Life is catching.  Aslan thawed the winter, and now he’s breathing life back into the Witch’s house, statue by statue.

And instead of deadly silence the whole [courtyard] rang with the sound of happy roarings, brayings, yelpings, barkings, squealings, cooings, neighings, stampings, shouts, hurrahs, songs and laughter.

You remember how I said this book represented Jupiter, and discussed the Jovial king?  Well, here we have Aslan invading the false ruler’s stronghold and turning a museum into a veritable zoo.  And he’s just so gleeful about it!

“Oh!” said Susan in a different tone.  “Look!  I wonder – I mean, is it safe?”

Lucy looked and saw that Aslan had just breathed on the feet of the stone giant.

“It’s all right!” shouted Aslan joyously.  “Once the feet are put right, all the rest of him will follow.”

Honestly, Susan, what did you expect him to say?  Or do, for that matter.  Just because he’s jumping around like a giant kitten doesn’t mean he’s lost his sense!

Giants of any sort are now so rare in England and so few giants are good-tempered that ten to one you have never seen a giant when his face is beaming.  It’s a sight well worth looking at.

This chapter is just so full of happy and I love every second of it.  The giant is shockingly adorkable, Lucy finally reunites with Tumnus (who’s none the worse for having been a statue), and that lion that used to be a statue is running around all excited and just straddles the line between adorable and annoying.

“Our day’s work is not yet over,” [Aslan] said, “and if the Witch is to be finally defeated before bedtime we must find the battle at once.”

How considerate of him to defeat the Witch and her army in a timely manner so the children won’t be kept up too late!  Did I mention how British this book is?  And then they have an epic foxhunt (witchhunt?) with all sorts of dogs and wolves and lions doing the sniffing with centaurs and unicorns and eagles following behind.  Needless to say, they manage to turn the battle into a route.

This chapter was fairly short, and I suppose it’s one-note (hence the short post), but when that one note is triumph, what more is there to add?  There’s not even too much tying up of loose ends aside from rescuing Tumnus (the rest will wait till next chapter).

Next chapter will be the last of LWW, but fear not! I’ll be starting on Prince Caspian next week, and there’ll be five more books after that.  I’m anticipating a particularly long post as I sum up my feelings on the book as a whole (and discuss the many things that happen within the chapter itself, of course).

Until then, farewell…