TCN04 - Prince Caspian, Part 05 of 08

Narrator (Guest Male): Last time on Prince Caspian, the Return to Narnia.
Lucy (Guest Female): So it was your horn, Susan, that dragged us all off that seat on the platform yesterday.
Susan (Guest Female): Do, let's get out of this wretched wood into the open as quick as we can.
Peter (Guest Male): If we've got lost coming, what chance have we of finding our way back again?
Edmund (Guest Male): We might as well give the whole thing up. Miraz will have finished with Caspian before we get there at any rate.
Lucy (Guest Female): Look!
Peter (Guest Male): What?
Edmund (Guest Male): Look!
Peter (Guest Male): What?
Lucy (Guest Female): The lion! Aslan himself!
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Narrator (Guest Male): To keep along the edge of the gorge was not so easy as it had looked. Before they had gone many yards, they were confronted with young firwoods growing on the very edge. And after they tried to go through these, stopping and pushing for about ten minutes, they realized that in there it would take them an hour to do half a mile. So they came back and out again and decided to go round the firwoods. This took them much further to their right than they wanted to go, far out of sight of the cliffs and the sound of the river, till they began to be afraid they had lost it altogether. Nobody knew the time, but it was getting to the hottest part of the day. When they were able at last to go back to the edge of the gorge, they found the cliffs on their side of it a good deal lower and more broken. Soon they found a way down into the gorge and continued the journey at the river's edge. As they went on, the rush began to fall more and more steeply. Their journey became more and more of a climb and less and less of a walk. In places even a dangerous climb over slippery rock, with a nasty drop into dark chasms, and the river roaring angrily at the bottom. It was maddening. Everyone knew that once they were out of the gorge on that side, they would have only a smooth slope and a fairly short walk to Caspian's headquarters. But the cliffs remained cruel and no break appeared. Of course, if the children had attempted a journey like this a few days ago in England, they'd have been in trouble. I think I've explained before how Narnia was altering them. Even Lucy was by now, so to speak, only one third of a little girl going to boarding school for the first time, and two thirds of Queen Lucy of Narnia. Finally, the river gorge had just made a bend and the whole view spread out beneath them.
Lucy (Guest Female): At last!
Peter (Guest Male): Hurrah!
Lucy (Guest Female): Those are, or were, the walls of Beruna over there.
Edmund (Guest Male): And there's the bridge! Yes!
Narrator (Guest Male): You can't help feeling stronger when you look at a place where you won a glorious victory, not to mention a kingdom hundreds of years ago. They were all getting on at a quicker pace now. The going became easier. Though there were still sheer cliffs on their left, the ground was becoming lower on their right. Soon it was no longer a gorge at all, only a valley. Then, all at once,
Lucy (Guest Female): Oh! What was that?
Peter (Guest Male): Down! Get down!
Susan (Guest Female): Oh!
Edmund (Guest Male): Someone is shooting arrows at us, quick, get back!
Peter (Guest Male): Crawl!
Lucy (Guest Female): To where?
Peter (Guest Male): Back up the hill!
Lucy (Guest Female): Oh, hurry!
Peter (Guest Male): Come on, move!
Susan (Guest Female): Get as low as you can!
Lucy (Guest Female): Oh!
Susan (Guest Female): Quick! Keep down!
Peter (Guest Male): Keep down! Keep down!
Peter (Guest Male): Whoever is loosing those arrows doesn't seem to be following us.
Trumpkin (Guest Male): That's a relief.
Peter (Guest Male): They're only sentries, I expect.
Trumpkin (Guest Male): But it means that Miraz has an outpost down there.
Peter (Guest Male): I ought to have my head smashed for bringing us this way at all.
Trumpkin (Guest Male): Oh, on the contrary, Your Majesty. For one thing, it wasn't you, it was your royal brother, King Edmund, who first suggested going by glass water.
Susan (Guest Female): I'm afraid Trumpkin's right.
Trumpkin (Guest Male): And for another, if we'd gone my way, we'd have walked straight into that new outpost, more likely, or at least had just the same trouble avoiding it. No, I think this glass water route has turned out for the best.
Susan (Guest Female): Ah, well, I suppose we'll have to go right up to the gorge again now.
Lucy (Guest Female): Lucy, you're a hero.
Peter (Guest Male): That's the nearest you've got today to saying, "I told you so." Let's get on.
Trumpkin (Guest Male): And as soon as we're well up into the forest, I'm going to light a fire and cook supper. And I have no doubt that after a good night's sleep, we'll reach King Caspian tomorrow.
Susan (Guest Female): Yes!
Peter (Guest Male): Come on, come on!
Lucy (Guest Female): Peter? Oh, where am I? A wood? Yes. We're still in Narnia. But what do I hear? Am I dreaming?
Narrator (Guest Male): Lucy got up, trembling with excitement, with fear. The moon was so bright that the whole forest landscape around her was almost as clear as day, though it looked wilder. Straight ahead there was open grass to where a glade of trees began. Lucy looked very hard at the trees of that glade.
Lucy (Guest Female): Why, I do believe they're moving. They're walking about.
Narrator (Guest Male): She walked towards them, her heart beating wildly.
Lucy (Guest Female): Oh, they're moving! The trees really are moving!
Narrator (Guest Male): The first tree she looked at seemed at first glance to be not a tree at all, but a huge man with a shaggy beard and great bushes of hair. She was not frightened. She'd seen such things before. But when she looked again, he was only a tree, though he was still moving. You couldn't see whether he had feet or roots, of course, because when trees move, they don't walk on the surface of the earth. They wade in it as we do in water. The same thing happened with every tree she looked at. At one moment they seemed to be the friendly, lovely giant and giantess forms which the tree people put on when some good magic has called them into full life. Next moment, they all looked like trees again. But when they looked like trees, it was like strangely human trees. And when they looked like people, it was like strangely branchy and leafy people. And all the time, there was that strange, lilting, rustling, cool, merry noise, and that moving in and out of one another, as if in a complicated country dance.
Lucy (Guest Female): Oh, pardon me, I didn't mean to get in the way. They're almost awake. But not quite. Oops, pardon me. Oh.
Aslan (Guest Male): Lucy.
Lucy (Guest Female): Yes, I'm coming!
Narrator (Guest Male): Lucy went fearlessly through the trees, leaping this way and that to avoid being run into. She was only half interested in them. She wanted to get beyond, for something else, for it was beyond the trees that the voice had called. Finally, she stepped out from among their shifting confusion of lovely lights and shadows. A circle of grass, smooth as a lawn, met her eyes, with dark trees dancing all around it. And then, oh joy, for he was there. The huge lion, shining white in the moonlight, with his huge black shadow underneath him.
Aslan (Guest Male): Lucy.
Lucy (Guest Female): Aslan! Oh, Aslan! Dear Aslan, at last!
Narrator (Guest Male): The great beast rolled over on his side, so that Lucy fell half sitting and half lying between his front paws. He bent forward and just touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath came all round her. She gazed up into the large, wise face.
Aslan (Guest Male): Welcome, child.
Lucy (Guest Female): Aslan. Oh, you're bigger than you were.
Aslan (Guest Male): That is because you are older, little one.
Lucy (Guest Female): Not because you are?
Aslan (Guest Male): I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.
Lucy (Guest Female): Oh, Aslan.
Aslan (Guest Male): Lucy, we must not stay here for long. You have work in hand, and much time has been lost today.
Lucy (Guest Female): Yes, wasn't it a shame? I saw you, but they wouldn't believe me. They were all so, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to start criticizing the others, but it wasn't my fault anyway. Was it? Was it? Oh, Aslan, you don't mean it was. I couldn't have left the others and come up to you alone. Don't look at me like that. Well, I suppose I could. Yes, and it wouldn't have been alone, I know. Not if I was with you. But what would have been the good? You mean that it would have turned out all right somehow? But how? Please, Aslan, am I not to know?
Aslan (Guest Male): To know what would have happened, child, no. Nobody is ever told that.
Lucy (Guest Female): Oh, dear.
Aslan (Guest Male): But anyone can find out what will happen if you go back to the others now and wake them up and tell them you have seen me again, and that you must all get up at once and follow me. What will happen? There is only one way of finding out.
Lucy (Guest Female): Do you mean that's what you want me to do?
Aslan (Guest Male): Yes, little one.
Lucy (Guest Female): Will the others see you too?
Aslan (Guest Male): Certainly not at first. Later on it depends.
Lucy (Guest Female): But they won't believe me.
Aslan (Guest Male): It doesn't matter.
Lucy (Guest Female): Oh, dear. And I was so pleased at finding you again. And I thought you'd let me stay. And I thought you'd come roaring in and frighten all my enemies away. Like last time. And now everything's going to be horrid.
Aslan (Guest Male): It is hard for you, little one. But things never happen the same way twice. It has been hard for us all in Narnia before now.
Lucy (Guest Female): Yes, Aslan. I'm sorry.
Aslan (Guest Male): Ah.
Lucy (Guest Female): I'm ready now.
Aslan (Guest Male): Ah. Now you are a lioness. And now all of Narnia will be renewed. But come, we have no time to lose. I will walk with you to the edge of your camp. Then you must awaken the others and tell them to follow. If they will not, then you at least must follow me alone.
Lucy (Guest Female): All right, Aslan. I mustn't think about it. I must just do it.
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Peter (Guest Male): Peter.
Lucy (Guest Female): Peter!
Peter (Guest Male): Wake up.
Lucy (Guest Female): Quick. Aslan is here. He says we've got to follow him at once.
Peter (Guest Male): Certainly, Luke. Whatever you like.
Lucy (Guest Female): Oh, Peter. Susan.
Susan (Guest Female): What?
Lucy (Guest Female): Aslan is here. He says we've got to follow him.
Susan (Guest Female): You've been dreaming, Lucy. Go to sleep again.
Lucy (Guest Female): Edmund.
Edmund (Guest Male): What's wrong?
Lucy (Guest Female): Aslan is here and he wants us to follow him at once.
Edmund (Guest Male): Aslan? Where?
Lucy (Guest Female): There, don't you see? Just this side of the trees.
Edmund (Guest Male): No. There's nothing there.
Susan (Guest Female): You've got dazzled and muddled with the moonlight. One does, you know. I thought I saw something for a moment myself. It's only an optical, what do you call it?
Lucy (Guest Female): I can see him all the time. He's looking straight at us.
Edmund (Guest Male): Then why can't I see him?
Lucy (Guest Female): He said you might not be able to.
Edmund (Guest Male): Why?
Lucy (Guest Female): I don't know. That's just what he said.
Edmund (Guest Male): Oh, bother it all. I wish you wouldn't keep on saying things. But I suppose we'll have to wake the others. Right. Everyone up. Wake up!
Peter (Guest Male): Peter, Susan.
Susan (Guest Female): Trumpkin.
Trumpkin (Guest Male): Oh, pickers and pumpkins.
Peter (Guest Male): Lucy's trying to tell us something.
Edmund (Guest Male): What?
Lucy (Guest Female): I'm only trying to say that Aslan is here and he wants us to follow him.
Edmund (Guest Male): Aslan? Where is he then?
Lucy (Guest Female): Over there.
Peter (Guest Male): Where? I can't see anything. Can you, Susan?
Susan (Guest Female): No, of course I can't. Because there isn't anything to see.
Susan (Guest Female): She's been dreaming.
Susan (Guest Female): Do lie down and go to sleep, Lucy.
Lucy (Guest Female): I do hope that you will all come with me, because because I'll have to go with him whether anyone else does or not.
Susan (Guest Female): Don't talk nonsense. Of course you can't go off on your own. Don't let her, Peter. She's being downright stubborn.
Edmund (Guest Male): I'll go with her if she must go. She's been right before.
Peter (Guest Male): I know she has, and she may have been right this morning. We certainly had no luck going down the gorge. Still, at this hour of the night. And why should Aslan be invisible to us? He never used to be. It's not like him. What does Trumpkin say?
Trumpkin (Guest Male): I'm a plain dwarf who doesn't think there's much chance of finding a road by night where you couldn't find one by day. And I have no use for magic lions which are talking lions and don't talk and friendly lions, though they don't do us any good. And whoppin' big lions, though nobody can see them. It's all bilge and beanstalks as far as I can see.
Lucy (Guest Female): Oh, he's beating his paw on the ground for us to hurry. We must go now. At least I must.
Susan (Guest Female): You've no right to try and force the rest of us like that. It's four to one and you're the youngest.
Edmund (Guest Male): Oh, come on, we've got to go. There'll be no peace till we do.
Peter (Guest Male): All right.
Peter (Guest Male): On the march then.
Edmund (Guest Male): All right.
Susan (Guest Female): Supposing I start behaving like Lucy. I might threaten to stay here whether the rest of you went on or not. I jolly well think I shall.
Trumpkin (Guest Male): Oh, obey the High King, your Majesty, and let's be off. If I'm not allowed to sleep, I'd assume march to stand here talking.
Lucy (Guest Female): All right, Lucy.
Peter (Guest Male): Which way?
Lucy (Guest Female): He's over there. Wait. He's turning now. We're to follow him through those trees. They were dancing a moment ago.
Susan (Guest Female): Dancing?
Peter (Guest Male): Dancing?
Edmund (Guest Male): They're not dancing now.
Trumpkin (Guest Male): Cobbles and kettledrums. We're headed straight for the gorge, I know it. I hope this madness isn't going to end in a moonlight climb and broken necks.
Narrator (Guest Male): For a long way Aslan went along the top of the precipices. Then he came to a place where some little trees grew right at the edge. He turned and disappeared among them. Lucy held her breath, for it looked as if he'd plunged over the cliff. But she was too busy following him to stop and think about this. She quickened her pace and was soon among the trees herself.
Susan (Guest Female): Lucy, look out for goodness sake! You're right on the edge of the gorge!
Lucy (Guest Female): It's all right!
Susan (Guest Female): No, she's right, Peter. Look, it's a steep path.
Peter (Guest Male): Well, I never! It goes slantwise down into the gorge between the rocks. You'd never see it unless you were looking for it. This way!
Lucy (Guest Female): Look, look ahead!
Edmund (Guest Male): What's that shadow crawling in front of us?
Lucy (Guest Female): It's his shadow!
Edmund (Guest Male): What?
Peter (Guest Male): I do believe you're right, Luce. I can't think how I didn't see it before.
Edmund (Guest Male): But where's he?
Lucy (Guest Female): With his shadow, of course. Can't you see him?
Edmund (Guest Male): Well, I almost thought I did. For a moment, it's such bad light.
Trumpkin (Guest Male): Get on, King Edmund, get on!
Susan (Guest Female): But it's so steep. I'm liable to fall.
Susan (Guest Female): Oh, do stop grousing, Susan.
Peter (Guest Male): Give me your hand. Why a baby could get down here.
Edmund (Guest Male): Listen!
Narrator (Guest Male): In a few minutes, they were at the bottom, and the roaring of water filled their ears. Treading delicately like a cat, Aslan stepped from stone to stone across the stream. In the middle, he stopped, bent down to drink. And as he raised his shaggy head dripping from the water, he turned to face them.
Susan (Guest Female): It's him! I see him!
Lucy (Guest Female): Oh, Aslan!
Peter (Guest Male): What? You see him, Peter?
Peter (Guest Male): Where?
Lucy (Guest Female): He stopped for a drink, but now he's moving up the far side of the rush.
Peter (Guest Male): I, I think I saw something, but it's so tricky in the moonlight. On we go, though, and three cheers for Lucy. I don't feel half so tired now either.
Narrator (Guest Male): Aslan without hesitation led them to their left, farther up the gorge. The whole journey was odd and dreamlike. The roaring stream, the wet grass, the shimmering cliffs which they were approaching, and always the glorious, silently pacing beast ahead.
Peter (Guest Male): Wait! There he is! I see him now!
Susan (Guest Female): Oh, Peter!
Peter (Guest Male): Presently they came to another steep path up the face of the farther precipices. These were far higher than the ones they'd just ascended, and the journey up them was a long and tedious zigzag.
Narrator (Guest Male): Lucy was alarmed when the tail and hind legs of Aslan disappeared over the top, but with one last effort, she scrambled after him and came out, rather shaky-legged and breathless, on the hill they had been trying to reach ever since they left Glasswater.
Narrator (Guest Male): The long, gentle slope stretched up to where it vanished in a glimmer of trees about half a mile away.
Narrator (Guest Male): It was the Hill of the Stone Table. The others climbed up behind her, and they walked after Aslan.
Lucy (Guest Female): Lucy.
Susan (Guest Female): Yes.
Susan (Guest Female): I, I see him now. I'm sorry.
Lucy (Guest Female): That's all right.
Susan (Guest Female): But I've been far worse than you know. I really believed it was him. He, I mean, yesterday, when he warned us not to go down to the firwood. And I really believed it was him tonight. I mean deep down inside. But I just wanted to get out of the woods and, oh, I don't know. Whatever am I going to say to him?
Lucy (Guest Female): Perhaps you won't have to say much.
Peter (Guest Male): There's the Great Mound. Aslan's Howe.
Peter (Guest Male): Trumpkin. How do I not keep a very good watch. We ought to have been challenged before now.
Edmund (Guest Male): Quiet.
Peter (Guest Male): Aslan has stopped.
Lucy (Guest Female): He wants us to come forward.
Peter (Guest Male): Oh, Aslan, I'm so glad. And I'm so sorry. I've been leading them the wrong way ever since we started, and especially yesterday morning.
Aslan (Guest Male): My dear son, Edmund.
Edmund (Guest Male): Aslan?
Aslan (Guest Male): Well done.
Edmund (Guest Male): Oh, thank you, Aslan.
Aslan (Guest Male): Susan. Come closer.
Susan (Guest Female): Oh, Aslan.
Aslan (Guest Male): You have listened to your fears, child. Come, let me breathe on you. Forget them. Are you brave again?
Susan (Guest Female): A little, Aslan.
Aslan (Guest Male): And now, where is this little dwarf? This famous swordsman and archer, who does not believe in lions? Come here, son of Earth.
Trumpkin (Guest Male): Oh, but, but, but, but.
Aslan (Guest Male): Come here!
Trumpkin (Guest Male): What are you doing?
Narrator (Guest Male): Aslan pounced. Have you ever seen a very young kitten being carried in the mother cat's mouth? It was like that. The dwarf, hunched up in a little miserable ball, hung from Aslan's mouth. The lion gave him one shake, and all his armor rattled like a tinker's pack, and then, presto, the dwarf flew up in the air. He was as safe as if he'd been in bed, though he didn't feel so. As he came down, the huge, velvety paws caught him as gently as a mother's arms, and set him right way up on the ground.
Aslan (Guest Male): Son of Earth. Shall we be friends?
Trumpkin (Guest Male): Yes, yes, yes.
Narrator (Guest Male): Now the moon is setting.
Aslan (Guest Male): Look behind you. There is the dawn beginning. We have no time to lose. You three, you sons of Adam, and son of Earth, hasten into the mound and deal with what you will find there.
Edmund (Guest Male): Yes, Aslan.
Lucy (Guest Female): But what do you want us to do, Aslan?
Aslan (Guest Male): Wait and watch.
Host Male (Doug Gresham): Next time on Prince Caspian, the Return to Narnia.
Miraz (Guest Male): Stand aside, then. Let all this work.
Peter (Guest Male): The help will come. Maybe even now at the door.
Miraz (Guest Male): I mean a power so much greater than Aslan's that it held Narnia spellbound for years and years.
Edmund (Guest Male): You mean the White Witch?
Miraz (Guest Male): Can't mean her.
Edmund (Guest Male): Yes, I mean the witch.
Miraz (Guest Male): Is this open treason, dwarf?
Peter (Guest Male): We must go in now.
Miraz (Guest Male): Right, come on.
Peter (Guest Male): Prince Caspian, the Return to Narnia from The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, is a production of Focus on the Family. I'm Doug Gresham. Thank you for listening.