C. S. Lewis - Narnia 1 - The Magician' s Nephew

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THE MAGICIAN'S NEPHEW
BY
C. S. LEWIS
CHAPTER ONE
THE WRONG DOOR
This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. It is a
very important story because it shows how all the comings and goings between our own world and the
land of Narnia first began.
In those days Mr Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street and the Bastables were looking
for treasure in the Lewisham Road. In those days, if you were a boy you had to wear a stiff Eton
collar every day, and schools were usually nastier than now. But meals were nicer; and as for
sweets, I won't tell you how cheap and good they were, because it would only make your mouth water
in vain. And in those days there lived in London a girl called Polly Plummer.
She lived in one of a long row of houses which were all joined together. One morning she was out
in the back garden when a boy scrambled up from the garden next door and put his face over the
wall. Polly was very surprised because up till now there had never been any children in that
house, but only Mr Ketterley and Miss Ketterley, a brother and sister, old bachelor and old maid,
living together. So she looked up, full of curiosity. The face of the strange boy was very grubby.
It could hardly have been grubbier if he had first rubbed his hands in the earth, and then had a
good cry, and then dried his face with his hands. As a matter of fact, this was very nearly what
he had been doing.
"Hullo," said Polly.
"Hullo," said the boy. "What's your name?"
"Polly," said Polly. "What's yours?"
"Digory," said the boy.
"I say, what a funny name!" said Polly.
"It isn't half so funny as Polly," said Digory.
"Yes it is," said Polly.
"No, it isn't," said Digory.
"At any rate I do wash my face," said Polly, "Which is what you need to do; especially after -"
and then she stopped. She had been going to say "After you've been blubbing," but she thought that
wouldn't be polite.
"Alright, I have then," said Digory in a much louder voice, like a boy who was so miserable that
he didn't care who knew he had been crying. "And so would you," he went on, "if you'd lived all
your life in the country and had a pony, and a river at the bottom of the garden, and then been
brought to live in a beastly Hole like this."
"London isn't a Hole," said Polly indignantly. But the boy was too wound up to take any notice of
her, and he went on "And if your father was away in India - and you had to come and live with an
Aunt and an Uncle who's mad (who would like that?) - and if the reason was that they were looking
after your Mother - and if your Mother was ill and was going to - going to - die." Then his face
went the wrong sort of shape as it does if you're trying to keep back your tears.
"I didn't know. I'm sorry," said Polly humbly. And then, because she hardly knew what to say, and
also to turn Digory's mind to cheerful subjects, she asked:
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"Is Mr Ketterley really mad?"
"Well either he's mad," said Digory, "or there's some other mystery. He has a study on the top
floor and Aunt Letty says I must never go up there. Well, that looks fishy to begin with. And then
there's another thing. Whenever he tries to say anything to me at meal times - he never even tries
to talk to her - she always shuts him up. She says, "Don't worry the boy, Andrew" or "I'm sure
Digory doesn't want to hear about that" or else "Now, Digory, wouldn't you like to go out and play
in the garden?"
"What sort of things does he try to say?"
"I don't know. He never gets far enough. But there's more than that. One night - it was last night
in fact - as I was going past the foot of the attic-stairs on my way to bed (and I don't much care
for going past them either) I'm sure I heard a yell."
"Perhaps he keeps a mad wife shut up there."
"Yes, I've thought of that."
"Or perhaps he's a coiner."
"Or he might have been a pirate, like the man at the beginning of Treasure Island, and be always
hiding from his old shipmates."
"How exciting!" said Polly, "I never knew your house was so interesting." .
"You may think it interesting," said Digory. "But you wouldn't like it if you had to sleep there.
How would you like to lie awake listening for Uncle Andrew's step to come creeping along the
passage to your room? And he has such awful eyes."
That was how Polly and Digory got to know one another: and as it was just the beginning of the
summer holidays and neither of them was going to the sea that year, they met nearly every day.
Their adventures began chiefly because it was one of the wettest and coldest summers there had
been for years. That drove them to do indoor things: you might say, indoor exploration. It is
wonderful how much exploring you can do with a stump of candle in a big house, or in a row of
houses. Polly had discovered long ago that if you opened a certain little door in the box-room
attic of her house you would find the cistern and a dark place behind it which you could get into
by a little careful climbing. The dark place was like a long tunnel with brick wall on one side
and sloping roof on the other. In the roof there were little chunks of light between the slates.
There was no floor in this tunnel: you had to step from rafter to rafter, and between them there
was only plaster. If you stepped on this you would find yourself falling through the ceiling of
the room below. Polly had used the bit of the tunnel just beside the cistern as a smugglers' cave.
She had brought up bits of old packing cases and the seats of broken kitchen chairs, and things of
that sort, and spread them across from rafter to rafter so as to make a bit of floor. Here she
kept a cash-box containing various treasures, and a story she was writing and usually a few
apples. She had often drunk a quiet bottle of ginger-beer in there: the old bottles made it look
more like a smugglers' cave.
Digory quite liked the cave (she wouldn't let him see the story) but he was more interested in
exploring.
"Look here," he said. "How long does this tunnel go on for? I mean, does it stop where your house
ends?"
"No," said Polly. "The walls don't go out to the roof. It goes on. I don't know how far."
"Then we could get the length of the whole row of houses."
"So we could," said Polly, "And oh, I say!"
"What?"
"We could get into the other houses."
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"Yes, and get taken up for burglars! No thanks."
"Don't be so jolly clever. I was thinking of the house beyond yours." ,
"What about it?"
"Why, it's the empty one. Daddy says it's always been empty since we came here."
"I suppose we ought to have a look at it then," said Digory. He was a good deal more excited than
you'd have thought from the way he spoke. For of course he was thinking, just as you would have
been, of all the reasons why the house might have been empty so long. So was Polly. Neither of
them said the word "haunted". And both felt that once the thing had been suggested, it would be
feeble not to do it.
"Shall we go and try it now?" said Digory.
"Alright," said Polly.
"Don't if you'd rather not," said Digory.
"I'm game if you are," said she.
"How are we to know we're in the next house but one?" They decided they would have to go out into
the boxroom and walk across it taking steps as long as the steps from one rafter to the next. That
would give them an idea of how many rafters went to a room. Then they would allow about four more
for the passage between the two attics in Polly's house, and then the same number for the maid's
bedroom as for the box-room. That would give them the length of the house. When they had done that
distance twice they would be at the end of Digory's house; any door they came to after that would
let them into an attic of the empty house.
"But I don't expect it's really empty at all," said Digory.
"What do you expect?"
"I expect someone lives there in secret, only coming in and out at night, with a dark lantern. We
shall probably discover a gang of desperate criminals and get a reward. It's all rot to say a
house would be empty all those years unless there was some mystery."
"Daddy thought it must be the drains," said Polly.
"Pooh! Grown-ups are always thinking of uninteresting explanations," said Digory. Now that they
were talking by daylight in the attic instead of by candlelight in the Smugglers' Cave it seemed
much less likely that the empty house would be haunted.
When they had measured the attic they had to get a pencil and do a sum. They both got different
answers to it at first, and even when they agreed I am not sure they got it right. They were in a
hurry to start on the exploration.
"We mustn't make a sound," said Polly as they climbed in again behind the cistern. Because it was
such an important occasion they took a candle each (Polly had a good store of them in her cave).
It was very dark and dusty and draughty and they stepped from rafter to rafter without a word
except when they whispered to one another, "We're opposite your attic now" or "this must be
halfway through our house". And neither of them stumbled and the candles didn't go out, and at
last they came where they could see a little door in the brick wall on their right. There was no
bolt or handle on this side of it, of course, for the door had been made for getting in, not for
getting out; but there was a catch (as there often is on the inside of a cupboard door) which they
felt sure they would be able to turn.
"Shall I?" said Digory.
"I'm game if you are," said Polly, just as she had said before. Both felt that it was becoming
very serious, but neither would draw back. Digory pushed round the catch with some difficultly.
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The door swung open and the sudden daylight made them blink. Then, with a great shock, they saw
that they were looking, not into a deserted attic, but into a furnished room. But it seemed empty
enough. It was dead silent. Polly's curiosity got the better of her. She blew out her candle and
stepped out into the strange room, making no more noise than a mouse.
It was shaped, of course, like an attic, but furnished as a sitting-room. Every bit of the walls
was lined with shelves and every bit of the shelves was full of books. A fire was burning in the
grate (you remember that it was a very cold wet summer that year) and in front of the fire-place
with its back towards them was a high-backed armchair. Between the chair and Polly, and filling
most of the middle of the room, was a big table piled with all sorts of things printed books, and
books of the sort you write in, and ink bottles and pens and sealing-wax and a microscope. But
what she noticed first was a bright red wooden tray with a number of rings on it. They were in
pairs - a yellow one and a green one together, then a little space, and then another yellow one
and another green one. They were no bigger than ordinary rings, and no one could help noticing
them because they were so bright. They were the most beautiful shiny little things you can
imagine. If Polly had been a very little younger she would have wanted to put one in her mouth.
The room was so quiet that you noticed the ticking of the clock at once. And yet, as she now
found, it was not absolutely quiet either. There was a faint - a very, very faint - humming sound.
If Hoovers had been invented in those days Polly would have thought it was the sound of a Hoover
being worked a long way off - several rooms away and several floors below. But it was a nicer
sound than that, a more musical tone: only so faint that you could hardly hear it.
"It's alright; there's no one here," said Polly over her shoulder to Digory. She was speaking
above a whisper now. And Digory came out, blinking and looking extremely dirty - as indeed Polly
was too.
"This is no good," he said. "It's not an empty house at all. We'd better bunk before anyone
comes."
"What do you think those are?" said Polly, pointing at the coloured rings.'
"Oh come on," said Digory. "The sooner-"
He never finished what he was going to say for at that moment something happened. The high-backed
chair in front of the fire moved suddenly and there rose up out of it - like a pantomime demon
coming up out of a trapdoor the alarming form of Uncle Andrew. They were not in the empty house at
all; they were in Digory's house and in the forbidden study! Both children said "O-o-oh" and
realized their terrible mistake. They felt they ought to have known all along that they hadn't
gone nearly far enough.
Uncle Andrew was tall and very thin. He had a long clean-shaven face with a sharply-pointed nose
and extremely bright eyes and a great tousled mop of grey hair.
Digory was quite speechless, for Uncle Andrew looked a thousand times more alarming than he had
ever looked before. Polly was not so frightened yet; but she soon was. For the very first thing
Uncle Andrew did was to walk across to the door of the room, shut it, and turn the key in the
lock. Then he turned round, fixed the children with his bright eyes, and smiled, showing all his
teeth.
"There!" he said. "Now my fool of a sister can't get at you!"
It was dreadfully unlike anything a grown-up would be expected to do. Polly's heart came into her
mouth, and she and Digory started backing towards the little door they had come in by. Uncle
Andrew was too quick for them. He got behind them and shut that door too and stood in front of it.
Then he rubbed his hands and made his knuckles crack. He had very long, beautifully white,
fingers.
"I am delighted to see you," he said. "Two children are just what I wanted."
"Please, Mr Ketterley," said Polly. "It's nearly my dinner time and I've got to go home. Will you
let us out, please?"
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"Not just yet," said Uncle Andrew. "This is too good an opportunity to miss. I wanted two
children. You see, I'm in the middle of a great experiment. I've tried it on a guinea-pig and it
seemed to work. But then a guinea-pig can't tell you anything. And you can't explain to it how to
come back."
"Look here, Uncle Andrew," said Digory, "it really is dinner time and they'll be looking for us in
a moment. You must let us out."
"Must?" said Uncle Andrew.
Digory and Polly glanced at one another. They dared not say anything, but the glances meant "Isn't
this dreadful?" and "We must humour him."
"If you let us go for our dinner now," said Polly, "we could come back after dinner."
"Ah, but how do I know that you would?" said Uncle Andrew with a cunning smile. Then he seemed to
change his mind.
"Well, well," he said, "if you really must go, I suppose you must. I can't expect two youngsters
like you to find it much fun talking to an old buffer like me." He sighed and went on. "You've no
idea how lonely I sometimes am. But no matter. Go to your dinner. But I must give you a present
before you go. It's not every day that I see a little girl in my dingy old study; especially, if I
may say so, such a very attractive young lady as yourself."
Polly began to think he might not really be mad after all.
"Wouldn't you like a ring, my dear?" said Uncle Andrew to Polly.
"Do you mean one of those yellow or green ones?" said Polly. "How lovely!"
"Not a green one," said Uncle Andrew. "I'm afraid I can't give the green ones away. But I'd be
delighted to give you any of the yellow ones: with my love. Come and try one on."
Polly had now quite got over her fright and felt sure that the old gentleman was not mad; and
there was certainly something strangely attractive about those bright rings. She moved over to the
tray.
"Why! I declare," she said. "That humming noise gets louder here. It's almost as if the rings were
making it."
"What a funny fancy, my dear," said Uncle Andrew with a laugh. It sounded a very natural laugh,
but Digory had seen an eager, almost a greedy, look on his face.
"Polly! Don't be a fool!" he shouted. "Don't touch them."
It was too late. Exactly as he spoke, Polly's hand went out to touch one of the rings. And
immediately, without a flash or a noise or a warning of any sort, there was no Polly. Digory and
his Uncle were alone in the room.
CHAPTER TWO
DIGORY AND HIS UNCLE
IT was so sudden, and so horribly unlike anything that had ever happened to Digory even in a
nightmare, that he let out a scream. Instantly Uncle Andrew's hand was over his mouth. "None of
that!" he hissed in Digory's ear. "If you start making a noise your Mother'll hear it. And you
know what a fright might do to her."
As Digory said afterwards, the horrible meanness of getting at a chap in that way, almost made him
sick. But of course he didn't scream again.
"That's better," said Uncle Andrew. "Perhaps you couldn't help it. It is a shock when you first
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see someone vanish. Why, it gave even me a turn when the guinea-pig did it the other night."
"Was that when you yelled?" asked Digory.
"Oh, you heard that, did you? I hope you haven't been spying on me?"
"No, I haven't," said Digory indignantly. "But what's happened to Polly?"
"Congratulate me, my dear boy," said Uncle Andrew, rubbing his hands. "My experiment has
succeeded. The little girl's gone - vanished - right out of the world."
"What have you done to her?"
"Sent her to - well - to another place."
"What do you mean?" asked Digory.
Uncle Andrew sat down and said, "Well, I'll tell you all about it. Have you ever heard of old Mrs
Lefay?"
"Wasn't she a great-aunt or something?" said Digory.
"Not exactly," said Uncle Andrew. "She was my godmother. That's her, there, on the wall."
Digory looked and saw a faded photograph: it showed the face of an old woman in a bonnet. And he
could now remember that he had once seen a photo of the same face in an old drawer, at home, in
the country. He had asked his Mother who it was and Mother had not seemed to want to talk about
the subject much. It was not at all a nice face, Digory thought, though of course with those early
photographs one could never really tell.
"Was there - wasn't there - something wrong about her, Uncle Andrew?" he asked.
"Well," said Uncle Andrew with a chuckle, "it depends what you call wrong. People are so narrow-
minded. She certainly got very queer in later life. Did very unwise things. That was why they shut
her up."
"In an asylum, do you mean?"
"Oh no, no, no," said Uncle Andrew in a shocked voice. "Nothing of that sort. Only in prison."
"I say!" said Digory. "What had she done?"
"Ah, poor woman," said Uncle Andrew. "She had been very unwise. There were a good many different
things. We needn't go into all that. She was always very kind to me."
"But look here, what has all this got to do with Polly? I do wish you'd -"
"All in good time, my boy," said Uncle Andrew. "They let old Mrs Lefay out before she died and I
was one of the very few people whom she would allow to see her in her last illness. She had got to
dislike ordinary, ignorant people, you understand. I do myself. But she and I were interested in
the same sort of things. It was only a few days before her death that she told me to go to an old
bureau in her house and open a secret drawer and bring her a little box that I would find there.
The moment I picked up that box I could tell by the pricking in my fingers that I held some great
secret in my hands. She gave it me and made me promise that as soon as she was dead I would burn
it, unopened, with certain ceremonies. That promise I did not keep."
"Well, then, it was jolly rotten of you," said Digory.
"Rotten?" said Uncle Andrew with a puzzled look.
"Oh, I see. You mean that little boys ought to keep their promises. Very true: most right and
proper, I'm sure, and I'm very glad you have been taught to do it. But of course you must
understand that rules of that sort, however excellent they may be for little boys - and servants -
and women - and even people in general, can't possibly be expected to apply to profound students
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and great thinkers and sages. No, Digory. Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from
common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely
destiny."
As he said this he sighed and looked so grave and noble and mysterious that for a second Digory
really thought he was saying something rather fine. But then he remembered the ugly look he had
seen on his Uncle's face the moment before Polly had vanished: and all at once he saw through
Uncle Andrew's grand words. "All it means," he said to himself, "Is that he thinks he can do
anything he likes to get anything he wants."
"Of course," said Uncle Andrew, "I didn't dare to open the box for a long time, for I knew it
might contain something highly dangerous. For my godmother was a very remarkable woman. The truth
is, she was one of the last mortals in this country who had fairy blood in her. (She said there
had been two others in her time. One was a duchess and the other was a charwoman.) In fact,
Digory, you are now talking to the last man (possibly) who really had a fairy godmother. There!
That'll be something for you to remember when you are an old man yourself."
"I bet she was a bad fairy," thought Digory; and added out loud. "But what about Polly?"
"How you do harp on that!" said Uncle Andrew. "As if that was what mattered! My first task was of
course to study the box itself. It was very ancient. And I knew enough even then to know that it
wasn't Greek, or Old Egyptian, or Babylonian, or Hittite, or Chinese. It was older than any of
those nations. Ah - that was a great day when I at last found out the truth. The box was
Atlantean; it came from the lost island of Atlantis. That meant it was centuries older than any of
the stone-age things they dig up in Europe. And it wasn't a rough, crude thing like them either.
For in the very dawn of time Atlantis was already a great city with palaces and temples and
learned men."
He paused for a moment as if he expected Digory to say something. But Digory was disliking his
Uncle more every minute, so he said nothing.
"Meanwhile," continued Uncle Andrew, "I was learning a good deal in other ways (it wouldn't be
proper to explain them to a child) about Magic in general. That meant that I came to have a fair
idea what sort of things might be in the box. By various tests I narrowed down the possibilities.
I had to get to know some - well, some devilish queer people, and go through some very
disagreeable experiences. That was what turned my head grey. One doesn't become a magician for
nothing. My health broke down in the end. But I got better. And at last I actually knew."
Although there was not really the least chance of anyone overhearing them, he leaned forward and
almost whispered as he said:
"The Atlantean box contained something that had been brought from another world when our world was
only just beginning."
"What?" asked Digory, who was now interested in spite of himself.
"Only dust," said Uncle Andrew. "Fine, dry dust. Nothing much to look at. Not much to show for a
lifetime of toil, you might say. Ah, but when I looked at that dust (I took jolly good care not to
touch it) and thought that every grain had once been in another world - I don't mean another
planet, you know; they're part of our world and you could get to them if you went far enough - but
a really Other World - another Nature another universe - somewhere you would never reach even if
you travelled through the space of this universe for ever and ever - a world that could be reached
only by Magic - well!" Here Uncle Andrew rubbed his hands till his knuckles cracked like
fireworks.
"I knew," he went on, "that if only you could get it into the right form, that dust would draw you
back to the place it had come from. But the difficulty was to get it into the right form. My
earlier experiments were all failures. I tried them on guinea-pigs. Some of them only died. Some
exploded like little bombs -"
"It was a jolly cruel thing to do," said Digory who had once had a guinea-pig of his own.
"How you do keep getting off the point!" said Uncle Andrew. "That's what the creatures were for.
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I'd bought them myself. Let me see - where was I? Ah yes. At last I succeeded in making the rings:
the yellow rings. But now a new difficulty arose. I was pretty sure, now, that a yellow ring would
send any creature that touched it into the Other Pace. But what would be the good of that if I
couldn't get them back to tell me what they had found there?"
"And what about them?" said Digory. "A nice mess they'd be in if they couldn't get back!"
"You will keep on looking at everything from the wrong point of view," said Uncle Andrew with a
look of impatience. "Can't you understand that the thing is a great experiment? The whole point of
sending anyone into the Other Place is that I want to find out what it's like."
"Well why didn't you go yourself then?"
Digory had hardly ever seen anyone so surprised and offended as his Uncle did at this simple
question. "Me? Me?" he exclaimed. "The boy must be mad! A man at my time of life, and in my state
of health, to risk the shock and the dangers of being flung suddenly into a different universe? I
never heard anything so preposterous in my life! Do you realize what you're saying? Think what
Another World means - you might meet anything anything."
"And I suppose you've sent Polly into it then," said Digory. His cheeks were flaming with anger
now. "And all I can say," he added, "even if you are my Uncle - is that you've behaved like a
coward, sending a girl to a place you're afraid to go to yourself."
"Silence, sir!" said Uncle Andrew, bringing his hand down on the table. "I will not be talked to
like that by a little, dirty, schoolboy. You don't understand. I am the great scholar, the
magician, the adept, who is doing the experiment. Of course I need subjects to do it on. Bless my
soul, you'll be telling me next that I ought to have asked the guinea-pigs' permission before I
used them! No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice. But the idea of my going myself is
ridiculous. It's like asking a general to fight as a common soldier. Supposing I got killed, what
would become of my life's work?"
"Oh, do stop jawing," said Digory. "Are you going to bring Polly back?"
"I was going to tell you, when you so rudely interrupted me," said Uncle Andrew, "that I did at
last find out a way of doing the return journey. The green rings draw you back."
"But Polly hasn't got a green ring."
"No " said Uncle Andrew with a
cruel smile.
"Then she can't get back," shouted Digory. "And it's exactly the same as if you'd murdered her.
"She can get back," said Uncle Andrew, "if someone else will go after her, wearing a yellow ring
himself and taking two green rings, one to bring himself back and one to bring her back."
And now of course Digory saw the trap in which he was caught: and he stared at Uncle Andrew,
saying nothing, with his mouth wide open. His cheeks had gone very pale.
"I hope," said Uncle Andrew presently in a very high and mighty voice, just as if he were a
perfect Uncle who had given one a handsome tip and some good advice, "I hope, Digory, you are not
given to showing the white feather. I should be very sorry to think that anyone of our family had
not enough honour and chivalry to go to the aid of - er - a lady in distress."
"Oh shut up!" said Digory. "If you had any honour and all that, you'd be going yourself. But I
know you won't. Alright. I see I've got to go. But you are a beast. I suppose you planned the
whole thing, so that she'd go without knowing it and then I'd have to go after her."
"Of course," said Uncle Andrew with his hateful smile.
"Very well. I'll go. But there's one thing I jolly well mean to say first. I didn't believe in
Magic till today. I see now it's real. Well if it is, I suppose all the old fairy tales are more
or less true. And you're simply a wicked, cruel magician like the ones in the stories. Well, I've
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never read a story in which people of that sort weren't paid out in the end, and I bet you will
be. And serve you right."
Of all the things Digory had said this was the first that really went home. Uncle Andrew started
and there came over his face a look of such horror that, beast though he was, you could almost
feel sorry for him. But a second later he smoothed it all away and said with a rather forced
laugh, "Well, well, I suppose that is a natural thing for a child to think - brought up among
women, as you have been. Old wives' tales, eh? I don't think you need worry about my danger,
Digory. Wouldn't it be better to worry about the danger of your little friend? She's been gone
some time. If there are any dangers Over There - well, it would be a pity to arrive a moment too
late."
"A lot you care," said Digory fiercely. "But I'm sick of this jaw. What have I got to do?"
"You really must learn to control that temper of yours, my boy," said Uncle Andrew coolly.
"Otherwise you'll grow up like your Aunt Letty. Now. Attend to me."
He got up, put on a pair of gloves, and walked over to the tray that contained the rings.
"They only work," he said, "if they're actually touching your skin. Wearing gloves, I can pick
them up - like this - and nothing happens. If you carried one in your pocket nothing would happen:
but of course you'd have to be careful not to put your hand in your pocket and touch it by
accident. The moment you touch a yellow ring, you vanish out of this world. When you are in the
Other Place I expect - of course this hasn't been tested yet, but I expect - that the moment you
touch a green ring you vanish out of that world and - I expect - reappear in this. Now. I take
these two greens and drop them into your right-hand pocket. Remember very carefully which pocket
the greens are in. G for green and R for right. G.R. you see: which are the first two letters of
green. One for you and one for the little girl. And now you pick up a yellow one for yourself. I
should put it on on your finger - if I were you. There'll be less chance of dropping it."
Digory had almost picked up the yellow ring when he suddenly checked himself.
"Look here," he said. "What about Mother? Supposing she asks where I am?"
"The sooner you go, the sooner you'll be back," said Uncle Andrew cheerfully.
"But you don't really know whether I can get back."
Uncle Andrew shrugged his shoulders, walked across to the door, unlocked it, threw it open, and
said:
"Oh very' well then. Just as you please. Go down and have your dinner. Leave the little girl to be
eaten by wild animals or drowned or starved in Otherworld or lost there for good, if that's what
you prefer. It's all one to me. Perhaps before tea time you'd better drop in on Mrs Plummer and
explain that she'll never see her daughter again; because you were afraid to put on a ring."
"By gum," said Digory, "don't I just wish I was big enough to punch your head!"
Then he buttoned up his coat, took a deep breath, and picked up the ring. And he thought then, as
he always thought afterwards too, that he could not decently have done anything else.
CHAPTER THREE
THE WOOD BETWEEN THE WORLDS
UNCLE ANDREW and his study vanished instantly. Then, for a moment, everything became muddled. The
next thing Digory knew was that there was a soft green light coming down on him from above, and
darkness below. He didn't seem to be standing on anything, or sitting, or lying. Nothing appeared
to be touching him. "I believe I'm in water," said Digory. "Or under water." This frightened him
for a second, but almost at once he could feel that he was rushing upwards. Then his head suddenly
came out into the air and, he found himself scrambling ashore, out on to smooth grassy ground at
the edge of a pool.
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As he rose to his feet he noticed that he was neither dripping nor panting for breath as anyone
would expect after being under water. His clothes were perfectly dry. He was standing by the edge
of a small pool - not more than ten feet from side to side in a wood. The trees grew close
together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light
that came through the leaves: but there must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green
daylight was bright and warm. It was the quietest wood you could possibly imagine. There were no
birds, no insects, no animals, and no wind. You could almost feel the trees growing. The pool he
had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others - a pool every few yards as
far as his eyes could reach. You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their
roots. This wood was very much alive. When he tried to describe it afterwards
Digory always said, "It was a rich place: as rich as plumcake."
The strangest thing was that, almost before he had looked about him, Digory had half forgotten how
he had come there. At any rate, he was certainly not thinking about Polly, or Uncle Andrew, or
even his Mother. He was not in the least frightened, or excited, or curious. If anyone had asked
him "Where did you come from?" he would probably have said, "I've always been here." That was what
it felt like - as if one had always been in that place and never been bored although nothing had
ever happened. As he said long afterwards, "It's not the sort of place where things happen. The
trees go on growing, that's all."
After Digory had looked at the wood for a long time he noticed that there was a girl lying on her
back at the foot of a tree a few yards away. Her eyes were nearly shut but not quite, as if she
were just between sleeping and waking. So he looked at her for a long time and said nothing. And
at last she opened her eyes and looked at him for a long time and she also said nothing. Then she
spoke, in a dreamy, contented sort of voice.
"I think I've seen you before," she said.
"I rather think so too," said Digory. "Have you been here long?"
"Oh, always," said the girl. "At least - I don't know a very long time."
"So have I," said Digory.
"No you haven't, said she. "I've just seen you come up out of that pool."
"Yes, I suppose I did," said Digory with a puzzled air, "I'd forgotten."
Then for quite a long time neither said any more.
"Look here," said the girl presently, "I wonder did we ever really meet before? I had a sort of
idea - a sort of picture in my head - of a boy and a girl, like us - living somewhere quite
different - and doing all sorts of things. Perhaps it was only a dream."
"I've had that same dream, I think," said Digory. "About a boy and a girl, living next door - and
something about crawling among rafters. I remember the girl had a dirty face."
"Aren't you getting it mixed? In my dream it was the boy who had the dirty face."
"I can't remember the boy's face," said Digory: and then added, "Hullo! What's that?"
"Why! it's a guinea-pig," said the girl. And it was - a fat guinea-pig, nosing about in the grass.
But round the middle of the guinea-pig there ran a tape, and, tied on to it by the tape, was a
bright yellow ring.
"Look! look," cried Digory, "The ring! And look! You've got one on your finger. And so have I."
The girl now sat up, really interested at last. They stared very hard at one another, trying to
remember. And then, at exactly the same moment, she shouted out "Mr Ketterley" and he shouted out
"Uncle Andrew", and they knew who they were and began to remember the whole story. After a few
minutes hard talking they had got it straight. Digory explained how beastly Uncle Andrew had been.
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file:///F|/rah/C.%20S.%20Lewis/CS%20Lewis%20-%201%20-%20The%20Magician's\%20Nephew.txtTHEMAGICIAN'SNEPHEWBYC.S.LEWISCHAPTERONETHEWRONGDOORThisisastoryaboutsomethingthathappenedlongagowhenyourgrandfa\therwasachild.Itisaveryimportantstorybecauseitshowshowallthecomingsandgoingsbet\weenourownworldandthe...

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