The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Edmund steals away to the White Witch's castle, which is filled with statues of Narnian victims she has turned to stone. The Witch is furious when Edmund appears alone and angrier still to learn that Aslan may have returned. She takes him on her sledge to intercept the others. Meanwhile, Mr. Beaver realizes that Edmund has betrayed them, and they set off at once to seek Aslan at the Stone Table. As they travel, the Witch's spell over Narnia begins to break: Father Christmas (who has not been seen in Narnia for a hundred years) arrives with magical presents: a
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe wrote in a letter about stories for children: "I have tried one myself but it was, by the unanimous verdict of my friends, so bad that I destroyed it." The plot element of entering a new world through the back of a wardrobe had certainly entered Lewis's mind by 1946, when he used it to describe his first encounter with really good poetry: In August 1948, during a visit by an American writer, Chad Walsh, Lewis talked vaguely about completing a children's book he had begun "in the tradition of E. Nesbit". After this conversation not much happened until the