Chapter 16 Chapter 16 Farewell to the Phantom World

If a man can fly without getting tired, I don't think he will think of doing anything else.But maybe there was a special reason for stopping, and that was what made Eustace cry out, "Listen to me! Take it easy! Look where we've come!" He probably stopped.Because now they see the Cauldron Deep, the unattainable cliff behind the Cauldron Deep, and the huge waterfall that pours thousands of tons of water every second from the cliff. Dark green as glass; and the sound of the thundering waterfall was already in their ears. "Don't stop! Go higher and deeper!" the eagle yelled, flying slightly upwards obliquely.

"Everything is convenient for it," said Eustace, but the Unicorn Jewel called too: "Don't stop. Go higher and deeper! Know the spirit as you stride." Amidst the roar of the great waterfall, the unicorn's cries could barely be heard, but after a while, it was seen going deep into the cauldron.In a hurry, splashing water, other people and beasts also went down.The water was not as icy cold as they all (especially the donkey Puzzled) expected, but it was foaming and cool and pleasant. They all found that they were swimming straight to the waterfall. "Very mad," said Eustace to Edmund.

"Isn't it wonderful?" said Lucy. "Have you ever noticed that one cannot be frightened, even if one wants to? Try." "My God, there's no way to be afraid," said Eustace, after he had tried it. Jewel the Unicorn was the first to reach the foot of the waterfall, but Tirian was right after him.Jill arrived last, so she could see better than the others.She saw something white moving steadily across the water of the Great Falls.The white thing is the unicorn.You can't tell whether it's swimming or climbing, but it's advancing, getting higher and higher.The tip of its single horn parted the water just above its head, and the water split into two streams of many colors that trickled down its shoulders.

Just behind the unicorn came King Tirian.He moved his legs and arms as if swimming, but he moved straight up: as if he could swim up the wall. The ones that looked the most ridiculous were the dogs.They had never been suffocated at all during the gallop, but now they huddled together, writhed upward, talked a lot to each other, and sneezed a lot; Every time I bark, my mouth and nose are full of water.But before Jill could see these things fully, she climbed into the waterfall herself.This is something that is completely impossible in our world.The waterfall crashes down on top of the rocks with such terrible weight that, if you don't drown, you are crushed to pieces.But in that world, you can do it.You keep going, rising and rising, all kinds of reflections from the waterfall shine on you, and all kinds of colored stones refract light from the water, so that it seems that you are climbing up on the body of light —and always higher and higher, even the sense of height would surprise you, if it scared you, but here it is nothing but a glorious exhilaration.At last, coming to that lovely, smooth, green bend by which the water rushes to the top of the hill, I found myself on the flat river above the falls.The current is rushing behind you, but you are such an amazing swimmer that you can swim upstream.Soon they all came ashore, dripping wet, but happy.

Ahead lay a long valley and great snow-capped mountains, which stood tall against the sky, much nearer. "Go higher and deeper," cried the Unicorn Jewel, and they set off again at once. Now they were out of Narnia, up into the Westfall, where Tirian, Peter, and even the Eagle had never seen before.But Lord Digory and Lady Polly had. "Do you remember? Do you remember?" they said--and they said it in even, steady tones, not at all out of breath, though the whole procession was flying faster than an arrow. "Oh, my lord," said Tirian, "the story says that you two traveled here in the first days of the world, so is it true?"

"Yes," said Lord Digory, "I feel as though it were only yesterday." "Rided a Pegasus?" asked Tirian. "Is it true?" "It is true, of course," said Digory.But the dogs barked "Quick, quick!" So they ran faster and faster, until they seemed to be flying instead of running, and the eagles in the sky were not faster than them.They went through one crooked valley and another crooked valley, up the steep slopes of the mountains, and down the other steep slope more quickly than before, followed the river, sometimes crossed it, and floated over the mountains Lakes, as if they themselves were living speedboats.At last they came to the end of a long lake, blue as turquoise.Then they saw a smooth green hill.The sides of the hill were as steep as the sides of a pyramid, and around the top of the hill was built a green wall, with branches stretching out from the wall, the leaves of which looked like silver, and the fruits like gold.

"Go higher and deeper!" the unicorn roared, and no one flinched.Heading straight for the foot of the hill, they found themselves running up the hill, almost like a dammed wave breaking up a boulder jutting out from the tip of the bay.Although the hillside was almost as steep as a roof and the grass as smooth as a bowls lawn, not one slipped or slipped.It was only that they slowed down when they reached the top, and that was because they found themselves facing the huge golden gate.For a moment, no one was bold enough to try to see if the Golden Gate would open.They all felt exactly the same way they felt about the miracle fruit—"Dare we? Right? Can this door be opened for us?"

But, while they stood thus outside the door, a great horn, loud and sweet, whined somewhere in the garden within the walls, and the golden door opened. Tirian stood breathlessly, wondering who was going to come out of the door.But what came out was a character he hadn't expected at all: a small, soft-haired, bright-eyed, human-speaking mouse with a red feather stuck in a circle on its head, and its left paw resting on a On the sword.It bowed, made the most beautiful bow, and said shrillly: "In the name of the Lion King, welcome. Go higher and deeper." Then Tirian saw High King Peter and King Edmund and Queen Lucy running forward, knelt down and saluted the Mouse, and all cried out in unison, "Reepicheep!"

The thing was so miraculous that Tirian's breath came short, for he knew now that he was seeing Reepicheep, the great hero mouse of Narnia, who had fought at the Battle of Boronna, and who had followed Keith the Voyager. King Bin went as far as the ends of the earth.However, before he had time to think about it, he felt two strong arms hugging him, felt a beard kissing his cheek, and heard a familiar voice say: "How's it going, kid? It's thicker and longer than the last time I kissed you, isn't it?" It was his own father, the good King Erlian, who said this: but not the father Tirian saw when he was sent home wounded and pale from the fight with giants, nor did Tirian even remember In his later years, he was the father of a gray-haired veteran soldier.Here was a young and happy father, the one Tirian could remember from childhood, when he himself was a little boy, playing games with his father in the gardens of Cair Paravel Castle, just before going to bed in the summer evening.The smell of bread and milk that he used to eat for dinner was back.

Jewel the Unicorn said to herself, "I'll let them talk a little while, and then I'll pay homage to King Erlenn. He fed me many shiny apples when I was a little one." But the next moment it came again Think of other things, for out of the gate came a horse again, so powerful and noble that even the Unicorn would have been ashamed of it.It is a big horse with wings.He looked at Lord Digory and Lady Polly for a moment, then neighed, "Ah, Cousin!" and they both cried, "Father! Good old Feather!" and ran to kiss it. At this moment, the mouse urged them to enter the door again.So they all went in through the golden gate, and a pleasant fragrance was blown to them from the garden.Step into a cool mix of sun and shade, and walk on springy turf studded with white flowers.The first fact that impressed everyone was that the garden was much larger inside than it looked outside.But no one had time to think about it, because people were coming from all over to meet the new arrivals.Everyone you've ever heard of (if you know the history of these countries), seems to be there.There was Grimfeather the Owl, Puddleglum the Marsh Thing, Rilian the Disenchanted King, Rilian's mother the star's daughter, Rilian's great father King Caspian himself.Next to Caspian are Lord Derinian and Lord Burnie, Trumpkin the Dwarf, Truffle the Orion, the Good Badger, Glenn Stone the Centaur, and others from the Great Salvation Hundreds of heroes.From the other side came Keo the King of Archenland, and King Lunn his father, and Aravis his Queen, and his brother Colin the Brave Prince, Boxer Thunderbolt, Bree the Warhorse, and Hwin the Mare.Then—and this was the miracle of all miracles, it seemed to Tirian—two good Beavers and Tumnus the Faun came from the distant past.Greetings, kisses, handshakes, old jokes come to life (you have no idea how funny an old joke sounds when you put it away for five or six hundred years and bring it up again), the whole line moves forward , walked to the center of the orchard; in the orchard, the phoenix sat on a tree, overlooking them all, and there were two thrones under the tree, on which sat the king and queen, great and beautiful, and everyone bowed down in front of them.They too will worship, for these two are King Frank and Queen Helen, from whom most of the old kings of Narnia and Archenland are descended.And Tirian felt the way she felt when she took you to meet Adam and Eve in their prime.

About half an hour later—or maybe fifty years later, because the time there is different from our time here—Lucy and her dear friend, her old Narnian friend Tom the Fay Nas stood together, looking over the garden wall, and saw all of Narnia spread out below.But when you look down, you realize that the mountain is much larger than you thought, sinking thousands of feet with its glistening cliffs, and at the bottom, the trees appear to be the size of green grains of salt.Then she turned inward, leaning her back against the wall, and looked out at the garden. "I see," she said thoughtfully at last, "and now I see. The garden is like the stable. The inside is much larger than the outside." "Of course, Daughter of Eve," said the Faun, "everything gets bigger the farther you go up and down. The inside is bigger than the outside." Lucy looked at the garden carefully, and found that it was not a garden at all, but a whole world, with its own rivers and lakes, forests, seas and mountains.But they were not new: she knew them all. "I see," she said, "that this is still Narnia, as real and more beautiful than Narnia down below, just as it is real and more beautiful than Narnia beyond the stable door! I see, world The world in Narnia, Narnia in Narnia..." "Yes," said Mr. Tumnus, "like an onion, unless you keep peeling it in, and each turn is bigger than the last." Lucy looked here and there, and presently noticed a new and beautiful change in her eyes.Whatever she was looking at, however far away she was looking at, once her eyes were fixed and straight on it, it seemed clear and near, as if she were looking through a telescope.She could see the whole of the great desert to the south, the city of Tashbaan beyond the desert, and to the east she could see the city of Cair Paravel by the sea, and the window of the room that had once been hers.Far above the sea she could find islands, one after another, as far as the ends of the earth, and beyond the ends of the earth lay the mountains of the land which they call Aslan.But now she saw clearly that the great mountains were only part of the great continuous range that encircled the whole world.It was right in front of her, and it seemed close.Then she looked to the left, and she saw what she thought were a mass of brightly colored clouds separated by a gully.But when she looked more closely, she saw that it was not a cloud at all, but a real landmass.When her eyes fixed on a certain point, she cried out at once: "Peter! Edmund! Come and see! Come." They came and looked, for their eyes became like Lucy's. The eyes are the same. "Ah!" exclaimed Peter, "this is England. This is the house—Professor Kirk's old country home, where all our adventures began!" "I thought the house was run down," said Edmund. "The house is falling down," said the Faun, "but what you are seeing now is England in England, the real England, just as here is the real Narnia. And in that inner England, there is nothing Good things are destroyed." Suddenly they turned their eyes to another spot, and Peter, Edmund, and Lucy, breathless with astonishment, cried out and began to wave their hands, for they saw their parents, Parents also waved to them across the big and deep valley.It's like you see people waving at you from the deck of a big ship and you're meeting them on the pier. "How can we reunite with them?" asked Lucy. "That's easy enough," said Tumnus, "that country and this country--the real country--are nothing but noses jutting out of the high mountains of Aslan. We'll just follow the ridge Go, go up and inward till the two join. Listen, King Frank's horn is sounding, and we must all go up." It was not long before they saw that they were all walking together--a great and glorious procession--all going up to mountains higher than you could see in this world, if mountains could be seen.But there was no snow on these high mountains: there were forests and green slopes and fragrant orchards and shimmering waterfalls, one after the other, rising forever to the heights.And the land they were walking on was getting narrower and narrower, with a ravine on each side, and the land on the other side of the ravine, which was the real England, was getting closer and closer. The light ahead is getting stronger and stronger.Lucy saw a series of colorful cliffs overlapping each other, like a giant's path.Then she forgot all the rest, for Aslan himself came, rushing down from precipice to precipice like a living waterfall of power and beauty. The first thing Aslan called to was Puzzle the donkey.The donkey walked towards Aslan, and you never saw a donkey so weak and stupid as Puzzled was then: it stood beside Aslan and looked as small as a kitten standing beside St. Bernard .The Lion bowed his head, and whispered something in Puzzle's ear, and Puzzle's long ears drooped; It stood up again, and several people couldn't hear what the Lion King said twice.Then Aslan turned to the people and said: "It seems that you are not as happy as I expected." Lucy said: "Aslan, we were afraid you were going to send us away. You have sent us back to our own world several times." "Don't worry," said Aslan, "didn't you guess?" Their hearts were pounding, and wild hope rose within them. "There was indeed a train wreck," whispered Aslan, "and your father and mother and all of you died - to the Shadowlands, as you used to say. The term is over and the holidays have begun .The dream is over: it is morning." Aslan spoke, he no longer looked straight at them like a lion; but what began to happen afterward was so great and beautiful that I cannot describe it.For us, that was the end of all stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after.But for them, this is only the beginning of the real story.All their lives in this world, and all their adventures in Narnia, were but the cover and title of a book: now at last they opened the first chapter of the great story.The great story, which no one in the world has ever read, will go on forever: each chapter is better than the last.