Author's note.

I wanted to try an experiment with this adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, to see what it would have looked like if written in a world with different gender roles for men and women.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is of course, the marvelous work of C.S. Lewis.

Chapter 1 Luke goes into a wardrobe

This story is about four children called Peronel, Simon, Edwina and Luke and what happened to them after they were sent away from Coventry during the war because of the air raids. They were sent to the house of an old professor who lived in the heart of the country, nine miles from the railway station and three miles from the village and post office

She wasn't married and lived in a huge house with a housekeeper, Mr. O'Grady and three servants. She was a very old woman with white hair in an untidy bun with a pencil skewered through it to keep it in place. She wore a brightly patterned fairisle jumper and plus fours. At their first meeting, when she came out to the front door to meet them, she was so odd looking that Luke (who was the youngest) was a little afraid of her and Edwina (who was the second youngest) wanted to laugh and had to keep coughing into her handkerchief cover it up. But afterwards they liked her very much.

As soon as they had said goodnight to the professor and gone upstairs, the girls came into the boys' room to talk it all over.

'We're in clover and no mistake,' said Peronel. 'This is going to be perfectly splendid. That old lady will let us do anything we like.'

'I think she's a dear,' said Simon.

'Oh, come off it,' said Edwina who was tired and pretending not to be tired, which always made her bad tempered. 'Don't go on talking like that.'

'Like what?' asked Simon. 'Anyway, it's time you were in bed.'

'Stop trying to talk like Father. And anyway, who are you to say what time I should go to bed? Go to bed yourself.'

'Hasn't we all better go to bed?' asked Luke. 'There'll be a fearful row if they hear us talking.'

'No, there won't,' said Peronel, 'and I'll tell you why, This is the sort of house where they don't mind what you do. Anyway, it's at least ten minutes' walk to the dining room from here and any number of stairs and passageways in between.'

'What's that noise?' asked Luke suddenly. It was a far larger house than he had ever been in before and the thought of all this long passages and empty rooms was beginning to make him feel a little creepy.

'It's only a bird, silly,' said Edwina.

'It's an owl,' said Peronel. 'This is going to be a wonderful place for birds. I'm going to bed now. Let's go and explore tomorrow. We might find anything in a place like this. Did you see the mountains and the woods? There might be eagles or stags.'

'Badgers!' said Simon.

'Stoats! said Edwina.

'Rabbits!' said Luke.

But when morning came, the rain was falling so heavily that they couldn't see either the mountain or the woods or even the stream in the garden through the window.

'Of course, it would be raining,' said Edwina.

They had finished breakfast with the old professor and were upstairs in the room she had set aside for them, a long low room with windows on two sides and bookcases on the other ones.

'Do stop grumbling, Ed,' said Simon. 'Ten to one it'll clear up in an hour or so. And we've got lots to keep ourselves busy till then; books and jigsaw puzzles and the wireless.'

'Not me,' said Peronel. 'I'm going to explore the house.'

Everyone agreed to that and that was how the adventure began. It was the sort of house that was full of unexpected places. The first few rooms they tried were only spare bedrooms but after that there was a long room full of interesting pictures and then a room with suits of armour and medieval weapons, and after that was a room all decorated in blue with a harpsichord in the corner, and then a whole series of rooms that led into each other and were filled with bookcases containing very old books that smelt dusty and mouldy, and books that were bigger than a bible in a church and some that were as small as a stamp.

Then they went up a narrow staircase and along a corridor and came to a big room that was empty apart from a wardrobe with a looking glass in it and a dead wasp on the window cill.

'Nothing there,' said Peronel and they all trooped out except Luke. He stayed behind because he thought that it might be worth trying the door of the wardrobe. He did so and to his surprise, it wasn't locked. The door swung open and three mothballs dropped out.

He looked inside and saw several long, fur coats hanging up. Luke liked nothing so much as the smell and feel of fur. He immediately climbed inside the wardrobe and rubbed his face against the coats. He left the door open because he knew it was dangerous to shut yourself in a wardrobe. He walked further in and found a second row of coats hanging up. It was quite dark in there and Luke put his hands out to avoid his face bumping against the back of the wardrobe. He took a few. more steps, expecting to feel the wood but he didn't.

'This is the biggest wardrobe I've ever seen,' thought Luke.

He pushed aside the soft folds of the coats to make room for him. Some more steps and he heard a crunching noise under his feet.

'I wonder if it is more mothballs,' he thought, stooping down to feel them. But instead of the smooth hard wood of the floor of the wardrobe, he felt something soft, powdery and very cold.

'This is odd,' he said and took a few more steps.

The next moment, he found something rough and prickly brushing against his face instead of the soft fur of the coats.

'Why, they feel like tree branches,' he exclaimed.

And then he saw a light, not a few inches in front of him where the back of the wardrobe should be but further away. Something cold and soft was falling on him. A minute later, he found himself in the middle of a wood at night-time with snowflakes whirling around him.

Luke felt a little frightened but also very curious and exhilarated. He looked back over his shoulder. Between the dark tree trunks, he could see the open doorway of the wardrobe and even catch a glimpse of the sunlit empty room beyond. It was still daytime there.

'I can always go back if anything goes wrong,' thought Luke.

He began to walk forward, crunching over the snow and through the wood towards the light. In about ten minutes, he reached it and found to his astonishment that it was a lamp-post. He stood looking at it and wondering what a lamp-post was doing in the middle of a wood. Then he heard the pitter patter of feet coming towards him. A moment later, a strange creature walked out of the woods and into the light of the lamp-post.

She was only a little taller than Luke and carried an umbrella over her head, white with snow. For the waist up, she was shaped like a woman, but her legs were like a goat's (the hair was glossy brown) and instead of feet, she had goat's hooves. She was wearing a red woollen cape trimmed with white fur with slits for the arms and had the hood up. She had a strange but pleasant face with curly hair peeping out from under the hood. One of her hands held the umbrella and the other arm carried several brown paper packages. What with the snow and the parcels, it looked to Luke like she had been doing her Christmas shopping. She was a faun. When she saw Luke, she gave such a start of surprise, she dropped all her packages.

'Goodness me!' exclaimed the faun.