THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA
THE LION THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE BBC
PART 3
EDMUND AND THE WARDROBE
PREVIOUSLY: Lucy Pevensie has found a mysterious wardrobe from the empty spare room, which led her into the world of Narnia under the one hundred year winter with no Christmas and ruled by the self-proglaimed Queen of Narnia, the White Witch. There, she met Mr. Tumnus, a Faun, part-man part-goat creature. Mr. Tumnus invited Lucy to have a tea with him in his cave, where the Faun lulls Lucy to sleep with his flute. Mr. Tumnus, however, is revealed to be a spy working for the White Witch, who has ordered any Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve discovered from the woods to be handed over to her. Mr. Tumnus, however, cannot bring himself to hand over Lucy to her and let's her go free out of change of heart. Lucy and Mr. Tumnus depart at the lamppost they met for the first time in good terms and Lucy finds her way back to the wardrobe and the spare room.
Lucy then went to the spare room's door and opened, seeing her three siblings still in the passage, walking away from her and the room.
"I'm back! I'm back! I've come back!" Lucy called and ran out into the passage and after her siblings.
Peter, Edmund and Susan turned around to see Lucy running up to them from the room they had just left.
"It's alright. I'm back." she told them as she joined them in the passage.
Peter, Edmund and Susan, however, looked baffled and exchanged a looks of confusion with one another.
"Back? What are you talking about?" Susan asked, not really understanding what their little sister was shouting about.
"But haven't you all been wondering where I was?" Lucy asked, a little confused herself too but only because her siblings didn't look like they already missed her.
"You've been hiding?" Peter said in mild surprise as he hadn't even noticed of Lucy having gone into hide.
However, his lips soon curved into a smile and he turned to Edmund, who was smiling as well.
"Poor old Lu, hiding and nobody noticed!" Peter said, amused.
Both brothers chuckled lightly at this, Edmund even louder without even trying to hold it back, before Peter suppressed his own laughter and turned back to Lucy.
"Lucy, you'll have to hide a little longer than that if you want people to start looking for you." he suggested.
"But I wasn't hiring. I've been away for hours and hours." Lucy insisted.
"Batty!" Edmund said, tapping his head with his finger. "Quite batty."
"But... It was just after breakfast when I went into the wardrobe, and I've been away for hours and hours, and had tea, and all sorts of things..." Lucy ranted frantically, trying to make sense of everything that was happening.
"Oh!" Susan sighed, shaking her head, before she quickly cut her little sister off. "Don't be silly, Lucy. We've only just come out of that room a moment ago. You can't have been there more than a few seconds."
"Nah, she's just making up a story for fun, aren't you, Lu?" Peter assumed, arms crossed over his chest.
Lucy felt bery offended that the others weren't believing her.
Barely maaging to keep herself together, nonetheless, Lucy shook her head in denial. "No, I'm not! It's magic! It's magic wardrobe! There's a wood inside it, and it's snowing, and there's a Faun I had tea with, and a witch and a place called Narnia! Just come and see!"
"Had tea with what?" Edmund asked, not sure if he had heard her right.
"With the Faun." Lucy repeated. "His name is Mr. Tumnus. He lives in there in a warm and cozy cave in the woods and can make a wonderful tea. And he's a very nice and kind person I've ever met."
"Lucy..." Susan sighed. "There are no such things as Fauns, or the magical lands in the magical wardrobes."
"Yes, there are!" Lucy insisted. "I've been there and I've seen the Faun with my own eyes! Please, believe me!"
The others did not know what to think,until Peter spoke over their thoughts.
"Let's... have a look."
Lucy smiled so excitedly after hearing this and rushed ahead of them back into the room, with the others following her right behind. Once there, Lucy flung open the door of the wardrobe and stepped aside, allowing the others to have a look.
"Now! go in and see for yourselves." she instructed.
Peter and Susan shrugged their shoulders and stepped into the wardrobe and pulled the coats apart; and they all saw—Lucy herself saw— a perfectly ordinary wardrobe. There was no wood or snow, only the back wall of the wardrobe. Peter and Susan rapped their knuckles on it to make sure that it was solid. Then, with the shake of his head in Peter's case anbd eye-roll in Susan's cace, they bot came out of the wardrobe and turned to Lucy.
"Lucy, it's just an ordinary wardrobe." Susan said.
"Look. There's the back of it." Peter said, gesturing towards the back of the wardrobe.
In confusion and disbelief, Lucy herself stepped past Peter and Susan into the wardrobe to see it herself. She felt the back of the wardrobe with her fingers and was disappointed to find that there was nothing but the back wall. She banged the wall with her hands before she walked out, head hanging loosely on her shoulders and gaze on the floor.
"A jolly good hoax, Lucy." Peter said with the smile, lightly bumping Lucy in the arm. "You really took it in for a moment!"
"IT WASN'T A HOAX!" Lucy cried out loud in Peter's face, her face red and eyes watery with tears, making Peter look taken aback.
Lucy then lowered her voice into soft whisper, looking alternately at Susan and Peter. "It... it was all different a moment ago. Honestly." he whispered, desperately, pleadingly.
"Come, Lu," Peter said, apologetically but seriously. "That's going a bit far. You've had your joke, and you better drop it now."
Lost, confused and hardly knowing what else she could say, and hurt that the others didn't believe her, Lucy couldn't anymore hold herself back and burst into tears. Susan sympathetically offered Lucy her shoulder to cry into, which Lucy somewhat accepted.
Edmund, however, grinned snidely and rolled his finger next to his head in "cuckoo"-manner. "Snow, woods, witches, yeah right."
###
Three days later, the weather was fine and the children were out of doors at the in a pool of water lily leaves and flowers in the courtyard, where they were looking at the carps swimming in the water.
However, Lucy felt too miserable to enjoy of the day with the others. In fact, she had began to spend more with herself than with the others, wandering aimlessly and in her own thoughts around the property. In fact, she had even refused to speak to her siblings, due to them still thinking she had made up the whole thing about Fauns, magical wardrobes and magical lands in the wardrobes.
While having fun with Peter and Edmund, Susan noticed that Lucy had made her way into the courtyard and was standing in the other end of the pool, looking blankly around in her own thoughts, and seemed to have not noticed them yet or she was just purposely ignoring them.
Excusing herself, Susan ran after Lucy, who heard her coming from her approaching running footsteps and tried to leave the courtyard. Susan, however, gently grabbed from her little sister's left shoulder, making hert to stop, and looked at her.
"Come on, Lucy. You must talk to us." Susan pleaded.
Lucy didn't say a word, making Susan let go of her shoulder and let out a sigh. She couldn't understand how her little sister could be so stubborn about that whole "magical wardrobe" thing that she'd refuse to spend time with them, let alone to talk to them.
"Why can't you admit it was all a story?" Susan asked.
Frowning in irritation of this subject being brought in... again... Lucy looked up at her big sister.
"You know I don't lie!" Lucy cried. "I never lie. It would be easiest thing in the world... to say I made it all up. But I didn't."
Susan looked at Lucy sympathetically, but still not enough to believe her story.
"Hey, Lucy?" Edmund's voice called behind them, making Lucy and Susan to see Edmund standing behuind them, sneering at Lucy. "Have you found a new countries in other cupboards lately?" he jeered.
Even if they didn't believed her, Peter and Susan have tried not to hurt Lucy's feelings, but Edmund had been on this occasion deliberately very spiteful towards Lucy, picking on her with the imaginary countries in the in other cupboards all over the house.
Annoyed, Lucy ran away from the courtyard.
"Lucy!" Susan called after but Lucy refused to listen and was soon out of the sight.
Susan turned around to glare at Edmund for being unnecessarily so mean to Lucy, but Edmund remorselessly shrugged his shoulders and went back of having fun.
###
The next night, when everyone else was asleep, Lucy was the only one still awake. Her head was so full of thoughts that she couldn't sleep properly, or even catch a dream.
The candle on her bedside table, which Lucy hadn't even bothered to put out yet, burned brightly, and Lucy stared intently at its dancing flame.
The flame reminded her of the fireplace in Mr. Tumnus' home, its coziness, its warmth, Mr. Tumnus's hospitality and delicious tea he made and that beautiful relaxing tune he had played to her with his flute.
The candle's flame also reminded him of the dream he had seen threre: those festive meals on the wooden table in middle of the summer forest, those Fauns, Satyrs, Nymphs and Dryads dancing in the summer forest, Winged Horses, Dwarfs mining for gems in the mines, noble noblemen chasing the White Stag, Silenius riding on a donkey's back and Bacchus turning a stream of water into wine.
At that time, everything she saw, felt and experienced back there seemed so real instead of as a makings of imagination or a dream.
But despite that, Lucy hadn't dared to make another trip upstairs to the room where the wardrobe was to see was Narnia still in there... not that she wouldn't have wanted to, but because she did not wish to face another disappointment to by finding nothing more than the empty space full of fur coats and the solid back wall of the wardrobe.
Another reason was that if she was caught from there by the others, that would only set them talking again about the whole wretched "coming up with the whole thing" business.
Lucy began to even forcibly wonder if her short time in Narnia, everything she saw and experienced there was really just a dream - although she would never admit it to her siblings because she still insisted that she was being truthful - but she still refused to fully believe it, even if she wasn't so sure about it.
*I don't care what they say. It may be just full of coats now, but it was Narnia then. I know it was all there, Narnia, the snow, the woods, the lamppost, Mr. Tumnus, everything. I know it happened. But I don't know how... or if it will be there ever again. But what if the others were right? What if Narnia and Mr. Tumnus were just a dream?*
Despite her own doubts, Lucy's own belief in the existence of such a place was kept alive by his thoughts and worry of Mr. Tumnus, that and whether he was alright or if the Witch had caught wind of him helping her to escape and punish him in the most horrible way possible.
She had to find that out. She had to be sure Mr. Tumnus was still alright. That's why she'd never give up from believing that there was Narnia in the wardrobe.
And so, she woved to go back to the wardrobe at the first chance she gets, with the hope that Narnia was still there at any moment, so that she could go to visit him.
###
On the fourth day, when it came to the afternoon it began to rain again, forcing the children to stay for the rest of the day inside.
In the study room given to them, Peter was standing at the window, looking outside, while Edmund lounged on the chair, reading some book or more likely looking at the pictures, while Lucy had somehow managed to convince still sulking Lucy to begrudgingly play a jigsaw puzzle with her.
However, Susan did most of the work of putting the bits together, while Lucy leaned her head on her hand, disinterested.
"C'mon, Lucy." Susan said, lightly nudging Lucy to bring her back into the puzzle, before pointing at one bit next to her. "Try this bit."
Lucy sighed and gave it a shot by picking the bit from the table and began to look for the place it could fit.
"It had to be another wet day!" Peter spat in disappointment and walked away from the window. He went in front of a map that showed Nazi Germany surrounded with red Swastika Flags.
Meanwhile, back with Lucy and Susan and their puzzle, Lucy grunted in frustration when the bit she was holding wasn't fitting into the spot she had found, and was even trying to force the bit into that spot.
"No." Susan said and gently took the bit from her hand. "Here." she said, carefully and properly fitting the bit into it.
Lucy sighed and took another bit from the table to fit it in another spot.
However, before she could've even found the right spot, Edmund came from behind the girls, lips twisted into another sneer as he looked down at Lucy. Susan noticed this and gave Edmund a warning stare.
"Edmund, don't!" Susan warned.
But Edmund didn't listen. Instead, he suddenly, swiftly and not too gently yanked the bit from Lucy's hand - making Lucy to glare up at him - and put it in the right spot. Afterwards, Edmund gave Lucy a triumphant sneer just to tease her.
"Oh!" Susan sighed with the face-palm, before she looked up at Edmund. "Edmund! You're being spiteful."
"What?" Edmund shrugged. "I was just helping her. She was too distracted with the hidden lands with Fauns and witches of hers in the wardrobes."
Lucy snorted in irritation and was about to get up from the chair and walk away, but Susan was quick to gently grab her arm to hold her in place.
"Pay no attention to him, Lucy." Susan reassured, even though Lucy didn't look up to her.
Peter then walked up to them. "Look. Since it's still raining and we cannot go to outside, how about we play hide-and-seek to pass time?" he suggested. "Susan? You're "It"."
Susan gapped at Peter. "Why me?" she asked.
"Because I'm the eldest around here." Peter said smugly. "And I say so. So start counting." he added before he ran off the room to find the place to go to hide.
"Fine." Susan relented and covered her eyes and started counting. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten..."
As Susan was counting, Lucy got up from the chair and left the room after Peter, followed closely by Edmund.
The other three children scattered at the staircase, where Peter went to find some place to hide from the downstairs while Lucy headed to the upstairs.
However, instead of going to find his own place to hide from somewhere else, Edmund secretly followed Lucy to upstairs.
Edmund had taken a notice of Lucy's sullen face changing into surprisingly intrigued at Peter's suggestion of playing hide-and-seek, but not really of the game itself but as if it offered her an opportunity to do something while the others were distracted.
And when he'd seen her go upstairs she seemed in a bit of a hurry, but for a completely different reason and not at all about finding a hiding place for herself.
Suspicious, Edmund decided to find out what Lucy was after.
He quietly followed Lucy all the way to the top floor of the house, and to the same passage that led to the empty room where the wardrobe was. He peeked from around the corner as Lucy entered the room and closed the door behind her, allowing Edmund to walk to the door, which he opened slightly and peered inside.
And there she was, Lucy, standing right in front of the wardrobe.
Edmund couldn't believe it! Lucy had gone back to that same wardrobe! He was about to burst into laughter from disbelief of Lucy's childish naivety and wild imagination about the magical lands inside the wardrobe, about snowy woods, Fauns, witches whatsoever, but he quickly though barely suppressed his laughter and covered his mouth in order not to let Lucy not to catch him from spying her.
*I can't believe it! She's going in there again.*
As Edmund peeked into the room again, he saw Lucy opening the wardrobe's door slowly, with the look on her face that looked like she was hoping for something against hope.
But once the door was fully open, Edmund saw Lucy just standing there in front of the open wardrobe. She craned her neck up, closed her eyes and let out a deep sigh.
But it didn't seem to come from 'yet another' disappointment as Edmund first thought she was facing, but rather from the sudden relief and happiness, to Edmund's confusion.
However, Edmund quickly deduced that maybe Lucy was just using her imagination and pretending her imaginary world to be there just to make herself feel better.
However, what Edmund didn't know was that after opening the wardrobe's door, Lucy had almost instantly felt the familiar sensation of the cool winter wind blowing from the wardrobe on her face, which had instantly removed all of her own doubts about Narnia's existence and filled her with relief and happiness over it.
And then, Lucy stepped in the wardrobe, leaving the door open behind her (because even if it was a magical wardrobe, it still would be very silly to shut oneself into a wardrobe), and vanished from sight.
And once she was gone, Edmund entered quietly into the room and closed the door behind him.
Edmund then turned to the open wardrobe and looked at it for a moment, until a big mischievious smile spread across his face and he shook his head even more at what he assumed was just Lucy's "childish imagination".
Edmund was even spiteful enough to relish of having caught Lucy right in here, because now that both Peter and Susan were out of the way and way out of the earshot, and he was alone in this room with Lucy, this was a perfect opportunity for him to tease her more about her imaginary country without interruption.
"Lucy?" Edmund called teasingly as he walked up to the wardrobe and peeked inside. "It's not Susan come to find you. It's me, Edmund. We're gonna have a lots of fun in here together."
All he could see was coats hanging up in the darkness as usual, but there was no sign of Lucy.
It was also completely silent, which only made Edmund to deduce that Lucy had become aware of his presence and was keeping very quiet in at the back.
"You cannot hide from me, Lucy! I saw you coming here! You better come out if you're afraid of the dark." Edmund teased again.
But even after a moment, to his brief confusion, there was not response. However, Edmund didn't let it to bother him.
With the shrug, Edmund jumped into the wardrobe, leaving the door open behind him, but only for the light to get in so that he could see, not so much because how silly it would be to shut oneself in the wardrobe like Lucy had thought.
Edmund began to look around, pushing fur coats out of his way in search of Lucy, expecting to find her in a few seconds.
But to his surprise, he didn't find her. In fact, he couldn't find her anywhere at all. And yet this was too small wardrobe to be a good hiding place anyway, even if there was two people at the same time.
He kept searching, pushing his way further into the wardrobe.
"Lucy?" Edmund called again, starting to get annoyed that he hasn't found her yet. But still there was no response from here. "Where are you? I know you're here somewhere!"
Suddenly Edmund blindly hit his face on something rough and stingly amongst the furs. The stingly sensation in his face startled the boy and he jumped back.
Edmund then looked closer to see what he had ran into, and was puzzled to find out that it was...
"Tree branch?" Edmund questioned, surprised and confused to find something like this in a small wardrobe.
*Hey! What's that?* Edmund's eyes then caught something up ahead. Looking more closely, he could have sworn he saw a light peeking through the fur coats.
Curiousness took him over and, forgetting all about his search for Lucy for now, he went towards to investigate the source of light.
But as he continued on, he noticed that there was unexpectedly cold, making him to see his own breath in front of him. Shivering from the cold, Edmund was forced to pick one of the fur coats, that too was rather big for him that it came down to his own heels, and put it on to keep himself warm before he continued onward.
After pushing the last row of coats away, he found himself staring at the thick wall of the fir trees' branches.
Though surprised by this unexpected discovery, Edmund shrugged before he continued, pushing pushing his way through the branches and letting out the grunts as the fir trees' needles stung his face and bare hands from all over, until he found himself stepping out of the shadow of the fir trees into the daylight somewhere in the middle of a wood.
Edmund took in his surroundings and gaped at everything he saw: A crisp, dry snow under his feet, all those trees around him and snow lying on their branches, a typical gray-white sky on a cloudy but otherwise fine winter day in the morning, a small spot of white light between the tree trunks, likely a sun that was just rising.
"My goodness!" Edmund gasped silently as he gazed at the landscape in wide-eyed wonder.
Everything was perfectly still. There was no sign of any living creature among the trees. Not even a single bird or a squirrel. He was all by himself. And everywhere he looked, there was more wood that stretched as far as he could see.
*So this is that "imaginary land" Lucy was talking about. It doesn't seem imaginary at all to me. So she was right all along!*
However, thinking about Lucy made Edmund suddenly remember that he was here looking for her. And after having seen the snowy woods in the wardrobe with his own eyes, the first thought that struck him was how unpleasant he had been to her. Edmund looked frantically around but couldn't see her anywhere.
*But where is she?"
"Lucy?" Edmund called, but there was no response.
Edmund deduced that even if Lucy was nowhere in sight, she must be somewhere quite close. After all, it hadn't even been long since he had entered the wardrobe after her. So he raised his voice into shouting.
"Lucy!" Edmund shouted. "Lucy! It's Edmund! I've got here too!"
There was no answer.
"Hmph!" Edmund snorted as he adjusted his coat because he was shivering. He assumed Lucy wasn't responding to his calls because she was probably still angry with him for being so mean to her lately: calling her a liar and teasing her about other countries in the cupbroads.
However, even though Edmund did not like to admit that he had been wrong while Lucy had been right, he also did not much liked being alone in the cold and in this strange, uncomfortably quiet place.
So Edmund started to walk forward into the woods to look for her, calling for her name over and over again.
"Lucy! Where are you!" Edmund called again, walking past the lamppost that stood no far from the fir trees behind of which the wardrobe was, but Edmund paid to it no mind.
###
Meanwhile, Lucy, who had already managed to grab a coat from the wardrobe before stepping back into Narnia, with no idea that Edmund had followed him and entered Narnia after her, was walking in the snowy forest heading towards Mr. Tumnus's cave.
However, heeding Mr. Tumnus' earlier advice, as well as the warning that some of the trees were on the Witch's side, Lucy took the same path that Mr. Tumnus had brought her back to the lappost, staying as quiet and out of sight as possible.
It didn't take her long to reach the familiar big rock in the middle of the forest where Mr. Tumnus' home was located. She was glad to see that she had arrived at her destination, and quickly went round it on the right side until she came to a side rock, and went around it too, finding from behind it the door of Mr. Tumnus's home.
Lucy immediately rushed to the door and knocked into it.
"Mr. Tumnus?" Lucy called.
However, there was no answer.
"Mr. Tumnus? It's me! Lucy!" Lucy called again, hoping for the Faun to hear her.
Still, no one answered to her.
A small amount of dread filled her as she stood there waiting for an answer. Lucy began to wonder if Mr. Tumnus was even at home, or worse, one of the trees growing near might have informed that horrible Witch that the Faun had let her go instead of handing her over to the Witch as ordered, which had put Mr. Tumnus in great trouble. She so wished it wasn't so.
However, much to her delight the door was opened and the Faun peeked out to see who it was. His eyes widened from surprise when he saw that it was just Lucy.
"Lucy?" Mr. Tumnus gasped and stepped outside. "What are you doing here?"
"I came to see you." Lucy responded, taking Fauns hands into her tiny own.
Mr. Tumnus looked around into the woods just to be sure it was just him and Lucy, before he turned back to Lucy.
"You are very brave to come back!" the Faun said, admiring Lucy's courage and delighted to see her again, before his face grew grim with worry. "But you took a very serious risk to come, even if you knew what to expect in here."
"I know, but I was so worried about you." Lucy told him. "I was afraid you would have gotten into trouble because of me. So I came back... to see if you were alright."
The Faun's worried face softened into a warm smile, moved by Lucy's care and worry for him.
"Well, I'm glad to see you again, even if my every instinct tells me to ask you to stay away from here... for your own safety." Faun's said. "Now come in."
Mr. Tumnus then gently ushered Lucy to get inside, looking from side to side before entering himself and closing the door behind him.
###
Meanwhile, Edmund had been walking alone in the forest for some time until he came across what looked like a winter forest road. He followed it to the right, not knowing where it led, but assuming that Lucy could have gone that way.
And on his way, he kept calling for Lucy.
"Lucy!? Do come out! I'm sorry I didn't believe in you! Make it Pax."
However, there was still no answer.
Finally, cold and fed up of this, Edmund halted in spot.
"Just like a girl." Edmund snarled to himself, "Sulking, and won't accept a fellow's apology."
Edmund took one last look around him. With no Lucy in sight, him not knowing anything about this place and it still being eerie quiet, he decided he did not like this place at all.
*That does it! I'm going back! Since Lucy has been here before, she can make her own way back.*
Edmund then began to look around to remember which way he had come so that he could follow his own tracks back to the wardrobe.
Suddenly, she heard something very far off in the wood, which sounded like the jingling of the bells.
Edmund turned back to listen as the sound came nearer and nearer.
And then, at last, Edmund saw how there from behind of the snowy hillside swept into sight a white fine sledge drawn by two weird-looking horses.
The horses' were as white as snow and they had two curvd horns producing from their foreheads in the manner of Unicorn. Their harness was pearl-white and covered with silver-gray bells.
On the sledge, driving the horses, sat a fat and ugly Dwarf dressed in polar bear's fur and wearing on his head a red hood with a long gold tassel hanging down from its point, right above of his face. He had a huge brown beard that covered his knees in the manner of the rug. The Dwarf was loudly cracking his whip at the horses pulling the sledge to make them go faster.
And behind him, on a much higer seat in the back of the sledge sat a great lady, taller than any woman that Edmund had ever seen. She was also covered in white polar-bear fur up to her throat, underneath of which was partially peeking a purplish-blue gown, and she had a high and white collar around her neck. She was holding in her right hand a long dull silver-colored wand with an ornate handle, and wore a four-pointed crown on her head that glittered like ice crystals. Her face was pale white, her lips very red and she used a turquoise eyeliner, and they were a beautiful face in other respects, but proud and cold and stern.
There was a third person on the sled, or not so much a person, but a rather large and completely white snowy owl that sat in the corner of the back of the sled, close to the lady sitting in the sled, like a pet.
Edmund didn't know what exactly to do, just stand here in the open or run away into the wood. But there he stood, staring at the sledge as it swept towards him.
"STOP!" cried the icy voice and the Dwarf pulled the horses up and the sleigh stopped right next to Edmund.
Edmund eyed each of the passenger of the sledge, first the Dwarf who shot at him a dirty look, then the owl who just stared at him emotionlessly with its large golden eyes, and finally to the lady who stared hard at him.
"And what, pray, are you?" the lady said with icy stern and demanding voice.
TO BE CONTINUED...