The Chronicles of Narnia 7-in-1 Bundle with Bonus Book, Boxen. Клайв Стейплз Льюис
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Название: The Chronicles of Narnia 7-in-1 Bundle with Bonus Book, Boxen
Автор: Клайв Стейплз Льюис
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Детская проза
isbn: 9780007531202
isbn:
“This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!” thought Lucy, going still further in and pushing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her. Then she noticed that there was something crunching under her feet. “I wonder is that more moth-balls?” she thought, stooping down to feel it with her hand. But instead of feeling the hard, smooth wood of the floor of the wardrobe, she felt something soft and powdery and extremely cold. “This is very queer,” she said, and went on a step or two further.
Next moment she found that what was rubbing against her face and hands was no longer soft fur but something hard and rough and even prickly. “Why, it is just like branches of trees!” exclaimed Lucy. And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her; not a few inches away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have been, but a long way off. Something cold and soft was falling on her. A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air.
Lucy felt a little frightened, but she felt very inquisitive and excited as well. She looked back over her shoulder and there, between the dark tree-trunks, she could still see the open doorway of the wardrobe and even catch a glimpse of the empty room from which she had set out. (She had, of course, left the door open, for she knew that it is a very silly thing to shut oneself into a wardrobe.) It seemed to be still daylight there. “I can always get back if anything goes wrong,” thought Lucy. She began to walk forward, crunch-crunch over the snow and through the wood toward the other light. In about ten minutes she reached it and found it was a lamp-post. As she stood looking at it, wondering why there was a lamp-post in the middle of a wood and wondering what to do next, she heard a pitter patter of feet coming toward her. And soon after that a very strange person stepped out from among the trees into the light of the lamp-post.
He was only a little taller than Lucy herself and he carried over his head an umbrella, white with snow. From the waist upward he was like a man, but his legs were shaped like a goat’s (the hair on them was glossy black) and instead of feet he had goat’s hoofs. He also had a tail, but Lucy did not notice this at first because it was neatly caught up over the arm that held the umbrella so as to keep it from trailing in the snow. He had a red woollen muffler round his neck and his skin was rather reddish too. He had a strange, but pleasant little face, with a short pointed beard and curly hair, and out of the hair there stuck two horns, one on each side of his forehead. One of his hands, as I have said, held the umbrella: in the other arm he carried several brown-paper parcels. What with the parcels and the snow it looked just as if he had been doing his Christmas shopping. He was a Faun. And when he saw Lucy he gave such a start of surprise that he dropped all his parcels.
“Goodness gracious me!” exclaimed the Faun.
“GOOD EVENING,” SAID LUCY. BUT THE FAUN WAS SO busy picking up its parcels that at first it did not reply. When it had finished, it made her a little bow.
“Good evening, good evening,” said the Faun. “Excuse me—I don’t want to be inquisitive—but should I be right in thinking that you are a Daughter of Eve?”
“My name’s Lucy,” said she, not quite understanding him.
“But you are—forgive me—you are what they call a girl?” asked the Faun.
“Of course I’m a girl,” said Lucy.
“You are in fact Human?”
“Of course I’m human,” said Lucy, still a little puzzled.
“To be sure, to be sure,” said the Faun. “How stupid of me! But I’ve never seen a Son of Adam or a Daughter of Eve before. I am delighted. That is to say—” and then it stopped as if it had been going to say something it had not intended but had remembered in time. “Delighted, delighted,” it went on. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Tumnus.”
“I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Tumnus,” said Lucy.
“And may I ask, O Lucy Daughter of Eve,” said Mr. Tumnus, “how you have come into Narnia?”
“Narnia? What’s that?” said Lucy.
“This is the land of Narnia,” said the Faun, “where we are now; all that lies between the lamp-post and the great castle of Cair Paravel on the eastern sea. And you—you have come from the wild woods of the west?”
“I—I got in through the wardrobe in the spare room,” said Lucy.
“Ah!” said Mr. Tumnus in a rather melancholy voice, “if only I had worked harder at geography when I was a little Faun, I should no doubt know all about those strange countries. It is too late now.”
“But they aren’t countries at all,” said Lucy, almost laughing. “It’s only just back there—at least—I’m not sure. It is summer there.”
“Meanwhile,” said Mr. Tumnus, “it is winter in Narnia, and has been for ever so long, and we shall both catch cold if we stand here talking in the snow. Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Tumnus,” said Lucy. “But I was wondering whether I ought to be getting back.”
“It’s only just round the corner,” said the Faun, “and there’ll be a roaring fire—and toast—and sardines—and cake.”
“Well, it’s very kind of you,” said Lucy. “But I shan’t be able to stay long.”
“If you will take my arm, Daughter of Eve,” said Mr. Tumnus, “I shall be able to hold the umbrella over both of us. That’s the way. Now—off we go.”
And so Lucy found herself walking through the wood arm in arm with this strange creature as if they had known one another all their lives.
They had not gone far before they came to a place where the ground became rough and there were rocks all about and little hills up and little hills down. At the bottom of one small valley Mr. Tumnus turned suddenly aside as if he were going to walk straight into an unusually large rock, but at the last moment Lucy found he was leading her into the entrance of a cave. As soon as they were inside she found herself blinking in the light of a wood fire. Then Mr. Tumnus stooped and took a flaming piece of wood out of the fire with a neat little pair of tongs, and lit a lamp. “Now we shan’t be long,” he said, and immediately put a kettle on.
Lucy thought she had never been in a nicer place. It was a little, dry, clean cave of reddish stone with a carpet on the floor and two little chairs (“one for me and one for a friend,” said Mr. Tumnus) and a table and a dresser and a mantelpiece over the fire and above that a picture of an old Faun with a gray beard. In one corner there was a door which Lucy thought must СКАЧАТЬ