Majesty," said Edmund rushing eagerly forward.
"How dare you come alone?" said the Witch in a terrible voice. "Did I not tell you to bring the others with you?"
"Please, your Majesty," said Edmund, "I've done the best I can. I've brought them quite close. They're in the little house on top of the dam just up the river—with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver."
A slow cruel smile came over the Witch's face.
"Is this all your news?" she asked.
"No, your Majesty," said Edmund, and proceeded to tell her all he had heard before leaving the Beavers' house.
"What! Aslan?" cried the Queen, "Aslan! Is this true? If I find you have lied to me—"
"Please, I'm only repeating what they said," stammered Edmund.
But the Queen, who was no longer attending to him, clapped her hands. Instantly the same dwarf whom Edmund had seen with her before appeared.
"Make ready our sledge," ordered the Witch, "and use the harness without bells."
Chapter X
The Spell Begins to Break
Now we must go back to Mr. and Mrs. Beaver and the three other children. As soon as Mr. Beaver said "There's no time to lose" everyone began bundling themselves into coats, except Mrs. Beaver who started picking up sacks and laying them on the table and said: "Now, Mr. Beaver, just reach down that ham. And here's a packet of tea, and there's sugar, and some matches. And if someone will get two or three loaves out of the crock over there in the corner."
"What are you doing, Mrs. Beaver?" exclaimed Susan.
"Packing a load for each of us, dearie," said Mrs. Beaver very coolly. "You didn't think we'd set out on a journey with nothing to eat, did you?"
"But we haven't time!" said Susan, buttoning the collar of her coat. "She may be here any minute."
"That's what I say," chimed in Mr. Beaver.
"Get along with you all," said his wife. "Think it over, Mr. Beaver. She can't be here for a quarter of an hour at least."
"But don't we want as big a start as we can possibly get," said Peter, "if we're to reach the Stone Table before her?"
"You've got to remember that, Mrs. Beaver," said Susan. "As soon as she has looked in here and finds we're gone she'll be off at top speed."
"That she will," said Mrs. Beaver. "But we can't get there before her whatever we do, for she'll be on a sledge and we'll be walking."
"Then—have we no hope?" said Susan.
"Now don't you get fussing, there's a dear," said Mrs. Beaver, "but just get half a dozen clean handkerchiefs out of that drawer. 'Course we've got a hope. We can't get there before her but we can keep under cover and go by ways she won't expect and perhaps we'll get through."
"That's true enough, Mrs. Beaver," said her husband. "But it's time we were out of this."
"And don't you start fussing either, Mr. Beaver," said his wife. "There. That's better. There's four loads and the smallest for the smallest of us: that's you, my dear," she added looking at Lucy.
"Oh, do please come on," said Lucy.
"Well, I'm nearly ready now," answered Mrs. Beaver at last allowing her husband to help her into her snow boots. "I suppose the sewing machine's too heavy to bring?"
"Yes. It is," said Mr. Beaver. "A great deal too heavy. And you don't think you'll be able to use it while we're on the run, I suppose?"
"I can't abide the thought of that Witch fiddling with it," said Mrs. Beaver, "and breaking it or stealing it, as likely as not."
"Oh, please, please, please, do hurry!" said the three children. And so at last they all got outside and Mr. Beaver locked the door ("It'll delay her a bit," he said) and they set off, all carrying their loads over their shoulders.
The snow had stopped and the moon had come out when they began their journey. They went in single file—first Mr. Beaver, then Lucy, then Peter, then Susan, and Mrs. Beaver last of all. Mr. Beaver led them across the dam and onto the right bank of the river and then along a very rough sort of path among the trees right down by the river-bank. The sides of the valley, shining in the moonlight, towered up far above them on either hand. "Best keep down here as much as possible," he said. "She'll have to keep to the top, for you couldn't bring a sledge down here."
It would have been a pretty enough scene to look at it through a window from a comfortable armchair; and even as things were, Lucy enjoyed it at first. But as they went on walking and walking—and walking—and as the sack she was carrying felt heavier and heavier, she began to wonder how she was going to keep up at all. And she stopped looking at the dazzling brightness of the frozen river with all its waterfalls of ice and at the white masses of the tree-tops and the great glaring moon and the countless stars and could only watch the little short legs of Mr. Beaver going pad-pad-pad-pad through the snow in front of her as if they were never going to stop. Then the moon disappeared and the snow began to fall once more. And at last Lucy was so tired that she was almost asleep and walking at the same time when suddenly she found that Mr. Beaver had turned away from the river bank to the right and was leading them steeply uphill into the very thickest bushes. And then as she came fully awake she found that Mr. Beaver was just vanishing into a little hole in the bank which had been almost hidden under the bushes until you were quite on top of it. In fact, by the time she realised what was happening, only his short flat tail was showing.
Lucy immediately stooped down and crawled in after him. Then she heard noises of scrambling and puffing and panting behind her and in a moment all five of them were inside.
"Wherever is this?" said Peter's voice, sounding tired and pale in the darkness. (I hope you know what I mean by a voice sounding pale.)
"It's an old hiding-place for beavers in bad times," said Mr. Beaver, "and a great secret. It's not much of a place but we must get a few hours' sleep."
"If you hadn't all been in such a plaguey fuss when we were starting, I'd have brought some pillows," said Mrs. Beaver.
It wasn't nearly such a nice cave as Mr. Tumnus's, Lucy thought—just a hole in the ground but dry and earthy. It was very small so that when they all lay down they were all a bundle of fur and clothes together, and what with that and being warmed up by their long walk they were really rather snug. If only the floor of the cave had been a little smoother! Then Mrs. Beaver handed round in the dark a little flask out of which everyone drank something—it made one cough and splutter a little and stung the throat but it also made you feel deliciously warm after you'd swallowed it—and everyone went straight to sleep.
It seemed to Lucy only the next minute (though really it was hours and hours later) when she woke up feeling a little cold and dreadfully stiff and thinking how she would like a hot bath. Then she felt a set of long whiskers tickling her cheek and saw the cold daylight coming in through the mouth of the cave. But immediately after that she was very wide awake indeed, and so was everyone else. In fact they were all sitting up with their mouths and eyes wide open, listening to a sound which was the very sound they'd all been thinking of (and sometimes imagining they heard) during their walk last night. It was a sound of jingling bells.
Mr. Beaver was out of the cave like a flash the moment he heard it. Perhaps you think, as Lucy thought for a moment, that this was a very silly thing for him to do? But it was really a very sensible one. He knew he could scramble to the top of the bank among bushes and brambles without being seen; and he wanted above all things to see which way the Witch's sledge went. The others all sat in the cave waiting and wondering. They waited nearly five minutes. Then they heard something that frightened them very much. They heard voices. "Oh," thought Lucy, "he's been seen. She's caught him!"
Great was their surprise when, a little later,