Tales Before Narnia Read online

  I do not know whether the scent of those bottles had anything to do with what happened. It certainly was a very extraordinary scent. Quite different from any perfume that I smell nowadays, but I remember that when I was a little girl I smelt it quite often. But then there are no best rooms now such as there used to be. The best rooms now are gay with chintz and mirrors, and there are always flowers and books, and little tables to put your teacup on, and sofas, and armchairs. And they smell of varnish and new furniture.

  When Amabel had sniffed at both bottles and looked in all the pots, which were quite clean and empty except for a pearl button and two pins in one of them, she took up the A.B.C. again to look for Whitby, where her godmother lived. And it was then that she saw the extraordinary name “Whereyouwantogoto.” This was odd—but the name of the station from which it started was still more extraordinary, for it was not Euston or Cannon Street or Marylebone.

  The name of the station was “Bigwardrobeinspareroom.” And below this name, really quite unusual for a station, Amabel read in small letters:

  “Single fares strictly forbidden. Return tickets No Class Nuppence. Trains leave Bigwardrobeinspareroom all the time.”

  And under that in still smaller letters—

  “You had better go now.”

  What would you have done? Rubbed your eyes and thought you were dreaming? Well, if you had, nothing more would have happened. Nothing ever does when you behave like that. Amabel was wiser. She went straight to the Big Wardrobe and turned its glass handle.

  “I expect it’s only shelves and people’s best hats,” she said. But she only said it. People often say what they don’t mean, so that if things turn out as they don’t expect, they can say “I told you so,” but this is most dishonest to one’s self, and being dishonest to one’s self is almost worse than being dishonest to other people. Amabel would never have done it if she had been herself. But she was out of herself with anger and unhappiness.

  Of course it wasn’t hats. It was, most amazingly, a crystal cave, very oddly shaped like a railway station. It seemed to be lighted by stars, which is, of course, unusual in a booking office, and over the station clock was a full moon. The clock had no figures, only Now in shining letters all round it, twelve times, and the Nows touched, so the clock was bound to be always right. How different from the clock you go to school by!

  A porter in white satin hurried forward to take Amabel’s luggage. Her luggage was the A.B.C. which she still held in her hand.

  “Lots of time, Miss,” he said, grinning in a most friendly way, “I am glad you’re going. You will enjoy yourself! What a nice little girl you are!”

  This was cheering. Amabel smiled.

  At the pigeon-hole that tickets come out of, another person, also in white satin, was ready with a mother-of-pearl ticket, round, like a card counter.

  “Here you are, Miss,” he said with the kindest smile, “price nothing, and refreshments free all the way. It’s a pleasure,” he added, “to issue a ticket to a nice little lady like you.” The train was entirely of crystal, too, and the cushions were of white satin. There were little buttons such as you have for electric bells, and on them “Whatyouwantoeat,” “Whatyouwantodrink,”

  “Whatyouwantoread,” in silver letters.

  Amabel pressed all the buttons at once, and instantly felt obliged to blink. The blink over, she saw on the cushion by her side a silver tray with vanilla ice, boiled chicken and white sauce, almonds (blanched), peppermint creams, and mashed potatoes, and a long glass of lemonade—beside the tray was a book. It was Mrs. Ewing’s Bad-tempered Family, and it was bound in white vellum.

  There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read—unless it be reading while you eat. Amabel did both: they are not the same thing, as you will see if you think the matter over.

  And just as the last thrill of the last spoonful of ice died away, and the last full stop of the Bad-tempered Family met Amabel’s eye, the train stopped, and hundreds of railway officials in white velvet shouted, “Whereyouwantogoto! Get out!”

  A velvety porter, who was somehow like a silkworm as well as like a wedding handkerchief sachet, opened the door.

  “Now!” he said, “come on out, Miss Amabel, unless you want to go to Whereyoudon’twantogoto.”

  She hurried out, on to an ivory platform.

  “Not on the ivory, if you please,” said the porter, “the white Axminster carpet—it’s laid down expressly for you.”

  Amabel walked along it and saw ahead of her a crowd, all in white.

  “What’s all that?” she asked the friendly porter.

  “It’s the Mayor, dear Miss Amabel,” he said, “with your address.”

  “My address is The Old Cottage, Amberley,” she said, “at least it used to be”—and found herself face to face with the Mayor. He was very like Uncle George, but he bowed low to her, which was not Uncle George’s habit, and said:

  “Welcome, dear little Amabel. Please accept this admiring address from the Mayor and burgesses and apprentices and all the rest of it, of Whereyouwantogoto.”

  The address was in silver letters, on white silk, and it said:

  “Welcome, dear Amabel. We know you meant to please your aunt. It was very clever of you to think of putting the greenhouse flowers in the bare flower-bed. You couldn’t be expected to know that you ought to ask leave before you touch other people’s things.”

  “Oh, but,” said Amabel quite confused. “I did….”

  But the band struck up, and drowned her words. The instruments of the band were all of silver, and the bandsmen’s clothes of white leather. The tune they played was “Cheero!”

  Then Amabel found that she was taking part in a procession, hand in hand with the Mayor, and the band playing like mad all the time. The Mayor was dressed entirely in cloth of silver, and as they went along he kept saying, close to her ear, “You have our sympathy, you have our sympathy,” till she felt quite giddy.

  There was a flower show—all the flowers were white. There was a concert—all the tunes were old ones. There was a play called Put yourself in her place. And there was a banquet, with Amabel in the place of honour.

  They drank her health in white wine whey, and then through the Crystal Hall of a thousand gleaming pillars, where thousands of guests, all in white, were met to do honour to Amabel, the shout went up—“Speech, speech!”

  I cannot explain to you what had been going on in Amabel’s mind. Perhaps you know. Whatever it was it began like a very tiny butterfly in a box, that could not keep quiet, but fluttered, and fluttered, and fluttered. And when the Mayor rose and said:

  “Dear Amabel, you whom we all love and understand; dear Amabel, you who were so unjustly punished for trying to give pleasure to an unresponsive aunt; poor, ill-used, ill-treated, innocent Amabel; blameless, suffering Amabel, we await your words,” that fluttering, tiresome butterfly-thing inside her seemed suddenly to swell to the size and strength of a fluttering albatross, and Amabel got up from her seat of honour on the throne of ivory and silver and pearl, and said, choking a little, and extremely red about the ears—

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t want to make a speech, I just want to say, ‘Thank you,’ and to say—to say—to say….”

  She stopped, and all the white crowd cheered.

  “To say,” she went on as the cheers died down, “that I wasn’t blameless, and innocent, and all those nice things. I ought to have thought. And they were Auntie’s flowers. But I did want to please her. It’s all so mixed. Oh, I wish Auntie was here!”

  And instantly Auntie was there, very tall and quite nice-looking, in a white velvet dress and an ermine cloak.

  “Speech,” cried the crowd. “Speech from Auntie!”

  Auntie stood on the step of the throne beside Amabel, and said:

  “I think, perhaps, I was hasty. And I think Amabel meant to please me. But all the flowers that were meant for the winter…well—I was annoyed. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh,
Auntie, so am I—so am I,” cried Amabel, and the two began to hug each other on the ivory step, while the crowd cheered like mad, and the band struck up that well-known air, “If you only understood!”

  “Oh, Auntie,” said Amabel among hugs, “This is such a lovely place, come and see everything, we may, mayn’t we?” she asked the Mayor.

  “The place is yours,” he said, “and now you can see many things that you couldn’t see before. We are The People who Understand. And now you are one of Us. And your aunt is another.”

  I must not tell you all that they saw because these things are secrets only known to The People who Understand, and perhaps you do not yet belong to that happy nation. And if you do, you will know without my telling you.

  And when it grew late, and the stars were drawn down, somehow, to hang among the trees, Amabel fell asleep in her aunt’s arms beside a white foaming fountain on a marble terrace, where white peacocks came to drink.

  She awoke on the big bed in the spare room, but her aunt’s arms were still round her.

  “Amabel,” she was saying, “Amabel!”

  “Oh, Auntie,” said Amabel sleepily, “I am so sorry. It was stupid of me. And I did mean to please you.”

  “It was stupid of you,” said the aunt, “but I am sure you meant to please me. Come down to supper.” And Amabel has a confused recollection of her aunt’s saying that she was sorry, adding, “Poor little Amabel.”

  If the aunt really did say it, it was fine of her. And Amabel is quite sure that she did say it.

  Amabel and her great-aunt are now the best of friends. But neither of them has ever spoken to the other of the beautiful city called “Whereyouwantogoto.” Amabel is too shy to be the first to mention it, and no doubt the aunt has her own reasons for not broaching the subject.

  But of course they both know that they have been there together, and it is easy to get on with people when you and they alike belong to the Peoplewhounderstand.

  If you look in the A.B.C. that your people have you will not find “Whereyouwantogoto.” It is only in the red velvet bound copy that Amabel found in her aunt’s best bedroom.

  THE SNOW QUEEN: A TALE IN SEVEN STORIES

  by Hans Christian Andersen

  * * *

  In a letter from March 1954, Lewis wrote: “I have come to like Hans Andersen better since I grew up than I did in childhood. I think both the pathos and the satire—both v[ery] delicate, penetrating, and ever-present in his work—disquieted me then.” “The Snow Queen” is one of Hans Christian Andersen’s longest tales. It masterfully blends Christian and folk elements, much as Lewis would later do. In the title character, we see a number of similarities with the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Both are pale and cruel, and both take a young boy captive.

  Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish writer. “The Snow Queen” (“Sneedronningen”) first appeared in his second collection of fairy tales, Nye Evyntyr, Anden Samling (New Tales, Second Collection, 1845). This English version appeared in Fairy Tales from Hans Christian Andersen (1906), part of the Everyman’s Library, edited by Ernest Rhys.

  * * *

  FIRST STORY

  Deals with a mirror and its fragments.

  Now we are about to begin, and you must attend; and when we get to the end of the story, you will know more than you do now about a very wicked hobgoblin. He was one of the worst kind; in fact he was a real demon. One day he was in a high state of delight because he had invented a mirror with this peculiarity, that every good and pretty thing reflected in it shrank away to almost nothing. On the other hand, every bad and good-for-nothing thing stood out and looked its worst. The most beautiful landscapes reflected in it looked like boiled spinach, and the best people became hideous, or else they were upside down and had no bodies. Their faces were distorted beyond recognition, and if they had even one freckle it appeared to spread all over the nose and mouth. The demon thought this immensely amusing. If a good thought passed through anyone’s mind, it turned to a grin in the mirror, and this caused real delight to the demon. All the scholars in the demon’s school, for he kept a school, reported that a miracle had taken place: now for the first time it had become possible to see what the world and mankind were really like. They ran about all over with the mirror, till at last there was not a country or a person which had not been seen in this distorting mirror. They even wanted to fly up to heaven with it to mock the angels; but the higher they flew, the more it grinned, so much so that they could hardly hold it, and at last it slipped out of their hands and fell to the earth, shivered into hundreds of millions and billions of bits. Even then it did more harm than ever. Some of these bits were not as big as a grain of sand, and these flew about all over the world, getting into people’s eyes, and, once in, they stuck there, and distorted everything they looked at, or made them see everything that was amiss. Each tiniest grain of glass kept the same power as that possessed by the whole mirror. Some people even got a bit of the glass into their hearts, and that was terrible, for the heart became like a lump of ice. Some of the fragments were so big that they were used for window panes, but it was not advisable to look at one’s friends through these panes. Other bits were made into spectacles, and it was a bad business when people put on these spectacles meaning to be just. The bad demon laughed till he split his sides; it tickled him to see the mischief he had done. But some of these fragments were still left floating about the world, and you shall hear what happened to them.

  SECOND STORY

  About a Little Boy and a Little Girl

  In a big town crowded with houses and people, where there is no room for gardens, people have to be content with flowers in pots instead. In one of these towns lived two children who managed to have something bigger than a flower pot for a garden. They were not brother and sister, but they were just as fond of each other as if they had been. Their parents lived opposite each other in two attic rooms. The roof of one house just touched the roof of the next one, with only a rain water gutter between them. They each had a little dormer window, and one only had to step over the gutter to get from one house to the other. Each of the parents had a large window-box, in which they grew pot herbs and a little rose tree. There was one in each box, and they both grew splendidly. Then it occured to the parents to put the boxes across the gutter, from house to house, and they looked just like two banks of flowers. The pea vines hung down over the edges of the boxes, and the roses threw out long creepers which twined round the windows. It was almost like a green triumphal arch. The boxes were high, and the children knew they must not climb up on to them, but they were often allowed to have their little stools out under the rose trees, and there they had delightful games. Of course in the winter there was an end to these amusements. The windows were often covered with hoar frost; then they would warm coppers on the stove and stick them on the frozen panes, where they made lovely peep-holes as round as possible. Then a bright eye would peep through these holes, one from each window. The little boy’s name was Kay, and the little girl’s Gerda.

  In the summer they could reach each other with one bound, but in the winter they had to go down all the stairs in one house and up all the stairs in the other, and outside there were snowdrifts.

  “Look! the white bees are swarming,” said the old grandmother.

  “Have they a queen bee, too?” asked the little boy, for he knew that there was a queen among the real bees.

  “Yes indeed they have,” said the grandmother. “She flies where the swarm is thickest. She is the biggest of them all, and she never remains on the ground. She always flies up again to the sky. Many a winter’s night she flies through the streets and peeps in at the windows, and then the ice freezes on the panes into wonderful patterns like flowers.”

  “Oh yes, we have seen that,” said both children, and then they knew it was true.

  “Can the Snow Queen come in here?” asked the little girl.

  “Just let her come,” said the boy, “and I will put her
on the stove, where she will melt.”

  But the grandmother smoothed his hair and told him more stories.

  In the evening when little Kay was at home and half undressed, he crept up on to the chair by the window, and peeped out of the little hole. A few snow-flakes were falling, and one of these, the biggest, remained on the edge of the window-box. It grew bigger and bigger, till it became the figure of a woman, dressed in the finest white gauze, which appeared to be made of millions of starry flakes. She was delicately lovely, but all ice, glittering, dazzling ice. Still she was alive, her eyes shone like two bright stars, but there was no rest or peace in them. She nodded to the window and waved her hand. The little boy was frightened and jumped down off the chair, and then he fancied that a big bird flew past the window.

  The next day was bright and frosty, and then came the thaw—and after that the spring. The sun shone, green buds began to appear, the swallows built their nests, and people began to open their windows. The little children began to play in their garden on the roof again. The roses were in splendid bloom that summer; the little girl had learnt a hymn, and there was something in it about roses, and that made her think of her own. She sang it to the little boy, and then he sang it with her—

  “Where roses deck the flowery vale,

  There, Infant Jesus, we thee hail!”

  The children took each other by the hands, kissed the roses, and rejoiced in God’s bright sunshine, and spoke to it as if the Child Jesus were there. What lovely summer days they were, and how delightful it was to sit out under the fresh rose trees, which seemed never tired of blooming.