This world and its inhabitants belong to C.S. Lewis. I am borrowing them for my own amusement and will return them unharmed.
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May the eighteenth had not yet differed in any particular from May the seventeenth. Or, for that matter, from the fifteenth and sixteenth. They had risen at dawn and eaten a spartan breakfast, then returned at once to their own little tower room. Edmund was sitting in the window seat facing the West, with a little volume of Milton open on his lap. Peter and Lucy sat across from each other at the chess table, four moves into a game that had been going for two hours. And Susan sewed, steadily and without expression, mending clothes.
And just like before, no one spoke. Every so often a page would turn, or Susan would snip a thread, but even when Peter finally captured one of Lucy's pawns, no one spoke.
When the clock struck eleven, Susan laid down the pair of stockings she was darning and drew in a deep breath.
"I suppose," she said hesitantly, "we ought to try and explain to the Professor where his fur coats have gone."
Lucy and Peter both turned to stare at her, and even Edmund looked up from his book in the window seat. Susan flushed, but gamely continued. "I mean, they are rather expensive, and we did lose them, so…"
Silence. Finally Edmund spoke, visibly wincing at the high timbre of his own voice. "I agree with Susan. Duty calls."
Peter and Lucy looked at one another for a long moment, grey eyes and brown remarkably similar, and then both nodded.
"Together?" Peter asked, more for the form of the thing than from any real uncertainty. Edmund closed his book, swung his legs off the window seat, and headed towards the door without bothering to speak. His siblings followed, equally silent.
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"Well, sit down," the Professor said, waving them to the array of armchairs that sat across from his desk. The automatic arrangement of their seats—Peter and Susan in the center, Edmund to Peter's right and Lucy to Susan's left—earned a raised eyebrow, and the Professor leaned forward, steepling his fingers together, and turned his bright eyes to Peter. "Now then. You have something to say, I imagine."
"Well, sir," Peter began, "it is rather a difficult story to believe, but we assure you it is the truth. You see, two days ago, we hid in the upstairs wardrobe…"
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"And so," Susan finished, "we thought that we should explain why the coats were missing."
The Professor, who had not moved since Peter began to speak, leaned back in his chair. Without a word, he packed his pipe and lit it, sending a curl of fragrant smoke up to the ceiling.
"We could go back and try and find them, if you like," Edmund offered cynically.
"No," the Professor said thoughtfully. He drew on his pipe again, and this time blew a rather nice smoke-ring. "I don't think it will be any good trying to go back through the wardrobe door to the get the coats. You won't get into Narnia again by that route. Nor would the coats be much good by now if you did!"
"Then… you don't think we'll ever go back," Peter said slowly.
"Eh? What's that? Yes, of course you'll get back to Narnia someday. Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don't go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don't try to get there at all. It'll happen when you're not looking for it. And don't talk too much about it even among yourselves. And don't mention to anyone unless you find that they've had adventures of the same sort themselves."
"How do you suggest we find that out, if we oughtn't speak of it?" Susan asked.
"What's that? How will you know? Oh, you'll know all right. Odd things they say—even their looks—will let the secret out. Keep your eyes open. Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?"
At that, he winked extravagantly at Lucy, and tipped his head toward the wall to his right. Lucy looked up and cried out. An instant later she was standing tiptoe on her chair, the better to see the painting that hung above her head.
"Beaversdam! Oh Peter, Susan, look! Ed, do you see it? The dam isn't there, but it's the same! There's Jackdaw Rock, and you can see the Western mountains and Cauldron Pool—"
It took only a glance for her siblings to see that she was right. It was a breathtakingly beautiful and surprisingly accurate landscape of the Beaversdam area. The only thing missing was the landmark by which they knew it, the dam built by Mr. and Mrs. Beaver.
Edmund turned to the Professor, who sat smoking his pipe and smiling broadly, and said slowly, "Sir…would your Christian name, by any chance, happen to be Digory?"
"Ed!" Susan rebuked. But the Professor clapped his hands together and leaped to his feet, giving a gracious and extravagant Narnian bow.
"Excellent! Well done indeed, Your Majesty. And would your royal sister like to guess the artist of the painting?"
"Polly," Lucy whispered. "Lady Polly and Lord Digory. The two that witnessed the birth of Narnia."
Now all of the children were staring at Digory, who sat himself on the edge of his desk with a smile they had never seen on an adult before.
"Sir, you…" Peter was having difficulty speaking. "You…have been to Narnia?"
Digory beamed at him. "I have indeed, my boy, I have indeed."
"But that was a thousand years ago," Susan said. "Over a thousand years. How can you still be here?"
"I shouldn't be surprised if time isn't the same at all in Narnia and here," Digory said. "In fact, since you ruled for so many years, and the most time that could have passed here is a few seconds, I should imagine that time runs much faster in Narnia than here. But don't count on it. Aslan is not a tame lion, and neither is Narnia a tame country."
"Would you tell us, sir?" Peter asked. "Please. It would mean so much to us."
"Well," Digory said, picking up his pipe again, "it really started about fifty years ago, in a garden in London…"
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Note: The date the four children entered Narnia together is May 14. This date is not explicitly given by Lewis, but is canon consistent. Digory's speech from "No, I don't think..." to "Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?" is verbatim Lewis, taken from the final chapter of LWW. "Waving without wind" is a reference to the end of Magician's Nephew, where, according to Lewis, the tree that Digory planted from the seeds of the apple from the Tree of Protection would sometimes shake and quiver on an absolutely still day in England, due to high winds in Narnia.