to flight by the rest and fled with their women into the tre of the island and up a mountain, a, as they thought, into a cave to hide. But it was one of the magical places of that world, one of the ks or chasms between chat world and this. There were many ks or chasms between worlds in old times, but they have grown rarer. This was one of the last: I do not say the last. And so they fell, or rose, or blundered, or dropped right through, and found themselves in this world, in the Land of Telmar which was then unpeopled. But why it was unpeopled is a long story: I will not tell it now. And in Telmar their desdants lived and became a fierd proud people; and after many geions there was a famine in Telmar and they invaded Narnia, which was then in some disorder (but that also would be a long story), and quered it and ruled it. Do you mark all this well, King Caspian?”
"I do indeed, Sir," said Caspian. "I was wishing that I came of a more honourable lineage.”
"You e of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor oh. Be tent.”
Caspian bowed.
"And now," said Aslan, "you men and women of Telmar, will you go back to that island in the world of men from which your fathers first came? It is no bad place. The race of those pirates who first found it has died out, and it is without inhabitants. There are good wells of fresh water, and fruitful soil, and timber for building, and fish in the lagoons; and the other men of that world have not yet discovered it. The chasm is open for your return; but this I must warn you, that once you have gohrough, it will close behind you for ever. There will be no more erce between the worlds by that door.”
There was silence for a moment. Then a burly, det looking fellow among the Telmarine soldiers pushed forward and said: "Well, Ill take the offer.”
"It is well chosen," said Aslan. "And because you have spoken first, strong magic is upon you. Your future in that world shall be good. e forth.”
The man, now a little pale, came forward. Aslan and his court drew aside, leaving him free access to the empty doorway of the stakes.
"Gh it, my son," said Aslan, bending towards him and toug the mans h his own. As soon as the Lions breath came about him, a new look came into the mans eyes - startled, but not unhappy - as if he were trying to remember something. Then he squared his shoulders and walked into the Door.
Everyones eyes were fixed on him. They saw the three pieces of wood, and through them the trees and grass and sky of Narnia. They saw the maween the doorposts: then, in one sed, he had vaterly.
From the other end of the glade the remaining Telmarines set up a wailing. "Ugh! Whats happeo him? Do you mean to murder us? <u>藏书网</u>We wont go that way." And then one of the clever Telmarines said: "We dont see any other world through those sticks. If you want us to believe in it, why doesnt one of you go? All your own friends are keeping well away from the sticks.”
Instantly Reepicheep stood forward and bowed. "If my example be of any service, Aslan," he said, "I will take eleven mice through that arch at your bidding without a moments delay.”
"Nay, little one," said Aslan, laying his velvety paw ever so lightly on Reepicheeps head.
"They would do dreadful things to you in that world. They would show you at fairs. It is others who must lead.”
"e on," said Peter suddenly to Edmund and Lucy. "Our times up.”
"What do you mean?" said Edmund.
"This way," said Susan, who seemed to know all about it. "Bato the trees. Weve got to ge.”
"ge what?" asked Lucy.
"Our clothes, of course," said Susan. "Nice fools wed look on the platform of an English station in these.”
"But our other things are at Caspians castle," said Edmund.
"No, theyre not," said Peter, still leading the way into the thickest wood. "Theyre all here. They were brought down in buhis m. Its all arranged.”
"Was that what Aslan was talking to you and Susan about this m?" asked Lucy.
"Yes - that and other things," said Peter, his face very solemn. "I t tell it to you all.
There were things he wao say to Su and me because were not ing back to Narnia.”
"Never?" cried Edmund and Lu dismay.
"Oh, you two are," answered Peter. "At least, from what he said, Im pretty sure he means you to get bae day. But not Su and me. He says were getting too old.”
"Oh, Peter," said Lucy. "What awful bad luck. you bear it?”
"Well, I think I ," said Peter. "Its all rather different from what I thought. Youll uand when it es to your last time. But, quick, here are our things.”
It was odd, and not very o take off their royal clothes and to e ba their school things (not very fresh now) into that great assembly. One or two of the nastier Telmarines jeered. But the other creatures all cheered and rose up in honour of Peter the High King, and Queen Susan of the Horn, and King Edmund, and Queen Lucy. There were affeate and (on Lucys part) tearful farewells with all their old friends - animal kisses, and hugs from Bulgy Bears, and hands wrung by Trumpkin, and a last tickly, whiskerish embrace with Trufflehunter. And of course Caspian offered the Horn back to Susan and of course Susan told him to keep it. And then, wonderfully and terribly, it was farewell to Aslan himself, aer took his place with Susans hands on his shoulders and Edmunds on hers and Lucys on his and the first of the Telmarines on Lucys, and so in a long lihey moved forward to the Door. After that came a moment which is hard to describe, for the children seemed to be seeing three things at once. One was the mouth of a cave opening into the glaring green and blue of an island in the Pacific, where all the Telmarines would find themselves the moment they were through the Door. The sed was a glade in Narnia, the faces of Dwarfs as, the deep eyes of Aslan, and the white patches on the Badgers cheeks. But the third (which rapidly swallowed up the
other two) was the grey, gravelly surface of a platform in a try station, and a seat with luggage round it, where they were all sitting as if they had never moved from it - a little flat and dreary for a moment after all they; had been through, but also, uedly, ni its own way, what with the familiar railway smell and the English sky and the summer term before them.
"Well!" said Peter. "We have had a time.”
"Bother!" said Edmund. "Ive left my or Narnia.”
百度搜索 PRINCE CASPIAN 天涯 或 PRINCE CASPIAN 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.