The Silver Chair - C. S. Lewis [13]
She was getting sleepy again when the Owl returned.
“Now we’re ready,” it said.
“You’d better lead the way,” said Jill. “I don’t know all these passages yet.”
“Tu-whoo!” said the Owl. “We’re not going through the castle. That would never do. You must ride on me. We shall fly.”
“Oh!” said Jill, and stood with her mouth open, not much liking the idea. “Shan’t I be far too heavy for you?”
“Tu-whoo, tu-whoo! Don’t you be a fool. I’ve already carried the other one. Now. But we’ll put out that lamp first.”
As soon as the lamp was out, the bit of night which you saw through the window looked less dark—no longer black, but gray. The Owl stood on the window-sill with his back to the room and raised his wings. Jill had to climb onto his short fat body and get her knees under the wings and grip tight. The feathers felt beautifully warm and soft but there was nothing to hold on by. “I wonder how Scrubb liked his ride!” thought Jill. And just as she was thinking this, with a horrid plunge they had left the window-sill, and the wings were making a flurry round her ears, and the night air, rather cool and damp, was flying in her face.
It was much lighter than she expected, and though the sky was overcast, one patch of watery silver showed where the moon was hiding above the clouds. The fields beneath her looked gray, and the trees black. There was a certain amount of wind—a hushing, ruffling sort of wind which meant that rain was coming soon.
The Owl wheeled round so that the castle was now ahead of them. Very few of the windows showed lights. They flew right over it, northward, crossing the river: the air grew colder, and Jill thought she could see the white reflection of the Owl in the water beneath her. But soon they were on the north bank of the river, flying above wooded country.
The Owl snapped at something which Jill couldn’t see.
“Oh, don’t, please!” said Jill. “Don’t jerk like that. You nearly threw me off.”
“I beg your pardon,” said the Owl. “I was just nabbing a bat. There’s nothing so sustaining, in a small way, as a nice plump little bat. Shall I catch you one?”
“No, thanks,” said Jill with a shudder.
He was flying a little lower now and a large, black-looking object was looming up toward them. Jill had just time to see that it was a tower—a partly ruinous tower, with a lot of ivy on it, she thought—when she found herself ducking to avoid the archway of a window, as the Owl squeezed with her through the ivied cobwebby opening, out of the fresh, gray night into a dark place inside the top of the tower. It was rather fusty inside and, the moment she slipped off the Owl’s back, she knew (as one usually does somehow) that it was quite crowded. And when voices began saying out of the darkness from every direction “Tu-whoo! Tu-whoo!” she knew it was crowded with owls. She was rather relieved when a very different voice said:
“Is that you, Pole?”
“Is that you, Scrubb?” said Jill.
“Now,” said Glimfeather, “I think we’re all here. Let us hold a parliament of owls.”
“Tu-whoo, tu-whoo. True for you. That’s the right thing to do,” said several voices.
“Half a moment,” said Scrubb’s voice. “There’s something I want to say first.”
“Do, do, do,” said the owls; and Jill said, “Fire ahead.”
“I suppose all you chaps—owls, I mean,” said Scrubb, “I suppose you all know that King Caspian the Tenth, in his young days, sailed to the eastern end of the world. Well, I was with him on that journey: with him and Reepicheep the Mouse, and the Lord Drinian and all of them. I know it sounds hard to believe, but people don’t grow older in our