The reason why the children were brought to Narnia

     "Please Aslan, before we go, will you tell us when we can come back to Narnia again? Please. And oh, do, do, do, make it soon."
    "Dearest," said Aslan very gently, "you and your brother will never come back to Narnia."
    "Oh, Aslan!!" said Edmund and Lucy both together in despairing voices.
    "You are too old, children," said Aslan, "and you must begin to come close to your own world now."
    "It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's you. We shan't meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?"
    "But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan.
    "Are — are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund.
    "I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."

C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952; this edition: HarperCollins, 1994) 247.

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“I have been here all the time” — Aslan

    “Oh, Aslan,” said she, “it was kind of you to come.”
    “I have been here all the time,” said he, “but you have just made me visible.”
    “Aslan!” said Lucy almost a little reproachfully. “Don’t make fun of me. As if anything I could do would make you visible!”
    “It did,” said Aslan. “Do you think I wouldn’t obey my own rules?”
    After a little pause he spoke again.
    “Child,” he said, “I think you have been eavesdropping.”
    “Eavesdropping?”
    “You listened to what your two schoolfellows were saying about you.”
    “Oh that? I never thought that was eavesdropping, Aslan. Wasn’t it magic?”
    “Spying on people by magic is the same as spying on them in any other way. And you have misjudged your friend. She is weak, but she loves you. She was afraid of the older girl and said what she does not mean.”
    “I don’t think I’d ever be able to forget what I heard her say.”
    “No, you won’t.”
    “Oh dear,” said Lucy. “Have I spoiled everything? Do you mean we would have gone on being friends if it hadn’t been for this—and been really great friends—all our lives perhaps—and now we never shall.”
    “Child,” said Aslan, “did I not explain to you once before that no one is ever told what would have happened?”
    “Yes, Aslan, you did,” said Lucy. “I’m sorry.

C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952; this edition: HarperCollins, 1994) 158-160.

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Who is Aslan? (Edmund’s answer)

    "But who is Aslan? Do you know him?"
    "Well — he knows me," said Edmund. “He is the great Lion, the son of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea, who saved me and saved Narnia. We’ve all seen him. Lucy sees him most often. And it may be Aslan’s country we are sailing to.”

C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952; this edition: HarperCollins, 1994) 110-111.

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The danger of sleeping with greedy, dragonish thoughts

[Eustace] had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself…. As for the pain in his left arm (or what had been his left arm) he could now see what had happened by squinting with his left eye. The bracelet which had fitted very nicely on the upper arm of a boy was far too small for the thick, stumpy foreleg of a dragon. It had sunk deeply into his scaly flesh and there was a throbbing bulge on each side of’ it. He tore at the place with his dragon’s teeth but could not get it off. 
     In spite of the pain, his first feeling was one of relief. There was nothing to be afraid of any more. He was a terror himself now and nothing in the world but a knight (and not all of those) would dare to attack him. He could get even with Caspian and Edmund now—
    But the moment he thought this he realized that he didn’t want to. He wanted to be friends. He wanted to get back among humans and talk and laugh and share things. He realized that he was a monster cut off from the whole human race. An appalling loneliness came over him. He began to see that the others had not really been fiends at all. He began to wonder if he himself had been such a nice person as he had always supposed. He longed for their voices. He would have been grateful for a kind word even from Reepicheep.
    When he thought of this the poor dragon that had been Eustace lifted up its voice and wept. A powerful dragon crying its eyes out under the moon in a deserted valley is a sight and a sound hardly to be imagined.

C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952; this edition: HarperCollins, 1994) 91-92.

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Could you ever sail to Aslan’s Country?

    “And where are we heading for?” asked Edmund.
    “Well,” said Caspian, “that’s rather a long story. Perhaps you remember that when I was a child my usurping uncle Miraz got rid of seven friends of my father’s (who might have taken my part) by sending them off to explore the unknown Eastern Seas beyond the Lone Islands.”
    “Yes,” said Lucy, “and none of them ever came back.”
    “Right. Well, on my coronation day, with Aslan’s approval, I swore an oath that, if once I established peace in Narnia, I would sail east myself for a year and a day to find my father’s friends or to learn of their deaths and avenge them if I could. These were their names: the Lord Revilian, the Lord Bern, the Lord Argoz, the Lord Mavramorn, the Lord Octesian, the Lord Restimar, and—oh, that other one who’s so hard to remember.”
    “The Lord Rhoop, Sire,” said Drinian.
    “Rhoop, Rhoop, of course,” said Caspian. “That is my main intention. But Reepicheep here has an even higher hope.” Everyone’s eyes turned to the Mouse.
    “As high as my spirit,” it said. “Though perhaps as small as my stature. Why should we not come to the very eastern end of the world? And what might we find there? I expect to find Asian’s own country. It is always from the east, across the sea, that the great Lion comes to us.”
    “I say, that is an idea,” said Edmund in an awed voice.
    “But do you think,” said Lucy, “Aslan’s country would be that sort of country—I mean, the sort you could ever sail to?”

C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952; this edition: HarperCollins, 1994) 20-21.

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Another Chronicle of Narnia begins

There was once a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. He didn't call his Father and Mother "Father" and "Mother", but Harold and Alberta. They [his family] were very up-to-date and advanced people. They were vegetarians, non-smokers and tee-totallers, and wore a special kind of underclothes. In their house there was very little furniture and very few clothes on beds and the windows were always open.
    Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on  a card. He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools.
    Eustace Clarence disliked his cousins the four Pevensies, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. But he was quite glad when he heard that Edmund and Lucy were coming to stay. For deep down inside him he like bossing and bullying; and, though he was a puny little person who couldn’t have stood up even to Lucy, let alone Edmund, in a fight, he knew that there are dozens of ways to give people a bad time if you are in your own home and they are only visitors.

C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952; this edition: HarperCollins, 1994) 3-4.

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Lucy had her eyes on the Lion (Prince Caspian)

     “He’s beating his paw on the ground for us to hurry,” said Lucy. “We must go now. At least I must.”
    “You’ve no right to try to force the rest of us like that It’s four to one and you’re the youngest,” said Susan.
    “Oh, come on,” growled Edmund. “We’ve got to go…
    “On the march, then,” said Peter…
    Susan was the worst “Supposing I started behaving like Lucy,” she said. “I might threaten to stay here whether the rest of you went on or not I jolly well think I shall.”
    “Obey the High King, your Majesty,” said Trumpkin, “and let’s be off…
    And so at last they got on the move. Lucy went first, biting her lip and trying not to say all the things she thought of saying to Susan. But she forgot them when she fixed her eyes on Aslan. He turned and walked at a slow pace about thirty yards ahead of them. The others had only Lucy’s directions to guide them, for AsIan was not only invisible to them but silent as well. His big cat-like paws made no noise on the grass.
    He led them to the right of the dancing trees—whether they were still dancing nobody knew, for Lucy had her eyes on the Lion and the rest had their eyes on Lucy—and nearer the edge of the gorge.

C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia The Chronicles of Narnia (1951, this edition Harper Collins, 1994) 148-149.

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Now you are a lioness (Prince Caspian)

    “Lucy,” [Aslan] said… “You have work in hand, and much time has been lost today.”
    “Yes, wasn’t it a shame?” said Lucy. “I saw you all right. They wouldn’t believe me. They’re all so—”
    From somewhere deep inside Aslan’s body there came the faintest suggestion of a growl.
    “I’m sorry,” said Lucy, who understood some of his moods. “I didn’t mean to start slanging the others. But it wasn’t my fault anyway, was it?”
    The Lion looked straight into her eyes.
    “Oh, Aslan,” said Lucy. “You don’t mean it was? How could I—I couldn’t have left the others and come up to you alone, how could I? Don’t look at me like that. . . oh 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?” 
    Aslan said nothing.
    “You mean,” said Lucy rather faintly, “that it would have turned out all right—somehow? But how? Please, Aslan! Am I not to know?”
    “To know what would have happened, child?” said Aslan. “No. Nobody is ever told that.”
    “Oh dear,” said Lucy.
    “But anyone can find out what will happen,” said Aslan. “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.”
    “Do you mean that is what you want me to do?” gasped Lucy.
    “Yes, little one,” said Aslan.
    “Will the others see you too?” asked Lucy.
    “Certainly not at first” said Aslan. “Later on, it depends.”
    “But they won’t believe me!” said Lucy.
    “It doesn’t matter,” said Aslan.
    “Oh dear, oh dear,” said Lucy. “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 the enemies away—like last time. And now everything is going to be horrid.”
    “It is hard for you, little one,” said Aslan. “But things never happen the same way twice. It has been hard for us all in Narnia before now.”
    Lucy buried her head in his mane to hide from his face, But there must have been magic in his mane. She could feel lion-strength going into her. Quite suddenly she sat up.
    “I’m sorry, Aslan,” she said. “I’m ready now.”
    “Now you are a lioness,” said Aslan. “And now all Narnia will be renewed. But come. We have no time to lose.”

C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia The Chronicles of Narnia (1951, this edition Harper Collins, 1994) 142-143.

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“Aslan, you’re bigger” (Prince Caspian)

And then—oh joy! For he was there: the huge Lion, shining white in the moonlight, with his huge black shadow underneath him.
    But for the movement of his tail he might have been a stone lion, but Lucy never thought of that. She never stopped to think whether he was a friendly lion or not. She rushed to him. She felt her heart would burst if she lost a moment. And the next thing she knew was that she was kissing him and putting her arms as far round his neck as she could and burying her face in the beautiful rich silkiness of his mane.
      “Aslan, Aslan. Dear Aslan,” sobbed Lucy. “At last.”
    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.
    “‘Welcome, child,” he said.
    “AsIan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”
    “That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.
    “Not because you are?”
    “I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”
C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia The Chronicles of Narnia (1951, this edition Harper Collins, 1994) 141.

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The time has come for faith (Prince Caspian)

    “If your Majesty is ever to use the Horn,” said Trufflehunter, “I think the time has now come.” Caspian had of course told them of his treasure several days ago.
     “We are certainly in great need,” answered Caspian. “But it is hard to be sure we are at our greatest. Supposing there came an even worse need and we had already used it?”
    “By that argument,” said Nikabrik, “your Majesty will never use it until it is too late.”
    “I agree with that,” said Doctor Cornelius.
    “And what do you think, Trumpkin?” asked Caspian.
    “Oh, as for me,” said the Red Dwarf, who had been listening with complete indifference, “your Majesty knows I think the Horn—and that bit of broken stone over there and your great King Peter—and your Lion Aslan—are all eggs in moonshine. It’s all one to me when your Majesty blows the Horn. All I insist on is that the army is told nothing about it. There's no good raising hopes of magical help which (as I think) are sure to be disappointed.”

C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia The Chronicles of Narnia (1951, this edition Harper Collins, 1994) 95.

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The religion of pragmatism (Prince Caspian)

     “We should not have Asian for friend if we brought in that rabble,” said Trufflehunter as they came away from the cave of the Black Dwarfs.
    “Oh, AsIan!” said Trumpkin, cheerily but contemptuously. “What matters much more is that you wouldn’t have me.”
    “Do believe in Aslan?” said Caspian to Nikabrik.
    “I’ll believe in anyone or anything,” said Nikabrik, “that’lI batter these cursed Telmarine barbarians to pieces or drive them out of Narnia. Anyone or anything, Aslan or the White Witch, do you understand?”
    “Silence, silence,” said Trufflehunter “You do not know what you are saying. She was a worse enemy than Miraz and all his race.”
    “Not to Dwarfs, she wasn’t,” said Nikabrik.

C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia The Chronicles of Narnia (1951, this edition Harper Collins, 1994) 77.

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Who believes in Aslan nowadays? (Prince Caspian)

   
    “Do you believe all those old stories?” asked Trumpkin [the reddish haired dwarf].

      “I tell you, we don’t change, we beasts,” said Trufflehunter [the badger]. “We don’t forget. I believe in the High King Peter and the rest that reigned at Cair Paravel, as firmly as I believe in Asian himself.”

    “As firmly as that, I daresay,” said Trumpkin. “But who believes in Asian nowadays?”

    “I do,” said [Prince] Caspian. “And if I hadn’t believed in him before, I would now. Back there among the Humans the people who laughed at Asian would have laughed at stories about Talking Beasts and Dwarfs. Sometimes I did wonder if there really was such a person as Asian: but then sometimes I wondered if there were really people like you. Yet there you are.”

    “That’s right,” said Trufflehunter. “You’re right, King Caspian. And as long as you will be true to Old Narnia you shall be my King, whatever they say. Long life to your Majesty.”

C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia The Chronicles of Narnia (1951, this edition Harper Collins, 1994) 70.

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Thinking all the time about Turkish Delight

      And now of course you want to know what had happened to Edmund. He had eaten his share of the dinner, but he hadn’t really enjoyed it because he was thinking all the time about Turkish Delight—and there’s nothing that spoils the taste of good ordinary food half so much as the memory of bad magic food. And he heard the conversation, but he hadn’t enjoyed it much either…. And then he had listened until Mr. Beaver told them about Aslan…. Edmund had got outside into the snow and cautiously closed the door behind him.
    You mustn't think that even now Edmund was quite so bad that he actually wanted his brother and sisters to be turned into stone. He did want Turkish Delight and to be a Prince (and later a King) and to pay Peter out for calling him a beast. As for what the Witch would do with the others, he didn't want her to be particularly nice to them – certainly not to put them on the same level as himself – but he managed to believe, or to pretend he believed, that she wouldn't do anything very bad to them.

C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950; this edition from The Essential C.S. Lewis (Touchstone, 1996)) Chapter IX, 97.

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Tell us about Aslan

     “Oh, yes! Tell us about Aslan!” said several voices at once; for once again that strange feeling—like the first signs of spring, like good news, had come over them.
    “Who is Aslan?” asked Susan.
    “Aslan?” said Mr. Beaver. “Why, don’t you know? He’s the King. He’s the Lord of the whole wood, but not often here, you understand. Never in my time or my father’s time. But the word has reached us that he has come back. He is in Narnia at this moment. He’ll settle the White Queen all right. It is he, not you, that will save Mr. Tumnus.”
    “Is—is he a man?” asked Lucy.
    “Aslan a man!” Mr. Beaver said sternly. “Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion—the Lion, the great Lion.”
    “Ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
    “That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”

C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950; this edition from The Essential C.S. Lewis (Touchstone, 1996)) Chapter VIII, 93.

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Aslan is on the move

 

    “They say Aslan is on the move—perhaps he has already landed,” [said Beaver].


    And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different.... At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.

C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950; this edition from The Essential C.S. Lewis (Touchstone, 1996)) Chapter VII, 88-89.

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Wanting more Turkish Delight

     “The White Witch?” said Edmund, “who's she?”
    “She is a perfectly terrible person,” said Lucy. “She calls herself the Queen of Narnia thought she has no right to be queen at all, and all the Fauns and Dryands and Naiads and Dwarfs and animals—at least all the good ones—simply hate her. And she can turn people into stone and do all kinds of horrible things. And she has made a magic so that it is always winter in Narnia—always winter, but it never gets to Christmas. And she drives about on a sledge, drawn by reindeer, with her wand in her hand and a crown on her head.”
    Edmund was already feeling uncomfortable from having eaten too many sweets, and when he heard that the Lady he had made friends with was a dangerous witch he felt even more uncomfortable. But he still wanted to taste that Turkish Delight more than he wanted anything else.
    “Who told you all that stuff about the White Witch?” he asked.
    “Mr. Tumnus, the Faun,” said Lucy. 
    “You can’t always believe what Fauns say,” said Edmund, trying to sound as if he knew far more about them than Lucy.
    “Who said so?” asked Lucy.
    “Everyone knows it,” said Edmund, “ask anybody you like…”

C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950; this edition from The Essential C.S. Lewis (Touchstone, 1996)) 77.

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Turkish Delight

     ‘‘It is dull, Son of Adam, to drink without eating,’’ said the Queen presently. ‘‘What would you like best to eat?’’
    “Turkish Delight, please, your Majesty,” said Edmund.
    The Queen let another drop fall from her bottle on to the snow, and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with green silk ribbon, which, when opened, turned out to contain several pounds of the best Turkish Delight. Each piece was sweet and light to the very centre and Edmund had never tasted anything more delicious. He was quite warm now, and very comfortable.
    While he was eating the Queen kept asking him questions. At first Edmund tried to remember that it is rude to speak with one’s mouth full, but soon he forgot about this and thought only of trying to shovel down as much Turkish Delight as he could, and the more he ate the more he wanted to eat, and he never asked himself why the Queen should be so inquisitive. She got him to tell her that he had one brother and two sisters, and that one of his sisters had already been in Narnia and had met a Faun there, and that no one except himself and his brother and his sisters knew anything about Narnia. She seemed especially interested in the fact that there were four of them, and kept on coming back to it. “You are sure there are just four of you?” she asked. ‘Two Sons of Adam and two Daughters of Eve, neither more nor less?” and Edmund, with his mouth full of Turkish Delight, kept on saying, “Yes, I told you that before,” and forgetting to call her “Your Majesty” but she didn’t seem to mind now. 
    At last the Turkish Delight was all finished and Edmund was looking very hard at the empty box and wishing that she would ask him whether he would like some more. Probably the Queen knew quite well what he was thinking; for she knew, though Edmund did not, that this was enchanted Turkish Delight and hat anyone who had once tasted it would want more and more of it, and would even, if they were allowed, go on eating it till they killed themselves. But she did not offer him any more. Instead, she said to him,
    “Son of Adam, I should so much like to see your brother and your two sisters. Will you bring them to me?”
    “I’ll try,” said Edmund, still looking at the empty box.
    “Because, if you did come again—bringing them with you of course—I’d be able to give you some more Turkish Delight. I can’t do it now, the magic will only work once. In my own house it would be another matter.” 
    ‘Why can’t we go to your house now?” said Edmund. When he had first got on to the sledge he had been afraid that she might drive away with him to some unknown place from which he would not be able to get back, but he had forgotten about that fear now.
    “It is a lovely place, my house,” said the Queen. “I am sure you would like it. There are whole rooms full of Turkish Delight, and what’s more, I have no children of my own. I want a nice boy whom I could bring up as a Prince and who would be King of Narnia when I am gone. While he was Prince he would wear a gold crown and eat Turkish Delight all day long; and you are much the cleverest and handsomest young man I’ve ever met. I think I would like to make you the Prince—some day, when you bring the others to visit me.”
    “Why not now?” said Edmund. His face had become very red and his mouth and fingers were sticky. He did not look either clever or handsome whatever the Queen might say.

C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950; this edition from The Essential C.S. Lewis (Touchstone, 1996)) 74-76.

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