the lion the witch and the wardrobe pages

The horse part of them was like huge English farm horses, and the man part was like stern but beautiful giants. There were Tree-Women there and Well-Women (Dryads and Naiads as they used to be called in our world) who had stringed instruments it was they who had made the music. While they were looking at this they heard a sound of music on their right and turning in that direction they saw what they had come to see.ĩ2 / The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Aslan stood in the center of a crowd of creatures who had grouped themselves round him in the shape of a half-moon. A wonderful pa- vilion it was-and especially now when the light of the setting sun fell upon it-with sides of what looked like yellow silk and cords of crimson and tent-pegs of ivory and high above it on a pole a banner which bore a red rampant lion fluttering in the breeze which was blowing in their faces from the far-off sea. The next thing they saw was a pa- vilion pitched on one side of the open place. They gave you a curious feeling when you looked at them. It looked very old and it was cut all over with strange lines and figures that might be the letters of an unknown language. It was a great grim slab of gray stone suppor- ted on four upright stones. “By gum!” whispered Peter to Susan, “the sea!” In the very middle of this open hilltop was the Stone Table. There, far to the East, was something twinkling and moving. They were on a green open space from which you could look down on the forest spreading as far as one could see in every direction-except right ahead. And just as Lucy was wondering whether she could really get to the top without another long rest, sud- denly they were at the top. The climb, coming at the end of the long day, made them all pant and blow. Beaver, and began leading them uphill across some very deep, springy moss (it felt nice under their tired feet) in a place where only tall trees grew, very wide apart. And now the sun got low and the light got redder and the shadows got longer and the flowers began to think about closing. Even if this had not been their way they couldn’t have kept to the river valley once the thaw began, for with all that melting snow the river was soon in flood-a wonderful, roaring, thundering yellow flood-and their path would have been under water. They had left the course of the big river some time ago for one had to turn a little to the right (that meant a little to the south) to reach the place of the Stone Table. Lewis / 91 when one is coming to the end of a long day in the open.

The lion the witch and the wardrobe pages