The Last Battle

The group stands on the right side of Aslan and looks through the open doorway. They see that the bonfire has gone out. Then they perceive the dark shape of an enormous giant rise up from where he has been asleep in a cave. Jill and Eustace recall hearing long ago that a giant named Father Time would awaken on the day Narnia ended. The giant blows a horn and the sky fills with shooting stars that fall until no stars are left above. Aslan has called these glittering star people home, and they stand behind Aslan’s group to the right; Aslan’s “great” and “terrible” shadow falls to their left.

Huge dragons and giant lizards move from the north into the Narnian woods, prompting millions of creatures, including talking beasts, dwarfs, and Calormenes, to run up to the doorway where Aslan stands. As the creatures pass through the doorway, they look at Aslan’s face. Those whose faces show hatred and fear disappear into Aslan’s gigantic black shadow; the talking beasts in this group lose their speech and become ordinary beasts. Those who look at Aslan and love him, even if they are frightened, come to Aslan’s right. Eustace recognizes some strange choices among those on the right, including a dwarf who helped shoot the talking horses, but decides that it is not for him to question Aslan’s judgment. Joyfully, he also recognizes friends he thought were dead, including Jewel, Farsight, Poggin, and Roonwit.

The dragons and lizards tear up Narnia’s forests and then die themselves. There is a roar as a rising sea covers everything. A large, red, dying sun rises and entangles the moon in its flames. Aslan orders the giant to finish, and the giant squeezes the sun until it goes out. Aslan commands Peter to shut the Door. Shivering in the cold and total darkness, Peter pulls the Door closed and locks it with a golden key.

Suddenly, all find themselves in a warm, sunlit land as Aslan shouts, “Come farther in! Come farther up!” (144). Lucy and Tirian mourn Narnia’s death as they walk away from the Door and the dwarfs, who still sit in their imaginary stable. The dogs excitedly pick up the scent of a Calormene and lead Peter’s group to where young Emeth sits under a tree by a stream. Emeth courteously greets them. Jill asks Emeth to tell what happened to him as the humans sit down on the grass.

Emeth tells his story: He initially rejoiced at the prospect of facing the Narnians as a warrior, but he felt ashamed when he learned that he and other Calormenes were to sneak into Narnia disguised as merchants and work by lies. Since boyhood he had served the god Tash, and the name of Aslan was hateful to him, so he was shocked when Shift said the two gods were one. He became convinced that the beast brought out of the Stable every night was not a god. It enraged him that his commanding officer, Rishda, did not believe in Tash at all. After Ginger emerged from the Stable, Emeth’s desire to enter and see the real Tash overcame his fear. Inside he found a Calormene set to kill anyone who did not collude in Rishda’s fraudulent plot, so Emeth fought him. When Emeth looked around afterwards, he found he was outside in a pleasant, sunlit land and began to seek Tash. Instead, Aslan welcomed him as a “Beloved Son.” Aslan explained to Emeth that he and Tash are opposites. Therefore, any good service is actually done for Aslan, while anything vile is done for Tash. Without knowing it, Emeth was really seeking Aslan.

Puzzle suddenly arrives, looking like a beautiful donkey with a gentle, honest face. When everyone asks where he has been, he admits to avoiding Aslan because he is ashamed of having dressed in the lion skin. Then they all move forward and westward. The beauty of their surroundings reminds them of Narnia, but Digory says it is “[m]ore like the real thing” (153). The Narnia that just died was only a shadow of the real Narnia: “All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door” (154), just as England is only a “copy of something in Aslan’s real world” (154). Digory states that this is all in Plato. Jewel realizes that he has come home at last to the land he sought all his life. He loved the old Narnia because it sometimes resembled this real Narnia. He urges them to come farther up and farther in. Everyone is astonished to find they can run as fast as Jewel without tiring.

Eustace shouts when they see Caldron Pool and the waterfall pouring down the high, unclimbable cliffs. Farsight and Jewel tell them not to stop but to go farther up and farther in. It seems impossible, but they discover they can move straight up the waterfall. Lucy notices they do not feel afraid—only excited. They run into the Western Wild, which only Digory and Polly have seen before, on the day the world was made. They run faster until they are almost flying over valleys and lakes, and they see a steep hill with a green wall around its top. Trees with silver leaves and gold fruit are visible above the wall. The group charges up the hill until they face huge golden gates, pausing to see if it is right to enter. A great horn blows and the gates open. A talking mouse wearing a sword hails them in Aslan’s name, surprising Tirian. Peter, Edmund, and Lucy rush to greet Reepicheep. Tirian realizes this mouse is the great Narnian hero. Suddenly, Tirian is greeted by his father, who looks the way he did in his younger days. A great winged horse, Fledge, emerges and addresses Digory and Polly, who kiss it.

When the group enters the garden, everyone honorable in Narnian history is present, including Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle, King Rilian, King Caspian, Bree the horse, and Tumnus the faun. Seated on thrones are King Frank and Queen Helen, the pair from whom all the ancient kings of Narnia and Archenland are descended. Lucy comments to her oldest Narnian friend, Mr. Tumnus, that the garden is like the Stable—bigger inside than outside. Mr. Tumnus says the worlds are like an onion, except as you go farther up and in, each circle is larger and more real than the last. Lucy discovers she can see England as if through a telescope: the real, inner England in which “no good thing is destroyed” (164). They see Lucy’s father and mother and Professor Kirk’s country home. Mr. Tumnus tells Lucy that all “real countries […] are only spurs” from Aslan’s mountains (164). They are walking to meet her parents when Lucy sees the dazzling Aslan leaping down cliffs. Aslan first calls Puzzle to him, whispering something that make Puzzle’s long ears go down but then saying something that perks them up again.

Lucy tells Aslan that they are afraid of being sent back to their own world. Aslan softly tells them that there was a railway accident and that all of them are dead, so the Shadowlands “term” is over and the “holidays” have begun. For them, it is only the beginning of “the Great Story which no one on earth has read” but “every chapter is better than the one before” (165).