The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: Chapters 13–17

Summon all our people to meet me here as speedily as they can.

"And so," continued the Witch, "that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property."

"I have settled the matter. She has renounced the claim on your brother's blood."

"As soon as she has finished her business in these parts," he said, "the Witch and her crew will almost certainly fall back to her house and prepare for a siege. You may or may not be able to cut her off and prevent her from reaching it."

But he never moved. And this seemed to enrage all that rabble. Everyone was at him now.

Now I will kill you instead of him as our pact was and so the Deep Magic will be appeased.

But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation.

Then he opened a great red mouth, warm and living, and gave a prodigious yawn.

Instead of all that deadly white the courtyard was now a blaze of colours; glossy chestnut sides of centaurs, indigo horns of unicorns, dazzling plumage of birds, reddy-brown of foxes, dogs, and satyrs, yellow stockings and crimson hoods of dwarfs; and the birch-girls in silver, and the beech-girls in fresh, transparent green, and the larch-girls in green so bright that it was almost yellow.

And into the interior they all rushed and for several minutes the whole of that dark, horrible, fusty old castle echoed with the opening of windows and with everyone's voices crying out at once, "Don't forget the dungeons — Give us a hand with this door! Here's another little winding stair — Oh! I say. Here's a poor kangaroo. Call Aslan — Phew! How it smells in here — Look out for trap-doors — Up here! There are a whole lot more on the landing!"

And Peter's tired army cheered, and the newcomers roared, and the enemy squealed and gibbered till the wood re-echoed with the din of that onset.

And that night there was a great feast in Cair Paravel, and revelry and dancing, and gold flashed and wine flowed, and answering to the music inside, but stranger, sweeter, and more piercing, came the music of the sea people.

And they made good laws and kept the peace and saved good trees from being unnecessarily cut down, and liberated young dwarfs and young satyrs from being sent to school, and generally stopped busybodies and interferers and encouraged ordinary people who wanted to live and let live.

And it seems to me we should be shamed if for any fearing or foreboding we turned back from following so noble a beast as now we have in chase.

And next moment they all came tumbling out of a wardrobe door into the empty room, and they were no longer Kings and Queens in their hunting array but just Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy in their old clothes.