Chapter One
The Journey Across Ettinsmoor
In the land of Narnia at its very beginning there were two human children from our world named Digory Kirke and Polly Plumber.
Undoubtedly the reader knows this if they have read a book called 'The Magician's Nephew'.
However, since I am not CS Lewis, I will say only a little more about it...
Recall that in the aforementioned book, Digory and Polly came to Narnia using magic rings, and before that they made a visit to the ruined world of Charn.
In Charn they met a queen named Jadis- or witch, if you prefer.
Digory acidentally brought Jadis back to our world, to London as it was in his time. I will not say much about that either.
Suffice to say, Digory's Uncle Andrew was forced to become Jadis's slave. Ironically, it was he who had created the rings that drew her from her world, so in a way he brought it on himself.
Jadis caused quite a ruckus out and about in London, stealing jewelry from a shop, and loudly declaring herself the new ruler of our world.
Pandemonium broke out in the streets, caused by her comandeering a Hansom cab to serve as a royal chariot. She then pulled up a lamp post with her sheer strength, and did several other alarming things.
Digory knew he had to get her out of London, and so he did. He put on his ring, and in due course to came into Narnia when it was an empty world- just before its creation.
The Great Lion Aslan was the creator of this magical realm. He sent Digory and Polly on a quest to retrieve an apple, and the rest is history.
That is the extent to which I will refresh the reader on the events in 'The Magician's Nephew'. If you still need more information, you will simply have to read it yourself...
This story takes place immediately after Jadis confronted Digory and tempted him to eat the apple from Aslan's orchard.
Now it is true I am not CS Lewis, so you may find my histories of Narnia apocryphal at best. However, I assure you that I have them on good sources. At any rate, you'll just have to take my word for it...
Jadis, or the Witch if you prefer- watched the flying horse Fledge ascend into the sky with the human children on it's back.
She wondered to herself why she had even bothered to offer the boy such valuable information regarding the apple when he was of so little value to her.
It might have been because she felt the slighest shred of gratitude to him for taking her out of Charn. He could be useful, and so she assumed he would be again at some time.
Unfortunately, he'd declined her most gracious offer. Well let the fool go back to the Lion! One day he would lie old and dying, and he would regret turning down her offer on that day.
The thought filled her with satisfaction, and she decided to put it all behind her.
She thought briefly of Charn, her city of times gone by, but it was no good now. Charn was gone forever. She had a new world to rule now, and at any rate- she needn't repeat her past mistakes.
Why destroy Narnia when it was only a land of animals and nature sprites? Something like the Deplorable Word would hardly be necessary...
Such subjects were hardly worthy, but she was of royal blood. Who ever heard of royalty not ruling over subjects?
She was determined she would go straight back to Narnia and conquer it.
It was late afternoon already, so little chance of reaching it that day. That was alright! She would just walk and think of her future plans- making their fulfillment all the sweeter!
Walk she did, and it was about evening when she reached the valley between the mountains where she'd spied on the children the night before.
The Witch noted a tree that hadn't been there previously, and a fascinating tree it was! It had papery white leaves and bore little chocolate brown fruits.
She decided to pluck one, and found it very sugary sweet like a rich chocolate.
Now the Witch of course didn't know what toffee was, but you probably know this was that same tree Digory and Polly planted using a toffee in their pocket.
The Witch found it sweet, but then the taste of that divine and terrible fruit came back into her mouth, blotting out the toffee's taste. She immediately dropped the candy fruit, finding herself in quite a torment- hungering for a fruit she found loathsome and must never taste again!
Instead she kept walking eastward, determined to reach Narnia with all speed, but about an hour later something stopped her in her tracks.
It was a sweet smell, and she recognized it as the same smell of Aslan's fruit, which she'd eaten without permission.
Now imagine a sweet smell mingled with a sour one, or even a rancid and putrid stench like something dead. Imagine too that the smell filled you up, making you feel quite ill as though drowning in rotting flesh.
That was the sensations the smell of the fruit incited in the Witch now. She tried to advance a few more paces in the direction of Narnia, but realized it was no good.
She'd quickly fled from the garden because she found the fruit loathsome after eating it. Now she couldn't go toward this other fruit tree. She simply couldn't...
Then a horrible idea dawned on her. She saw how Aslan had gotten one over on her. He'd sent that brat and the girl to retrieve a fruit for planting. That was how he planned to keep her away from his precious Narnia...
She was furious at realizing she was thwarted, and instead made for the north- having no idea what lay in that direction, or exactly where she was going.
Often when one is mad they stomp in a rage, and the more they stomp, the angrier they get. This is quite a childish thing to do, but even adults do it if they're angry enough.
And so Jadis stomped. She was so furious she put all her energy and concentration into her stomping, and before she had any concept of how long she'd walked, the scenary changed.
She was standing at the top of one of the great western hills, but below her, stretching into the north as far as she could see, was a rugged moorland.
That must be her destination unless she wished to make south. Yet something about south as opposed to north didn't really appeal to her much.
Remember that she was half-giant, and giants like northern, rugged terrain. It was surely the giant in her that called her to that endless expanse of moor.
She descended the hill, and when her feet met the flat outskirts of the moorland, she decided to call it a day.
She lay on the rocky earth, which wouldn't be comfortable to a human, but to a half-giant who are nearly like rocks themselves in their way- it isn't far from lying on a cushioned mat.
Jadis slept quite well, and in her darkened thoughts she dreamed of Charn. Not Charn as it was after she uttered the Deplorable Word. Rather, Charn as it had been.
Dreams are of course like seeing through a shadowy veil when one relives things in them. She was walking down Charn's street at night, but it wasn't quite real.
The buildings were hardly there, and she barely noticed them. She heard drums, and it was toward the beat she must go.
Now some dreams are more lucid than others, as well as some details. Those drums were very real compared to the rest of it. Her heart seemed to beat with those drums, and she knew what they were.
Like dreams do, the scene seemed to speed up and fast forward as she walked. Soon she was standing outside the building the drumming was coming from.
Her subconscious recognized it as the temple of the goddess Aseriah, or so the unlearned masses of Charn had believed her to be.
The royal family of Charn had known that these beings were in reality creatures called Jinn, and they believed they were descended from them.
Certainly, they could be called divinities, but that is what someone who knows nothing about them would call them.
Think about how we might easily call a lion or a leopard a feline, or we might speak of a mythological being like Zeus without knowing what nature of creature he is, and his specific attributes.
The gods are actually Jinn, once better understood. That is their species, like ours is human, and a chimpanzee is a chimpanzee.
The royal family of Charn knew many of them face to face, like people know other people.
Mostly that had been in the olden times, when the Jinn still appeared to the rulers of Charn, but Jadis had known them in visions and dreams before.
Jadis had undergone the initiation that all Charnites seeking occult knowledge did. She'd taken Aseriah the Mistress of Shadow as her patron deity.
Already in her dream she was passing into those halls she recognized well, though they were vague in her memory's eye. The torches on the wall seemed to cast a darkened light, and as she walked, it was mostly the pillars she saw.
Passing between them on her right she came into the inner chamber of the shrine, before the altar of Aseriah.
Behind the altar was a painted mural that occupied a good amount of wall. It depicted a lady with flowing auburn hair, and dressed in a flowing green dress.
The Green Lady was holding a stringed instrument. In another section of wall was painted a great green serpent with a crown on its head.
Even though it was only a painted mural, the serpent's eyes seemed to gaze into Jadis's very heart. She felt a chilling, piercing to the heart fear.
She gasped and awakened in the chilly Narnian dawn. The dream had been too real...
Why would she dream of her patron deity, who as far as she knew, might not even exist in Narnia? Did the Jinn exist in other worlds? How would she know it was the same ones?
Yet from what she'd learned of the Jinn from the handed down knowledge, they must surely exist in other worlds. They were of a higher race than giants and men, and had ways of traveling between dimensions.
Jadis felt a curiosity to call to her patron, but she decided against it. It would take a ritual of some kind, and she wasn't sure it would work for certain.
Instead she decided to walk only a little that day, until the hills of the Western Wild were a line on the horizon.
She stopped in the afternoon, having ascended the moorland here and there, and found herself on a leveled out shelf.
Still the moor went on and on to her north. What in the world was she doing out here?
She was also very hungry, but she wondered if the fruit would torment her again if she tried to eat.
That was another problem. What was she going to eat? She hadn't brought any of the strange sugary fruit from the tree.
It was around that time she realized how alone she was, and she felt a rare fear begin in her.
She might have even felt just a little sorry for destroying her own world, but she must swallow that feeling. Was it not right for a queen such as she to do with her subjects as she pleased?
Yet she found herself wishing she'd gotten one of the rings from the children. Their world had been settled and had cities. She wasn't liking the lonely moor very much at all...
The moor was so very expansive and endless that she thought of the close kin of the giant- the creature called the Ettin.
She decided this land would be called the Ettinsmoor for its roughness and largeness.
Jadis figured that she immortality, and that at least was something. She could perhaps feel the pains of hunger, and even come within an inch of her life- yet she would not die.
If only she had some of her former powers! Her magic...
Yet she found that she didn't have them. She had tried on earth to feel the powers, and she had tried here in Narnia. Nothing was the same.
The energies of the worlds were totally different than her own...
Might not she learn to tap it somehow?