“Is he . . . God?” I ask outright the question I’ve been thinking. This is what I want to tell George: Aslan is God; all is well. There is a place where things are made right and good again. There is hope.
“That is the question I get all the time. What I did when crafting this tale, Miss Devonshire, was to suppose that there was another world, and God entered it in a different way than He did here on earth. And so there you have Aslan. It’s a supposal, if you will.”
“A supposal. What’s that?”
“Something supposed, an idea of another world. And if there was this other world, how would God show Himself?”
I smile. “Or herself. And who is the Witch?” I ask, hurtling through my prepared list as quickly as possible, not wanting him to stop answering, believing I am at last finding my way to the missing puzzle piece.
“She may be any number of things.”
Warnie laughs at this answer. Even though he remains otherwise silent, he seems to be enjoying this conversation, like a show.
I toss out an idea. “Is she Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen?”
Mr. Lewis lifts only his right brow. “Or, Miss Devonshire, is she Circe from Homer’s Odyssey?” He leans forward. “Who knows? But don’t we all know the White Witch? Must she be someone in particular? We can try and find the source, but we are all born knowing the Witch, aren’t we?”
“Yes. We are.” I think about the disease that has ravaged my brother’s heart, making it weak. His illness is the White Witch. War is the White Witch. Cruelty is the White Witch. I take a breath. “There are so many things in your novel, Mr. Lewis. And then I’ve listened and I’ve written down the stories you tell me as best I can in my notebook, and I’ve read fairy tales and George MacDonald. I see, of course, that there is Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology in your Narnia story. There are British fairy tales, Irish folklore, and . . . even Father Christmas.”
His laugh bellows across the room so loudly that outside I spy a flock of birds loosening from their branches and flying away with their black wings. “Yes, indeed,” he says. “That is what my friend Tollers doesn’t like.”
I sink inside, drop my chin into my scarf. “So there isn’t one answer for each question.”
“There rarely is, Miss Devonshire.”
“I wish there were.” I look up. “And the character Lucy, she’s named after someone because I see that name in the front of your book.”
“Yes. My godchild is named Lucy. She is the daughter of my dear friend, Owen Barfield, an author and poet, a fellow Inkling. When I started the book, she was four years old. Now she is fourteen.” He shakes his head.
He is quiet for so long that I think perhaps he’s done talking, that I have finally, finally outdone my welcome. Then he speaks. “Megs,” he says, calling me by my first name for the first time. “We rearrange elements that God has provided. Writing a book is much less like creating than it is like planting a garden—we are only entering as one cause into a causal stream that works, so to speak, its own way.”
“In its own way?” I repeat.
“Do you know Psalm 19?” he asks.
I think for a breath and then another, moving myself backward through my memory to catechism days. “The one about the heavens or the sky showing God’s handiwork?”
“Yes. The cosmos reveals God’s handiwork.”
“So you’re saying maybe stories are the same? That they reveal . . . God’s handiwork?” I think for a better word. “Or truth? They reveal some kind of truth about the universe? That’s what physics is all about.”
“Yes, that is partly what I am saying. Megs, stars are made of dust and nitrogen; they are balls of gas and hydrogen. But that isn’t what a star is; it’s only what it is made of.”
“I . . . hear you,” I say and think about how this is the phrase young Jack Lewis wanted to hear from Mr. Kirkpatrick. “I hear you.”
I don’t want to say I understand, because I don’t.
Not yet. Not fully.
“Did you want your book to have a spiritual message?” I ask. “To really say that . . .” I falter.
“I continue to hear this idea, that I have set out to write a Christian allegory, but it is all pure moonshine. I couldn’t write in that way at all. Like I said, everything began with images: a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn’t even anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord. And archetypes,” he says. “You know about those?”
“I do,” I say. “Carl Jung. I learned in secondary school how there are . . . what? Twelve types, I think. And they each show a kind of person or trait. Is it that each one represents a universal pattern of human nature? Or . . . I can’t really have any kind of intelligent conversation about it. Which is the only kind I would like to have with you. I would be mortified to be considered daft.”
“You, Megs, are far from daft. But yes, archetypes are patterns. They are there in Narnia.” He glances at the notebook on my lap, open to the end with only a few pages remaining. “I do believe your notebook might be full, and it’s time for you, my dear, to live and tell your own stories.”
Tears fill my chest like a balloon. I don’t want this to end, whatever this is. I need to continue bringing stories to George. It seems they are keeping him alive.
“I don’t know if I shall be back,” I say, feeling overwhelmed. “It feels as if we are done.”
“You may visit anytime, Megs.”
“This has felt . . .” I stumble and forge through my thoughts for the right word. “This feels important.”
“Megs, every human interaction is eternally important.” He smiles, and I swear those eyes that usually twinkle are swimming with tears.
Twenty-One
The Kiss
I step off the bus in downtown Oxford. It is eerily quiet. Most students have gone home for holiday. Without the crowds bustling by, the stone and brick buildings seem larger, more eternal, as if they have always been there and always will be, even without us. I kick my way through a snowdrift. I want to be home by dinnertime.
I bundle my scarf and coat as tightly as I can. I’ve forgotten my hat at Mr. Lewis’s house and my hair is growing damp with the few snowflakes falling, leftovers from a swollen cloud that has already sent an inch to the ground. I shiver. I will go home and I will tell George the last of what I’ve learned today, but it doesn’t seem enough.
It will never be enough.
I pass the Bird and Baby, the pub where Mr. Lewis met with the Inklings. Through the dusty window I see a small crowd inside. I remember meeting Padraig in a pub. I thought I’d never be able to really talk to him, but now we are friends. The warmth of the light draws me forward. One pint of cider might warm me up before I get on the train.
Also, I need to catch my breath. I want to write down everything Mr. Lewis told me—the lion and the faun and the umbrella—before I forget.
When I push the wooden door and step inside, warm air rushes toward me. I brush the snow from my hair and find my way to the bar. It is dim inside, the lights low. Its wood-beamed ceiling makes me almost feel like I’m within a ship. I set my satchel on the floor and my elbows on the bar. Behind it are shelves and shelves of liquor and glasses that glisten. The bartender, a short older man with white hair and a nose that appears to have been broken a few too many times, walks over and tosses a towel over his shoulder. “What can I get you?”