Sarah was still rocking back and forth with her head between her knees after 10 minutes. "It's impossible," she would cry to the heavens, "it defies the laws of physics!" She does so love her physics.
"I have an idea," I told my friend, soothingly, "we got into Narnia the same way the kids got in in the book, right?"
She stared up at me, eyes hard and bloodshot. "Yeah..."
"So we just use the book as a guide to see what happens until we get out again!"
Sarah seemed mildly placated by the restoration of some form of logic and stood up. We flipped through the first few chapters of the book, and tried to understand how to proceed. The kids in the book had a magic dwarf to help them, and we eventually conceded that we weren't going to get that kind of help, so we decided to try improvise and went on our way.
Then we made our way easily around Narnia, frolicked with some fauns, and arrived back safe and sound, the end. Ha, no.
We walked for about ten minutes in a direction Sarah assured me was North, until she stopped abruptly. I followed her line of sight, curiously. Oh. The cold hard hand of dread clenched its cruel fingers around my rapidly beating heart. There, towering in front of us, was a very large, very active-
"Volcano," she squeaked.
"Oh dear lord," my breath was getting ragged, and I could feel sweat dripping down the nape of my neck, "there's a real, live volcano. In Narnia. NARNIA!"
"How do we know if it is Narnia," Sarah asked, the hysteria in her voice mounting steadily, "if there's a dirty great volcano in it?"
"I don't know, it's not in any of the books!" I was having a minor panic attack.
"Check," choked Sarah, her voice tight.
"But it-"
"Just check!"
I was pretty sure it would be futile, but I reached into my bag, trying to work out how likely it was that C.S Lewis thought that adding a volcano into his series was an issue so pressing that he came back from the dead, found my particular copy of "Prince Caspian," amended it, and disappeared, all without us noticing. It was as I was reluctantly coming to the conclusion that this was improbable that my hand pulled out the book- yet it wasn't the book.
It was a book, yes, but it was thicker, and heavier. I didn't see the title, however, as from between the pages slipped a large, gold ring. I cradled it in my hand. "So shiny," I whispered, "so pretty..."
"Emily?" Sarah was leaning over my shoulder, sounding nervous. She wants it, I thought, she wants my lovely precious. She wants it for herself-ses.
"NO," I screamed, "NOT MY PRECIOUS!" I swung my arm, trying to hit her face, but she's a lacrosse goalie, and has sharp reflexes- she caught my arm before it reached her, and wrenched my precious ring from my hands. She started running, as fast as she could- which is a lot faster than me- away from the volcano. I couldn't let her escape with my precious!
"EVIL!" I cried, and launched myself onto her back. One of my arms snaked around her throat, trying to strangle her, and my other grappled desperately with her hands for my poor, dear ring.
"Gerrof. Me!" Sarah rasped.
"Never," I screamed, "not until you gives us precious!"
Sarah kept running, and I kept grappling. She halted abruptly when were about two-hundred meters from the volcano, and turned around. Her face was red, and she struggled to breathe. Excellent. If she keeled over and died, precious would be mine! Sarah wrenched her right arm from my tenacious grasp, and raised it in the air. She swung it forward, and hurled my beautiful, my only, my precious, high into the air. It arced away from me, and somehow, impossibly, landed inside the volcano. I felt it as precious died. "NO!" I screeched "PRECIOUS!"
Sarah shook me off her back, and snatched the book from me. Unceremoniously, she whacked me round the head with it.
"Ouch," I rubbed the spot where she'd hit me. I suddenly felt as though I had magically recovered from a bout of amnesia. "Oh dear god-in-heaven," I moaned, "it wasn't 'Lord of the Rings,' was it? Tell me I wasn't-"
"It was 'Lord of the Rings,' Sarah confirmed, grimly, "that was Mount Doom, and you, Madam, were Gollum."
"It cannot be," I whimpered, "I should've been Legolas! Or at least a hobbit! A hobbit!"
Sarah scowled, and rubbed her neck. "Let's go, idiot, before the volcano goes and explodes and really makes my day!"
Actually, I did recall that in the book, Mount Doom had erupted, but I didn't think Sarah was in the mood to hear it.