Posted on by TracyC

Last Battle

The Chronicles of Narnia

Last Battle by C.S. Lewis, 1956.

This is the last book in The Chronicles of Narnia series, and this is the book that shows the final days of the land of Narnia.

In Narnia, a wily old ape called Shift lives with a donkey called Puzzle. Shift is more clever than Puzzle and often tricks Puzzle into doing all his work for him. One day, they find an old lion skin in a pool. They think that it probably belonged to a non-talking lion that a hunter killed, but talking animals still show respect to lions because of Aslan. Puzzle thinks they should give the old lion skin a decent burial, but Shift says that he will use the lion skin to make a winter coat for Puzzle. Puzzle doesn’t think that sounds like a good idea because he wouldn’t like to have people thinking that he was trying to look like Aslan. Shift says that sounds like nonsense and makes the lion skin into a coat for Puzzle. Of course, sly Shift has a more diabolical plan in mind.

When Puzzle tries the coat on, he does look like a lion. Shift says that Puzzle looks like Aslan, and if people saw him, he could tell them what to do, and everyone would do it. Puzzle is alarmed at the idea, but Shift insists that Puzzle pretend to be Alsan with him advising him about what to say. Puzzle worries that Aslan would be angry, but Shift isn’t concerned because Aslan hasn’t appeared for a long time. At that moment, there is a thunder clap and a small earthquake. Puzzle is convinced that’s a warning sign from Aslan, but Shift tries to convince Puzzle that it’s actually a sign of approval.

The last king of Narnia is King Tirian. He is a young man, and he has a unicorn friend named Jewel. Word has reached him that Aslan has reappeared in the land, and he is very excited. A centaur wants him that this story much be false because the centaurs study the stars and have not seen the signs that should precede Aslan’s arrival. He is sure that the story about Aslan appearing is an evil lie. Jewel says that it’s difficult to say because Aslan is known to not be a tame lion, and that would make him unpredictable.

Before they reach any conclusions, a dryad stumbles toward them, wailing because the talking trees are being cut down, and her kind are dying. She falls dead at their feet because her own tree is cut down in the forest. The king is appalled and horrified! He insists that he and Jewel immediately go to the forest and find out what is happening and put a stop to it. The centaur urges caution, but the king doesn’t want to wait, telling the centaur to return to Cair Paravel to assemble his troops and follow him to the forest.

When King Tirian and Jewel come to a river, they are horrified to see a river rat with a newly-built raft, floating logs down the river. The king demands to know what he’s doing and by whose authority. The river rat says that he’s taking the logs to sell in another kingdom and that he’s doing it because Aslan the lion commanded it. King Tirian and Jewel find that alarming and difficult to believe, so they continue on to the forest. There, they see men from another country, known to be cruel, chopping down trees. They have also enslaved talking horses to help them. When the king and Jewel witness a couple of men abusing a horse, they kill them on the spot. They ask the horse how he was taken captive, and the horse says that it was at the command of Aslan.

The other men and talking animals realize that the king and Jewel have killed two of their people and turn on them. The king jumps on Jewel, and they run away, but they feel guilty about the men they killed. King Tirian realizes that this impulsive killing was murder because they had not needed to defend themselves. They also worry about whether they have violated Aslan’s command. They are not sure whether the Aslan who commanded these terrible deeds is the real Aslan. None of what has happened sounds like anything Aslan would want to happen, but Aslan is known to be wild and unpredictable, so they can’t be sure. What if they have become sinners for interfering with some grand plan of Aslan’s? Although they are afraid and feel guilty, they decide that the only thing they can do is surrender themselves to the horrible band and ask to be taken before Aslan, both to see if this Aslan is the real Aslan, and if necessary, submit themselves for punishment for killing the men, even if it means their lives.

When they are captured by the men, they are taken before Shift the ape. Shift has dressed himself as a king with a paper crown, and he tells everyone that he’s a human, just that he looks like an ape because he’s very old. He refuses to let anyone see Aslan up close, saying that he will deliver any messages Aslan has for them. He threatens the other animals with dire consequences if they don’t obey all of “Alsan’s” commands. He says that Aslan will turn the country into something amazing with lots of oranges and bananas (the things Shift wants more than anything) and roads and whips and kennels. The other animals try to say that they don’t want all those things, but Shift says that they should want what Aslan wants. A small lamb wants to know why they have to work with the men of the other nation when they know that they worship a different god, one who requires human sacrifices, instead of Aslan. Shift tells the lamb he’s stupid and these other people worship Aslan as well, just under a different name. Some of the animals are fooled by this logic, but others protest. Shift has a cat who protests taken away.

The mice are nice to the captive King Tirian, bringing him food and water. They want to help him, but they are afraid to help him too much because they are afraid of opposing Aslan. King Tirian asks them if it is the real Aslan, and the mice think it is. They say that “Aslan” is in the stable. As King Tirian watches “Alsan” appear by a bonfire on the hill, he notices that the “lion” doesn’t move like a lion should, and when he thinks about what the ape said about Alsan being the same as the cruel god who wants sacrifices, he sees through the fraud. He thinks about the past king and queens of Narnia and calls out to the Pevensies to return to Narnia and help him. To his surprise, he has a vision of the Pevensies at a dinner table, and he realizes that they can see him. The High King Peter calls out to him to speak, but then, the vision fades. Still, he has managed to let the Pevensies know that Narnia is in danger and needs them one more time.

The next morning, a strange boy and girl appear before him, and he recognizes them from his vision because they were at dinner with the Pevensies. The boy is the Pevensies’ cousin, Eustace, and his friend, Jill. Eustace and Jill untie King Tirian and help him escape. When they are safe, Eustace and Jill explain some things about their past adventures. King Tirian recognizes them as the children who rescued an ancestor of his. They also explain to him about the magic rings (which were introduced in The Magician’s Nephew and which they retrieved in his book). They were going to use the rings to reach King Tirian in Narnia, but they were on a train on their way to reach them when they felt a terrible jerk and suddenly found themselves in Narnia anyway.

With the past saviors of Narnia on his side, King Tirian recruits them to help him save Jewel. Jill finds Puzzle in the stable with the lion skin tied to him. She thinks that’s hilarious, but she convinces Puzzle to come with her. At first, King Tirian wants to kill Puzzle for his deception, but Jill persuades him not to because this situation isn’t Puzzle’s fault. Puzzle explains how Shift convinced him that Aslan wanted him to do this, and he says that he doesn’t know much about what’s been happening lately because Shift doesn’t let him out of the stable much. King Tirian agrees to spare Puzzle, and he is sure that many people will change their minds about Shift and what he’s been doing once they see Puzzle in his lion disguise.

King Tirian and the others begin showing Puzzle to everyone and explaining how Shift lied to them and tricked them. Some of the dwarfs find Puzzle as laughable as Jill did, but the humans from the cruel country are angry and fight them. They end up having to kill one of them. Some of the dwarfs disbelieve King Tirian and the children. The dwarfs explain that, yes, they see that the ape’s story about Aslan was a lie, but since they’ve been fooled once already, they’re not prepared to believe anybody else about anything. They don’t want to believe that King Tirian serves the real Aslan or that the real Aslan sent the children to Narnia to help. They don’t want to hear anything more about Aslan being real from anyone, and after the ape king, they don’t want anymore kings of any kind. They know that they were used by the ape, but what’s to say that King Tirian didn’t rescue them from the ape just to use them for some selfish purpose of his own. Having been fools once, they don’t want to risk being fools again by believing in anyone or anything else again. King Tirian and his allies realize that one fake Aslan, even one that was such an obvious fake, has damaged everyone’s faith in the real one because the fraud damaged everyone’s trust. The dwarfs say that they will now be entirely for themselves first and won’t listen to anyone else.

King Tirian thought that once people saw the truth, they would go back to being the way they were before, but he had underestimated the ways people can react when they find out they’ve been tricked. Not everyone will agree that they’ve been tricked, even when presented evidence, and even those who agree that they’ve been tricked may not have faith in the people telling them the truth. Also, now that the ape’s ruse has been exposed, others have seen how trickery can help them gain power and influence over others. Before King Tirian and his friends can tell others about the fake Aslan, Shift’s cronies start spreading their own fake stories about King Tirian and Aslan. Shift accuses Puzzle of being the deceiver because he’s the one who is wearing the lion skin, and it’s difficult to prove that Shift was the one who started all this in the first place. (What’s the best way to survive a witch hunt? Be the one who starts it. Bonus points if you can accuse other people of starting it later and blame them for victimizing you.) When King Tirian and the children try to tell people the truth, they’ve already heard so many lies and conflicting stories, many either aren’t convinced of the truth or are just so confused that they don’t know what to think. Some people realize that Shift has been playing them with the entire time and turn against him, while others still listen to Shift’s explanations and try to follow the convoluted logic and the scary things he promises them if they refuse to listen to them. Some people ally with King Tirian, while others stay loyal to Shift and his cronies, and others don’t want to trust either side and prefer to just try to look out for themselves.

When news reaches them that their enemies have already taken Cair Paravel and killed everyone there, they realize that the end of Narnia is close at hand. There is only one thing left to do: face down the enemy in a final battle for truth and the very souls of Narnia.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

I was not looking forward to this book because I don’t like apocalyptic stories, and it was difficult for me to get through. I knew that this story would be about the end of Narnia, and in the Biblical tradition, the end of Narnia’s days are full of horrible things. It’s depressing to go into a story knowing that horrible things are going to happen, followed by the end of the world, at least a world that we’ve come to like through the other books in the series. I also knew that most of the characters we’ve come to know and love get killed in this story. Still, I decided to suffer through the story just to finish off the series and discuss my feelings about it.

It is also important to realize that the last battle of Narnia isn’t really about armies facing each other so much as the battle for truth against falseness, a subject of much debate in real life. Readers of this story are in on the objective truth of the situation along with our main characters, and they see how their enemies play tricks with lies and half-truths to manipulate other people. Their aim is to confuse people so they don’t know what to think, and then, everyone will follow them because they act like they are certain they are on the side of right. People who are insecure and uncertain in themselves will follow people who act confident, regardless of whether that confidence is real or deserved or not. That is the major theme that runs through the entire book. I think it’s an important lesson, but one that also makes me angry because I have seen people doing these things in real life, especially in recent years. I don’t really think that the end of our world is immediately at hand, although I’ve seen some people speculating about that because of things that have been happening.

Life is Unpredictable, and So Is History When You Live It

I was truck by the scene with Tirian remembering past glories of Narnia and its rulers, when there were bad times, but things went right in the end. He thinks how things like that don’t happen anymore, and it seems like there is no happy ending to this story. It reminds me of people who feel nostalgic and patriotic about things like World War II, when the Allied nations united and defeated a great evil and how it seemed like all of society agreed on the vision of victory and achieved it. Some people now, in the 21st century, almost seem like they wish they could return to those days. The only reason why those times provide any comfort now is because we are looking at them in hindsight.

We know what eventually happened and that the world wasn’t destroyed, but the people who actually lived during those times didn’t know that. They had no guarantees that they were going to survive, many of them didn’t. Many people died during WWII, in combat, in bombings, in concentration camps, etc. I’m sure that none of it seemed glorious at the time. At times, it must have seemed like the end of world to the survivors. Knowing the resolution of that conflict gives the false impression that people back then knew what outcome they wanted and were united behind that vision. They weren’t. There were some people who felt like the Nazis were in the right or at least couldn’t be opposed. Even in the United States, there was a pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. (Video footage on YouTube, courtesy of PBS.) If someone had told the people at that rally on the day the rally was held what was going to eventually happen, they probably would have felt that the defeat of the Nazis would be the end of the world because they were convinced that they were the ones in the right and everyone else was in the wrong. Whether they still felt that way by the time the war actually ended is debatable, but from where they stood at that moment, what was best for the rest of the world would have seemed terrible to them.

Even in Britain, there was sympathy and support for the Nazis among the aristocracy, like the Mitfords and even members of the royal family. C. S. Lewis would have been aware of people like that during his time, and the Mitfords are a good example because they were well-known for their scandalous political views. (P. G. Wodehouse’s character, Roderick Spode, was a parody on the husband of one of the Mitford sisters, who was the leader of the British Union of Fascists during the 1930s.) Their support for Nazis changed some of their lives for the worst, and some of them probably wouldn’t have wanted everyone to remember their earlier stances after the war was over, but while the entire situation was unfolding, they were certainly very sure of themselves. They may have thought that they knew what they wanted and what was going to happen, but outcomes were never guaranteed for anyone.

Life is unpredictable, like an untamed lion. While many of us have a sense of when things are going wrong or seem unreasonable, we’re not always right, and even when we are, it can be difficult convince others of that if they think they have reason to believe otherwise. The truth is that we have never had any guarantees at any point in our history. While we like to think that God will carry us through any situation, bad things do happen along the way, often to good or normal people. Outcomes are not completely assured for anybody. Every disaster, while not bringing about the total end of the world just yet, have been the end of days for some individual people, who didn’t live through them.

The only moral I can think of from that is not to envy people from the past too much. Their problems don’t seem as bad now because we know that the survivors survived, and the world went on. But, the world didn’t go on for everyone caught up in those situations, and survival wasn’t guaranteed for everyone in the middle of the crisis. Even those who did survive in the end couldn’t know for sure whether they would or not while they were struggling along. They didn’t even always have the comfort of knowing absolutely, for certain that they were on the side of right or not not or if they were carrying out their missions in the right way. While I’m sure that they tried to do what they thought was right in spite of everything, there were voices in their ears trying to tell them that they were in the wrong and it was time to give up at every step and stage. Of course, I would argue that Nazi supporters were the ones who really needed to be told that and that they should have taken it to heart, but while the situation was in motion, everyone just had to keep playing out their chosen parts to the end. You can’t rewrite people or situations while they’re in the middle of writing their own histories themselves.

The same is also true of the rest of us. I’ve said before that history is not written by “winners” but by writers, and actions are a form of writing history. We all do it, all the time. Nothing is guaranteed for us. Whatever you stand for and whatever sides you pick to follow are the parts you’ve written for yourself by your choices. Our outcomes will all be determined by the parts we’ve chosen to play and the way we’ve written them for ourselves to act out, and unfortunately, what others choose to act out upon us. We can’t control everyone’s decisions, only our own, and that’s part of what makes life and history unpredictable.

“Fake News!”

When C. S. Lewis wrote the Narnia books, he had already lived through WWII and knew the power of propaganda. From the beginning of the story, propaganda, or more simply, lies, play a major role. It starts with Shift’s plan to put his donkey stooge into a lion costume and use him to get bananas and oranges (or, more generally, wealth that can be used to buy these things). However, along the way, Shift himself becomes a stooge for other people who see the power of his lies and want to use lies for their own purposes. As the situation spirals out of control, the concept of truth itself loses meaning for people, and many people struggle with what to believe. Oh, gee, where have I heard that before about a million times over the last several years? They think they’ve gamed the system, but their own system of lies have gamed them, and none of them are bright enough to notice until it’s far too late. From there, it’s just a slow, excruciating train wreck to watch. (By the end of that book, the metaphor is disturbingly real.)

Yeah, I know that’s a political statement these days, but if you recognize what I’m criticizing without being told directly, you must know what I’m complaining about and why. (I’m sure I’ve complained about this before somewhere on this site because I never suffer anything in silence, and I’m my only editor.) In the story, when King Tirion tries to reveal the truth about the Aslan donkey hoax to everyone, it proves harder than he expected because everyone has been so inundated with lies that they either don’t know what to think or just don’t want to think anything about anything anymore. The villains in the story start spreading their lies faster than our heroes can explain the truth to everyone, and all the villains have to do is to accuse our heroes of being the liars or let others think that they’re just as bad as everyone else telling tales. (“Fake news!”, “Election fraud!”, “All politicians lie” and “Who cares if our favorite ones lie when it benefits us and makes us feel good?” – I could go on and on, but what would be the point? People who have seen the problems with all of this already understand, and those who say they don’t have already made a decision.) Everyone is left to make up their own mind, which wouldn’t be so bad except what some of them decide to do is to let the villains make up their minds for them. When they don’t know who or what to trust, they trust in what they’re accustomed to, and some of them have become accustomed to listening to Shift and his pals because they were the ones who started the whole situation and have been yelling the loudest since.

Puzzle the donkey keeps saying that the reason why he keeps letting Shift talk him into doing things is that he knows he’s not as clever as Shift, so he thinks that he’d better let Shift make the decisions. It’s not unlike those people who assume that someone with a lot of money or a high position must have gotten there through brains. It’s not always true. Sometimes, they don’t have to be bright or talented if they just convince other people that they’re not. Puzzle is sure that Shift is smarter than he is, but actually, Shift is just more manipulative. Yes, he knows how to sew, but it’s the only talent he uses other than lying and manipulation. He wouldn’t have even half of what he’s got if he didn’t routinely talk Puzzle and others into doing things for him or giving him things. Ultimately, he’s a conman. Of course, most of the reason why Puzzle thinks he can’t be clever or competent by himself is that Shift has been telling him that and insisting on making the decisions. Puzzle doesn’t have the confidence to stand up to him, even when he knows that Shift is asking him to so something wrong. Eustace gets frustrated with Puzzle’s attitude and tells him that he wouldn’t have to worry so much about how clever he is if he just focused on being as clever as he knows how to be. If you know better, do better! It’s a Christian concept, and the Narnia stories have Christian themes. Eustace is trying to get Puzzle to listen to those doubts that he has about Shift and what Shift wants, to take them seriously, and recognize that he can say “no” to Shift when he’s asking for something unreasonable.

So, what can you actually do in a situation where you’re not sure who’s telling the truth or what the best thing to do is? There are no hard and fast answers to that, but my answer is … don’t depend on hard and fast answers at all. Never be so married to any particular stance that it would be like ripping out a part of your soul to simply change your mind and change course. Again, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” Be open to incoming information and feedback that lets you know how you’re doing and if you’re really understanding the situation correctly. The way I look at it, all humans are capable of being fooled, but those who aren’t afraid to back up or change their minds and are open to updating the information and understanding in their own minds are likely to spend less time continuing down a wrong course, even if they were wrong before.

Also, make sure that you have personal limits. Know when someone is pushing you to your limits or over them, and know when it’s time to back off. Puzzle the donkey has no boundaries whatsoever. Shift can talk him into anything, even things that are personally risky or harmful to him or downright immoral because, while there are things that Puzzle thinks are morally wrong, there is nothing in Puzzle’s moral view that is so far wrong that it would cause Puzzle to stop listening to the person telling him what to do. The only thing Puzzle is sure of is that Shift is smarter than he is, and he clings to that in spite of all evidence to the contrary. In the end, Puzzle is a major part of what brings down all of Narnia because he was the one person who could have stopped its destruction before it started, if he had only said no when he had misgivings. He didn’t invent the scheme, but he’s the one who chose to carry it out, even when he really knew he shouldn’t.

Trains Crash, Everyone Dies

This whole book was like a slow train wreck. It’s well-written, but it’s a well-written slow train wreck. There is the figurative train wreck, where everything spirals out of control in Narnia, and the world ends. Then, there is the literal train wreck that kills most of the characters we’ve come to know and love.

Eustace and Jill die in England at the moment they enter Narnia to help Tirian. Since time in Narnia works differently from time in our world, they don’t find out that they are dead or in the middle of being killed in a train accident until they reunite with the rest of their friends in the “true” Narnia, which is part of Aslan’s Country, which represents heaven. Although the Narnia they all knew before is gone, all the best parts of it and the friends that they knew from past eras of Narnia in their previous adventures are all alive again in True Narnia. The True Narnia is also one of all the “true” versions of all of the other worlds, including ours. The Pevensie children’s parents were also on the train when it crashed, so they appear in the True England that is also part of Aslan’s Country.

The only young Pevensie who isn’t killed in the railway accident on Earth is Susan, who was more worldly than the others and wasn’t on the train. We don’t see her reaction to the deaths of her parents and siblings or learn what the rest of her life on Earth is like. Her siblings say that she has stopped believing in Narnia, remembering it only as a game that the siblings used to play. Her main interests now are parties and fashion, much like other young women. The other characters think that she has become “silly” and has lost sight of what’s important. She may have, but this part of the book gets a lot of criticism because, from the description we have of her, she is just going through a normal phase of life where she wants to have fun, make friends, and date. She might be kind of silly in the way she’s going about it, but by itself, it’s not something abnormal or deserving of scorn. As I said, we also don’t know what the rest of Susan’s life will be like. I think there is an implication that she will someday come to True Narnia, too, because she was also once a Queen of Narnia, and once someone is a King or Queen in Narnia, they will always be a King or Queen there.

The rest of the characters who died in the train accident and are now in True Narnia spend the rest of eternity exploring Aslan’s Country and having endless adventures. It’s framed as a positive because it means that they get to be young forever in the True Narnia, having amazing adventures with the people they love, but it’s still upsetting to me. It bothers me because it occurs to me that they were destined for True Narnia eventually in any case, and I would have liked for them to have lived their full lives on Earth to old age first. Yes, True Narnia is wonderful, and they will get to enjoy eternity there, but it just seems to me kind of sad that they couldn’t have put it off for a few more decades anyway. Polly and Digory are elderly when they are killed, and Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie had the chance to enjoy their marriage and children before the accident, and it just seems like a shame that the young Pevensies didn’t have those opportunities. It’s also sad to think of Susan, mourning the loss of her entire family.

Another Problem

One other thing that bothered me about this book is that the Calormenes are described as being darker physically than the human Narnians. During the final battle of the book, Narnians jeer at them and call them “Darkies.” I don’t like the idea that that the light-colored people are described as being the good ones and the dark ones as the bad ones, especially not when paired with a known racial slur. These people are set in another world, but it just echoes the racism of this world too much for me.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Chronicles of Narnia

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis, 1950.

During WWII, the four Pevensie children are sent away from London to the countryside as child evacuees. They end up staying in a strange old house with an unmarried professor. The children are fascinated by the professor’s big, old house, and on their first rainy day there, they decide to go exploring. In a spare room, the children see a big, old wardrobe. While her older siblings move on to look in other rooms, Lucy can’t resist looking inside the wardrobe. The wardrobe is full of old coats, but Lucy enters the wardrobe and pushes past the coats to see how far back the wardrobe goes.

As Lucy continues trying to find her way to the back of the wardrobe, she feels like the old coats are starting to feel like tree branches. When she emerges from the wardrobe, she is in a snowy forest. She sees a faun hurrying by with some parcels, and she talks to him. The faun, Mr. Tumnus, is surprised to see her and asks her if she’s a “daughter of Eve”, meaning a human girl. Lucy finds that question confusing at first, but she confirms that she is a human girl. Mr. Tumnus convinces Lucy to join him at his house for tea. While she’s there, Mr. Tumnus plays music for her. Lucy is enchanted, and she almost falls asleep, but then, she suddenly realizes that she should return to her siblings. To her surprise, Mr. Tumnus is upset and guilty. He explains that he has been forced into the service of the White Witch, who has commanded him to charm any human children he finds until she can come and collect them from him. Lucy is shocked and disbelieving because Mr. Tumnus has been so nice to her. Mr. Tumnus hates having to work for the evil White Witch, but she does horrible things to anyone who defies her, often turning her enemies into stone statues. The White Witch controls the land of Narnia, where they currently are, and she’s the one who has made it eternally winter but never Christmas. However, Mr. Tumnus just can’t bring himself to turn Lucy over to her, so he agrees to help her get back to the wardrobe without telling the witch about her.

Lucy returns to her own world through the wardrobe and eagerly rushes to her siblings to tell them where she’s been. When she sees her siblings, she learns that almost no time has passed since she first went into the wardrobe, and nobody has missed her. Her siblings can’t believe that she’s been to a magical land and that no time has passed while she was having this adventure. They go to the wardrobe themselves and look at it, but when they look, it’s just an ordinary wardrobe with a back. They think that Lucy was just playing a prank, but Lucy is very upset because she knows that it wasn’t a joke or a dream. Her oldest siblings, Peter and Susan, would be ready to forget the entire matter, but Edmund can’t resist teasing Lucy about it.

During a game of hide-and-seek later, Lucy goes through the wardrobe again, and this time, Edmund follows her. Edmund is shocked to find himself in the same snowy woods and to realize that Lucy was telling the truth. At first, he looks for Lucy, having lost track of her, but then, he encounters a strange white lady in a sleigh. This is the White Witch. Not knowing who she is, Edmund accepts the witch’s offer of a hot drink and his favorite treat, Turkish Delights. The treats that the witch gives him are enchanted to give him a terrible craving for more. The witch is careful about how many she gives him, but that craving and her promise of more keeps Edmund wanting to please her and to tell her everything she wants to know. He tells the witch about Lucy and her earlier trip to Narnia. The witch asks him if he has any other siblings, and she is strangely interested when he says that he is one of four. The witch tells Edmund that she is the queen of Narnia, but she has no children. She says that if Edmund will bring all of his siblings to meet her, she will make him the prince of Narnia, and he can live in her palace and eat Turkish Delights all day. Edmund is reluctant to bring her his siblings because he craves her treats so much he would rather just go to her palace at once, but the witch insists that he must bring her his siblings.

Lucy and Edmund meet back at the wardrobe entrance to Narnia, and Lucy is pleased at first that Edmund has now seen that Narnia is real. However, when they return to their own world and see Peter and Susan, Edmund spitefully tells them that Narnia isn’t real and that they were just playing pretend. After all of his earlier teasing, he can’t bring himself to admit that he was in the wrong for saying that Lucy was just making it all up before. Lucy is deeply hurt that Edmund is denying something they both know is true and becomes very upset.

Peter and Susan know that Edmund is being mean to Lucy, but they are also concerned about why Lucy seems to suddenly be making up these strange fantasies, when she’s never done anything like that before. Thinking that maybe the stress of being sent away from home is making Lucy crazy, they talk to the professor about what’s been happening. The professor listens to their story and their concerns very seriously, and they are surprised when the professor asks them how they can be sure that Lucy isn’t telling the truth. He admits that this old house is very strange, and he hasn’t even lived there very long himself, so he can’t say for certain what might be happening there. There have been some strange stories about this house before, and sometimes, they even get tourists stopping to see the house. Peter and Susan say that they doubt Lucy’s story because Edmund says it wasn’t true and because they saw nothing in the wardrobe when they looked themselves. They think if the wardrobe was really a portal to a magical world, surely it would be there all the time, for anyone who looked. The professor says that might not be true, that there might be thinks that are real that aren’t necessarily there or visible all the time. Part of his reasoning is that, if Lucy was playing a prank of some kind, she would have hidden for longer before coming to tell them of her adventures so that her story would seem more plausible. Lucy’s story is so implausible that the professor is inclined to believe it. The professor says that time might work differently in Narnia and that’s why it seemed like no time has passed. As for Edmund’s word, the professor asks Peter and Susan whether they would have thought Lucy or Edmund more reliable before. They say that Lucy is usually more reliable than Edmund, so the professor dismisses Edmund’s story in favor of Lucy’s. Peter and Susan still aren’t sure what to do about the situation, even if Lucy really has visited a magical land. The professor’s suggestion is that they mind their own business for now. Not knowing what else to do, Peter and Susan decide to wait and see what happens.

The truth is revealed when the children find themselves in the room with the wardrobe again while trying to avoid a group of tourists the housekeeper is leading on a tour of the house. Hearing the housekeeper approaching they all decide to hide in the wardrobe, and this time, they all find their way to Narnia. Peter and Susan are amazed and apologize to Lucy for not believing her before. It’s cold in the snow, so Susan sensibly suggests that they borrow some of the coats in the wardrobe to wear. Edmund gives away his earlier lie about not having been to Narnia by mentioning the position of a street lamp that is oddly in the forest. Peter is angry with Edmund for lying to them and trying to make Lucy look like either a liar of crazy person. Like a lot of people caught doing something bad, Edmund becomes sullen and resentful that the others are rightfully angry with him for what he’s done.

Lucy wants to introduce her siblings to Mr. Tumnus, but when they reach his house, they learn that he has been arrested. Lucy knows that he was arrested for defying the White Witch, and she explains about the witch to her siblings. Edmund doesn’t tell the others that he has met the White Witch himself, although he tries to introduce the idea that none of them really know what’s going on in this land, asking how they know if the witch is really evil or not. The others don’t listen to him and agree with Lucy that they should try to help Mr. Tumnus, if they can.

At first, they don’t know where to go or what to do, but a friendly robin guides them to meet a beaver. Animals talk in Narnia, and the beaver takes the children to his house, where he explains to them what happened to Mr. Tumnus and the truth about the White Witch. Although the White Witch calls herself the queen of Narnia, the actual ruler of Narnia is Aslan, the emperor. The beaver is vague about exactly what Aslan is, but he says that Aslan is not human, and neither is the White Witch, although she looks sort of human and would like people to think she is human. The truth is that, while humans are “sons of Adam” or “daughters of Eve” (referring to the Biblical Adam and Eve), the White Witch is actually a descendant of Lilith, Adam’s first wife. (According to folklore/mythology, as this video explains, Lilith was created by God at the same time as Adam, but she was not faithful to him. She left him and mothered a race of demons with other creatures. Therefore, in Lewis is following folklore, the White Witch is actually a demonic enchantress. The book doesn’t go into all this backstory. The beaver describes the White Witch as being the product of a djinn and a giant, but based on folklore, that’s the implication that she’s demonic. The White Witch is not just a human who practices evil magic; she’s a non-human demon. Being half-djinn and half-giant sounds less scary for kids, but it’s really more sinister, if you know the folklore and think more deeply about it. That’s what the beaver means when he refers to being careful about things that look human but actually aren’t. In folklore, demons and other evil creatures can sometimes make themselves look human to get people to trust them.) The reason why the White Witch is so concerned about human children is that there is a prophecy that four human children will take the thrones in the castle of Cair Paravel, and that will bring her evil reign to an end. Any time human children come to Narnia, the White Witch tries to get her hands on them to prevent the prophecy from coming true. (She has no intention of adopting Edmund as a prince. If she gets her hands on all four Pevensie children at once, she’ll turn them all into stone statues, as she does with all of her enemies, to prevent them from taking the thrones.) However, the word is that Aslan is returning, and the presence of the four children is a sign that the prophecy will soon be fulfilled.

During the course of this explanation, Edmund slips away from the others, wanting to seek out the White Witch because of her promises to him and his irresistible craving for what she has offered him. When the others realize that he is gone, Peter thinks that they should search for him, but the beaver has accurately realized that Edmund is under the influence of the witch. There is no point in going after him because he is not in a state where he will listen to them and is in the process of betraying them all. Their only hope is to leave before the White Witch comes and to seek out Aslan!

This book is the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia, although the books in the series jump around in time. The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It has been made into movies multiple times.

My Reaction

When I was in high school, my history teacher brought up this book, saying that it was more than just a fantasy book, asking the class if we knew what it was supposed to be an allegory for. I said that it was religious allegory, and she told me that I was wrong and that it was an allegory for World War II. The story takes place during World War II, but it is definitely religious allegory. All the talk about “sons of Adam” and “daughters of Eve” and the references to Lilith are not coincidence. C. S. Lewis was a lay theologian and also wrote nonfiction books on the subject of religion. This book was written for his goddaughter, Lucy Barfield. Aslan is a lion in the story, but he also represents God, and toward the end of the story, he performs a Christ-like sacrifice of himself for the sake of Edmund’s sins (Edmund’s betrayal of his siblings has made him the property of the White Witch and a sacrifice for her until Aslan voluntarily takes his place to free him from the witch) before rising to life again and restoring life to all the people who had been turned to stone.

The Chronicles of Narnia is a popular Christian series, and some Sunday schools even use the series to teach Christian lessons. However, because of the fantasy themes and the style of the stories, not all Christians approve of them. Reception among atheists and people of other religions has been mixed, although the series is generally famous and has become a classic among children’s literature. One of the chief problems people have with the stories occurs toward the end of the series, where children who grow up and become interested in dating are at least temporarily lost to godliness or Heaven or the magic of Narnia, and the children who die young are the ones who live in Narnia eternally. It does creep me out a little that dying young instead of growing up is depicted as a virtue. It probably would have creeped me out even more if I had read the last book in the series as a child instead of an adult. As an adult, I see it more as a result of the author’s possible disillusionment with the habits adults develop when they lose their youthful sense of innocence and, even more likely, that problem that fantasy authors often seem to struggle with, explaining how these magical lands and adventures can exist without grown adults knowing about them. Many fantasy authors include an element in their stories that only children can experience certain magical things and that those children will forget about them as they age, allowing young readers to indulge in a belief in magic they can experience that adults living in the real world don’t experience. But, as I’ll discuss more later, the end of this series does bother me because the author kills off most of the characters that we have come to know and love, which I don’t think should be necessary. The girls in the story are also not allowed to take an active part in the battle at the end of the story, fulfilling more support roles, and the story itself admits that it’s because they’re girls. The roles that the girls in the story play are important, and they have their share of excitement, but few modern stories would make this type of distinction between boys’ and girls’ roles like this.

Time functions differently in Narnia, and there are odd jumps in time, both within this book and the rest of the series. Whenever characters are in Narnia, no time passes in our world. The four Pevensie children become kings and queens in Narnia and live full lives there for decades (which helps me feel a little less sad that they don’t live as long in the real world, but still not great). They are adults in Narnia when they find the way back to our world, and suddenly, they find themselves children again in the professor’s house during WWII. Returning to their old lives is a shock, but the professor tells them that they will return to Narnia again someday. The professor knows about Narnia because he was there as a child himself. His backstory is covered in a later book, which also includes an explanation about why there is a street lamp in the forest in Narnia. During later books, when the children and their friends return to Narnia, centuries have passed there, and their adventures from this book have become legends for the people of Narnia.

As a side note, I also liked how the book repeatedly warns readers that smart people realize that, if you ever explore a wardrobe, you should always leave the door open behind you because you don’t want to get shut in. It’s a practical point and one worth making to kids who might want to try exploring a wardrobe or two to see if they can find magic doors.

Posted on by TracyC

Silver on the Tree

The Dark is Rising Sequence

Silver on the Tree by Susan Cooper, 1977.

This is the final book in The Dark is Rising Sequence, and it focuses on the epic battle between the forces of good (the Light) and the forces of evil (the Dark). Like the other books in this series, it uses and references folklore and Arthurian legends. At the end of the previous book, the characters used a magical harp to wake “the Sleepers” in Wales. The man that the children know as Merriman Lyon is actually Merlin from the Arthurian legends, and Will Stanton has discovered that King Arthur had a son named Bran who was brought into the 20th century by Guinevere and Merlin to protect him from his parents’ troubles in their own time.

Twelve-year-old Will Stanton is spending some time with his brothers at Midsummer because his oldest brother, Steven, has come home for a visit from his service in the navy. While the boys are out fishing, Will begins having visions of the distant past. He sees people who seem to be fleeing from something, and these people are talking about the terrible things that their pursuers would do to them if they caught them. Will watches as they bury something, some kind of treasure. He sees smoke on the horizon and has a sense of fear that tells him these people are right to be afraid. Then, suddenly, Will is back with his brothers in modern times, and a strange black animal, probably a mink, is sitting there, staring at Will. His brothers run the mink off, commenting on how oddly it was behaving.

Steven talks to Will in private about some odd things that have been happening that have let him know that Will must be involved in something strange. Strangers in other countries that Steven has visited have approached him and, with no explanation, have asked him to tell Will that the Old Ones of different regions are “ready.” Steven wants to know who these people are, how they know Will and know that Steven is will’s brother, what Will is involved in, and what they mean when they say that they’re “ready.” Will doesn’t want to answer at first because he knows that Steven won’t understand, but Steven insists that he wants an explanation. Will explains to him, as best he can, about the Old Ones, the magic of the world and the universe, and the opposing forces of the Dark and the Light that are fated to battle with each other. (This is the most complete and concise explanation of how magic works in these stories and how their universe is ordered.) As Will expected, Steven doesn’t believe him and insists that he can’t be an “Old One” because he is only twelve years old and Steven remembers when he was born, but Will asks him whether it’s any more plausible that a twelve-year-old boy would be involved in smuggling or other suspicious activities. Steven doesn’t know what to think, but then, some white moths come, and Will recognizes them as creatures that are reputed to carry away memories. After they leave, Steven doesn’t remember their conversation at all and is no longer interested in the idea of the “Old Ones.”

On the way home, Steven deals with a young local bully who stole an instrument case from a smaller boy. The bully threatens to send his father after Steven, and Steven, being a tough member of the navy, says that he’d be happy to talk to his father about the bully. The father does come to talk to Steven eventually, and the Stantons see that the young bully’s bad behavior is fueled by racist things that his father thinks and says. The father of the bully has no self-awareness. The Stantons are disgusted by him, but Will’s father says to his kids that they know that such disagreeable people exist and “You can’t convince them, and you can’t kill ’em. You can only do your best in the opposite direction—which you did.” (The part of the observation about not killing people sounds a bit violent, but I think I understand. You might not like certain people, and you might find them a hardship to have around, but you can’t just get rid of them, out of the world, anymore than the racist bully has either the right or the ability to get rid of all the people he doesn’t like. All people are a part of the world and all have a right to be there … no matter how much of a trial and hardship some of them make themselves to other people because they either don’t understand that other people are making allowances for them on a daily basis that they don’t make for others or deny knowing it to preserve their self-image and justify their bad behavior. Yeah, I’m a bit fed up with some people myself, but we’re all stuck with each other, so we all have to make the best of it.) Will finds himself evaluating this man as an Old One, trying to decide if he is also an agent of the Dark. He seems to be an ordinary human, but it has already been established that even ordinary humans can also serve the Dark, even unknowingly. Will finds himself thinking that people have multiple sides to their personalities, indicating that this obnoxious man may have a role to play in the upcoming struggle, either for good or evil, and whichever role it is will be his personal choice. On the other hand, there is a concept in this story that there are people and things outside of the battle between Light and Dark, people who are either neutral or a mixture of Dark and Light. In other words, this jerk could simply be just a random jerk and hold no other significance but that. (Spoiler: He doesn’t appear again in this story, and the jerk isn’t significant. He’s just a rude guy with a nasty son and some personal issues that are causing him to be a bad example. On the one hand, I’m was a little disappointed because I thought they were setting something up with this incident, but on the other hand, the character was so oblivious and full of himself that saying that he’s insignificant in the grand scheme of things actually pleases me.)

Later, the mink shows up again and kills some of the Stanton family’s chickens, not even carrying them off. It seems like the mink is merely killing for the pleasure of killing, not to eat. Will recognizes that the animal is another creature of the Dark and almost kills it, but he decides not to because it wouldn’t do any good. He knows that the Dark is rising, and killing this small creature won’t stop what is about to happen.

Will continues to have visions of the past and a sense that he is sometimes between time periods. Old Ones can travel between time periods, and even Will has done this before. The rising of the Dark that is happening in the 20th century is actually the Second Rising. The First Rising of the Dark was during the time of King Arthur, about 1500 years earlier. Will travels to that time with Merriman/Merlin and witnesses that struggle. There is a connection between the First Rising and the Second Rising. They are both part of the same, larger battle. Old Ones aren’t bound by time like normal humans, and the struggle between Light and Dark also transcends time.

To protect the six signs that Will had to gather in the second book of the series, he and Merriman hid them in the past, during Roman Britain. Now, Will has to retrieve them because they will be needed for the upcoming struggle. Will and Merriman have to go through multiple time periods to get the signs, and then, they have to summon the other Old Ones for the final battle. However, one of the Old Ones, a vital one, is missing. Will realizes that he must go to Wales once again to find the Old One known as The Lady.

In Wales, Will is reunited with Bran from the previous book and with the three Drew children from previous books, whose parents are staying at a local golfing hotel at Merriman’s suggestion. All of them will be needed for the battle is coming. They will each have to face their own tests of character and courage, and when it’s over, their futures will be in their own hands. They all go on their own trips through time, and Will and Bran visit the Lost Land, where Bran was actually born.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction and Spoilers

I often find myself feeling a little disappointed at the ends of books or tv shows that have a long wind-up to some kind of epic battle or revelation because what happens rarely meets my expectations. When a single event or plot point has been built up over a long time, the imaginations of readers and viewers sometimes have such high expectations that the final resolution of it can feel a little like a let down. With this one, I had some mixed feelings.

I liked it that all of the major characters had roles to play in the final events. I would have been disappointed if some of the major characters had fallen away. I didn’t want Bran to replace the Drew children in the story, for example. However, everyone has a role and at least one major test of character or bravery. There is a twist toward the end where a minor character but someone we’ve seen before in a sympathetic role turns out to have been secretly evil all the time. It’s a terrible blow to one of the other characters, but he comes to accept that this person deceived him about who she really is and the attachment he felt was to the facade not the person as she actually is.

One of the aspects of this series that interests me the most is that it’s pretty thorough in the way it addresses the problem of evil in human beings. Throughout the series, it has shown what the agents of evil in the form of agents of the Dark are like. Some of them are deceptive about who they really are and what they really want, like the secretly evil character in this book, shocking even people who are close to them when they learn the truth. It’s true that many of us have been shocked by someone in our lives who wasn’t quite what we thought they were or had something unsavory about them or their behavior that we never suspected because they were careful to hide it. In the first book of the series, there was a betrayal of trust that led someone to turn to the Dark side. In other books, we’ve also seen neutral people or natural forces, people who choose a side by accident and aid the causes of good or evil unwittingly because they’re wrapped up in their own issues and don’t see the bigger picture, and as mentioned about the bully and his father, there are also people who are a mixed bag, with the potential go to either way, shift back and forth, or just hover somewhere in the middle. The series covers quite a lot of the nuances of the choices people make about their behavior and the choices they make between good and bad.

That being said, even though this book explains the background to the battle between Light and Dark in a more straightforward way than other books, I felt like I never completely understood the motives of the Light and the Dark. It seems like the two of them are just naturally opposing forces. They don’t seem to have any specific over-arching goal that they’re trying to accomplish other than defeating each other. What their exact plains are once they’ve achieved victory isn’t clear.

Of course, readers know that the Light will win, and when it does, Merriman says that there won’t be further battles between Dark and Light. Merriman and other Old Ones move on to another world, where they say they have work to do, although Will Stanton will remain as “the Watchman” to continue watching over the world. Merriman says that the two of them will see each other again someday. Merriman says that the future of this world is in the hands of the children and other people of the world, referencing man’s ability to destroy the world. This book, and the rest of the series, was written during the Cold War, when people were particularly afraid of the threat of nuclear weapons. It seems like the legends and prophecies are over. Bran remains in the present although his father, Arthur, invited him to the past because he has become part of the 20th century and is bound to his friends and adoptive father by affection.

I enjoyed all the references to old legends during the course of the story. The Lost Land is a legendary country off the coast of Wales. They don’t use the name Lyonesse, but I think that’s what they’re referring to. Accord to the book, people can still hear the bells of the lost city, a legend that’s been applied to other lost towns in legends, and a phenomena that has a scientific explanation, When Bran and Will go there, they meet a bard named Gwion (Taliesen).

Posted on by TracyC

The Grey King

The Dark is Rising Sequence

The Grey King by Susan Cooper, 1975.

This is the fourth book in The Dark is Rising Sequence, and it picks up not long after the previous book ends.

Will Stanton has been very ill with hepatitis, and the doctor ask advised his parents to send him somewhere to rest for a while and recover his strength. In the previous book, his sister Mary had gone to stay with relatives in Wales after she had the mumps, so his parents agree to send him there. Even after he recovers, Will has a nagging feeling that he’s forgotten something very important. What he’s forgotten are the clues that he and his friends discovered at the end of the previous book, but little by little, they come back to him.

Will calls his relatives Aunt Gem and Uncle David, but really, they’re distant cousins. On his way to stay with them on their farm, Will sees a mountain that locals call “the Grey King”, which begins bringing back Will’s memory of the clues to the next item of power that he and his friends are supposed to find. An encounter with a strange dog with silvery eyes brings back the rest of Will’s memory, reminding him that he is the youngest of the Old Ones and it is his mission to find a magical harp in Wales.

The owner of the dog is an albino boy named Bran, who surprisingly knows the clues that Will had been struggling to remember. Bran reveals that Merriman visited him before Will arrived, told him to keep an eye out for Will and help him, and taught him the first part of the clue rhyme as a show that he can be trusted. The boys talk about what the clues in the rhyme mean. Will is supposed to find the harp on “the Day of the Dead”, which Will thinks means Halloween and which is coming soon, but he’s confused because the rhyme also refers to the end of the year. Bran says that Halloween might have once been regarded as the time of the New Year (which is true, and I discussed it in the History section of my Halloween Ideas site), and the two of them discuss some old traditions and superstitions about Halloween.

On Halloween, Bran and Will go into the mountains, and Will’s knowledge and abilities are tested before they are given the harp. Yet, Will is not the one to play it because he doesn’t know how. Bran is the harper. He also seems to have a strange connection to one of the lords who guarded the harp in the mountains. On the way down, the boys have a frightening encounter with a fox who has been killing sheep in the area, but weirdly, nobody else else can see the fox but the boys. A disagreeable farmer shoots poor Bran’s brave dog because he thinks that the dog is the one killing the sheep, and Bran is inconsolable. (I hate books where the dog dies.)

However, their work is not yet done. Will has to use what he’s learned from Bran about playing the harp to wake the Sleepers, who will aid the Light in the upcoming battle against the Dark. Bran also comes to learn his true identity and that of his mother. Although he is not one of the Old Ones, Bran is special and will play a pivotal role in the battle between Light and Dark.

The book is a Newbery Medal winner. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction and Spoilers

Even though this book is the Newbery Medal winner in the series, I didn’t like it as well as the earlier books. It’s partly because the dog Cafall dies, and I always hate books where the dog dies. I love dogs, and also, I realize that it’s often a cheap way to give readers and emotional wrench, to kill off a beloved animal. Also, I missed the familiar characters from the earlier books. The Drew children are not in this story, and even Merriman doesn’t play much of a role. For most of the story, Will is alone, although he does make an important friend in Bran, whose past is more mysterious than most people know.

Although, Cafall also represents one of the innocent sacrifices in the name of the battle between good and evil. Bran is angry at Cafall’s death and says that neither he nor his dog were part of Will’s battle or quest, and it wasn’t fair for them to be dragged into it or for Cafall to be killed. He’s partly right, although he is actually much closer to the center of this battle than he knows. Another character in the book talks to Will about the apparent callousness of the Light for those who end up being sacrificed in the struggle. Will’s answer is that some things cannot be helped. They might want to protect everyone and make things work out well for everyone, but circumstances don’t always make it possible, and there are times when trying to save someone or make someone happy could cause something else to happen that would be worse for everyone. I’m not completely satisfied with that explanation because, in this particular instance, I don’t see why this sacrifice was necessary and I feel like it could have been avoided, like I felt that another tragedy in The Dark is Rising could have been avoided. I suppose the principle that avoiding one sort of bad thing could lead to something worse could be true, but I just don’t feel it in these stories.

I was more convinced and intrigued by the concept of people who aid the dark without knowing that they’re doing it. In the previous book in the series, the author addressed the idea of neutral parties in the struggle between good and evil, but this book introduces the idea of ignorant or deluded people who do bad things without realizing. In the story, they aren’t regarded as true agents of the Dark because they haven’t consciously joined the Dark side and don’t even know that there’s any Light/Dark struggle happening around them, but they are doing what the Dark wants them to do and hurting people and the cause of the Light either because they are being tricked and manipulated into doing it or because they have some other motive that allows them to do bad things because they don’t care as much about the concept of good and evil as much as accomplishing their own goal.

In this case, the unwitting helper of the dark is the farmer who shot Bran’s dog. He genuinely did think that the dog was killing his sheep, so he thought that he was just protecting his property by killing the dog. That could be seen as a good motive gone astray, but when Bran’s real history is revealed, it is also revealed that the farmer also has darker motives for his bad behavior that he has been trying to keep hidden. It’s not just about protecting his sheep but also his resentment against Bran and Bran’s father, so he enjoyed hurting them by killing their dog. The farmer’s resentment goes back to when Bran’s mother, Guinevere, brought him out of the past to be raised by his adoptive father in the 20th century. Bran’s real father is King Arthur, but by the time Bran was born, Guinevere had already betrayed Arthur and feared that he would reject his son because of what she did. She wanted Bran to grow up in a safe place, away from his parents’ struggles. At her request, Merlin (which is Merriman Lyon’s real identity), brought her forward in time to the 20th century to find a new home for Bran. Bran’s adoptive father is a good man, and Guinevere knew that her son would be safe with him. He loved her in return and wanted her to stay and marry him, but Guinevere knew she couldn’t stay, so she left secretly, leaving Bran behind. Her departure might have been hastened because the farmer was jealous of Bran’s adoptive father for having Guinevere. Although he didn’t know Guinevere’s true identity, she was a beautiful woman, and the farmer wanted her for himself. He apparently tried to attack her or maybe even force himself on her, and he was fought off by Bran’s adoptive father and a friend of his. Although the farmer is a married man, he still harbors possessive feelings about Bran’s absent mother and resentment toward the men who stopped him from taking her. By extension, he also resents Bran. In the end, he is driven mad by his obsessions and his manipulation by the forces of the Dark.

Posted on by TracyC

Greenwitch

The Dark is Rising Sequence

Greenwitch by Susan Cooper, 1974.

This is the third book in The Dark is Rising Sequence, and it brings together the two sets of characters who have already been established in the series: the three Drew children from the first book and Will Stanton and the Old Ones from the second book.

The story begins with the theft of the grail that the Drew children found in the first book with their Great-Uncle Merry, otherwise known as Merriman Lyon. The grail was stolen from the museum where it was being studied, and Merry wasn’t there because he was supposedly on an extended trip to Greece. However, when word of the theft spreads, Merry comes back to see the children. He is the only person other than the children who know that the thieves who took the grail were not ordinary thieves but agents of the Dark, the forces of evil. Merry say that he believes that they took the grail because it will lead them to something else that they’re seeking. He says that he will need the children’s help again and asks them to trust him. There will be danger, but he promises them protection. The children agree and accept Merry’s invitation to spend their holidays in Cornwall with him again.

Meanwhile, Will Stanton is bored because his older brothers and sister are off doing other things. Even though he is secretly one of the Old Ones and has great powers, he is also still the youngest in his family and feels left out of things that his older siblings are able to do. Then, a mysterious stranger arrives and introduces himself as Will’s Uncle Bill. Will was named after Bill, who is one of his father’s brothers and has been living in the United States for as long as Will can remember. Will’s parents are glad to see Bill, and Bill offers to take Will with him on a trip to Cornwall because a friend of his who is also staying there will have a couple of nephews about Will’s age staying with him. Will is eager to go, and his parents agree to let him.

Of course, the friend that Uncle Bill is talking about is Uncle Merry, and the nephews are Simon and Barney Drew, along with their sister Jane. At first, the Drew boys don’t like Will much because they think he’s going to interfere in their mission with their Uncle Merry, not knowing yet that Will has special powers and is directly involved in the fight against the Dark as their ally.

Shortly after they arrive in the village where the Drew children stayed in the first book, Will and Uncle Merry mention a pagan ceremony that is still being practiced in the area called the Greenwitch. Uncle Merry says that Jane may watch it, but not the boys because only women are allowed to attend the ritual. However, the dog Rufus that the children befriended on their last visit is kidnapped, and they are given the warning that the captain who owns him had better stay away from the Greenwitch if he wants him back. Unbeknownst to the children, the captain, who is the man who owns the house where they stayed last time, is another of the Old Ones.

Still, Mrs. Penhallow, the wife of a fisherman they met in the first book, invites Jane to come with her to see the Greenwitch being made. Jane doesn’t know what that means at first, but she goes to the ceremony anyway. Jane watches the local women weaving branches together to make a strange figure. It makes Jane uneasy because it doesn’t seem human but it has a kind of power. The women tell her that few people can sense its power but that people make wishes on it before tossing the Greenwitch into the sea for luck. Jane is given the opportunity to make a wish herself, and she finds herself wishing that the Greenwitch could be happy because she senses a loneliness about the figure. She feels a little silly for that wish after she realizes that she could have wished to find the grail again instead. One of the women there approves of the sentiment of Jane’s wish although she notes that it’s also a dangerous one because it’s difficult to know what might make someone happy. Some people find happiness in dark or dangerous things, but in this case, it might be a very good wish.

However, the forces of darkness are also targeting Barney. Barney has recently been developing artistic skills, like the children’s mother, and an artist who serves the Dark steals one of his drawings to gain control over him. The Dark needs Barney, at least for a short period, because he can do something that none of them can; Barney can look into the grail and tell them what he sees.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

There are even more pagan references in this story than in the previous two. The Greenwitch is a fictional ceremony, but it seems like it’s based on or inspired by a kind of folk magic. It might be that the local women who make the Greenwitch are meant to represent a coven performing magic. I’m not going to go too deep into the history pre-Christian traditions because this isn’t a real ritual that I can trace and the history of neo-paganism is complicated. If you’re curious, I recommend watching this documentary about the life of Gerald Gardner, the founder of Wicca. I don’t really believe in Wicca myself, but I think Gerald Gardner is a delightful eccentric and fun to hear about. (Just don’t show the documentary to kids without watching it yourself. There are a couple of things in there that night not be suitable for young kids.)

It’s not all focused on the folklore of the British Isles, though. At one point in the story, the characters seek the help of Tethys, a figure from Greek mythology. The Greenwitch is meant as a tribute to her, so she has power over it, and the characters need something from the Greenwitch. This story introduces the idea that, although the stories are about the struggle between good and evil, Light and Dark, there are also some powerful, ancient forces that are not part of this struggle, including Tethys and the Greenwitch. These forces are neutral, and their neutrality requires that they neither help nor hinder either side in the struggle. Tethys and the Greewitch are among those neutral forces.

Part of this story also involves characters doing things they shouldn’t because they don’t have all of the information they really need to make better decisions. Ignorance and half-knowledge are annoying parts of stories like this, plot devices to allow characters to get into dangerous situations. It all works out for the best in the end, though.

Posted on by TracyC

The Dark is Rising

The Dark is Rising Sequence

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, 1973.

The day before his eleventh birthday on Midwinter, Will Stanton has an uneasy feeling that something is about to happen. First, the rabbits that his family keep behave oddly. Then, other animals seem to be afraid of him when they never have before. When he and his brother James go to pick up some hay from Mr. Dawson, Mr. Dawson makes an odd comment about “the Walker” being abroad and that it’s going to be a bad night. Then, Mr. Dawson says that he has something for Will for his birthday. He gives Will an odd iron ornament and tells him to keep it safe and not talk about it with other people. Everything about this day seems odd to Will, but he accepts this unusual gift.

That night, Will has an increasing sense of terror, and a rook apparently breaks the skylight in his room during a snow storm. The next day, Will can’t seem to wake up his sleeping family. He puts on warm clothes and leaves the house with a strange feeling that this is somehow his destiny. Things in the area look different, as if he is now in a different time, sometime in the past. Eventually, he sees a man he knows who works for Mr. Dawson, John Smith. John Smith is working on horseshoes for a black horse that belongs to a mysterious stranger in a dark cloak. The mysterious stranger offers him food and a ride on his horse, but Will refuses both. The stranger gives him an uneasy feeling, and without really knowing why, Will says that he is looking for “the Walker.” The cloaked stranger tells him that “the Rider is abroad” and tries to grab him, but John Smith pulls him out of the way, and the stranger is angry. John Smith tells Will that he is just newly woken and will have to figure things out for himself but to trust his instincts today. A beautiful white horse appears, and John Smith says that Will can ride it, if he wants, but Will’s instincts tell him that he needs to go on alone. As he leaves, Will sees John Smith giving the white mare shoes that look like the iron ornament that Mr. Dawson gave him.

As he explores the countryside further, Will encounters a wandering tramp that he saw attacked by rooks the day before and confronts him as being “the Walker.” The Walker is defensive and suspicious, and he asks Will to show him “the Sign.” Will realizes that he must mean the iron ornament that he now wears on his belt, but before he can show it to the Walker, the Rider comes and frightens the Walker away. The Rider sees his Sign and comments that Will only has one of them so far, and that won’t help him much. Fortunately, the white mare comes and carries Will away from the Rider.

The white mare carries Will away into the hills, he has a sensation like he’s falling, and then, he finds himself alone in the snow near a pair of carved wooden doors that appear to be standing by themselves, attached to nothing. Will pushes on the doors and finds himself in what seems to be a great hall, hung with tapestries. There is an old woman and a tall man standing by the fireplace, and they greet him. Will tries to ask them about the doors and why they seem to be standing by themselves, but the doors have vanished behind him. The man says that Will’s first lesson is that nothing is what it seems to be.

The man introduces himself as Merriman Lyon (introduced in the previous book in the series), and he says that he and Will were born with the same gift, the power of the Old Ones. Now that it’s Will’s eleventh birthday, his gift is awakening, but he must learn how to control it. At first, Will doesn’t think that he has any particular gift, so Merriman shows him how he can receive mental pictures from someone else’s mind and send them a mental picture and how he can even put out a fire with his mind. Will becomes convinced that he does indeed have powers that normal boys don’t have. Merriman tells him that this gift is a burden, like many special gifts, but he was born with this gift for a special purpose.

Merriman says that he doesn’t want to tell him too much yet because the full knowledge of his destiny may be dangerous for him while he is still learning to use his gift. However, he does tell Will that he is actually one of the Old Ones, the first of his kind to be born in the last 500 years, and he will be the very last of them. Like other Old Ones, he will play a role in the battle between good and evil. His first role is that of the Sign-Seeker. He must find the six Signs and guard them. The iron ornament is the first Sign, but the others won’t be as easy to find.

Will returns to his family and his ordinary life, buying Christmas presents for his siblings for the coming holiday, but he knows that his life is no longer ordinary. He has much to learn about how to use his powers, and the sinister forces that pursue him to try to stop him from carrying out his mission.

The book is a Newbery Honor Book. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). The book was adapted as a movie called The Seeker in 2007.

My Reaction and Spoilers

Fantasy books sometimes have to deal with the subject of religion and the relationship between magic and religion. This book also does so somewhat, but I noticed that it also seems to try to remove itself from consideration of the issue at the same time. At one point, Merriman discusses the idea of witches and witchcraft trials with Will, telling him that none of those involved were Old Ones, like the two of them. He says that everyone involved with witchcraft trials were ordinary humans, most of the people who were called “witches” were innocent victims although a small number were genuinely evil, and generally, the witchcraft trials were the result of human madness and irrationality, not genuine magic. In other words, readers don’t need to worry about trying to reconcile the power of the Old Ones with witchcraft because the author says that the two of them are two different, unrelated things.

Will and his family celebrate Christmas during the course of the book, and they go to church, so it’s apparently fine for an Old One to also be a Christian. Yet, there is a scene at church on Christmas where Will and John Smith have to stop the forces of the Dark attacking the church. The minister tries by calling on the powers of God and exorcising the evil spirits, but John Smith says that the minister’s efforts don’t work because “This battle is not for his fighting”, apparently indicating that the powers of Light and Dark as portrayed in this story are somehow outside of any religion or the interference of any god because they are forces that are completely unto themselves. The traditional Christian view would be that God commands the forces of good and light while the devil commands the forces of evil and darkness, but they’re saying here that’s not the case in this story. Will’s thought is that there is a place that exists out of time where all the Gods that ever were came from and also all of the forces and powers in the world, and it seems like some of these exist independently of each other, that they don’t have any beginning and so none of them is less old than any of the others. There is an element of pagan and folklore traditions that runs through these books, and I think that part of this concept references that, but I also see that looking at the battle between Light and Dark in this way, as being something independent of absolutely everything else, leaves the author of the stories free to have it play out in whatever way makes a good story without having to make it adhere to any rules and traditions other than the ones she’s chosen.

Of course, even fictional magic has to follow some rules in order to make logical sense to the readers. As I said, there are pagan and/or folklore traditions that are implied to be true or to have more significance than most people would suspect. Will uses holly as a form of protection for his home during Christmas. Aside from its association with Christmas, there are also many folkloric superstitions about holly. It is also revealed that part of what makes Will so special is that he is the seventh son of a seventh son, another concept from folklore.

A theme that is carried over to this book from the first one in the series is that evil can sometimes appear innocent and even friendly. People who have appeared as friends before can be revealed to be secretly evil or coerced to the dark side, even people who have been close before. Those who aren’t as in tune with the battle between good and evil may be fooled by friendly smiles, charming manners, and a pleasant appearance, but those who are aware of the difference between dark and light can feel when someone isn’t right.

There is one case in this book where a previously good person turns to the Dark because he feels betrayed about how Merry put his life at risk for the cause of the Light. I feel like this could have been avoided if Merry had been more honest with him in the beginning about the risks of what they were doing and the reasons why it was so important, but Merry seems to feel like it was all inevitable, something that was fated to be. Yet, at the end of this person’s life, Merry emphasizes that all of the choices this person made were his own, and although he went through much suffering because of things that had to happen as they did, he could have still had a better life even while undergoing his ordeals if he had made different choices along the way. I think I see what he means, that there are some things in life that are unavoidable but people can make them better or worse through their own choices and behavior, but I still feel like Merry set him up for this bad situation because he didn’t explain things properly when he should have. Maybe that was Merry’s bad decision, too?

Parts of this book actually reminded me of The Box of Delights, a vintage children’s fantasy book that also takes place at Christmas. In both books, Herne the Hunter, a character from folklore, makes an appearance, and the boys in each story get turned into different animals through their adventures with magical books.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Over Sea, Under Stone

The Dark is Rising Sequence

Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper, 1965.

The Drew family is spending the summer in Cornwall with their Great-Uncle Merry. Professor Merriman “Merry” Lyon isn’t really a relative, but a very old family friend who teaches at a university and has a somewhat mysterious past. Of the three Drew children – Simon, Jane, and Barney – Barney is the one most looking forward to their time in Cornwall because he loves Arthurian stories, and he is fascinated by Cornwall’s connections with King Arthur. Simon is more interested in watching boats.

One day, while the children are bored because it’s raining, they start playing at being explorers inside the house where they’re staying and discover a secret passage to a hidden room. There, they find an old manuscript that seems to be some kind of treasure map! It seems like parts are written in Latin, but even Simon, who has studied Latin in school, can’t read it all. At first, they wonder if they should tell their parents about it, but they decide not to, at least not right away, because their parents would probably tell them not to touch it because it doesn’t belong to them. They feel like they just have to figure out what it means and what it might lead to.

The family makes the acquaintance of a yacht owner, Mr. Withers, and his sister, and the two of them invite the whole family to go for a ride on their yacht. Mrs. Drew is an artist and wants to spend the day painting, so she declines, and so does Jane. Jane says that she’s afraid of getting seasick, but really, the Witherses give her an uneasy feeling. Jane feels like there’s something that’s not right about them, and it’s strange that Miss Withers asks them if they’ve found any secret passages in the house just after they actually found one. None of the children confide anything in Miss Withers. Mr. Withers seems oddly interested in the books in the house.

The next day, while her father and brothers go out on the yacht with the Witherses, Jane studies the manuscript and tries to figure out what it means. When she also finds an old guidebook to the area in an old trunk, she realizes that the map on the manuscript shows the area where they are staying, but there’s something strange about the coastline. The coastline on the old map is a slightly different shape. Jane wonders if one of the two maps could be wrong or if the coastline has changed somehow over the years because the manuscript looks very old.

Since the guidebook was written by the local vicar, Jane decides to go see him and ask him about the coastline and whether it’s changed over the years. She takes along the guidebook but not the manuscript. However, the vicar she meets says he’s the new vicar, not the old one who wrote the book. She talks to him about the book and the coastline anyway, but he gives her a bad feeling, similar to the one that the Witherses give her. The vicar discounts the idea of the coastline changing, and he asks Jane uncomfortable questions about the books in the house, pressing her for answers that she doesn’t have and doesn’t want to give him.

When the boys come back from the yacht, and Jane tells them about the guidebook and the vicar, Simon is irritated that Jane tried to investigate the manuscript without them, and he doesn’t think she should have talked to the vicar. Jane says that she didn’t tell the vicar about the manuscript, only the guidebook, and Barney says that what Jane learned is important.

The next morning, they wake up to find that the house has been ransacked. Books have been tossed all over in the middle of the night by someone who was clearly hunting for something. The children are sure that their mysterious intruder was searching for the manuscript, which is safe because Jane had it hidden in her bed. But, who was it? Was it the vicar or the Witherses? All of them seemed interested in old books and manuscripts, and they all seem suspicious. What is the real significance of the manuscript anyway?

Still not wanting to tell their parents or the police who were called to investigate the break-in, the children confide in Great-Uncle Merry about the manuscript and their suspicions. Uncle Merry knows more about the manuscript than the children know, and he tells them about a lost grail, a copy of the original Holy Grail, inscribed with the true story of King Arthur and about an ancient struggle between good and evil, a struggle that the children have now joined.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). The book was once adapted as a tv mini-series, but apparently, no copies of it survive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

This book is the first in a series about the struggle between good and evil, known as the Light and the Dark, and all of the other books in the series also draw on Arthurian legends. Merry and the children appear in other books, although not always together. Merry (the children sometimes call him Gumerry, which is short for Great-Uncle Merry) isn’t quite what he appears to be, which is how he knows things that other adults don’t know. There are hints in this book about Merry’s real identity, but it isn’t explained in this book, although Barney has a feeling that his name is a clue.

When Merry explains about the battle between good and evil, he says that the struggle has been going on for ages, and neither side ever completely wins or completely loses. It’s like that in this story, too. At first, I wasn’t completely sure whether they would actually find the grail or if it would turn out to be a MacGuffin, only existing to drive the action without it being really important whether it was actually found or not. The heroes do actually find and successfully retrieve the grail, but they also lose the manuscripts they’ve found before they can completely study them. It’s a victory, but not a total victory, and the villains are still around and may reappear in the future. This story ends in a way that indicates that this could have been a standalone book, which it might have been originally, before the author decided to continue the series, but the ending is also open, making the continuation of the series natural.

There are references to old folklore traditions throughout the story. I’ve never seen The Wicker Man, but I saw a comment on a YouTube video where someone compares a public festival from this story to a scene in The Wicker Man, so there may be the implication that this is a more ancient form of celebration with more significance than the modern characters think. In fact, old traditions and folklore from the British Isles also appear in various forms throughout the series, and there are references to pagan beliefs.

I didn’t like the part where the kids were pretending to be explorers, and they were talking about acting out one of those scenes with “rude natives” (Simon’s words, and even he has to admit that he doesn’t quite know what it means when Barney asks him, although he’s aware that it’s a different sort of “rude” from the word meaning “impolite”) who want to make them gods and encountering cannibals. That type of scene always annoys me in books, and I’m sure that they’re referencing some of the vintage books I’ve read where that happens or ones very much like them. It’s really my only complaint about this story. Fortunately, that part doesn’t last very long because the kids find the manuscript and get on with the fantasy story.

Posted on by TracyC

Linnets and Valerians

Linnets and Valerians by Elizabeth Goudge, 1964.

The Beginning

When the story begins, in 1912, the four Linnet children are in a bad situation. With their father on his way to serve in the army in India with a stop in Egypt, they have been left behind to stay with their grandmother, who is not an indulgent, “grandmotherly” sort of grandmother. First, she’s planning to give away the children’s dog because she doesn’t like dogs. Then, she’s planning to send the two eldest children, Robert and Nan (short for Anna), to boarding school, while keeping the younger children, Betsy and Timothy, to be tutored at home. Worse, she locks the children up by themselves, sometimes in the dark, leaving them to scream.

Admittedly, the reason why they were locked up was because their grandmother had arranged a tea party to show them off to her friends, and the children, not liking parties, had barricaded themselves in a hen house, fighting off the gardener and their grandmother’s companion with rhubarb stalks until they were finally caught. They were locked away from the party guests until they were ready to apologize, which none of them want to do. (Bad strategy on the part of the adults. Some things are their own punishment. Rather than locking the children up, which is cruel, they should have let the children suffer the consequences of their own bad choice. Don’t get them out of the hen house; insist that they stay out there, not being allowed any of the goodies at the party or even being allowed back into the house until they first clean themselves up in the yard. The kids aren’t very good at planning, and I’m sure they don’t have food stores in the hen house. Everyone gets hungry eventually, and it should be clear to the children that it’s their personal choice how long they want to stay that way. But, the grandmother also shouldn’t give away the children’s dog without their consent, so it’s hard to feel too sympathetic here.) Realistically, it is acknowledged that their grandmother could be quite kind with children who were gentle, quiet, and well-behaved, but also realistically, this is not the case with her grandchildren. Frankly, the children are wild and have no inclination to compromise with their grandmother. With all of these things combined, it is clear that life with their grandmother is going to be impossible, and Robert decides that there’s only one thing to do: escape.

Robert manages to break out of the room where he’s been locked up, and he frees his siblings and their dog, Absolom. The four children set off with their dog, intending to walk to the mountains (just some mountains, somewhere to the west – nowhere specific and no real plan involved) and make their living there because Robert imagines that would be a good idea. As they pass an inn, they spot a pony and cart tied up outside, and they decide to appropriate them for some transportation. Besides, Robert has always wanted a pony. Nan is concerned that they’re stealing, but Robert says that they’re just “borrowing.”

The Linnet children have much more in common with their Uncle Ambrose than with their grandmother or other relatives. Uncle Ambrose is similarly unsociable and impatient. Uncle Ambrose was once a teacher, but now that he’s retired, he has no desire to spend time with children again. He also doesn’t like dogs. But, it turns out that the pony they “borrowed” belongs to him and takes them to his house. When Uncle Ambrose realizes who the children are, he takes them into his house and keeps them over night, although he doesn’t introduce himself to them immediately. The children feel much more at home with Uncle Ambrose, even when they don’t know who he is, because his house is a bit shabby and untidy, and he has a pet owl and a cat with kittens. Also, in spite of his gruff manner and assertion that he’s not happy about having children around, Nan has the sense that he actually likes them. The children decide that they’re going to try to behave themselves in this house because they like being there and want to stay.

In the morning, Uncle Ambrose goes to town to get the groceries that his peg-legged gardener, Ezra, neglected to get the other day when the children stole the pony and cart in town. When he returns, he also has the children’s luggage with him. Uncle Ambrose went to see his mother about the children, and when he suggested that he could keep them at his house, the children’s grandmother eagerly took him up on the offer. The children are all intensely relieved that they won’t be sent back to their strict grandmother and her overly-tidy house and can stay with their eccentric uncle, the peg-legged gardener who comes home singing in the middle of the night when he gets drunk, and the wonderfully untidy garden outside, where they can play.

Uncle Ambrose confesses to the children that he has actually missed his students since he retired from teaching. He isn’t particularly fond of children by themselves, but he is fond of teaching them. As a condition of the children staying with him, Uncle Ambrose insists that they allow him to educate them. The children agree to this because one of their reasons for running away was so they would not be split up when Robert and Nan were sent to boarding school. The children just want to stay together with their dog. Uncle Ambrose agrees to this, saying that he doesn’t approve of sending young girls to boarding school at all, although he insists that girls be properly educated as well as boys. He says that he wouldn’t even consider sending Robert to boarding school until he’s had a better grounding because he’s not satisfied with the reports he’s had of Robert’s academic abilities. The children aren’t thrilled at the idea of studying, but they agree to it because staying together and studying with Uncle Ambrose sounds better than being split up or the other alternative, being sent to stay with their Uncle Edgar in Birmingham. Also, Uncle Ambrose is willing to give the children some time each day to themselves, to play or do what they want. He won’t even insist that they show up for meals, but if they miss them, they’ll just have to go hungry. (See? I told you it was a better strategy than fighting to get them out of the hen house.) As much as the kids don’t like the idea of studying, they love the idea of having some freedom. Freedom means that adventures could happen.

Now, the story at this point could have been a complete story by itself – a group of wild, undisciplined kids are left with their strict grandmother, and after a battle of wills between the children and the grandmother and some overly-harsh punishment, the children run away, finding a gruff but kindly bachelor uncle who rediscovers the pleasure of having children around and also happens to have once been a teacher and can tutor the children while their father is away, managing to inspire the children to behave a little better and learn to make some better decisions by granting them a little freedom to make some of their own choices instead of being too controlling. That’s all very nice as a single story. However, in this case, all of that is just the background for the story to come. We’re still in just the first part of the book.

Segue to the Magic

After it’s settled that the children will stay with Uncle Ambrose, they decided to go into town for their first free excursion. They stop at the little store in town to buy some sweets and a picture postcard to send to their grandmother because Nan has been thinking over their time with her and has realized that they were badly behaved and feels guilty about it. The store is managed by Emma Cobley, an old woman in an old-fashioned dress and cap and a red shawl who owns a black cat named Frederick. Emma is a little creepy and she warns the children to stay away from Lion Tor because it’s a dangerous place. (A “tor” is “a high, craggy hill.”)

When the children return to the house, Ezra insists upon introducing them to the bees. The children think that this is a very odd thing to do, but Ezra says that it’s important, and he asks the bees to look after the children. Timothy asks if it’s possible for bees to look out for people, and Ezra says that they once saved his life when he fell into an old tin mine and showed the vicar (the children’s uncle, after he retired from teaching – they’re all living at the vicarage now) where to find him. When Ezra hears that they’ve been to Emma Cobley’s shop, he tells them not to go there anymore. The most Uncle Ambrose buys there is stamps, but neither of them ever buys anything else from her, and Ezra is reluctant to tell the children why. There is something a bit creepy about Emma and some suspicious things in her shop, like the overly-appealing candy and the one postcard that she refuses to allow the children to buy or even look at for long.

As the children start having lessons with Uncle Ambrose, Robert asks him if he will be giving them pocket money. Uncle Ambrose says that he doesn’t give pocket money, but there are opportunities for earning some. He gives them a list of chores that they can do and what he’s willing to pay for doing them. He also points out to Robert that, as the oldest boy, he can’t expect to wriggle out of the tougher chores or leave them to the girls, but if he’s willing to tackle the tougher chores, he will pay him well for it. Uncle Ambrose has somewhat chivalrous sensibilities about what girls can handle, and he also reminds the boys that there are consequences for misbehavior, lying, or stealing. He says that he would never use corporal punishment on a girl, but he has caned boys before and could do the same to his nephews if they give him reason. He tells the children that, from this point on, they cannot interrupt their lesson time with any subjects that aren’t related to the lesson. (He never does hit any of the children and does make reasonable exceptions to this rule later in the story.) It isn’t just the threat of punishment that keeps the children in line, though. It turns out that Uncle Ambrose is an excellent story-teller, and when he starts describing other countries or historical events, the children are captivated. In many ways, Uncle Ambrose makes learning fun because he really loves his subjects and knows how to share what’s fascinating about them with other people. There are parts of the learning that seem like drudgery, but they are balanced out by the parts that are truly fascinating.

The children also gradually begin learning more about the other people who live nearby. There is a black man (called a “Negro” in the story) called Moses Glory Glory Alleluja. (That’s apparently his real name in the story and not just a nickname, to which I say, “God help us all!”) When the children first see him, they’re startled and afraid of him because he’s carrying a curved knife and looks like “a coal-black giant.” They stop and stare at him because they’re afraid, and Ezra tells them not to hurt the poor man’s feelings because he’s a gentle man. As he gets closer to the children, they realize that he’s not as fearsome as they had first thought from a distance. He’s actually very pleasant, and the knife he’s carrying is just a scythe for clearing plants.

Moses works for Lady Alicia (a sort of man-of-all work – cook, gardener, butler, etc.), and Lady Alicia also has a monkey called Abednego. When the kids go with Ezra to pick up a couple of extra beds that Uncle Ambrose is borrowing from Lady Alicia for the children, Abednego takes Betsy’s doll, and she has to chase after him to get it back. In the process, Betsy meets Lady Alicia, an elderly lady in very worn fancy clothes and wearing jewelry. The two of them introduce themselves to each other and explain a little about who they are. Lady Alicia once lived there with her husband and son, but she says that her son, Francis, was “lost” years ago on Lion Tor at the age of eight. She doesn’t explain at this point how that happened or even if her son died or simply disappeared. Her husband also disappeared a few years later overseas because he was a traveler and explorer. She doesn’t seem to expect to see either of them again. This is really where the main plot of the book is introduced.

The Magic

So, now we know that there’s a creepy old lady who owns a shop that isn’t quite what it seems to be and a mysterious and sad old lady whose husband and son have disappeared, and it’s all connected to Lion Tor. The children’s first encounter with Lion Tor happens when Betsy’s siblings realize that she’s missing at Lady Alicia’s house. Not knowing that she’s with Lady Alicia, they assume that she’s wandered off into the woods to pick flowers and go searching for her. Nan finds her way to Lion Tor, where she discovers a cave that is filled with paintings. She knows they weren’t done by cave people ages ago because people in the drawings are wearing modern hats. The artist turns out to be a bearded man in ragged clothes who seems unable to speak.

Nan learns that this man is called Daft Davie, but Nan doesn’t think that’s fair because he seems intelligent and artistically talented, even though he isn’t able to speak. Ezra explains to her that Davie used to work for a blacksmith in another village nearby but some boys kept teasing him and tormenting him because he couldn’t speak, so he eventually went to live by himself at Lion Tor.

The boys eventually find Betsy with Lady Alicia. To their surprise, Lady Alicia seems to be enjoying Betsy’s company, even though she doesn’t normally like visitors. She invites the children to return again with Nan, making an odd comment about how the Linnet family seems “inevitable” but might do her some good.

Uncle Ambrose allows Nan to use the parlor of his house as her private room, where she can do her sewing and darning or just have time to herself. He says that he hasn’t done much with the parlor himself, other than putting furniture in it, because the parlor is usually for the lady of the house, and he’s unmarried. Now that Nan is there, she counts as the lady of the house as the oldest girl, and Uncle Ambrose can tell that she’s a reflective kind of person who can use some quiet time to herself, away from the other children. Nan is appreciative, and she’s also surprised when Uncle Ambrose tells her that the previous lady of the house was Lady Alicia. Before her marriage to the local lord, she was the daughter of the previous vicar, and he found some of her old books in a hidden cabinet in the room.

Uncle Ambrose removed the books from the hidden cabinet and put them on the bookshelf in the room, but out of curiosity, Nan investigates the hidden cabinet and finds that it still contains a notebook. However, the notebook belonged to a young Emma Cobley, not Lady Alicia. The notebook contains what looks like evil witchcraft spells. Nan is alarmed, although later, she’s confused because she sees Emma Cobley at church. She isn’t sure what to think because she can’t imagine that a real, evil witch would go to church. Nan considers that perhaps Emma used to practice witchcraft in her youth but repented later and changed her ways. However, if that’s true, why does Ezra disapprove of her, and how can they explain Emma’s creepy black cat? When Nan studies the spells in the book, seeing spells that can prevent a person from speaking, cause a person to lose his memory, and cause a person to forget affection for another, Emma’s true character and some of the mysterious events of the past begin coming a little more clear.

When Nan talks to Ezra later, he says that Emma Cobley’s father was a black-hearted warlock who taught her evil spells. Ezra says that his own mother practiced white magic and that his family is descended from ancient peoples who were called fairies or gods. Nan had thought that there was something gnome-like in his appearance and isn’t surprised that he’s a bit magical. Ezra further describes the day that Lady Alicia’s son disappeared at Lion Tor. They’d been on a picnic with the boy’s nurse, and the nurse and the boy had been playing hide-and-seek. A mist came up, and they were unable to find the boy. They feared that he might have drowned in the marsh because his cap was nearby, but they were never able to establish that. Some other people thought he might have been kidnapped by gypsies, but there was no evidence of that, either.

In the cemetery of the churchyard, there is a memorial to Lady Alicia’s husband, Hugo Francis Valerian, and his son who was named after him, but the husband’s death date is unknown. The children argue about what that really means. Robert says that the Valerians are dead, but they’re just not buried at the site of the memorial because they were lost and nobody knows exactly when they died and where the bodies are. However, Betsy has the feeling that they’re not dead, and Nan agrees that disappearing isn’t the same as dying. But, is that really true? Are the Valerians alive or dead, and if they are alive, where are they?

Pieces of the past continue falling into place. Betsy and Nan accidentally find old love letters that Emma Cobley wrote to the elder Hugo Valerian … love letters that also contain angry threats when the love wasn’t returned. Pictures that Davie painted on the walls of his cave resemble ones from Lady Alicia’s tapestry. Uncle Ambrose doesn’t believe in the power of witches and thinks that what Ezra has been saying about magic and spells is just superstition, but Ezra knows a few things that Uncle Ambrose doesn’t. He’s the one who knows how to undo Emma Cobley’s wicked spells.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. Sometimes, this book also appears under the title The Runaways.

My Reaction and Spoilers

A Few Concerns

I didn’t like the parts with the harsh punishments or threats of it for the children. Locking children up or caning them would be considered child abuse by modern standards, although my feelings about that are somewhat offset because they kids are pretty wild and the book makes it clear that they are badly behaved in the beginning and provoked the punishment they received. I’m willing to let it go partly because nobody actually gets caned and because of the fairy-tale atmosphere of the story. In fairy tales, there is often a cruel relative, and in this case, it’s more like an overly-provoked one at her wit’s end. In either case, the children’s situation with their grandmother in the beginning establishes the reason why they go to live with their eccentric uncle and have magical adventures.

Some people might not care for the different standards for boys and girls in the story. It’s old-fashioned, out of date even for the time when the book was first published, but the setting is also old-fashioned, so I think it’s meant to establish the time and place. It’s common in older children’s books and stories that imitate them for boys to be given more freedom than girls but also for boys to be subjected to harsher, more physical punishments when they get out of line. Uncle Ambrose seems to have similar feelings in that direction, although he does give the boys and girls the same lessons because he feels that girls’ minds also need to be educated, and he allows all of the children to have equal free time and ability to play and explore the area together.

As another reviewer of this book observed, it seems a little strange that the children would be so frightened of Moses when they first meet him because they used to live in India, and you would think that they would be accustomed to the idea that there are people of different races in the world. This can’t be the first time that they’ve seen people who look different, although I suppose they could be a little intimidated by him being especially tall and carrying a scythe. That might be something that would be a little startling to see very suddenly until you look again and realize it’s just a really tall guy with a farm implement because we’re living in the countryside now. I liked the warning from Ezra to the children to behave themselves and not hurt Moses’s feelings. I thought it was good to emphasize that other people’s feelings are important, and that comment helped to humanize Moses because, even if he looks a little strange or intimidating at first, he’s still a human being with feelings.

However, there is another part of the story not too long after that, when they’re looking for Betsy and Robert, who has a habit of play-acting, pretends like he’s a Roman emperor giving a command to a “coal-black Nubian standard-bearer”, saying, “Slave, lead on.” There seems to be some self-awareness in the story that this wasn’t a good thing for Robert to say to Moses (who is a servant, not a slave, although Ezra later says that there is a rumor that Lady Alicia’s husband may have bought him in a slave market overseas when he was young), and Timothy is concerned that Robert might have offended him. The story says that Moses isn’t the kind of person who takes offense or holds grudges, and he seems to understand that Robert is play-acting, but I felt like this somewhat undermined the message of considering other people’s feelings by suggesting that the best way to be is not to have any particular feelings to consider. That’s not something anybody can count on in real life or insist that others provide for them. Real human beings are not like stuffed teddy bears, who can take endless abuse or respond to any comment with a constant smile and still be lovable and want to snuggle afterward, like none of it matters. Real humans have both feelings and limits, and this is one instance where I felt like someone should have thrown a little cold water on Robert’s play-acting. The whole story has an air of unreality about it, which is part of the charm, but I think even fantasy stories should be real about human behavior.

The Fantasy

The fantasy in the story is really very light, compared to most fantasy books. Although it becomes well-established by the end of the book that Emma Cobley is definitely a witch who cast evil spells which caused Lady Alicia to lose both her son and her husband, the spells and their undoing were done in such a way that Uncle Ambrose never seems to realize that it was all magic. Basically, the children and Ezra find the little figures with pins in them that Emma made, and Ezra recites a magical rhyme that allows them to remove the pins, thus breaking the spells. Then, they burn the figures and Emma’s old spell book, destroying her magic forever. After that, Lady Alicia’s son and husband both come back, Emma actually becomes a much nicer person, and everybody lives happily ever after.

The pace of the story is fairly slow, which is actually part of its atmospheric charm. For a book dealing with an evil witch, black magic spells, and unhappy people, it’s really pretty relaxing. I think part of that effect is because of its gradual pace and also because there are never very serious consequences for anybody in the story. It’s sad that Lady Alicia, her husband, and her son were all parted from each other for a period of years, but when the spells are broken, they are pretty quickly very happy again. Emma Cobley does try to prevent the children from learning her secrets and breaking the spells, but really, nothing bad happens to the children at all. There is one semi-frightening part where the boys and their dog are up a tree with Emma and her friends below it, but then Uncle Ambrose comes and takes the children home, and everything is fine. Emma tries to cast spells on the children at once point, but the children don’t even notice until they find the figures of themselves later. Ezra tells them that the witch’s spells were ineffective against them because he made his own figures of the children first and put them in the church, so they are protected. Emma herself faces no consequences in the end, either. They don’t have to destroy the witch to destroy her magic, and once her magic is gone, she is so changed and everyone is so happy that there’s no retribution, only forgiveness.

On the one hand, the lack of consequences in the story for things the children do make the story feel like the stakes are low. There is a sense of sadness around characters in the story, but is no particular sense of urgency. They are not racing the clock to break the spells, and the villains are pretty ineffectual at putting up obstacles to their success. On the other hand, it seems like most of the story focuses on atmosphere over action. This little village is an enchanting place to be. It’s charming, and the lack of consequences for the children, whether it’s for being racially insensitive or facing down a witch or even just staying out late, make the story feel like a very safe kind of adventure. Uncle Ambrose, Ezra, and their bees won’t let anything serious befall the children, and the worst punishment they have for misbehavior is being sent to bed with gruel (a kind of thin porridge) instead of a proper supper. Uncle Ambrose told them that if they missed meals, it would be their fault, and they’d have to go without. However, he never lets children go to bed hungry, and he even allows them sugar on their gruel. Again, very low stakes, but charmingly so. This story is not stressful, which is good, but it’s not for people looking for excitement.

I was a little impatient with the children for not making the connection between the spells in the book and Daft Davie even after seeing the figurines, including the one with the pin in its tongue. This spell is supposed to prevent people from talking, and who else do they know who can’t talk? There aren’t that many people in the area, and there’s only one person in the story whose main characteristic is an inability to speak. Even as they’re breaking the spells, they don’t know who they’re breaking them for, like they can’t even guess, and Nan is surprised when Davie can suddenly talk afterward. I think this is one of those stories that wants to make readers feel clever for figuring it out before the characters, but that can also feel a little frustrating. If there’s one thing I would change about this story (other than the racial bits), I would want the children to realize the truth about the spells faster and break them more deliberately.

I don’t really mind that Uncle Ambrose never believes in the magic. The book leaves the situation a little open for the characters, and possibly even the readers, to believe that there are other explanations for what happens. Maybe “Davie” lost his memory and ability to speak through an illness. The children in the story know that’s not it, but it’s not important for anybody else to know. Although, perhaps Uncle Ambrose knows more about magic than he lets on because, for reasons that are never explained, his pony never grows old, and his pet owl seems immortal. But, maybe that’s for the readers to decide.