Narnia

Awhile after the Earthmen left off tying up the lunatic prince-person to the chair, we went back into the room. He warned us that while he was raving, we were not to untie him, no matter what he said. We swore we wouldn’t. After all, who would want to set a crazed serpent-man loose on themselves? That resolve held firm until he started his moanings and ravings. At first it was as he said it would be: he begged and threatened and cried to be released. He told us this was the only time he was ever sane: the rest of his waking hours was lunacy and enchantments. If he ever did get free and we did not help him, we would be his mortal enemies. Though he was convincing, we stood firm. But then he charged us in Aslan’s name to set him free. That was the fourth sign that Aslan had given us. The prince would be the first person who asked us to do something in Aslan’s name. Though we were afraid of the results and sure of our own deaths, we said goodbye to each other and cut the ropes that bound him to the chair. As soon as he was free, he grabbed his own sword and destroyed the chair. Then he turned around as if seeing us for the first time, recognized me as a Marshwiggle (I had gotten quite tired of being called Froggy and Frog-foot) and introduced himself as Prince Rilian of Narnia. No sooner had we finished telling him who we were, what we were doing there, and about his father than two Earthmen and the green lady entered the room.

She was quite shocked (as well she might be) and possibly angry to see the prince out of his chair. When Rilian accused her of being a witch she threw some sort of powder on the fire and started strumming this lute thing and that, for some reason, threw a fog over our brains. She tried to enchant us all by arguing circles around us and convincing us that the sun and Overworld and Narnia and all other worlds were not real. The sun was not real. Aslan was not real. That is when somehow, someway, I found my foot in the fire. Literally. My foot was burned terribly and it will probably never heal or get infected and the have to be cut off or some other thing like that, but it woke everyone (including me…pain is a great stimulant) up enough to realize what exactly was going on. And then I lost my temper and told the witch that even if our world was imaginary, I would rather live there than underground with her and we’d be leaving to look for our imaginary Narnia or (the most likely option) die trying.

That was when things got even more interesting. The witch turned herself into a very large snake and attacked us but between Rilian, Scrubb and I, we managed to hack its head off. After we had refreshed ourselves with some food and wine, and a bandage for my foot, we started talking about how we were to get out of Underland. Then we noticed a noise coming from outside. There was shouting that seemed to be coming from the previously-silent Earthmen, and a roaring coming from the lake. It was at that point I decided that the world was probably going to collapse on us at any time. There was also a red glow coming from some place; and I felt sure it was a volcano forming. So then it was a debate to whether or not the volcano would erupt and melt us before we were buried alive. To make matters better, the lake was rising. I added drowning to the death-equation. Even though death seemed inevitable, we all decided to try for escaping anyway, and so we left the castle, took the two horses in the stable, and started riding for the diggings that had been underway for the witch’s invasion. While we rode, we kept seeing Earthmen darting about into the shadows. Possible death by ground-creatures appeared on my list. Just to see what they were up to and what their quarrel was with us, I snuck up behind one and caught it so we could interrogate it. It turns out it was all a misunderstanding. They were afraid that we had come out to fight them while they were trying to get back to their home in the even deeper land of Bism (they had been under an enchantment too), and we were afraid that they were come to fight us while we tried to escape. We almost lost the prince and Scrubb there for a moment because that gnome thing I caught invited us down to his land of Bism (that was what the red glow was; a rift down to Bism) and they both wished to go for the adventure, but Pole and I talked them out of it. The Earthmen left, the rift closed, and we were left alone to find our way to the diggings. There were lamps in the road that we followed and by Aslan’s mercy led us to the diggings. We kept riding until we could go no further. A wall of earth stood in our way, with only a small hole of light coming in from the top. I raised Pole onto my shoulders so she could see what it was, and then she fell through we didn’t know what happened to her for some time. We all felt sure I had let her go to her death and could do nothing about it because there was no way we could go after her.

After awhile of sadness and wondering what to do now that we had lost Pole and were stuck underground for all eternity, Scrubb convinced me to let him climb up on his shoulders so he could see through the hole, and then he got pulled through too. Pole stuck her head in the hole and told us everything was all right, but at that point I felt certain that this whole trip had gotten to her and she had cracked under the pressure. Then it was left for me and the prince and the horses to sit an await our fate, whatever that might be (starvation, dehydration, drowning from the rising lake, death from the ruthless barbarians on the other side of the wall). Not long after that, though, a mass of dirt came tumbling down on us and moonlight came through and then dwarves and talking beasts were helping us out of the hole and we found ourselves back in Narnia again. And, surprisingly, there are no disasters we come back to. The king is not dead, there are no invasions, or dragons, or floods, or forest fires. All in Narnia, for now, is well.