“Come with you? To the house?” I glance down the hill toward the shingled roof and chimney pot, where smoke coils out and rises to the sky. I’ve memorized the lines of the house, the windows like eyes and the green side door.
“Yes. You are invited by me—and I, too, live in the house. Let’s have a cuppa and warm you up. You are covered in snow.”
He doesn’t speak another word but tramps toward the house and assumes I will follow. I place my feet into his footprints and make my way past the frozen lake, silver with ice, past the dock covered in snow with tiny footprints of an animal I can’t identify, past a tree stump so large it might seat four for dinner, and onto the pathway to the green door behind a low stone wall.
Warnie stops, stamps his feet on the brick entryway, and opens the door. A pale lemony light falls out, and even if I’ve changed my mind, even if I’ve second thoughts, there is no turning back now. Golden light beckons me into the home of Jack Lewis and his brother, Warnie.
The hallway is covered in dark wood, making it feel like a cave with a bench that runs along the herringbone wood floor. Coats and hats dangle from metal hooks on the wall. Dust motes float and sink in the light until Warnie closes the door and turns to face me.
“Welcome to the Kilns, Miss Devonshire. Follow me.” He takes a few steps and enters a room to the left, where the first thing I see is the source of the chimney smoke: a crackling fire on the back wall of the hazy room. I blink to clear my eyes and step back.
“Jack,” Warnie says, “we have a guest.”
“We do?”
That booming voice I heard in the lecture hall is no different here and it fills the room. My sight finds the man with that beautiful sound. He looks up with a beaming smile. C. S. Lewis sits in a large leather chair with a book on his lap and a pipe dangling from his mouth. His eyes are clear and cheerful as he looks right at me.
He stands and places his book on a side table. “Hallo.”
He has the same look as Warnie, though perhaps a bit shabbier, if anyone asks me. His brown felt slippers are half on, half off with the backsides turned down; his shirt mussed and wrinkled; his jacket elbows worn almost clear through. “Welcome to the Kilns.”
“Jack,” Warnie says. “This is Miss Megs Devonshire. She has a most important question for you.” Warnie holds out his hand to me. “Do take off your coat and mittens, and while you ask my brother your question, I will go make us some tea.”
I unbutton my blue wool coat and remove it, slip off my mittens, and Warnie takes them from me.
Mr. Lewis smiles at me as if we’ve been friends all our lives. “Well, Miss Devonshire, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Do sit down. Now, what kind of question do you have for me?”
Mr. Lewis’s voice is so welcoming that again I find myself telling the truth as straight up as if I’ve practiced.
“My little brother, George, is eight years old, sir. He’s very sick, and he asked a favor of me. He asked me to find out if Narnia is real. When I told him that of course it wasn’t, he insisted on knowing where it comes from. I’m sorry if I am ruining your lovely evening—Mum does say I can be a pest. But I’m willing to be a pest for this undertaking.”
“Dear Miss Devonshire, whoever told you Narnia isn’t real?” He taps his pipe onto a tray. He leans closer. “Who?”
“No one, sir. I attend Somerville College reading maths. I’m smart enough to know your story is made up. I just want to be able to explain to George where it comes from. When I suggested your imagination, that wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted to know how and . . . sir . . .” My eyes fill with tears threatening to run down my face. “I don’t know what to tell him. It feels like both life and death to me, and I don’t know what to say.”
“Have you read the story, Miss Devonshire?”
“Yes, and I know it’s a children’s book.”
Mr. Lewis laughs with a bellow that startles me. “Our mother had a mathematics degree herself in a time when women didn’t do such things. But she was never above a good story, myth, or fairy tale.”
Embarrassment floods my mouth with a metallic taste, like I bit my tongue, and I can’t find the words to defend myself. He waits. Finally I speak with a stutter. “Sir, I’m not above it. It’s just . . . It’s a children’s book.”
“Well, well. It seems you are poorly informed, but sit, sit.”
“Poorly informed?”
“As I say in the front of the book, ‘maybe someday you’ll be old enough to read fairy tales again.’” He points to a chair. I sit, cross my ankles, and prepare to be kicked out of the warm room any minute. “I’m not sure I can answer the question for your brother, but I can tell you a story or two.”
The warmth of the room begins to make me dizzy and I just stare at him.
“Did you know there will be more books about Narnia?” he asks.
“I’ve heard. But right now we only have The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
“The next will be released in autumn of next year.”
“George probably won’t be able to read that one. He probably . . . Well, Mum says he probably won’t . . .” I can’t finish, the tears puddling in my eyes.
“Oh, Miss Devonshire.” His voice breaks in half with the syllables of my name. “That is tragic in a way words can’t contain. He’s only eight years old?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let us give your brother some stories to carry with him on his journey.”
“Please, sir. Anything at all that I can take home with me.”
A rustling noise interrupts, and we both turn to see Warnie holding a black lacquered tray. Atop it is a brown common teapot with three cream pottery cups and saucers. Nothing fancy here, and that brings me comfort.
He pours us a cup of tea, and the three of us sit in a circle as the fire crackles like a man coughing. I wish for sugar but the rationing still prohibits it. Five years after the war, the rationing for flour and chocolate biscuits and syrup has been lifted, but sugar is still a rare treat.
I take a sip of my tea. It scalds my tongue, but I don’t flinch. My skin buzzes with nervousness.
The Lewises’ common room isn’t what I expected at all. I thought that a tutor who is likely the most revered lecturer at Oxford would have a dark-paneled chamber full of books and awards, a musty room with a ladder to the top shelves, and glass cases of rare books. But no! This is a room crowded with well-worn furniture, knitted throws, and books scattered about like toys. Blackout curtains left over from the Second World War are hanging on the windows as if the fighter planes still buzz overhead.
There are masses of books: on the tables, on the floor, on the desk at the far end of the room. The walls must have once been painted a creamy white but are now yellowed from pipe smoke.
Mr. Lewis begins to speak. “Who knows where Narnia came from?” He lowers his voice. “Who knows when exactly a story begins? Probably at the start of time. But maybe Narnia had its first seeds in a land that my brother and I imagined as children in our attic. We called it Boxen. What do you think, Warnie?”
“It’s quite possible,” replies his brother. “But there was no real magic in those stories. Maybe the magic came later. In Narnia.”