The beauties of the World’s End begin.
And every night they saw that there rose in the east new constellations which no one in Narnia and perhaps, Lucy thought with a mixture of joy and fear, no living eye had seen at all. Those new stars were big and bright and the nights were warm. Most of them slept on deck and talked far into the night or hung over the side watching the luminous dance of the foam thrown up by the bows.
There are going to be way too many passages like this in the final chapters for me to quote, so I’ll just leave y’all to read and enjoy most of them on your own. Also, speaking as one who has lived primarily in the Great Lakes region, water does, in fact, get warmer at night (or at least feels warmer), since it retains the heat of the day.
Anyhow, they encounter an island on which there is a table set with a glorious feast – and the last three lords, evidently in an enchanted sleep. Reepicheep, Edmund, Caspian, Lucy, and Eustace all volunteer to stake out the place overnight and perhaps find a way to undo the enchantment. After a long, restless, and uneventful evening, a “tall girl” comes out from a nearby hillside.
She was bareheaded and her yellow hair hung down her back. And when they looked at her they thought they had never before known what beauty meant.
For the record, this girl is never actually given a name (the movie DOES NOT count), and I think that’s for the best. To give her a name would somehow cheapen her beauty by putting a label on it. She explains what happened to the Lords, and tells them a little of where they are.
The three lords landed on the Island seven years earlier (she says it’s known as “the World’s End”, although it really marks the beginning of the end of the world), and one wanted to head back to Narnia in hopes that they would return to find Miraz dead, one wanted to continue their journey to see if they could reach the End of the World, and the other just wanted to stay put on the Island (because hey, you could find much worse places to retire to). They started quarreling about it, and then one of them picked up a certain Knife that was not meant to be touched, casting them all into their enchanted sleep.
“What is this Knife of Stone?” asked Eustace.
“Do none of you know it?” said the girl.
“I – I think,” said Lucy, “I’ve seen something like it before. It was a knife like it that the White Witch used when she killed Aslan at the Stone Table long ago.”
“It was the same,” said the girl, “and it was brought here to be kept in honor while the world lasts.”
Between the name of the place (“Aslan’s Table”) and the presence of the Stone Knife, Lewis is drawing a pretty clear parallel to the Lord’s Supper – which is generally considered both a reminder and a refreshment of the spirit for Christians. What’s particularly notable, however, is that the Stone Knife is being “kept in honor” there. This is a particularly Judeo-Christian idea: Holy things are not made unholy by contact with “unclean” things; rather, the mundane or even unclean things are made holy when they touch something (or in this case, someone) holy. As such, the very blade that the Witch used to kill Aslan was made holy. This reminder is not lost on Edmund.
Edmund, who had been looking more and more uncomfortable for the last few minutes, now spoke.
“Look here,” he said, “I hope I’m not a coward – about eating this food, I mean – and I’m sure I don’t mean to be rude. But we have had a lot of queer adventures on this voyage of ours and things aren’t always what they seem. When I look in your face I can’t help believing all you say: but then that’s just what might happen with a witch, too. How are we to know you’re a friend?”
“You can’t know,” said the girl. “You can only believe – or not.”
That’s the question everyone must struggle with – to believe or not. There really is no certainty, and any religion or belief system that claims otherwise is a cheat. Even atheism isn’t provable, since anything beyond our own perceivable universe is equally impossible to disprove as to prove.
After Reepicheep tries the food with no adverse effects, they all dig in. Then Caspian broaches the topic of breaking the enchantment.
“And what are we to do about the Sleepers?” asked Caspian. “In the world from which my friends come” (here he nodded at Eustace and the Pevensies) “they have a story of a prince or a king coming to a castle where all the people lay in an enchanted sleep. In that story he could not dissolve the enchantment until he had kissed the Princess.”
“But here,” said the girl, “it is different. Here he cannot kiss the Princess till he has dissolved the enchantment.”
Well, Caspian, you sly dog, do you always hit on girls using fairy tale references?
Next time: They all get to meet her father!
Eucatastrophe 
I never thought about the point that it would diminish the beauty of Ramandu’s daughter if she had a name – and I don’t think I agree. Women of proverbial beauty in legend and myth are usually named.
I an more inclined to see her lack of a name as symptomatic of a strange trend in the Narniad: The lack of female given names in the world of Narnia. Of the named characters born in our world, there is an approximately equal number of males and females, but when it comes to those born in the world of Narnia, the named characters are almost exclusively male, excepting only Prunaprismia, Aravis, and Lasaraleen.
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And Hwin, of course. But the males are numerous.
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Yeah, I’ve kinda landed in a different place by now. The issue I had wasn’t really about naming her, it’s that the name they went with (Liliandil) just didn’t fit with the languages established in the books. It seemed vaguely Elvish – I might be more okay if her name was just Lilian, as at least that seems to be reflected in the names of her mortal descendants, but the name they want with doesn’t reflect either the human Narnian language or the naming system the stars use. I really hope it’s not considered canon…
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That’s right, it’s been nine years since you posted this. I’m impressed that you are still reading and answering comments – and promptly at that!
Yeah, “Liliandil” does sound somewhat like the Sindarin names Eärendil, Amandil and Elendil (which are all masculine names, by the way). I wonder how Michael Apted came up with it!
So, what would have been a believable name for Ramandu’s daughter? Due to the very limited number of names that Lewis has given us for female characters native to the Narnian world, it’s not an easy question to answer, but it just struck me that we are given at least one more female name than the ones I mentioned above, namely Alambil, the Lady of Peace. So it would seem that it is at least possible for the name of a female star to end in -il.
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I think Douglas Gresham came up with it, but to be fair, he isn’t a linguist. I happened to take a class on developing languages for fictional cultures, so that sort of stuff just bugs me xD
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There are classes on developing languages for fictional cultures?! That must have been really exciting! (And rather geeky, some might say 😉 ).
Are there any signs that C.S. Lewis did in fact develop any kind of fictional language for the world of Narnia? The characters all seem to speak English, which makes sense, considering that the humans are all descended from our own world (though I don’t know whether the pirate ancestors of the Telmarines were English speakers) – but it may also be that we are to understand that the people of the Narnian world spoke a different language altogether, and that it was by some magic of Aslan that the children from our world were able to communicate with them.
Have you found any linguistic patterns in the naming customs of Narnia, Archenland, Calormen and Telmar?
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I mean, Lewis himself wasn’t a linguist, either, so it doesn’t seem that he put much thought into the languages of Narnia. The only languages he seemed to put much thought into was the languages of his Space Trilogy, because he was pretty clearly influenced by Tolkien in that series. Tolkien was the one who basically pioneered the concept of fictional languages as a concrete element of worldbuilding.
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Yes, he was very much influenced by Tolkien when he wrote the Space Trilogy (or the “Ransom Trilogy” og “Planetary Trilogy”, as some argue that it should rather be called), even to the point of making mention of Númenor (though he spelled it “Numinor”, probably because he had only heard Tolkien say the name and not seen it in writing).
(Disclaimer: I know very well that you already know what I just wrote. I wrote it for the benefit of whoever else might be reading along, and I would have done no differently if you had been male – just so you don’t think I’m “mansplaining”). 🙂
Those classes sound really interesting! Did you construct your own fictional languages as part of the curriculum?
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I actually attempted to create a language for the Gem society in Steven Universe for our final group project (although most of the others in the group weren’t as familiar with the show, so it ended up as a human language). But it was still a ton of fun!
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I bet it was! 🙂
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