ICHS HOUSE AND now of course you want to know what had happeo Edmund. He had eaten his share of the dinner, but he hadnt really e because he was thinking all the time about Turkish Delight - and theres nothing that spoils the taste of good ordinary food half so much as the memory of bad magic food. And he had heard the versation, and hadnt e much either, because he kept on thinking that the others were taking no notice of him and trying to give him the cold shoulder. They werent, but he imagi.
And then he had listened until Mr Beaver told them about Aslan and until he had heard the whole arra for meeting Aslan at the Stoable. It was then that he began very quietly to edge himself uhe curtain which hung over the door. For the mention
of Aslan gave him a mysterious and horrible feeling just as it gave the others a mysterious and lovely feeling.
Just as Mr Beaver had beeing the rhyme about Adams flesh and Adams bone Edmund had been very quietly turning the doorhandle; and just before Mr Beaver had begun telling them that the White Witch wasnt really human at all but half a Jinn and half a giantess, Edmund had got outside into the snow and cautiously closed the door behind him.
You mustnt think that even now Edmund was quite so bad that he actually wanted his brother and sisters to be turned into stone. He did want Turkish Delight and to be a Prince (and later a King) and to pay Peter out for calling him a beast. As for what the Witch would do with the others, he didnt wao be particularly o them - certainly not to put them on the same level as himself; but he mao believe, or to pretend he believed, that she wouldnt do anything very bad to them, "Because," he said to himself, "all these people who say nasty things about her are her enemies and probably half of it isnt true. She was jolly o me, anyway, muicer than they are. I expect she is the rightful Queen really. Anyway, shell be better than that awful Aslan!" At least, that was the excuse he made in his own mind for what he was doing. It wasnt a very good excuse, however, for deep down inside him he really khat the White Witch was bad and cruel.
The first thing he realized whe outside and found the snow falling all round him, was that he had left his coat behind in the Beavers house. And of course there was no ce of going back to get it now. The hing he realized was that the daylight was almost gone, for it had been nearly three oclock when they sat down to dinner and the winter days were short. He hadnt reed on this; but he had to make the best of it. So he turned up his collar and shuffled across the top of the dam (luckily it wasnt so slippery sihe snow had fallen) to the far side of the river.
It retty bad when he reached the far side. It was growing darker every minute and what with that and the snowflakes swirling all round him he could hardly see three feet ahead. And then too there was no road. He kept slipping into deep drifts of snow, and skidding on frozen puddles, and tripping over fallerunks, and sliding down steep banks, and barking his shins against rocks, till he was wet and cold and bruised all over.
The silend the loneliness were dreadful. In fact I really think he might have given up the whole plan and gone bad owned up and made friends with the others, if he hadnt happeo say to himself, "When Im King of Narnia the first thing I shall do will be to make some det roads." And of course t