Prince Caspian: Chapters 1–4

They had travelled together as far as this station, which was a junction; and here, in a few minutes, one train would arrive and take the girls away to one school, and in about half an hour another train would arrive and the boys would go off to another school.

Next moment the luggage, the seat, the platform, and the station had completely vanished.

With some difficulty, and with some stings from nettles and pricks from thorns, they struggled out of the thicket.

The shore that they were walking on drew nearer and nearer to the opposite shore, and as they came round each promontory the children expected to find the place where the two joined.

Hermits and knights-errant and people like that always manage to live somehow if they're in a forest.

They had to stoop under branches and climb over branches, and they blundered through great masses of stuff like rhododendrons and tore their clothes and got their feet wet in the stream; and still there was no noise at all except the noise of the stream and the noises they were making themselves.

Pressing their way between the laden branches they reached the wall.

That was the dais where the High Table was, where the King and the great lords sat. Anyone would think you had forgotten that we ourselves were once Kings and Queens and sat on a dais just like that, in our great hall.

Just picture a roof on this, and a coloured pavement instead of grass, and tapestries on the walls, and you get our royal banqueting hall.

In between the suits of armour, and on each side of the path, were shelves covered with precious things—necklaces and arm rings and finger rings and golden bowls and dishes and long tusks of ivory, brooches and coronets and chains of gold, and heaps of unset stones lying piled anyhow as if they were marbles or potatoes—diamonds, rubies, carbuncles, emeralds, topazes and amethysts.

There was something sad and a little frightening about the place, because it all seemed so forsaken and long ago.

But whether by some magic in the air of the treasure chamber or not, the bow was still in working order.

"We reigned for years and years and learned to do things. Aren't we just back at our proper ages again now?"

He floundered away to the far bank and Peter knew that Susan's arrow had struck on his helmet.

In a few seconds they had hauled her to the bank and lifted the Dwarf out, and Edmund was busily engaged in cutting his bonds with the pocket knife.

"Anyway," he continued, "ghosts or not, you've saved my life and I'm extremely obliged to you."

You've no idea what an appetite it gives one, being executed.

"There's only apples," said Lucy dolefully.

The Dwarf, who was a most capable person (and, indeed, though one meets bad Dwarfs, I never heard of a Dwarf who was a fool), cut the fish open, cleaned them, and said: "Now, what we want next is some firewood."

He would have made much more fuss about this if he had not by now been so ravenously hungry.

"We're a kind of rebellion, I suppose."

"I insist upon being answered. Look me in the face. Who has been telling you this pack of lies?"

"It was your Highness's ancestor, Caspian the First," said Doctor Cornelius, "who first conquered Narnia and made it his kingdom.

This didn't seem to have anything to do with Old Narnia, which was what Caspian really wanted to hear about, but getting up in the middle of the night is always interesting and he was moderately pleased.

"The virtue of this tower," said Doctor Cornelius, "is that we have six empty rooms beneath us, and a long stair, and the door at the bottom of the stair is locked. We cannot be overheard."

It is the country of Aslan, the country of the Waking Trees and Visible Naiads, of Fauns and Satyrs, of Dwarfs and Giants, of the gods and the Centaurs, of Talking Beasts.

The other was sheer delight—"There are real Dwarfs still, and I've seen one at last."

I am one of those, only a half-Dwarf, and if any of my kindred, the true Dwarfs, are still alive anywhere in the world, doubtless they would despise me and call me a traitor.

I have been looking for traces of them all my life.

But because they have quarrelled with the trees they are afraid of the woods.