Observations placeholder

C S Lewis – Dawn Treader

It was a large room with 3 big windows and it was lined from floor to ceiling with books; more books than she had ever seen before, tiny little books, fat and dumpy books, and books bigger than any Church Bible you have ever seen, all bound in leather and smelling old and learned and magical.  But she knew from her instructions that she need not bother about any of these.  For the  book, the Magic book was lying on a reading desk in the very middle of the room.

The Chief Voice had not been able to give her any idea whereabouts in the Book the spell for making things visible came.

She went up to the desk and laid her hand on the book; her fingers tingled when she touched it as if it were full of electricity.  She tried to open it but couldn't at first; this, however, was only because it was fastened by two leaden clasps, and when she had undone these it opened easily enough.  And what a book it was!

It was written, not printed; written in a clear even hand, with thick down-strokes and thin upstrokes, very large, easier than print, and so beautiful that Lucy stared at it for a whole minute and forgot about reading it.  The paper was crisp and smooth and a nice smell came from it; and in the margins and round the big coloured capital letters at the beginning of each spell, there were pictures.

There was no title page or title; the spells began straight away, and at first there was nothing very important in them.  There were cures for warts … and toothache and cramp and a spell for taking a swarm of bees.... And on she went for about 30 pages which if she could have remembered them would have taught her how to find buried treasure, how to remember things forgotten, how to forget things you want to forget, how to tell whether anyone was speaking the truth, how to call up or prevent wind, fog, snow, sleet or rain....