THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA
THE LION THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE BBC
PART 6
INTO THE WOODS
PREVIOUSLY: After Lucy and Edmund returned from Narnia back to the house, Lucy is hopeful that Peter and Susan would believe her now that Edmund has been in Narnia too. However, Edmund betrays Lucy by denying the excistence of Narnia, hurting Lucy beyond of reconciliation and earning Peter's ire. Peter and Susan go to professor to ask for advise as they believe this is beyond them, but the professor explains to them that if Lucy is not telling lies or is not mad as both Peter and Susan have been thinking and that she is more truthful than Edmund then Lucy is telling the truth. He further presses on that if there really is another world, it may have a different time of its own and won't affect to their world's time however long you spend in that world, and questions if Lucy could've invented something so complicated on her own in such of short of time. Few days later, the children are on the run from Mrs. Macready and the party of sight-seers who are seemingly following them wherever they go. They end up to the wardrobe's room, where surprisingly the wardrobe itself urges them to hide inside of it. Though initially hesitant, Peter eventually leads everybody inside of it.
With all four of them bundled inside, children remained still, panting loudly while waiting in the dark and amongst the fur coats for Mrs. Macready and the party to leave the room.
But after waiting a long time, Susan started to shiver from cold and could see her own breath in front of her eyes, which surprised her.
"Is it... cold in here?" she questioned, wrapping her arms around herself.
Peter felt a cold draft of air blowing his neck from behind him, catching his attention from the wardrobe door to the back of it in confusion.
"Yes, I can feel that too." he said. "It is cold."
Lucy's smile grew wider upon hearing that, as she knew full well what this meant. It also reminded her about the fur coats hanging around of them.
"Put these on." she instructed, taking down one of the coats and putting it on.
The others followed suit and each picked one of the fur coats - and the ones that Peter and Susan picked up for themselves were too big even for them, even though they were taller than Lucy and Edmund, but their hems still came down just above their heels - and put them on, all except Edmund, who remained to stand next to the open door of the wardrobe.
As Peter was putting on his own coat, he stopped suddenly and frowned when he felt the fur in its left sleeve to be all wet.
"Hang it all, it's wet too." Peter said, removing the coat and hanging it up again before sought another drier one.
And when he did, he could feel several wet spots all over the fur with his hands. and even found himself stepping on a wet ponds. Hey, wait a minute! Wet puddles on the wardrobe floor?
"What's the matter with this place?" he asked, looking around as he put a dry coat on he had found.
"Let's get out." Edmund said while peering into the emoty room through the doorway. "They've gone."
"O-O-OH!" Susan yelped all of the sudden, making everybody to turn towards her to see what was the matter.
Susan had felt something rough and stinging touching the back of her hand. When she looked closely of what it was, she was surprised to find out it was a fir tree's branch.
"There are trees here." she told to the others.
This new curiosity filled Peter and Susan to such an extent that they forgot all the hesitation and fear they had felt before and after entering this wardrobe, and ventured deeper into the wardrobe, making slowly their way through the hanging coats - and several other tree branches hanging amids them - until they could see the light behind the last row.
"Look! It's getting lighter—over there." Susan called.
Peter and Susan then pulled the last row of coats out of their way, and found themselves staring at out of nowhere appeared thick wall of the fir tree branches through of which the light came dimly, to their surprise and amazement.
"By jove, you're right!" Peter exclaimed, looking all the trees around before turning to Susan. "And this wet stuff is...?"
"Snow." Susan finished for him.
Peter then turned to look at Lucy, who was smiling at her two elder siblings with her face full of delight, before Peter turned back to Susan. "I think we've got into Lucy's wood after all. Come on!"
Peter then walked forward and made his way through the wall of branches. Giggling, Lucy ran after him. Edmund, who had finally put on his own coat, followed next after them. Susan knelt down to pick up some boots from the floor of the wardrobe before following the others through the fir branches.
Getting past the branches, both Peter and Susan blinked their eyes in amazement when they saw the wintery woods and all the snow-covered trees Lucy had been talking about with their very own eyes. Lucy smiled at the astonished looks on their faces, while Edmund kept her face down and stood in sulky-looking silence.
"See? What did I tell you?" Lucy said teasingly, making Peter and Susan to turn to her. "It was here all along, unless it's all just your imagination."
Peter sighed with the apologetic smile he offered to his sister, realizing that he had to admit himself that she had been right about this country in the wardrobe all along while he and the others have been wrong. Peter then extended his hand at her.
"I'm sorry I didn't believe you." he said.
"I am too." Susan said, and could've extended her own hand to Lu if just she could if it wasn't for the boots she was carrying.
Lucy took Peter's hand and shook it, forgiving both him and Susan everything.
Edmund, however, didn't show any sign to offer some kind of apology for being so mean to Lucy for the existence of this country, which earned him a brief-lasting look from suspicious Peter.
"What should we do now?" Lucy asked.
Peter looked at her as if she, as the one who discovered this country first in the first place, had just asked a daft question.
"Why, go and explore the wood, of course." Peter responded.
"Not before putting these boots on." Susan quickly said, pushing the pair of boots she was carrying into Peter's arms.
"What?" Peter asked, dumbfounded.
"They're from the wardrobe." she explained, giving Lucy and Edmund the pair of their own
Peter looked down the boots in his arms with doubt. "But these things aren't ours." he protested.
"No, but it is cold." Susan pointed out. "And it isn't as though were taking them out of the house. So technically, you shan't take them even out of the wardrobe."
Peter thought that for a moment before he realized Susan's point.
"Oh, of course! Why I never thought it that way!" Peter exclaimed lightly as he began to put the boots in his feet. "You can't say you had bagged a coat as long as you leave it in the wardrobe where you found it. So I suppose this whole country is in the wardrobe."
Susan nodded before she too put the boots on, followed by Lucy and Edmund.
With the coats on and boots in their feet, they all felt a good deal warmer.
"So, where would we go first?" Peter then said.
Edmund lifted his head up and secretly eyed sideways the direction where the Queen had told him her house was. Remembering those sweet Turkish Delight he was still desiring so much for himself as well as her promise to make him the prince, and King of Narnia only if he would bring his siblings along to there... and now that they were all here in Narnia, this was the perfect opportunity for him to fulfill his side of the deal.
However, before he could suggest they go in the direction he had already chosen, Peter had quickly and unknowingly interrupted him as he turned to Lucy.
"Lucy? Since it was you who discovered this country first, and perhaps you know how to get around here, I think you ought to be the leader." Peter decided, feeling that she rightfully deserved such of honor for being truthful. "Where will you take us first, Lu?"
Lucy gasped in delight, realizing that this would be a perfect opportunity for her to introduce her siblings to Mr. Tumnus, the Faun, now that they were all here as well. "What about going to see Mr. Tumnus? The nice Faun I told you about."
"Then, Mr. Tumnus it is." Peter said with the nod. "Lead the way, Lu."
Lucy smiled and began leading the way forward into the forest to the direction where she knew Mr. Tumnus' cave was. Peter and Susan eagerly followed their sister to meet this Faun themselves.
Edmund, however, lounged behind them, sulking.
He wasn't as eager to go to meet the Faun who has "assumedly" said an awful things about the sweet Queen he had met. Besides, he was also irritated that nobody gave him even a slightest chance to say where they should go first, but immediately gave the leadership to Lucy.
*They're always on her side.*
And so they walked in the row, Lucy in the lead, Peter following her next, Susan third and Edmund at the tip of the tail.
They walked briskly and stamping their feet.
And as they walked, there were heavy darkish clouds overhead and it looked as if there might be more snow before night.
Finally Edmund couldn't hold his tongue back anymore. "Why do we have to go to meet some Faun we barely know anyway?"
"Well, it's simple, Ed." Peter said, briefly turning to Edmund. "Lucy knows him. And we're going simply because Lucy said so." he added and turned back to the road.
"Lucy? Are we going the right way?" Peter asked, because when he himself looked around, everything seemed so foreign to him.
"Yes. It's this way. Just around the corner." Lucy said, pointing to the right direction she was leading them.
"Well, I say, oughtn't we to be bearing a bit more to the left, that is, if we are aiming for the lamp-post." Edmund gasped, having forgotten for the moment that he must pretend never to have been in the wood before. The moment the words were out of his mouth he realised that he had given himself away.
"Humph!" he mumbled as he covered his mouth with his hands to prevent himself from saying anythng more, but the damage was already done, as everybody stopped and turned to stare at him.
"Lamppost? What lamppost?" Peter questioned, narrowing his eyes with confusion and suspicion.
"Nothing." Edmund squeaked, trying to save himself.
However, his attempts were all ruined when Lucy spoke up. "He is talking about the lamppost standing in middle of these woods. It's from us to the left as he said, almost right in front of the wardrobe."
"But how could you know, Ed?" Susan asked, turning to the Edmund. "You told us you have never been here before."
"Unless..." Peter said dangerously slowly as his eyes hardened into a glare he shot at Edmund.
Peter then left his spot in the row, walking dangerously towards Edmund, eyes blazing and fumming from seethed anger.
"So you were here, weren't you? You knew this was here the whole time, didn't you? And all the time you made out Lucy was telling lies!" Peter roared angrily, cornering his brother against the tree trunk behind him. "Why, you POISONOUS LITTLE BEAST!"
"HEY! YOU DIDN'T BELIEVE HER EITHER!" Edmund pointed out in his defense.
"MAYBE I DIDN'T AT FIRST!" Peter admitted. "BUT AT LEAST I HAVE MORE GUTS TO ADMIT MY MISTAKES AND APOLOGIZE HER, UNLIKE YOU, BECAUSE YOU NEVER HAVE THE GUTS TO ADMIT YOUR OWN MISTAKES! AND MOREOVER, I NEVER INTENTIONALLY TRIED TO BE SUCH A SPITEFUL BEAST TO HER LIKE YOU HAVE BEEN!"
"Shame on you, Edmund Pevensie!" Susan chastised, equally angry at Edmund for making Lucy feel awful about herself for the whole past week. "Shame on you! Shame on you!"
Cornered and desperate to save himself, Edmund turned to Lucy. "Lucy! Help me out of here!"
But Lucy made no move to help him but stood neutrally there. She still hasn't forgiven her brother for betraying her and making her to look like a liar in front of Peter and Susan. She only gave him a look of sad pity.
"Don't you dare to appeal to Lucy to weasel your way out of this after everything you've done to her!" Peter snarled. "The very one thing you can do for her is to apologize."
Edmund glared at Peter, definitely not in the mood to admit his wrongdoings or to apologize for them.
"Go on and apologize." Peter demanded and stepped aside so that Edmund could face Lucy and apologize her directly.
Edmund, however, kept her eyes down and head slightly turned away, saying nothing.
Seeing no progress, Peter was on the verge to loose his cool and patience with him. "APOLOGIZE!"
"Alright! Alright!" Edmund exclaimed frustrated, finally albeit begrudgingly bending before he turned to look Lucy directly in the eyes.
"I'm sorry." he said rather curtly, before turning afterwards from Lucy to Peter. "You happy?"
Against the odds, Lucy at least managed to break into a small smile and shrugged her shoulder, seeing no point to hold grudge anymore now that they were all in Narnia.
"It's alright, Ed. Some children just don't know when to quit." Lucy simply said.
Edmund merely snorted at this.
"We should keep moving before we catch cold out here." Susan suggested, chiefly for the sake of changing the subject.
Lucy then resumed leading them, with Susan quickly following after her. Edmund was about to follow, until he was held back by Peter, who was still glaring at him icily.
"We're not finished here, Ed, mark my words." he told him with low but icy voice. "Once we get back home, I'm going to have a serious discuss with you, and decide what sort of well-deserved punishment you should receive. Even having you horse-whipped sounds too light of punishment for all the ill-treatment you've given to Lucy!"
Peter then pushed Edmund slightly back and moved away from him to follow the girls.
Edmund, unable and unwilling to accept the fault in himself, gritted his teeth as he looked at his sisters and brother nastily.
*You think you're so clever. Nobody treats me that way! I'll pay you all out for this, you pack of stuck-up, self-satisfied prigs.*
And as he followed the others, he mumbled quietly about getting back on Peter. Or not just on him, but ALL of them! He planned to get back on Peter for shouting at him, calling him a "beast" and for making him to apologize for nothing. Get back on Susan for siding with everybody else against him. And Lucy... well, get back on Lucy too for exposing him to Peter and Susan, and for doing nothing to help him out of Peter's harsh reprimental to him.
###
Lucy proved a good leader. Using her memory from her first two trips, Lucy was able to find the way she and Mr. Tumnus had used to get to his cave, and it didn't take long when they arrived to the big rock in the middle of the forest and went round it on the right side until they came to a side rock, behind of which Mr. Tumnus' home was located.
"Here we are." Lucy said, turning to the others, before turning back and went around the rock.
However, there awaited for her a terrible surprise.
The Faun's cave's door had been wrenched off its hinges and broken into bits as if something had forced its way in.
Lucy gaped at it in shock and was all of the sudden filled with dread.
"Mr. Tumnus!" Lucy cried as she sprung towards the broken door and went inside.
"Lucy!" Peter called as he, Susan and Edmund ran after their sister and went inside.
When they entered, they saw that the cave was dark and in disarray as if after a burglary: all the furniture - armchairs, tables, a dresser, cupboard and the book shelves - had been flung about the room or broken, and the pieces of smashed crockery lay on the floor. The carpet on the floor was torn to shreds, nearly all the pictures on the wall taken down and smashed, and due to the open door, the snow had drifted in from the doorway and was heaped on the floor. The snow was mixed with charred sticks and ashes from the empty fireplace, as if someone had flung it about the room and then stamped it out.
Peter, Susan and Edmund found Lucy standing in the midst of the desolation, holding in her hands the smashed picture of Mr. Tumnus' father, which had been slashed from the lower right corner into shreds, with the slashes somewhat resembling the clawmarks... and big ones.
"This place is cold and damp, and it hasn't been lived in for days." Peter told her as she walked to Lucy's right side.
"Not since after I was here." Lucy said, remembering that this place was not like this after she had left Mr. Tumnus' place during her second trip.
Peter then looked around, until he eyes caught a piece of paper which had been nailed to the wall.
"What's this?" he asked and walked to it before taking it off the wall. Susan and Lucy immediately huddled beside him to look a closer, while Edmund indifferently wandered around the ransacked cave.
"Is there a message on it?" Susan asked.
"Yes, there is." Peter answered. "but I can't read it in this light."
The children then went out in the daylight and crowded round Peter as he began to read out the following words.
"The Faun Tumnus, is under arrest and awaiting his trial on a charge of High Treason against her Imperial Majesty Jadis, Queen of Narnia."
And as Peter read it, out of nowhere onto the paper, over the writings, much to the siblings surprise, appeared a transparent head with the traits resembling to the wolf - gray fur covering the head, the pointed ears, snout, canine teeth, everything, except that it had more human-like eyes - looking up at them savagely and reading the message along with Peter.
"Chatelaine of Cair Paravel, Empress of the Lone Islands, etc., also of comforting her said Majesty's enemies, harbouring spies and above all, fraternising with Humans."
"Signed by me, Maugrim,"
"Captain of the Secret Police."
"LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!"
"RRRRAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!"
The wolf-like head instantly fanished from the paper, though the message, its's meaning, and the wolf-like head's a blood curdling roar had left the children with the chilling terror.
"Long live the queen." Peter repeated.
The children then stared at each other, stunned by the message.
"I don't know that I'm going to like this place." Susan confessed, looking fearfully into the woods.
"Who is this Queen, Lucy?" Peter asked, turning to Lucy.
"She's not a queen at all!" Lucy spat, knowing well of whom the message was talking about. And if she didn't hate this person enough like all the wood people do before this, well she hated her even more now. "She's the horrible witch. The White Witch. She made an enchantment over the whole country of Narnia so that it is always winter yet never Christmas."
Peter and Susan stared wide-eyed at their sister.
"I wonder if there's any point in going on." Susan said after the moment of silence. "I mean, it's getting colder every minute, and we've brought nothing to eat. Why don't we just go home?"
"But we can't, we can't just go home and abandon Mr. Tumnus!" Lucy protested.
"I'm sorry, Lucy, but I don't think there's much we can do. Maybe we could just call the police." Susan suggested.
"These are the police, Susan." Peter reminded, showing her the message. "And according to what Lucy told us, the police are on the side of this... the White Witch."
"But if being with the human is such a high crime, it doesn't seem particularly safe for us to even be here." Susan pointed out.
"Don't you understant!" Lucy cried with teary eyes as he stared up at Susan, confronting her. "Not just any human! I'm that human! That's what the message said: comforting the Queen's enemies and fraternising with Humans. He was supposed to hand me over to the Witch as ordered, but he hid me from her and showed me the way back to the wardrobe. So it is all on my account that the poor Faun has been captured by the Witch! We have to try to rescue him!"
Edmund scoffed at the idea. "Fat lot of good we can do. Besides, why to even bother? He's a criminal after all."
This comment earned him an offended frown from Lucy.
"Shut up, you!" Peter snapped, for he was still very angry with Edmund. "How do you even know that if you haven't met the Faun or anyone else here?"
Edmund was just about to tell him some sort of excuse as the Queen had instructed, until Peter, frustrated with him to the point of being disinterest to hear him out, cut him off.
"You know what? I don't want to even hear another word from you!" Peter said. "You've cause enough of trouble than that."
Peter then turned to Susan. "What do you think, Susan?"
"I don't want to go a step further and I wish we'd never come." Susan said steenly, before she turned to look at Lucy's desperate and pleading face. "But I think Lucy's right. We must try to do something for Mr. Whatever-his-name is—the Faun."
"I agree." Peter said. "I'm worried about having no food."
"Then why don't we go back and get something from the larder?" Edmund questioned.
"Well, there is no certainty we get back into this country once you've got out of it." Peter told him in controlled voice despite being still angry with him. "I think we'll have to go on."
"So do I," said both the girls.
"Psst!"
Startled by the sudden voice, the children spun around to look into the woods, expecting somebody be in there, but they saw nobody there.
Peter instinctively pulled both Susan and Lucy behind his back and stepped forward, ready to confront the one that was apparently spying on them.
"Who's there!?" Peter called out.
However, there was no answer, and no one was seen sneaking or hiding among the trees. There was a moment of dead silence, until...
"Psst!"
The children heard that "Psst!" voice again, and this time they heard it coming from above of them.
They craned their necks upwards to the direction of the voice and spotted a red-breasted robin perched on the lowest branch of the tree that stood next to Mr. Tumnus' cave. The bird just stood there, quietly and without singing and chirping like it should do, and stared down at them directly with its black eyes, as if waiting for them patiently.
But when the robin opened its tiny beak, there was no the sound of singing and chirping but... "Psst!"
The children gaped when a sudden realization dawned to them, unbelievable as it sounded.
"Did that bird just "psst" us?" Susan questioned with the frown.
Susan's words gave Lucy an idea: if there was such of things like the magical countries in the wardrobe, Fauns, Dwarfs, Naiads, Dryads and Winged Horses that were considered as a myth in their country, and above of all, magic, then this might mean that even the animals here could...
Armed with that thought, or more of theory, Lucy took a slow and careful step forward, her eyes locked on the robin who was staring back at her, not seeming to be afraid of her at all.
"Please, robin, can you tell us where Tumnus the Faun has been taken to?" she asked.
Peter and Susan looked at each other with the raised eyebrows, not knowing what to think of this even after having come to realize that this country was real. Edmund, however, rolled his finger next to his head, wordlessly calling Lucy nuts for thinking that the birds could talk, even in this magical land.
The robin, however, suddenly took off to flight and swooped down towards the children, making them duck as the bird glidded over their heads.
But instead of flying away, the robin perched on the branch of another tree not too far from them and turned to look at them very hard... as if it had actually understood all Lucy had been saying, as well as the whole matter throughly. It even finally chirped, but only as if to let the kids know where it was.
Surprised by this and almost without noticing doing so, the four children went a step or two towards the robin, until it flew away again and perched onto the next tree and once more looked at the children very hard, before chirped again.
"I think he means us to follow him." Lucy said, realizing the robin's intention as she turned to others.
"What do you think, Peter?" Susan asked, turning to Peter.
Peter folded the message and put it into his coat's pocket. "Well, we might as well try it." he answered.
The children then went to follow the robin as it kept flying from tree to tree, chirping at every time when it perched on the tree to signal its whereabouts to the children and never staying farer than a few yards away from them so that the children wouldn't get lost.
Lucy and Susan walked ahead side by side, while Peter walked behind of them and Edmund last.
###
After a while while following the robin through the woods, Edmund was starting to have enough with this silent treatment he had with Peter, even if he was not in the mood to talk to him. But some thought bothered him so much that he couldn't keep it to himself any longer.
"If you're not still too high and mighty to talk to me... I've something to say which you'd better listen to." Edmund called after Peter.
Peter rolled his eyes at this. He really didn't want to listen to what Edmund had in mind, but he knew he wouldn't stop bothering him otherwise...
"Alright! What is it?" Peter asked as he stopped and turned to Edmund as he came to stand beside him.
"Look, we don't even know where this Faun is imprisoned, and we're following a guide we know nothing about." Edmund said, getting to the point. "We don't know which side that bird is on. How do we know it wouldn't be leading us into a trap?"
"That's a nasty idea, Ed." Peter chided. "Besides, if this Robin can lead us to the Faun, I'm sure it's not on the wrong side."
"And another thing. When it comes to which is the right side, how do we know he, the Faun, is in the right? We've been told this Queen is the Witch, but we don't know she is in the wrong." Edmund argued.
"The Faun saved Lucy?" Peter argued.
"Well, he said he did, but how do we know that?" Edmund argued back.
But before the argument over the facts and unconfirmed theories between two brothers could continue...
"Peter! Peter!" Susan called from far ahead where she and Lucy were standing right under a large tree.
Putting their bickering aside for now, Peter and Edmund ran over to the girls to see what was the matter.
TO BE CONTINUED...