温馨提醒：系统正在全面升级。您可以访问最新站点。谢谢！

  "theres not much to tell," said peter. "edmund and i were standing on the platform and we saw your train coming in. i remember thinking it was taking the bend far too fast. and i remember thinking how funny it was that our people were probably in the same train though lucy didnt know about it -”

  "your people, high king?" said tirian.

  "i mean my father and mother - edmunds and lucys and mine.”

  "why were they?" asked jill. "you dont mean to say they know about narnia?”

  "oh no, it had nothing to do with narnia. they were on their way to bristol. id only heard they were going that morning. but edmund said theyd be bound to be going by that train." (edmund was the sort of person who knows about railways.)

  "and what happened then?" said jill.

  "well, its not very easy to describe, is it, edmund?" said the high king.

  "not very," said edmund. "it wasnt at all like that other time when we were pulled out of our own world by magic. there was a frightful roar and something hit me with a bang, but it didnt hurt. and i felt not so much scared as - well, excited. oh - and this is one queer thing.

  id had a rather sore knee, from a hack at rugger. i noticed it had suddenly gone. and i felt very light. and then - here we were.”

  "it was much the same for us in the railway carriage," said the lord digory, wiping the last traces of the fruit from his golden beard. "only i think you and i, polly, chiefly felt

  that wed been unstiffened. you youngsters wont understand. but we stopped feeling old.”

  "youngsters, indeed!" said jill. "i dont believe you two really are much older than we are here.”

  "well if we arent, we have been," said the lady polly.

  "and what has been happening since you got here?" asked eustace.

  "well," said peter, "for a long time (at least i suppose it was a long time) nothing happened. then the door opened -”

  "the door?" said tirian.

  "yes," said peter. "the door you came in - or came out - by. have you forgotten?”

  "but where is it?”

  "look," said peter and pointed.

  tirian looked and saw the queerest and most ridiculous thing you can imagine. only a few yards away, clear to be seen in the sunlight, there stood up a rough wooden door and, round it, the framework of the doorway: nothing else, no walls, no roof. he walked towards it, bewildered, and the others followed, watching to see what he would do. he walked round to the other side of the door. but it looked just the same from the other side: he was still in the open air, on a summer morning. the door was simply standing up by itself as if it had grown there like a tree.

  "fair sir," said tirian to the high king, "this is a great marvel.”

  "it is the door you came through with that calormene five minutes ago," said peter 【创建和谐家园】iling.

  "but did i not come in out of the wood into the stable? whereas this seems to be a door leading from nowhere to nowhere.”

  "it looks like that if you walk round it," said peter. "but put your eye to that place where there is a crack between two of the planks and look through.”

  tirian put his eye to the hole. at first he could see nothing but blackness. then, at his eyes grew used to it, he saw the dull red glow of a bonfire that was nearly going out, and above that, in a black sky, stars. then he could see dark figures moving about or standing between him and the fire: he could hear them talking and their voices were like those of calormenes. so he knew that he was looking out through the stable door into the darkness of lantern waste where he had fought his last battle. the men were discussing

  whether to go in and look for rishda tarkaan (but none of them wanted to do that) or to set fire to the stable.

  he looked round again and could hardly believe his eyes. there was the blue sky overhead, and grassy country spreading as far as he could see in every direction, and his new friends all round him laughing.

  "it seems, then," said tirian, 【创建和谐家园】iling himself, "that the stable seen from within and the stable seen from without are two different places.”

  "yes," said the lord digory. "its inside is bigger than its outside.”

  "yes," said queen lucy. "in our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world." it was the first time she had spoken, and from the thrill in her voice, tirian now knew why. she was drinking everything in even more deeply than the others. she had been too happy to speak. he wanted to hear her speak again, so he said: "of your courtesy, madam, tell on. tell me your whole adventure.”

  "after the shock and the noise," said lucy, "we found ourselves here. and we wondered at the door, as you did. then the door opened for the first time (we saw darkness through the doorway when it did) and there came through a big man with a naked sword. we saw by his arms that he was a calormene. he took his stand beside the door with his sword raised, resting on his shoulder, ready to cut down anyone who came through. we went to him and spoke to him, but we thought he could neither see nor hear us. and he never looked round on the sky and the sunlight and the grass: i think he couldnt see them either. so then we waited a long time. then we heard the bolt being drawn on the other side of the door. but the man didnt get ready to strike with his sword till he could see who was coming in. so we supposed he had been told to strike some and spare others.

  but at the very moment when the door opened, all of a sudden tash was there, on this side of the door; none of us saw where he came from. and through the door there came a big cat. it gave one look at tash and ran for its life: just in time, for he pounced at it and the door hit his beak as it was shut. the man could see tash. he turned very pale and bowed down before the monster: but it vanished away.

  "then we waited a long time again. at last the door opened for the third time and there came in a young calormene. i liked him. the sentinel at the door started, and looked very surprised, when he saw him. i think hed been expecting someone quite different -”

  "i see it all now," said eustace (he had the bad habit of interrupting stories). "the cat was to go in first and the sentry had orders to do him no harm. then the cat was to come out and say hed seen their beastly tashlan and pretend to be frightened so as to scare the other animals. but what shift never guessed was that the real tash would turn up; so ginger came out really frightened. and after that, shift would send in anyone he wanted to get rid of and the sentry would kill them.

  and -”

  "friend," said tirian softly, "you hinder the lady in her tale.”

  "well," said lucy, "the sentry was surprised. that gave the other man just time to get on guard. they had a fight. he killed the sentry and flung him outside the door. then he came walking slowly forward to where we were. he could see us, and everything else.

  we tried to talk to him but he was rather like a man in a trance. he kept on saying tash, tash, where is tash? i go to tash. so we gave it up and he went away somewhere - over there. i liked him. and after that ... ugh!" lucy made a face.

  "after that," said edmund, "someone flung a monkey through the door. and tash was there again. my sister is so tender-hearted she doesnt like to tell you that tash made one peck and the monkey was gone!”

  "serve him right!" said eustace. "all the same, i hope hell disagree with tash too.”

  "and after that," said edmund, "came about a dozen dwarfs: and then jill, and eustace, and last of all yourself.”

  "i hope tash ate the dwarfs too," said eustace. "little swine.”

  "no, he didnt," said lucy. "and dont be horrid. theryre still here. in fact you can see them from here. and ive tried and tried to make friends with them but its no use.”

  "friends with them!" cried eustace. "if you knew how those dwarfs have been behaving!”

  "oh stop it, eustace," said lucy. "do come and see them. king tirian, perhaps you could do something with them.”

  "i can feel no great love for dwarfs today," said tirian. "yet at your asking, lady, i would do a greater thing than this.”

  lucy led the way and soon they could all see the dwarfs. they had a very odd look. they werent strolling about or enjoying themselves (although the cords with which they had been tied seemed to have vanished) nor were they lying down and having a rest. they were sitting very close together in a little circle facing one another. they never looked round or took any notice of the humans till lucy and tirian were almost near enough to touch them. then the dwarfs all cocked their heads as if they couldnt see anyone but were listening hard and trying to guess by the sound what was happening.

  "look out!" said one of them in a surly voice. "mind where youre going. dont walk into our faces!”

  "all right!" said eustace indignantly. "were not blind. weve got eyes in our heads.”

  "they must be darn good ones if you can see in here," said the same dwarf whose name was diggle.

  "in where?" asked edmund.

  "why you bone-head, in here of course," said diggle. "in this pitch-black, poky, 【创建和谐家园】elly little hole of a stable.”

  "are you blind?" said tirian.

  "aint we all blind in the dark!" said diggle.

  "but it isnt dark, you poor stupid dwarfs," said lucy. "cant you see? look up! look round! cant you see the sky and the trees and the flowers? cant you see me?”

  "how in the name of all humbug can i see what aint there? and how can i see you any more than you can see me in this pitch darkness?”

  "but i can see you," said lucy. "ill prove i can see you. youve got a pipe in your mouth.”

  "anyone that knows the 【创建和谐家园】ell of baccy could tell that," said diggle.

  "oh the poor things! this is dreadful," said lucy. then she had an idea. she stopped and picked some wild violets. "listen, dwarf," she said. "even if your eyes are wrong, perhaps your nose is all right: can you 【创建和谐家园】ell that?" she leaned across and held the fresh, damp flowers to diggles ugly nose. but she had to jump back quickly in order to avoid a blow from his hard little fist.

  "none of that!" he shouted. "how dare you! what do you mean by shoving a lot of filthy stable-litter in my face? there was a thistle in it too. its like your sauce! and who are you anyway?”

  "earth-man," said tirian, "she is the queen lucy, sent hither by aslan out of the deep past. and it is for her sake alone that i, tirian your lawful king, do not cut all your heads from your shoulders, proved and twice-proved traitors that you are.”

  "well if that doesnt beat everything!" exclaimed diggle. "how can you go on talking all that rot? your wonderful lion didnt come and help you, did he? thought not. and now - even now - when youve been beaten and shoved into this black hole, just the same as the rest of us, youre still at your old game. starting a new lie! trying to make us believe were none of us shut up, and it aint dark, and heaven knows what.”

  "there is no black hole, save in your own fancy, fool," cried tirian. "come out of it.”

  and, leaning forward, he caught diggle by the belt and the hood and swung him right out of the circle of dwarfs. but the moment tirian put him down, diggle darted back to his place among the others, rubbing his nose and howling: "ow! ow! what dyou do that for! banging my face against the wall. youve nearly broken my nose.”

  "oh dear!" said lucy, "what are we to do for them?”

  "let em alone," said eustace: but as he spoke the earth trembled. the sweet air grew suddenly sweeter. a brightness flashed behind them. all turned. tirian turned last because he was afraid. there stood his hearts desire, huge and real, the golden lion, aslan himself, and already the others were kneeling in a circle round his forepaws and burying their hands and faces in his mane as he stooped his great head to touch them with his tongue. then he fixed his eyes upon tirian, and tirian came near, trembling, and flung himself at the lions feet, and the lion kissed him and said, "well done, last of the kings of narnia who stood firm at the darkest hour.”

  "aslan," said lucy through her tears, "could you - will you - do something for these poor dwarfs?”

  "dearest," said aslan, "i will show you both what i can, and what i cannot, do." he came close to the dwarfs and gave a low growl: low, but it set all the air shaking. but the dwarfs said to one another, "hear that? thats the gang at the other end of the stable.

  trying to frighten us. they do it with a machine of some kind. dont take any notice.

  they wont take us in again!”

  aslan raised his head and shook his mane. instantly a glorious feast appeared on the dwarfs knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. but it wasnt much use. they began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldnt taste it properly. they thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable.

  one said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had a bit of an old turnip and a third said hed found a raw cabbage leaf. and they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said "ugh! fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkeys been at! never thought wed come to this." but very soon every dwarf began suspecting that every other dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarrelling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was 【创建和谐家园】eared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. but when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses, they all said: "well, at any rate theres no humbug here. we havent let anyone take us in. the dwarfs are for the dwarfs.”

  "you see, " said aslan. "they will not let us help them. they have chosen cunning instead of belief. their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out. but come, children. i have other work to do.”

  he went to the door and they all followed him. he raised his head and roared, "now it is time!" then louder, "time!"; then so loud that it could have shaken the stars, "time.”

  the door flew open.

  wＷw：xiaoshuotxt？com

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  　小＿说txt天'堂

  night falls on narnia they all stood beside aslan, on his right side, and looked through the open doorway.

  the bonfire had gone out. on the earth all was blackness: in fact you could not have told that you were looking into a wood if you had not seen where the dark shapes of the trees ended and the stars began. but when aslan had roared yet again, out on their left they saw another black shape. that is, they saw another patch where there were no stars: and the patch rose up higher and higher and became the shape of a man, the hugest of all giants. they all knew narnia well enough to work out where he must be standing. he must be on the high moorlands that stretch away to the north beyond the river shribble.

  then jill and eustace remembered how once long ago, in the deep caves beneath those moors, they had seen a great giant asleep and been told that his name was father time, and that he would wake on the day the world ended.

  "yes," said aslan, though they had not spoken. "while he lay dreaming his name was time. now that he is awake he will have a new one.”

  then the great giant raised a horn to his mouth. they could see this by the change of the black shape he made against the stars. after that - quite a bit later, because sound travels so slowly - they heard the sound of the horn: high and terrible, yet of a strange, deadly beauty.

  immediately the sky became full of shooting stars. even one shooting star is a fine thing to see; but these were dozens, and then scores, and then hundreds, till it was like silver rain: and it went on and on. and when it had gone on for some while, one or two of them began to think that there was another dark shape against the sky as well as the giants. it was in a different place, right overhead, up in the very roof of the sky as you might call it.

  "perhaps it is a cloud," thought edmund. at any rate, there were no stars there: just blackness. but all around, the downpour of stars went on. and then the starless patch

  began to grow, spreading further and further out from the centre of the sky. and presently a quarter of the whole sky was black, and then a half, and at last the rain of shooting stars was going on only low down near the horizon.

  with a thrill of wonder (and there was some terror in it too) they all suddenly realized what was happening. the spreading blackness was not a cloud at all: it was simply emptiness. the black part of the sky was the part in which there were no stars left. all the stars were falling: aslan had called them home.

  the last few seconds before the rain of stars had quite ended were very exciting. stars began falling all round them. but stars in that world are not the great flaming globes they are in ours. they are people (edmund and lucy had once met one). so now they found showers of glittering people, all with long hair like burning silver and spears like white-hot metal, rushing down to them out of the black air, swifter than falling stones. they made a hissing noise as they landed and burnt the grass. and all these stars glided past them and stood somewhere behind, a little to the right.

  this was a great advantage, because otherwise, now that there were no stars in the sky, everything would have been completely dark and you could have seen nothing. as it was, the crowd of stars behind them cast a fierce, white light over their shoulders. they could see mile upon mile of narnian woods spread out before them, looking as if they were floodlit. every bush and almost every blade of grass had its black shadow behind it. the edge of every leaf stood out so sharp that youd think you could cut your finger on it.

  on the grass before them lay their own shadows. but the great thing was aslans shadow.

  it streamed away to their left, enormous and very terrible. and all this was under a sky that would now be starless forever.

  the light from behind them (and a little to their right) was so strong that it lit up even the slopes of the northern moors. something was moving there. enormous animals were crawling and sliding down into narnia: great dragons and giant lizards and featherless birds with wings like bats wings. they disappeared into the woods and for a few minutes there was silence. then there came - at first from very far off - sounds of wailing and then, from every direction, a rustling and a pattering and a sound of wings. it came nearer and nearer. soon one could distinguish the scamper of little feet from the padding of big paws, and the clack-clack of light little hoofs from the thunder of great ones. and then one could see thousands of pairs of eyes gleaming. and at last, out of the shadow of the trees, racing up the hill for dear life, by thousands and by millions, came all kinds of creatures - talking beasts, dwarfs, satyrs, fauns, giants, calormenes, men from archenland, monopods, and strange unearthly things from the remote islands of the unknown western lands. and all these ran up to the doorway where aslan stood.

  this part of the adventure was the only one which seemed rather like a dream at the time and rather hard to remember properly afterwards. especially, one couldnt say how long it had taken. sometimes it seemed to have lasted only a few minutes, but at others it felt as if it might have gone on for years. obviously, unless either the door had grown very

  much larger or the creatures had suddenly grown as 【创建和谐家园】all as gnats, a crowd like that couldnt ever have tried to get through it. but no one thought about that sort of thing at the time.

  the creatures came rushing on, their eyes brighter and brighter as they drew nearer and nearer to the standing stars. but as they came right up to aslan one or other of two things happened to each of them. they all looked straight in his face, i dont think they had any choice about that. and when some looked, the expression of their faces changed terribly - it was fear and hatred: except that, on the faces of talking bears, the fear and hatred lasted only for a fraction of a second. you could see that they suddenly ceased to the talking beasts. they were just ordinary animals. and all the creatures who looked at aslan in that way swerved to their right, his left, and disappeared into his huge black shadow, which (as you have heard) streamed away to the left of the doorway. the children never saw them again. i dont know what became of them. but the others looked in the face of aslan and loved him, though some of them were very frightened at the same time. and all these came in at the door, in on aslans right. there were some queer specimens among them. eustace even recognized one of those very dwarfs who had helped to shoot the horses. but he had no time to wonder about that sort of thing (and anyway it was no business of his) for a great joy put everything else out of his head.

  among the happy creatures who now came crowding round tirian and his friends were all those whom they had thought dead. there was roonwit the centaur and jewel the unicorn and the good boar and the good bear, and farsight the eagle, and the dear dogs and the horses, and poggin the dwarf.

  "further in and higher up!" cried roonwit and thundered away in a gallop to the west.

  and though they did not understand him, the words somehow set them tingling all over.

  the boar grunted at them cheerfully. the bear was just going to mutter that he still didnt understand, when he caught sight of the fruit-trees behind them. he waddled to those trees as fast as he could and there, no doubt, found something he understood very well.

  but the dogs remained, wagging their tails, and poggin remained, shaking hands with everyone and grinning all over his honest face. and jewel leaned his snowy white head over the kings shoulder and the king whispered in jewels ear. then everyone turned his attention again to what could be seen through the doorway.

  the dragons and giant lizards now had narnia to themselves. they went to and fro tearing up the trees by the roots and crunching them up as if they were sticks of rhubarb.