Free Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis Page B

Pattertwig, one of you. And when shall I blow the Horn?”
    “I would wait for sunrise, your Majesty,” said Doctor Cornelius. “That sometimes has an effect in operations of White Magic.”
    A few minutes later Pattertwig arrived and had his task explained to him. As he was, like many squirrels, full of courage and dash and energy and excitement and mischief (not to say conceit), he no sooner heard it than he was eager to be off. It wasarranged that he should run for Lantern Waste while Trumpkin made the shorter journey to the river-mouth. After a hasty meal they both set off with the fervent thanks and good wishes of the King, the Badger, and Cornelius.

Eight

HOW THEY LEFT THE ISLAND
    “AND SO,” SAID TRUMPKIN (FOR, AS YOU have realized, it was he who had been telling all this story to the four children, sitting on the grass in the ruined hall of Cair Paravel)—“and so I put a crust or two in my pocket, left behind all weapons but my dagger, and took to the woods in the gray of the morning. I’d been plugging away for many hours when there came a sound that I’d never heard the like of in my born days. Eh, I won’t forget that. The whole air was full of it, loud as thunder but far longer, cool and sweet as music over water, but strong enough to shake the woods. And I said to myself, ‘If that’s not the Horn, call me a rabbit.’ And a moment later I wondered why he hadn’t blown it sooner—”
    “What time was it?” asked Edmund.
    “Between nine and ten of the clock,” said Trumpkin.
    “Just when we were at the railway station!” saidall the children, and looked at one another with shining eyes.
    “Please go on,” said Lucy to the Dwarf.
    “Well, as I was saying, I wondered, but I went on as hard as I could pelt. I kept on all night—and then, when it was half light this morning, as if I’d no more sense than a Giant, I risked a short cut across open country to cut off a big loop of the river, and was caught. Not by the army, but by a pompous old fool who has charge of a little castle which is Miraz’s last stronghold toward the coast. I needn’t tell you they got no true tale out of me, but I was a Dwarf and that was enough. But, lobsters and lollipops! it is a good thing the seneschal was a pompous fool. Anyone else would have run me through there and then. But nothing would do for him short of a grand execution: sending me down ‘to the ghosts’ in the full ceremonial way. And then this young lady” (he nodded at Susan) “does her bit of archery—and it was pretty shooting, let me tell you—and here we are. And without my armor, for of course they took that.” He knocked out and refilled his pipe.
    “Great Scott!” said Peter. “So it was the horn—your own horn, Su—that dragged us all off that seat on the platform yesterday morning! I can hardly believe it; yet it all fits in.”
    “I don’t know why you shouldn’t believe it,” said Lucy, “if you believe in magic at all. Aren’tthere lots of stories about magic forcing people out of one place—out of one world—into another? I mean, when a magician in The Arabian Nights calls up a Jinn, it has to come. We had to come, just like that.”
    “Yes,” said Peter, “I suppose what makes it feel so queer is that in the stories it’s always someone in our world who does the calling. One doesn’t really think about where the Jinn’s coming from .”
    “And now we know what it feels like for the Jinn,” said Edmund with a chuckle. “Golly! It’s a bit uncomfortable to know that we can be whistled for like that. It’s worse than what Father says about living at the mercy of the telephone.”
    “But we want to be here, don’t we,” said Lucy, “if Aslan wants us?”
    “Meanwhile,” said the Dwarf, “what are we to do? I suppose I’d better go back to King Caspian and tell him no help has come.”
    “No help?” said Susan. “But it has worked. And here we are.”
    “Um—um—yes, to be sure. I see that,”