True Northern Stock
The Horse had lifted its head. Shasta stroked its smooth-as-satin nose and said, "I wish you could talk, old fellow." And then for a second he thought he was dreaming, for quite distinctly, though in a low voice, the Horse said, "But I can."
Shasta stared into its great eyes and his own grew almost as big, with astonishment.
"How ever did you learn to talk?" he asked.
"Hush! Not so loud," replied the Horse. "Where I come from, nearly all the animals talk."
"Wherever is that?" asked Shasta.
"Narnia," answered the Horse. "The happy land of Narnia - Narnia of the heathery mountains and the thymy downs, Narnia of the many rivers, the plashing glens, the mossy caverns and the deep forests ringing with the hammers of the Dwarfs. Oh the sweet air of Narnia! An hour's life there is better than a thousand years in Calormen." It ended with a whinny that sounded very like a sigh.
"How did you get here?" said Shasta.
"Kidnapped," said the Horse. "Or stolen, or captured whichever you like to call it. I was only a foal at the time. My mother warned me not to range the Southern slopes, into Archenland and beyond, but I wouldn't heed her. And by the Lion's Mane I have paid for my folly. All these years I have been a slave to humans, hiding my true nature and pretending to be dumb and witless like their horses."
[...]
"You see, he thinks I'm dumb and witless like his other horses. Now if I really were, the moment I got loose I'd go back home to my stable and paddock; back to his palace which is two days' journey South. That's where he'll look for me. He'd never dream of my going on North on my own. And anyway he will probably think that someone in the last village who saw him ride through has followed us to here and stolen me."
"Oh hurrah!" said Shasta. "Then we'll go North. I've been longing to go to the North all my life."
"Of course you have," said the Horse. "That's because of the blood that's in you. I'm sure you're true Northern stock.
~C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy (Chapter One: How Shasta Set Out On His Travels) (1954)
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On this day:
1908 C.S. Lewis completed his first reading of Milton's Paradise Lost (age nine)
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My favourite of the Narnia Chronicles. To me, this was a wonderful way to begin a story because I had often said things like this to animals. The wishing that something might be and then, beyond all expectation, having it come true was a delightful idea.
Mine too, because it was the first one I picked up. I was a horse-crazy pre-teen and I only decided to read it because the word "horse" was in the title. I think I read the rest of them in like a week, and clung to them like life preservers for a long time afterwards!
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