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СКАЧАТЬ “Go!” then—Oh, thank goodness. The angry, frightened faces had vanished. The angry, frightened voices were silenced. All except Uncle Andrew’s. Close beside Digory in the darkness, it was wailing on: “Oh, oh, is this delirium? Is it the end? I can’t bear it. It’s not fair. I never meant to be a Magician. It’s all a misunderstanding. It’s all my godmother’s fault; I must protest against this. In my state of health too. A very old Dorsetshire family.”

      “Bother!” thought Digory. “We didn’t want to bring him along. My hat, what a picnic. Are you there, Polly?”

      “Yes, I’m here. Don’t keep on shoving.”

      “I’m not,” began Digory, but before he could say anything more, their heads came out into the warm, green sunshine of the wood. And as they stepped out of the pool Polly cried out:

      “Oh look! We’ve brought the old horse with us too. And Mr. Ketterley. And the Cabby. This is a pretty kettle of fish!”

      As soon as the Witch saw that she was once more in the wood she turned pale and bent down till her face touched the mane of the horse. You could see she felt deadly sick. Uncle Andrew was shivering. But Strawberry, the horse, shook his head, gave a cheerful whinny, and seemed to feel better. He became quiet for the first time since Digory had seen him. His ears, which had been laid flat back on his skull, came into their proper position, and the fire went out of his eyes.

      “That’s right, old boy,” said the Cabby, slapping Strawberry’s neck. “That’s better. Take it easy.”

      Strawberry did the most natural thing in the world. Being very thirsty (and no wonder) he walked slowly across to the nearest pool and stepped into it to have a drink. Digory was still holding the Witch’s heel and Polly was holding Digory’s hand. One of the Cabby’s hands was on Strawberry; and Uncle Andrew, still very shaky, had just grabbed on the Cabby’s other hand.

      “Quick,” said Polly, with a look at Digory. “Greens!”

      So the horse never got his drink. Instead, the whole party found themselves sinking into darkness. Strawberry neighed; Uncle Andrew whimpered. Digory said, “That was a bit of luck.”

      There was a short pause. Then Polly said, “Oughtn’t we to be nearly there now?”

      “We do seem to be somewhere,” said Digory. “At least I’m standing on something solid.”

      “Why, so am I, now that I come to think of it,” said Polly. “But why’s it so dark? I say, do you think we got into the wrong pool?”

      “Perhaps this is Charn,” said Digory. “Only we’ve got back in the middle of the night.”

      “This is not Charn,” came the Witch’s voice. “This is an empty world. This is Nothing.”

      And really it was uncommonly like Nothing. There were no stars. It was so dark that they couldn’t see one another at all and it made no difference whether you kept your eyes shut or opened. Under their feet there was a cool, flat something which might have been earth, and was certainly not grass or wood. The air was cold and dry and there was no wind.

      “My doom has come upon me,” said the Witch in a voice of horrible calmness.

      “Oh don’t say that,” babbled Uncle Andrew. “My dear young lady, pray don’t say such things. It can’t be as bad as that. Ah—Cabman—my good man—you don’t happen to have a flask about you? A drop of spirits is just what I need.”

      “Now then, now then,” came the Cabby’s voice, a good firm, hardy voice. “Keep cool, everyone, that’s what I say. No bones broken, anyone? Good. Well there’s something to be thankful for straight away, and more than anyone could expect after falling all that way. Now, if we’ve fallen down some diggings—as it might be for a new station on the Underground—someone will come and get us out presently, see! And if we’re dead—which I don’t deny it might be—well, you got to remember that worse things ’appen at sea and a chap’s got to die sometime. And there ain’t nothing to be afraid of if a chap’s led a decent life. And if you ask me, I think the best thing we could do to pass the time would be sing a ’ymn.”

      And he did. He struck up at once a harvest thanksgiving hymn, all about crops being “safely gathered in.” It was not very suitable to a place which felt as if nothing had ever grown there since the beginning of time, but it was the one he could remember best. He had a fine voice and the children joined in; it was very cheering. Uncle Andrew and the Witch did not join in.

      Toward the end of the hymn Digory felt someone plucking at his elbow and from a general smell of brandy and cigars and good clothes he decided that it must be Uncle Andrew. Uncle Andrew was cautiously pulling him away from the others. When they had gone a little distance, the old man put his mouth so close to Digory’s ear that it tickled, and whispered:

      “Now, my boy. Slip on your ring. Let’s be off.”

      But the Witch had very good ears. “Fool!” came her voice and she leaped off the horse. “Have you forgotten that I can hear men’s thoughts? Let go the boy. If you attempt treachery I will take such vengeance upon you as never was heard of in all worlds from the beginning.”

      “And,” added Digory, “if you think I’m such a mean pig as to go off and leave Polly—and the Cabby—and the horse—in a place like this, you’re well mistaken.”

      “You are a very naughty and impertinent little boy,” said Uncle Andrew.

      “Hush!” said the Cabby. They all listened.

      In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it. The horse seemed to like it too; he gave the sort of whinny a horse would give if, after years of being a cab-horse, it found itself back in the old field where it had played as a foal, and saw someone whom it remembered and loved coming across the field to bring it a lump of sugar.

      “Gawd!” said the Cabby. “Ain’t it lovely?”

      Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn’t come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out—single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world. There were no clouds. The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the first voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.

      “Glory be!” said the Cabby. “I’d ha’ been a better man all my life if I’d known there were things like this.”

      The Voice on the earth was now louder and more triumphant; but the voices in the sky, after singing loudly with it for a time, began to get fainter. And now something else was СКАЧАТЬ