“AND NOW,” SAID LUCY, “DO PLEASE TELL us what’s happened to Mr. Tumnus.”
“Ah, that’s bad,” said Mr. Beaver, shaking his head. “That’s a very, very bad business. There’s no doubt he was taken off by the police. I got that from a bird who saw it done.”
“But where’s he been taken to?” asked Lucy.
“Well, they were heading northward when they were last seen and we all know what that means.”
“No, we don’t,” said Susan. Mr. Beaver shook his head in a very gloomy fashion.
“I’m afraid it means they were taking him to her House,” he said.
“But what’ll they do to him, Mr. Beaver?” gasped Lucy.
“Well,” said Mr. Beaver, “you can’t exactly say for sure. But there’s not many taken in there that ever comes out again. Statues. All full of statues they say it is—in the courtyard and up the stairs and in the hall. People she’s turned”—(he paused and shuddered) “turned into stone.”
“Aslan?” said Mr. Beaver. “Why, don’t you know? He’s the King. He’s the Lord of the whole wood, but not often here, you understand. Never in my time or my father’s time. But the word has reached us that he has come back. He is in Narnia at this moment. He’ll settle the White Queen all right. It is he, not you, that will save Mr. Tumnus.”
“Ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
When Adam’s flesh and Adam’s bone
Sits at Cair Paravel in throne,
The evil time will be over and done.
“So’ve I, now you come to speak of it,” said her husband, “but precious few, and they were the ones least like men. But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that’s going to be human and isn’t yet, or used to be human once and isn’t now, or ought to be human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet. And that’s why the Witch is always on the lookout for any humans in Narnia. She’s been watching for you this many a year, and if she knew there were four of you she’d be more dangerous still.”
“Has he been in this country before?” asked Mr. Beaver. “Has he ever been here alone?”
“Why, all she wants is to get all four of you (she’s thinking all the time of those four thrones at Cair Paravel). Once you were all four inside her House her job would be done—and there’d be four new statues in her collection before you’d had time to speak. But she’ll keep him alive as long as he’s the only one she’s got, because she’ll want to use him as a decoy; as bait to catch the rest of you with.”
用户评论