THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA
THE LION THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE BBC
PART 1
LUCY LOOKS INTO THE WARDROBE
Author's note: I've been thinking of this for some time now, and let's us say that while I love the Disney version of the Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with all my heart ever since I watched the film for the very first time at my friend's place, I cannot help but feel an equal genuine interest towards BBC miniseries version of the Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And so, my version of the story is from the most part based on BBC version of LWW, but there will be some additions from the Disney film and from the book itself, including some stuff from the animation film version and few of my own things.
Of course, I don't own the story, but all the credit goes to C. ... and just in case to the makers of the BBC miniseries version.
Hope you enjoy!
London 1940, during the World War II.
Last night, the of the night had been abruptly and tragically broken when the city of London had come under a massive and bloody air-raid by the Nazi Germans.
It was a terrible night: Air raid sirens echoed through the night, waking the people from their sleep, the sky full of bombers like the flock of black birds, spotlights waved across the sky revealing the glimpses of the enemies flying in the cover of darkness, British anti-aircraft missiles exploded in the sky around the planes and felled several of them down, the deafening sounds of explosions when the bombs were dropped onto the neighborhood could be heard from all sides, the houses and the streets shook from the nearby explosions or were blown up into the air upon direct hit from the dropped bombs, and a terrified and panicking people fled from their still intact houses into the bomb shelters, but not everyone made it in time.
Afterwards, the attack had resulted in thousands of civilians being either killed or injured and countless houses damaged or destroyed in the bombings.
And as a result, hundreds of children were to be evacuated from London to the British countryside, safe from further attacks, which was why the train station was packed with the departing recruited soldiers to fight in the war and the families, whose parents bidded their children a warm goodbye before sending them off to the waiting train that would soon take them away to their foster homes in the countryside.
In the midst of all this, there were four children amongst the hundreds of others being evacuated, but four very special children.
These children names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy Pevensie.
First came Peter Pevensie (13 years old). He was the oldest of the four of them, who had the dark-brown hair and had a serious demeanor, as he was recently burdened by the newfound responsibilities over his siblings during of these times.
Then came Susan Pevensie (12 years old). She was the second oldest of the four, who was a beautiful young woman with the long blonde hair that was braided into two long pigtails with green bow ties in them, which fell over her shoulders.
Then Edmund Pevensie (10 years old). He was the second youngest of the four, who had a dirty-blonde hair with curls over his forehead, and who was most of the time sullen, often self-centered and mischievous boy.
And last but not least, Lucy Pevensie (8 years old). She was the youngest of the four, who had a auburn hair with the dark-purple bow tie in the right side, and who was the most sensitive and by now the gloomiest of the four due to their current situation.
She along with her siblings were about to be sent to an old and mysterious Professor, who had no wife and lived in a very large house in the heart of the country along with a housekeeper called Mrs. Macready and three other servants named Ivy, Margaret and Betty. Even though he neither had the children of his own or never had the children in his house, he had at least agreed to take Pevensie children to live under his wing during the war.
The four children, dressed up in the warm coats and hats (Peter had a dark brown coat, Edmund's grayish-brown coat, Susan's bluish-gray coat and a dark-blue brimmed hat and Lucy's a light brown jacket and beanie, which she wore tilted on her head), each carrying their suitcases filled with prized and necessary belongings, train tickets in their hands and the nametags in their coats and jackets, were escorted towards the train car by their mother, Helen Pevensie. Once they were outside of the train car's open door, Helen bid them a final farewells by hugging each of her children in turn and giving them kisses on the cheeks.
Both Peter and Susan happily accepted the hugs and kisses from their mother, while Edmund felt embarrassed at being hugged and kissed in public, but eventually accepted them too, albeit reluctantly. Then Helen and Lucy gave each other the last, longest hug, with Lucy doing her best to hold her feelings of dread and her own tears back for being separated from their mother for who knows how long until the Nazi germans attacks ceased and the war ended.
Helen and Lucy eventually let go of each other before she sent her children to the train that was soon to depart from the station.
Peter, walking in the front, led his siblings into the train car - with Lucy briefly stopping at the door of the car, turning around and giving one last look in her mother's direction before another group of children made her to move into the car.
Once on the train car, the siblings walked along the corridor looking for a compartment that was still available, until they found one and stepped inside. There they lifted their suitcases up to the holders above of them and sat down to the seats, the girls to the other side and the boys in their own side.
There was the scream of the whistle heard, as the train prepared to leave the station at this very moment.
But before it could, Helen quickly looked for the window of the compartment where her children were. And once she found the right one, she gently tapped the window with her knuckles to get her precious children's attention and waved her hand at them in goodbye, to which the children responded in kind and with the sad smiles.
With that, the train left, while the children in the cars leaned against the windows to wave goodbyes to their weeping parents left to the platforms.
And as the station, and their mother were left far behind, each of the four children were quickly lost in their own thoughts: Lucy became once again gloomy and silent, afraid of what was about to come to them from now on, while Susan tried her best to both comfort her little sister and cheer her up with the promises that everything was going to be just fine. Peter kept himself busy by re-checking their tickets and destination to memorize where exactly they were supposed to get out of the train, while Edmund looked boredly around of them.
"Why do we have to go?" Edmund eventually asked, making his siblings to turn to him.
"I think we should've stayed in London to see the war." Edmund added, making it clear that he didn't even want to leave home but stay there and see the war up close.
Appalled by his brother's rather disturbingly excited words about the war, Peter put the tickets away and turned to Edmund.
"This war is going to be a very nasty thing, Edmund." Peter reminded strictly. "It is why we're sent away."
Edmund scoffed at this, annoyed. "Spoil sports grown-ups!"
"Come on, Edmund. They're only doing this for our sake." Susan cut in. "We'll be back soon as the bombs stop falling on London. And we'll see our mom and dad again."
"I wish they could've come with us." Lucy hoped with quiet and soft voice.
"Mom had to stay behind to do some war work at the factory while dad went off to fight nazis, Lucy." Peter reminded his little sister in a low and gentle voice, though he too wished if their mother and father could've just come with them to wherever they were going instead to staying behind to do their duties during the war.
"I don't think it's fair!" Edmund claimed. "I mean that we're leaving while all of that excitement is right there behind us!"
"All of that danger, death and destruction you mean?!" an appalled Peter exclaimed, visibly disturbed by his brother's enthusiasm towards the war. "Don't talk such of tarsh." he said reproachfully.
"We were lucky, Edmund." Susan said, calmly trying to reason with her younger brother. "We're going deep into the countryside where we will be safe from the war."
Edmund scoffed again. "Yes, and you know why we'll be safe there?" Edmund asked rudely. "Because in the countryside nothing ever happens. There will be so boring that you could even die from it."
Peter rolled his eyes, irritated with his little brother's attitude and sarcasm towards Susan, who frowned at Edmund's face for his rude words. However, both of them wisely kept their composure, neither really being in the mood to make the scene here.
Lucy, choosing not to participate in the bickering between her siblings, sat quietly in her seat while looking out of the window, absentmindedly watching as the train entered the dark tunnel and traveled along it in the darkness for a while before emerging from the other side of the tunnel outside of London.
###
Time passed (some thinking it having gone quite fast, while others thought it went too slow) as the train traveled along the track across the countryside for about ten miles, until the train finally pulled stop to the platform of the post office, where the four Pevensies jumped off the train.
And as the train pulled off, leaving Pevensie siblings onto the platform, all the four of them could do now was just wait for someone to pick them up from there and take them the rest of the way to their destination.
Luckily the siblings did not have to wait for long for someone when some driver of the rather fine and shiny black scar arrived to the spot, having assigned to pick them up from the post office, and drove the children for two miles into the heart of the countryside.
They eventually arrived to their destination at 72A Hillsborough Road, that was the vast property surrounded by the tall fence with the gate being the only way in. The driver turned and drove through the open gate into the three-lined driveway and drove along it to the other end, where the driver pulled the car stop right in front of the smooth stone stairs that led up to the large three-storied old-looking reddish-brown mansion, that was surrounded by the gardens full of well-kept trees. flowrr bushes and even some carved stone statues.
When Pevensies stepped out of the car and moved to stand right in front of the steps, they looked up and noticed that at the top of the stairs was standing a gray-haired woman dressed in all gray, waiting for them. However, the proud but stone-hard stern look on this woman's face made the children feel a little uncomfortable, as if she wouldn't be quite welcoming towards them.
"Now I hope that the professor had forgotten we were supposed to come here." Edmund whispered to the others.
Swallowing their initial nervousness, the Pevensies eventually started to climb up the stairs and towards the stern-faced woman until they were standing right in front of her.
The woman eyed each child in turn before opening her mouth to speak. "Pevensies?" he asked stoically.
"Yes, ma'am." Peter confirmed, though the woman didn't respond to this in any manner at all.
"I am Mrs. Macready, professor's housekeeper." the woman, Mrs. Macready, introduced herself, before she turned her back to the children and walked torwards the large doors of the house. "Follow me."
Mrs. Macready opened the doors, leading the children into the hall with the grand staircase, where Pevensies were left awed by its vast decoration of all kinds of antique furniture like chairs, tables, vases and cabinets, and the historical artifacts like old paintings, swords and other weapons displaying on the walls, busts standing on the posts and suits of armours.
"Ivy? Margaret? Betty?" Mrs. Macready called, and from behind of the nearby corner appeared three female servants (Ivy, Margaret and Betty most likely) in the white and black servant attires.
Now..." Mrs. Macready said as he turned back to the children. "The servants will take these for you. That is their function, and one must not deprive people of their function." she explained to them.
Ivy, Margaret and Betty then moved towards Pevensies to take their suitcases, which the children handed over to them.
"Everyone has their part to play, including you, children." Mrs. Macready added further.
"What is our part then?" Edmund asked.
"Since the Professor Kirke has never before had the children in this house, there will be a few rules you need to follow: There will be no shouting, or running, nor sliding on the banisters, no improper use of the dumbwaiter..." Mrs. Macready listed.
Edmund only rolled his eyes, not really being into the rules, until his eyes caught the nearby gleaming suit of armour standing next to him. So when Mrs. Macready's eye avoided, Edmund reached out to touch the armour.
"Edmund!" Peter called, having spotted what Edmund was about to do, which alerted Mrs. Macready immediately.
"NO... touching of the historical artifacts!" Mrs. Macready hissed with the low but high-pitched voice like the bashee, making an awkward Edmund quickly pull his hand back, but not before angrily glancing at Peter's direction.
"Gossiper." he muttered under his breath.
Mrs. Macready then resumed to list her rules. "And whenever this house is visited by the parties of sight-seers, you're to keep out of the way and sight whenever I'm taking a party over the house."
"So there are other visitors here?" Susan asked, surprised.
"Yes. You see, this house is old and it has a great historic value, so the people come from all over England to see it over... with the professor's permission of course." Mr. Macready explained.
"Really? Why?" Susan asked again.
"Because this house is mentioned in guide books and even in histories; and behind of almost every historical artifact lies its own story." Mrs. Macready explained.
Edmund turned to Susan and bombared her with another snarky comment. "Like I told you, nothing ever happens in the countryside, especially when you live in the place that is like some boring museum."
Mrs. Macready then finished a remarkably long list of rules with one last rule, saying it with the lower but still stern voice.
"And above all, unless absolutely necessary, there shall be no disturbing of the professor. Is that clear?"
All four Pevensie's (although Edmund did so reluctantly and lastly) nodded at the same time, affirming the housekeeper that the message got through.
"Excellent! I will now lead you to your quarters. Follow me." Mrs. Macready instructed.
The housekeeper then turned around again and headed towards the stairs, with the Pevensies and the other servants following in her wake. But before she could take a step on the first step of the stairs, Mrs. Macready turned to the other side of the room, making the children and the servants to stop and turn to look to where Mrs. Macready was looking at.
The children saw that an elderly man, who had dressed in the grayish-brown suit and had a grayish hair, beard and mustaches and glasses over his eyes, entered the hall from the door of the side room and walked towards them, using the cane in his hand.
"Ah, children. Good afternoon." he greeted politely.
"Good afternoon, sir." the children responded in kind.
"Unless you already know, my name is Professor Digory Kirke, but you can call me just professor... or sir, whatever you please. And I warmly welcome you to my home..." professor said warmly, giving them a light bow. "...which you must feel is your home as long as you stay here with me."
"Thank you, sir." Peter thanked in behalf of his family.
"Well, it's wartime I suppose, even I must make a pretence at military precision." the professor added, before he put his cane under his right arm and straightened up. "Right. Form straight right there." he ordered with slightly raised voice.
The children looked at each other for a moment before they did as told and formed in line in front of the professor: first came Peter in his far right, then came Susan, then came Lucy, and lastly came Edmund in his far left.
"Very good. Now then, from the right." professor said, before he stepped first towards Peter, leaned his head forward and held his left hand's finger at the eldest boy. "Name?"
"Peter, sir. Peter Pevensie." Peter asnwered.
Professor nodded and moved in front of Susan, wordlessly asking the same question.
"Susan Pevensie, sir." Susan asnwered.
After nodding, Professor moved in front of Lucy.
"I'm Lucy. Lucy Pevensie, sir." Lucy answered with the smile.
Professor smiled back, before he moved in front of Edmund.
However, istead of telling professor his name, Edmund remained quiet, not really in the mood of playing along in this game which he found somewhat silly.
"You have a name too, I trust?" professor asked gently.
"Edmund." Edmund simply said.
""Sir"." Peter remainded, looking over at his younger brother with the look that demanded him to be polite in front of their host.
Edmund nearly rolled his eyes at this. "Edmund, sir." he corrected himself.
Professor, however, paid no mind to Edmund's attitude. Instead, he lifted his hand over his temple as if to memorize the names.
"Peter... Susan... Lucy... and Edmund. I shall TRY not to mix you up." he told to himself as he turned around to walk back to where he had came from.
"Oh! Mrs. Macready?" he suddenly said as he turned back to his housekeeper.
"Yes, professor?" Mrs. Macready said as he stepped forward to face the professor.
"These children have had a long journey. Please, have their suppers served upstairs in their own study. They don't want to sit up and be polite to an old man all of time." the professor requested.
Mrs. Macready was slightly taken aback by the request, even if she didn't show it by masking it with the smile.
"Well, with all due to respect, sir, I was expecting to have their supper served at the dinner room as with all the guests. That would be an inconvenience for the kitchen staff." Mrs. Macready responded.
"Ohh, how grand that sounds, indeed, but these fine ladies are the kitchen staff, indeed all the staff in this house." professor pointed out, gesturing with his hand at Ivy, Margaret and Betty, who nodded their heads in repect. "I'm sure they don't mind serving the children's supper in their own room. What do you think?"
Even if Mrs. Macready might not have quite agreed with the professor, she knew better than to object against her master's polite request. She masked the different opinions flashing on her face with a smile and nodded her head.
"Whatever you say, professor. After all, your word is law." she said.
"Excellent. See to it." professor added, satisfied, before he excited from the hall.
And as the professor left, Mrs. Macready turned back to the children and the other servants and getured them to follow her.
But as everybody else followed Mrs. Macready to the children's quarters, Lucy stayed behind for a moment and looked to where the professor had gone.
During the whole trip, Lucy had thought about what kind of man this professor could be, and such knowledge that since he had no wife of his own and no children of his own and necessarily had no experience with children in his house, she had been a little afraid of meeting him for the first time. But now that she had met him face to face, and seen how calm, welcoming and downright warm and polite he was to them, Lucy had quickly grown to like him.
He smiled after the professor, before she quickly rushed after her siblings and Mrs. Macready.
###
Mrs. Macready had led the children to the spare bedrooms - one went for Susan and Lucy and the other one went for Peter and Edmund - with two separative beds in each room, which were located next to the old study room, which the children were allowed to use as their living space with professor's permission as he rarely used it anymore due to having a new study in the upstairs.
While the children were unpacking their suitcases and trying to settle into their new premises, Ivy, Margaret and Betty brought them their supper in the study room as requested by professor and reluctant Mrs. Macready, serving a delicious soup, bread and butter, green apples and hot tea.
The three servant wished the children good nights, they excited from the room, leaving the children all by themselves to enjoy their meals.
"I'll say..." Peter started as they had almost finished their meals. "What about the old prof? Trying to be a military." he said with hardly suppressed laughter, having found the professor's attempt to pretence at military precision quite funny.
"He's funny, but lovely man." Susan admitted as she cleaned her mouth with the tissue.
"I think he's peculiar." Edmund commented from the other side of the table.
Both Peter and Susan turned to their younger brother with the frowns on their faces. "And why's that? Because he's nice?" Susan questioned.
Edmund just shrugged before voicing his point. "Well, you see how he talks? As if he wanted us to laugh like to some clown in the circus." he said with the chuckle.
Peter was less than pleased with Edmund's comment. "Very bad form to show respect for an old man, Edmund." Peter scolded. "He's giving us a home, food, roof over our heads and warm beds to sleep."
"I know that well, Peter! You don't have to keep on making me to do what I don't want to!" Edmund said irritably, already fed up with Peter always breathing down his neck while watching over his doings that were none of his business.
"I WOULDN'T KEEP ON IF YOU'D DO AS YOU'RE TOLD!" Peter snapped with the raised tone.
"WHO EVEN GAVE YOU THE PERMISSION TO ACT LIKE DAD HERE, WHILE YOU'RE NOT?!" Edmund shouted back.
"MOM DID! AND WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT, YOU'LL DO AS YOU'RE TOLD OR ELSE..." Peter shouted, trying to sound authoritative.
"Stop it! Stop it! Please! Please, don't fight!" Lucy let out, finding the fighting between them inappropriate at this moment... and hour. "Didn't you hear what Mrs. Macready said about yelling? She and someone else might hear us."
"Well, you shouldn't think so, Lucy." Peter, having lowered his voice and calmed down, assured his little sister. "In such as enormous place as this sort of house, they won't hear us from here. It's miles from here down to that drawing room and with all those rooms, stairs and passages in between of us."
"Speaking of which..." Susan started. "It's the biggest, wierdest house we've ever been in. With all those long passages and rows of doors leading into many rooms." she admitted, as she stood up from hair chair and began to collect the empty dishes from the table.
Lucy looked around the study with a restless look on her face as the evening began to darken outside. And the thought of the dark staircases, long passages and the rows of doors leading to the empty dark rooms, not to mention about the paintings about the people staring right back at you, the statues, busts and still-standing suits of armor, was beginning to make her feel a little creepy.
"I think it's spooky." Lucy confessed nervously. "Especially now that it's dark."
"Nah! I think that's the only good thing about the whole business." Edmund said indifferently, before he turned to Lucy with the scary look on his face. "I like this spooky house. I'm sure there are GHOSTS in every corner, BOGEYMEN under the girls beds, and MONSTERS under the stairs."
Every time Edmund said "ghosts" or "bogeymen" or "monsters" he raised his voice while suddenly leaned his head closer of Lucy in an attempt to frighten her, which made Lucy to flintch in fright.
"Stop scaring her, Edmund." Susan scolded.
HOO-HOO! HOO-HOO! HOO-HOO!
Lucy gasped in fright when she heard noise coming from outside. "What was that?!"
"Calm down, Lucy. It's only an owl." Peter assured.
"Oh yes." Susan said, as he turned to her siblings with her hands full of empty dishes. "We've never had owls in London. The countryside is actually a perfect and peaceful place for birds and other animals. Think about what we might actually find in a place like this. We might actually find rabbits in here."
An eager smile appeared on everyone's lips at Susan's mention of the animals as she took the dishes to the trays waiting next to them.
"Or hawks and eagles?" Peter said, as he had always wanted to see eagles himself.
"Or foxes. I like foxes." Edmund said. Foxes were his favorite animals because of their cunningness and insincerity known in fairy tales.
"Or badgers. I'd love to see badgers." Lucy admitted.
"I wonder if there's stags." Susan said as she returned to the others.
"Well, we'll soon know." Peter said as he stood up from his seat to speak to his siblings. "Because starting from tomorrow, we have weeks and weeks holidays ahead. We'll start by exploring the grounds, and the woods, and the fields and everything else... as the first thing tommorrow after the breakfast. So what do you say?"
"YEAH!" everybody, including Edmund, let out eagerly in agreement.
Soon they all went to sleep in their respective bedrooms, eager and impatient to wait for tomorrow when all the fun could begin. And while sleeping, each of them had a wonderful dreams of mountains (such as those they had passed by earlier today on the train), forests, and animals such as rabbits, hawks, eagles, foxes, badgers and stags, the adventures, discoveries and all kinds of fun they were about to have in here.
###
However, in the morning, Pevensies were unfortunately met by a bitter disappointment.
It was pouring rain outside, so thick that one couldn't even see clearly the closest trees in the garden, and very least to beyond them to the countryside.
After finishing the breakfast with the Professor in the dinning room, the children could only look out of the second floor window at the thick curtain of rain that had so suddenly ruined all their plans for the day.
"Of course it would be raining!" Edmund complained bitterly.
"Oh, stop grumbling, Ed," said Susan. "Ten to one it'll clear up in an hour or so. And in the meantime we can keep ourselves busy by looking at and reading some old books. There are a lots of them here."
"Boring! No thanks." Edmund dismissed the idea.
Peter then turned from the window to his siblings, determined to keep his promise about exploring. "Cheer up, everyone. This is just the minor setback. We can still explore around."
"Explore what?" Edmund demanded to know. "Unless you haven't noticed, Peter, it rains pouring outside, and I have no interest of going out there to get all wet and catch a cold, thank you."
"I didn't mean of going outside, Ed." Peter told him. "I meant we could explore the house instead."
Susan and Lucy agreed to this eagerly and followed Peter as he led them away from the window to the tour around the house, with Edmund following them lastly and reluctantly as he really wasn't too keen to explore something he viewed as a museum.
The children started their tour around the house from the dining room and began to wander in a line - first Peter, then Susan, then Lucy and lastly Edmund - down the passages that never seemed to end anywhere but kept turning in one direction or another. On their way they came across many doors in both sides of the passages, and out of sheer curiosity, each one of them picked one door and opened it to peek in and see what was behind the door. Some of the doors were locked, thus inpassable, but some of them were open and allowed the access inside. Some of the rooms were other spare bedrooms, some of them were studies, drawing rooms, one time they found the library full of bookshelves filled with very old books (something what delighted Susan in particular but Edmund found it to be lame discovery and suggested they move on, to Susan's dismay), and another time they discovered a long hall full of old paintings and suits of armour.
After having gone through the ground floor completely, the children walked up the stairs to the second floor and found themselves in some sort of upstairs hall with a glass window door that led out to a balcony. They explored this floor through for a while before moving on to the third and final floor.
Shortly after the children had climbed the stairs up to the third floor and started to explore it - finding nothing more than a few small rooms mostly used as storage spaces for the spare furniture - they ended up to enter through the next open door into a room that was quite dim, dusty and surprisingly compared to the other rooms, empty.
However, after looking around for a while, the children saw that there was a large antique-looking wardrobe standing against the wall on the opposite side of the room, which hardly aroused the children's interest much.
"Nothing there. Let's continue." Peter said, and they all trooped out out of the room.
All except Lucy, who stayed behind in the room.
While the others kept going to see the other parts of the house, Lucy, however, grew surprisingly curious about the wardrobe and walked slowly towards it, marveling it and its design, which apparent not to be quite normal design for the simple wardrobe.
The wardrobe had a weird patterns on the outside of its doors in a three horizontal rows - similar to the long tapestries that told stories via pictures - which were probably carved in them during the manufacturing phase of the wardrobe.
Lucy started from the upper row and went them through from left to right. The upper row started from the first pattern depicting two rings in the air, then continued to the three ponds of water under the trees, then to a tall and ruined fortress and ended to a bell, next to which was a nasty-looking person with crown on its head and sitting on the throne-like chair. The second and middle row started from what depicted a sunrise at the dawn, then continued a horse with large bird-like wings growing out of its back, then to the top of the mountain where was growing a bunch of trees, and ended to a large apple tree. Then the third and bottom rowbegan from the pattern depicting a strange bird-like figure sitting on the tree, then continued to a heart-shaped apple hanging from the tree branch and ended to the two crowns atop of each others.
Lucy didn't know what these carvings were all about, but her full focus was on the doors' handles, however, because she curiously thought if it would be worth to try the door of the wardrobe, even though the lock hole in the door caused her to think that it would be locked.
But when Lucy lifted her hand, reached out towards the handle, wrapped her fingers around of it and pulled it down, she was surprised to find out that the door opened quite easily.
Pulling the door open, Lucy looked into the inside and saw several rows of leather and fur coats hanging up there in the dark.
Overcame with curiosity and the likable smell and feel of soft fur, Lucy stepped into the wardrobe - but almost immediately remembered to leave the door open, thinking it to be very foolish to end up locked inside the wardrobe - and got in among the coats, rubbing her face against them and feeling their softness and pleasantly tickling sensation against her skin.
However, the deeper Lucy went into the wardrobe to fish out more fur coats, her attention was quickly caught by the odd sensation of the sudden cold stream of air which blew against her face from where should usually be the back of the wardrobe.
Curious by this, Lucy quickly forgot the fur coats and went further in. She pushed her way past the rows of coats, pushing their soft folds aside. But because of the wardrobe's darkness, she kept her arms stretched out in front of her so as not to bump face-first into the back of the wardrobe.
However, after first step further in, then after the next two steps and even after three steps, she couldn't feel the hard back wall against the tips of her fingers, only empty air, which was getting even colder at every step she took.
Finally, Lucy started to feel something, but it was no more of the soft fur coats or even the wardrobe's back wall. Actually, it felt more hard, rough and even prickly. It felt as if she was touching needles of the fir tree's branches with her bare hands. And at the same time as she felt this, she heard something crunching under her feet and looked down, seeing that the hard smooth floor of the wardrobe was covered first with a thin but then slowly growing layer of something soft and powdery and extremely cold like... snow?
"Tree branches and snow in the wardrobe? This is very queer." Lucy thought to herself.
The air was getting even colder that Lucy was quickly forced to pick one of the fur coats and put it on to keep herself warm. The coat was rather too big for her that it came down to her heels, which made it to look like royal robe than coat when she had put it on.
Feeling a little warmer, Lucy ventured on a step or two further and pushed her way past the last row of the coat and a wall of fir tree's thick branches that appeared as if out of nowhere, much to her surprise.
But what she saw behind them left her very astonished.
Lucy couldn't believe her own eyes when she realized that she'd found herself from standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and a gentle rain of cold and soft snowflakes falling through the air and on her hair and face.
"This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!" Lucy thought in astonishment, while trying to find some logical explanation to all of this.
Lucy looked further into the woods and saw that there was a dim light a small walk away from her. Looking closer, she saw that there was a lamp-post in middle of the wood, that created the light that enlighted the small area around of it.
However, Lucy felt a little frightened due to the dark forest around the lamppost which created unnerving atmosphere, but despite that she felt very inquisitive and excited as well. After all, she and her siblings were supposed to be exploring around the house and since this woods was in the wardrobe and wardrobe in that empty room of professor's house, this could be counted as exploring.
Speaking of which, Lucy looked back to where she had come from and saw through the tree branches the open doorway of the wardrobe and and even a glimpse of the empty room she had set out. And there seemed to still have daylight unlike here in the woods.
"It's alright." Lucy thought to herself. "This is not far and the wardrobe's door is open. I can always get back if anything goes wrong."
With that in mind, Lucy began to walk forward and throught the snowy wood towards the lamppost.
Lucy reached to the lamppost in less than ten minutes and stood next to it, looking at it and wondering why there was a lamppost in the middle of a wood.
"Hmm. What's should I do next?" Lucy then said, looking around of her into the woods.
Shee wanted to explore these woods some more, but didn't think it was a good idea to wander off into a complete strange place with no idea where she was going, and that she might get lost somewhere without a chance to get back to the wardrobe.
CRUNCH-CRUNCH!
She swiftly turned around and looked in the direction of the footsteps, and noticed there a dark figure walking from behind the trees and into the border of the light of the lamppost, appearetly not having noticed Lucy yet.
He was taller than Lucy herself and he carried over his head an snow-covered umbrella, wore a red woollen scarff around his neck and a black coat over. He looked like a man from the waist upwards, but he had the goat-like legs and hoofs, and the hair of them was yellowish white as the snow, and he had a long tail. He had a reddish-brown short pointed beard and curly hair, and out of the hair there stuck two short horns, one on each side of his forehead. In one of his hands, as said before, he held the umbrella, while in the other arm he seemed to be carrying several paper parcels, as if he had been doing Christmas shopping somewhere.
"AHH!" Lucy let out, startled and afraid of this all of the sudden appeared figure that she quickly stepped away from him and behind of the lamppost.
Suddenly...
"GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME!" the creature let out, startled by Lucy's scream that he dropped the parcels from his hands and quickly withdrew into the shadows of the forest.
TO BE CONTINUED...