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C S Lewis – Dawn Treader

She could even see the shafts of sunlight falling through the deep water on to the wooded valley, and in the extreme distance, everything melted away into a dim greenness.  But some places – the sunny ones, she thought – were ultramarine blue. 

She could not however, spend much time looking back; what was coming into view in the forward direction was too exciting.  The road had apparently now reached the top of the hill and ran straightforward.  Little specks were moving to and fro on it.  And now something most wonderful, fortunately in full sunlight – or as full as it can be when it falls through  fathoms of water – flashed into sight.  It was knobbly and jagged and a pearly or perhaps an ivory colour.  She was so nearly straight above it that at first she could hardly make out what it was.  But everything became plain when she noticed its shadow.  The sunlight was falling across Lucy’s shoulders so the shadow of the thing lay stretched out on the sand behind it.  And by its shape she saw clearly that it was a shadow of towers and pinnacles, minarets and domes. ’Why it’s a city or a huge castle’ said Lucy to herself ‘But I wonder why they’ve built it on top of a high mountain?’

Long afterwards when she was back in England and talked all those adventures over with Edmund, they thought of a reason and I am pretty sure it is the true one.  In the sea, the deeper you go, the darker and colder it gets and it is down there in the dark and cold that dangerous things live – the squid and the Sea Serpent and the Kraken

The valleys are the wild unfriendly place.  The sea people feel about their valleys as we do about mountains and feel about their mountains as we feel about valleys.  It is on the heights that there is warmth and peace.