Narnia

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

3rd. of June.

This fragment about Narnia; The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, I thought up after seeing the movie every day for 7 days in a row. Yesterday I received the original English version of the book which I finished reading this morning. I noticed the differences between the book and the movie and I daresay that, concerning the storyline and the way it is told, I find the movie better. One point I think, is that the book is told in a more childish way (that's logical for a children's novel) than the movie. Concerning Mr. Tumnus I find his bigger role in the movie suits the story better. After all, it's his abduction that keeps Lucy motivated to participate in the war.

The reason I'm writing this, is because I wanted to paste the scenes with Tumnus into the book together with a bit I thought up myself.

On the Internet I read that in the last book, Aslan takes all good creatures to his country, which is actually Heaven. Anyway, I figured, that as he made Narnia, he brought angels with him from heaven too. From the way I see it, I figured that angels are beautiful men and women, who were brought up from childhood along with other creatures that inhabit Narnia.

When the White Witch comes to power in the year 900(Narnian years), she captures a small group of young angels because she knows they would become very powerful beings. She tortures them and casts spells on them until they became her willing slaves. The evil spells changed the fair looking angels into dark, evil creatures with twisted minds, although with no free will of their own. The Witch gave them evil weapons and learned them dangerous magic only few can control. However, she forbade them to use their fire powers, since that would melt the Queen's ice. She even made sure that they forgot every memory they had about the lifes they had lived before. She made them loose any emotion they might have had. They truly became creatures of the night.

One of those fallen angels is a female named Elianor, only she doesn't remember that and the Witch gave her a new name. Raven. After her raven-black wings that one day had been white. As a child, only her hair had been black, but now everything was except her pale skin. Even her eyes were pitch black. The clothes the Witch had given her were black too. She had wanted it so because she herself would stand out among her troops with her white dresses.

Raven was dressed in a black tunic that ended just above her knees. The sleeves ended at her elbow and were wide and pointed. Under her tunic, a black legging that covered her legs. On her feet she wore strong, high heeled boots. Leather straps with silver buckles made sure they were tight.

On top of her tunic she wore a coat of mail that was made of black iron. The sleeves of the mail coat ended just below her shoulders. On top of the chain mail coat she wore a leather jacket that was lined on the inside with wool against the cold. Around her waist she had a belt on which she had hung a dagger. It was an wicked formed dagger with evil writing on the blade in long forgotten languages. She also had a spear with multiple cutting edges but was still easy in use, even when flying.

Now, let's get back to the story. This part of the story takes place when Mr. Tumnus is already captured by the White Witch. The Pevensie children still don't believe Lucy because Edmund, who had already been there, pretends he was only playing along. They are playing cricket at the moment. In Narnia, Aslan is gathering troops that will all be assembling by the Stone Table to put up camp there. That's where we will begin.

The Witch had met Edmund but is concerned that he might not keep his promise of bringing the others to her. She also fears that other creatures might have heard about the arrival of the humans and would remember the prophesies concerning them. That might result in resilience against her reign and that was the least thing she wanted. So Raven was send out to search for possible presence of humans or hostilities against the Queen.

If the Queen wanted thorough and yet unnoticed searches, she would send angels which were far more silent than the wolves of the Secret Police. Then, once the angels had tracked down the target, the wolves would make the arrest. The Queen wanted this particular search go unnoticed for the inhabitants of Narnia because there might be a chance of a revolt. But more important, although she kept it secret, she didn't want anyone to see how fearful she was for the prophecy coming true.

Returning to Ravens' assignment, she had done countless missions like this. Over the years, many creatures had ended up as stone statues in the Queen's courtyard by her hand. But emotionless as she was, she felt no remorse for it. The reason why Raven, (the strongest and most faithful) of all people, was send out for this simple task, was because she was simply the only angels left.

You see, although the angels were evil now, the Witch knew that there would always be a chance that they would fall back to their old 'good' ways. If she saw even the slightest hint of such a fallback, she made sure that it was brought to a halt. In other words, a lot of statues in her courtyard featured the angels. As said before, that happened to all of them except Raven. She had been the only one proven faithful over a hundred years. She might have been proud of herself if she had been able to feel anything, but for the 'good side's' point of view it meant she was the first to fall for the evil powers.

So it happened that Raven soared over fields and woods this night. She looked for suspicious movement down below and when she saw something, she descended to take a closer look. The last thing she had expected was to find an army under the trees, so you can imagine her surprise when an arrow shot out from beneath the trees that hit her full on the left side of her stomach. She yelped as the sudden pain took her by surprise. She lost her balance of flight and fell towards the ground at high speed. Even as the treetops broke her fall she hit the ground pretty roughly. She lay there stunned for a moment, but the sound of galloping hooves alerted her again. Apart from the arrow that stuck out her waist she miraculously had no serious injuries so she hastily started to look for her spear which she had dropped during her fall. Before she could find it however, a dozen or so fauns, centaurs and satyrs appeared. They surrounded her and even the trees seemed to want to close her in. She took a defensive position but noticed that some of them stared at her curiously. That wasn't surprising because they didn't get to see an angel every day, especially a fallen one. Then, a centaur galloped towards her with a sword in his hands, ready to strike. Raven hadn't time to think and simply drew back as far as she could until she stood with her back against a tree. The centaur went straight for her, she held her arms in front of her face and closed her eyes… But his blow never landed.

"Wait." A deep voice said. Raven heard the centaur gallop back and she opened her eyes. In the middle of the circle stood a lion. She immediately saw that this was Aslan, The Great Lion. As soon as she saw him, somewhere in her mind a door opened and light shone through. The gate to her old life's memories had been opened.

"Let me handle this." Aslan said to the centaur. The centaur nodded and took his distance. As Aslan walked towards her, raven scanned the circle in search for escape routes. She nearly forgot the lion until he stood right in front of her and pushed her in a sitting position with his massive paw. She kept it so there was no way for her to go. Knowing that there was no way out of this, she waited for whatever he might do. But instead of killing her like she had expected, he started to talk to her.

"It's been a long time, Elianor." Aslan said. The creatures behind them murmured to each other at hearing that name.

"You must be mistaking me for someone else." Raven said. "I don't know anyone called like that and it's certainly not me.

"The Witch has changed you greatly. "Aslan said sadly. "But to me you are still the same person you were a hundred years ago."

The lion's face was very close to hers and she looked straight in his golden eyes. They awoke something inside her, sensations that were strange to her, images of places she seemed to have known but couldn't place. His voice made her feel her warm inside, a strange feeling if you consider the fact that she hadn't felt anything for a hundred years. All these sensations confused her. To gain time she revealed her pointed teeth (another thing the Witch was responsible for. Fallen angels drink the blood of their victims and don't eat anything else. However they were dependant on how much they were allowed to take from the, not yet, petrified prisoners of the Witch) and hissed at him. The lion did not seem impressed. He could see right through the mask she put up and saw her confusion and insecurity. He knew his appearance had triggered it and that had been his intention. She hadn't been evil all her life, in fact, he had even known her personally. It hurt him to see her degraded like that. At this moment of thought, Raven took her chance and gathered all her strength and suddenly pushed the lion back with her legs. With a force that surprised herself, the lion fell backwards. Raven pushed off hard and shot up to the sky like an arrow from its bow. The centaurs raised their bows and aimed at the sky.

"Hold you fire." Aslan said. The centaurs looked at him bewildered.

"She isn't beyond rescue." Aslan said as he watched her flying away.

And so Raven escaped. She knew what had happened was important, so she flew back to the castle as fast as she could. But the flight was difficult because the arrow still stuck in the wound and it began to bleed more heavily. Together with the confusion Aslan had caused her, you can imagine just how difficult it really was.

Nearly fainting, she finally arrived at the castle and tumbled in the courtyard with the stone statues. As she landed, the arrow that stuck out, broke to the skin with the other end still in it. She breathed heavily and just lay there until she heard Maugrim, head of the Secret Police , coming towards her.

"Get the Queen. Quick! It's very important." Raven panted. Maugrim growled in acknowledgement although he knew how stupid it was to let the Queen come to you instead of the other way ´round, and went upstairs. Raven stayed where she was. She sat up on her knees but had to support herself with her left arm while she laid her right on the wound that still bled. It was painful to breathe with half an arrow in her gut so she kept panting.

The Queen appeared, followed by Maugrim and her dwarf Ginnabrik.

" What on earth," She said impatiently. " Can be so important that you let me do the walking. You have wings so you could've flown too."

She saw that Raven was injured, but at the moment she didn't care because she was still angry at the fact that she had been summoned.

" Aslan, my Queen." Raven said between her pants. " he has come back to Narnia."

"Aslan?" The Queen repeated. " And how, exactly, did you find that out? You heard it from one of the inhabitants?"

" No, your Majesty. I met him."

" You actually met the Lion?" The Queen slowly said. " Then why didn't you kill him then?" She burst out.

" I…I was wounded, Sire, and surrounded by enemy troops." Raven said, surprised that the Queen even asked.

" I gave you powers beyond their imagination! You're stronger than any of them!" The Queen shouted. " Why didn't you use them?" She asked softly, almost disappointed. That tone was worse than her shouting. It made you feel that you'd done something really wrong.

"I…" Raven began, but she couldn't think of a sensible answer.

"Do you perhaps." The Queen said slowly. "sympathise them, Raven?"