The Magician's Nephew Read Free

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    “Why! I declare,” she said. “That humming noise gets louder here. It’s almost as if the rings were making it.”
    “What a funny fancy, my dear,” said Uncle Andrew with a laugh. It sounded a very natural laugh, but Digory had seen an eager, almost a greedy, look on his face.
    “Polly! Don’t be a fool!” he shouted. “Don’t touch them.”
    It was too late. Exactly as he spoke, Polly’s hand went out to touch one of the rings. And immediately, without a flash or a noise or a warning of any sort, there was no Polly. Digory and his Uncle were alone in the room.

Two

DIGORY AND HIS UNCLE

    IT WAS SO SUDDEN, AND SO HORRIBLY unlike anything that had ever happened to Digory even in a nightmare, that he let out a scream. Instantly Uncle Andrew’s hand was over his mouth. “None of that!” he hissed in Digory’s ear. “If you start making a noise your Mother’ll hear it. And you know what a fright might do to her.”
    As Digory said afterward, the horrible meanness of getting at a chap in that way, almost made him sick. But of course he didn’t scream again.
    “That’s better,” said Uncle Andrew. “Perhaps you couldn’t help it. It is a shock when you first see someone vanish. Why, it gave even me a turn when the guinea-pig did it the other night.”
    “Was that when you yelled?” asked Digory.
    “Oh, you heard that , did you? I hope you haven’t been spying on me?”
    “No, I haven’t,” said Digory indignantly. “But what’s happened to Polly?”
    “Congratulate me, my dear boy,” said UncleAndrew, rubbing his hands. “My experiment has succeeded. The little girl’s gone—vanished—right out of the world.”
    “What have you done to her?”
    “Sent her to—well—to another place.”
    “What do you mean?” asked Digory.
    Uncle Andrew sat down and said, “Well, I’ll tell you all about it. Have you ever heard of old Mrs. Lefay?”
    “Wasn’t she a great-aunt or something?” said Digory.
    “Not exactly,” said Uncle Andrew. “She was my godmother. That’s her, there, on the wall.”
    Digory looked and saw a faded photograph: it showed the face of an old woman in a bonnet. And he could now remember that he had once seen a photo of the same face in an old drawer, at home, in the country. He had asked his Mother who it was and Mother had not seemed to want to talk about the subject much. It was not at all a nice face, Digory thought, though of course with those early photographs one could never really tell.
    “Was there—wasn’t there—something wrong about her, Uncle Andrew?” he said.
    “Well,” said Uncle Andrew with a chuckle, “it depends what you call wrong . People are so narrow-minded. She certainly got very queer in later life. Did very unwise things. That was why they shut her up.”
    “In an asylum, do you mean?”
    “Oh no, no, no,” said Uncle Andrew in a shocked voice. “Nothing of that sort. Only in prison.”
    “I say!” said Digory. “What had she done?”
    “Ah, poor woman,” said Uncle Andrew. “She had been very unwise. There were a good many different things. We needn’t go into all that. She was always very kind to me.”
    “But look here, what has all this got to do with Polly? I do wish you’d—”
    “All in good time, my boy,” said Uncle Andrew. “They let old Mrs. Lefay out before she died and I was one of the very few people whom she would allow to see her in her last illness. She had got to dislike ordinary, ignorant people, you understand. I do myself. But she and I were interested in the same sort of things. It was only a few days before her death that she told me to go to an old bureau in her house and open a secret drawer and bring her a little box that I would find there. The moment I picked up that box I could tell by the pricking in my fingers that I held some great secret in my hands. She gave it me and made me promise that as soon as she was dead I would burn it, unopened, with certain ceremonies. That promise