The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis.
Title: The Horse and His Boy.
Author: C.S. Lewis.
Genre: Literature, fiction, YA lit, fantasy.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: September 6, 1954.
Summary: After Shasta learns from the mysterious stranger that he was not Arsheesh's son, he decides to escape from the cruel land of Calormen, and with the help and persuasion of the talking horse Bree, and accompanied by a privileged girl escaping an arranged marriage, Aravis with her own talking horse, Hwin, he goes north towards Narnia where the air is sweet and freedom reigns. As they set out on their journey across the harsh desert, Shasta tries to glimpse what is ahead. It all looks so endless, wild, lonely... and free.
My rating: 8.5/10
My review:
♥ "..By the way, I suppose you know how to ride?"
"Oh, yes, of course," said Shasta. "At least, I've ridden the donkey."
"Ridden the what?" retorted the Horse with extreme contempt. (At least, that is what he meant. Actually it came out in a sort of neigh-"Ridden the wha-ha-ha-ha-ha." Talking horses always become more horsey in accent when they are angry.)
"In other words," it continued, "you can't ride. That's a drawback. I'll have to teach you as we go along. If you can't ride, can you fall?"
"I suppose anyone can fall," said Shasta.
"I mean can you fall and get up again without crying and mount again and fall again and yet not be afraid of falling?"
♥ "Ooh! You're a dreadful height," gasped Shasta after his first, and unsuccessful, attempt.
"I'm a horse, that's all," was the reply. "Anyone would think I was a haystack from the way you're trying to climb up me! There, that's better. Now sit up and remember what I told you about your knees. Funny to think of me who has led cavalry charges and won races having a potato sack like you in the saddle! However, off we go." It chuckled, not unkindly.
&hearts They had been going uphill and now were at the top of the ridge-that ridge which had always been the boundary of Shasta's known world. He could not see what was ahead except that it was all open and grassy. It looked endless: wild and lonely and free.
♥ "..-please, Horse. I don't know your name."
"Breehy-hinny-brinny-hoohy-hah," said the Horse.
"I'll never be able to say that," said Shasta. "Can I call you Bree?"
♥ "..But now about this gallop. It's a good deal easier than trotting if you only knew, because you don't have to rise and fall. Grip with your knees and keep your eyes straight ahead between my ears. Don't look at the ground. If you think you're going to fall, just grip harder and sit up straighter. Ready? Now: for Narnia and the North."
♥ But in spite of his rude words, Bree was a patient teacher. No one can teach riding so well as a horse.
♥
..his heart leaped into his mouth because an appalling noise had suddenly risen up out of the darkness ahead: a long snarling roar, melancholy and utterly savage. Instantly Bree swerved round and began galloping inland again as fast as he could gallop. "What is it?" gasped Shasta.
"Lions!" said Bree, without checking his pace or turning his head.
♥ "Why do you keep on talking to my horse instead of to me?" asked the girl.
"Excuse me, Tarkheena," said Bree (with just the slightest backward tilt of his ears), "but that's Calormene talk. We're free Narnians, Hwin and I, and I suppose, if you're running away to Narnia, you want to be one too. In that case Hwin isn't your horse any longer. One might just as well say you're her human."
The girl opened her mouth to speak and then stopped. Obviously she had not quite seen it in that light before.
♥
Aravis immediately began, sitting quite still and using a rather different tone and style from her usual one. For in Calormen, storytelling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you're taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays.
♥ "Then I parted my clothes where I thought the readiest way lay to my heart and I prayed to all the gods that as soon as I was dead I might find myself with my brother. After that I shut my eyes and my teeth and prepared to drive the dagger into my heart. But before I had done so, this mare spoke with the voice of one of the daughters of men and said, "O my mistress, do not by any means destroy yourself, for if you live you may yet have good fortune but all the dead are dead alike.""
♥
♥ During these discussions Aravis became a little, a very little, less unfriendly to Shasta; one usually gets on better with people when one is making plans than when one is talking about nothing in particular.
♥
A broad river divided itself into two streams and on the island between them stood the city of Tashbaan, one of the wonders of the world. Round the very edge of the islands, so that the water lapped against the stone, ran high walls strengthened with so many towers that he soon gave up trying to count them. Inside the walls the island rose in a hill, and every bit of that hill, up to the Tisroc's palace and the great temple of Tash at the top, was completely covered with buildings: terrace above terrace, street above street, zigzag roads or huge flights of steps bordered with orange trees and lemon trees, roof gardens, balconies, deep archways, pillared colonnades, spires, battlements, minarets, pinnacles. And when at last the sun rose out of the sea and the great silver-plated dome of the temple flashed back its light, he was almost dazzled.
..Inside the gates, Tashbaan did not at first seem so splendid as it had looked from a distance. The first street was narrow and there were hardly any windows in the walls on each side. It was much more crowded than Shasta had expected: crowded partly by the peasants (on their way to market) who had come in with them, but also with water sellers, sweetmeat sellers, porters, soldiers, beggars, ragged children, hens, stray dogs, and barefooted slaves. What you would chiefly have noticed if you had been there were the smells, which came from unwashed people, unwashed dogs, scent, garlic, onions, and the piles of refuse which lay everywhere.
♥ "..Yet when he was with us in Narnia, truly this Prince bore himself in another fashion than he does now in Tashbaan. For I take you all to witness what marvelous feats he did in that great tournament and hastilude which our brother the High King made for him, and how meekly and courteously he consorted with us the space of seven days. But here, in his own city, he has shown another face."
"Ah!" croaked the Raven. "It is an old saying: 'See the bear in his own den before you judge of his conditions.'"
♥
"Oh, Master Tumnus, dear Master Tumnus," said the Queen, catching his hands and swinging with him as he danced. "You have saved us all."
♥ And he thought that even if the Narnian King might be friendly to the two horses, because they were talking beasts of Narnia, he would hate Aravis, because she was a Calormene, and either sell her for a slave or send her back to her father. As for himself, I simply daren't tell them I'm not Prince Corin now, thought Shasta. I've heard all their plans. If they knew I wasn't one of themselves, they'd never let me out of this house alive. They'd be afraid I'd betray them to the Tisroc. They'd kill me. And if the real Corin turns up, it'll all come out, and they will! He had, you see, no idea of how noble and free-born people behave.
♥ "Thanks," said Shasta, who was already sitting on the sill. The two boys were looking into each other's faces and suddenly found that they were friends.
♥
♥
♥ "Here. All of you. And you, doorkeeper. No one is to be let out of the house today. And anyone I catch talking about this young lady will be first beaten to death and then burned alive and after that be kept on bread and water for six weeks. There."
♥
♥
;
The Tisroc was apparently sunk in thought, but when, after a long pause, he noticed what was happening, he said tranquilly,
"My son, by all means desist from kicking the venerable and enlightened Vizier; for as a costly jewel retains its value even if hidden in a dunghill, so old age and discretion are to be respected even in the vile persons of our subjects. Desist, therefore, and tell us what you desire and propose."
..For the Prince, at the word "mad," had kicked him again.
"Desist, O my son, " said the Tisroc. "And you, estimable Vizier, whether he desists or not, by no means allow the flow of your eloquence to be interrupted. For nothing is more suitable to persons of gravity and decorum to endure minor inconveniences with constancy."
♥ "..I also love none of these things in comparison with the glory and strength of my throne. If the Prince succeeds, we have Archenland, and perhaps hereafter Narnia. If he fails-I have eighteen other sons, and Rabadash, after the manner of the eldest sons of Kings, was beginning to be dangerous. More than five Tisrocs in Tashbaan have died before their time because their eldest sons, enlightened Princes, grew tired of waiting for their throne. He had better cool his blood abroad than boil it in inaction here. And now, O excellent Vizier, the excess of my paternal anxiety inclines me to sleep."
♥ They were now in the palace garden, which sloped down in terraces to the city wall. The moon shone brightly. One of the drawbacks about adventures is that when you come to the most beautiful places you are often too anxious and hurried to appreciate them, so that Aravis (though she remembered them years later) had only a vague impression of gray lawns, quietly bubbling fountains, and the long black shadows of cypress trees.
♥
♥ "Well, I can't go on without a snack," said Bree. "Take my bridle off, Shasta."
"P-please," said Hwin, very shyly, "I feel just like Bree that I can't go on. But when horses have humans (with spurs and things) on their backs, aren't they often made to go on when they're feeling like this? And then they find they can. I m-mean oughtn't we to be able to do even more, now that we're free. It's all for Narnia."
"I think, Ma'am," said Bree very crushingly, "that I know a little more about campaigns and forced marches and what a horse can stand than you do."
To this Hwin made no answer, being, like most highly bred mares, a very nervous and gentle person who was easily put down. In reality she was quite right, and if Bree had had a Tarkaan on his back at that moment to make him go on, he would have found that he was good for several hours hard going. But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more, you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.
♥ "..Gallop, Bree, gallop. Remember you're a war-horse."
It was all Shasta could do to prevent himself from shouting out similar instructions; but he thought, The poor chap's doing all her can already, and held his tongue. And certainly both horses were doing, if not all they could, all they thought they could, which is not quite the same thing.
♥
♥ Shasta's heart fainted at these words, for he felt he had no strength left. And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.
♥ "I say!" said Aravis. "I have had luck."
"Daughter," said the Hermit, "I have now lived a hundred and nine winters in this world and have never yet met any such thing as Luck. There is something about all this that I do not understand, but if ever we need to know it, you may be sure that we shall."
♥ "..Narnia, at last, Bree!"
"I shall never see Narnia," said Bree in a low voice.
"Aren't you well, Bree, dear?" said Aravis.
Bree turned round at last, his face mournful as only a horse's can be.
"I shall go back to Calormen," he said.
"What?" said Aravis. "Back to slavery?"
"Yes," said Bree. "Slavery is all I'm fit for. How can I ever show my face among the free horses of Narnia? I, who left a mare and a girl and a boy to be eaten by lions while I galloped all I could to save my own wretched skin!"
"We all ran as hard as we could," said Hwin.
"Shasta didn't!" snorted Bree. "At least he ran in the right direction: ran back. And that is what shames me most of all. I, who called myself a war-horse and boasted of a hundred fights, to be beaten by a little human boy-a child, a mere foal, who had never held a sword nor had any good nurture or example in his life!"
"I know," said Aravis. "I felt just the same. Shasta was marvelous. I'm just as bad as you, Bree. I've been snubbing him and looking down on him ever since you met us, and now he turns out to be the best of us all. But I think it would be better to stay and say we're sorry than to go back to Calormen."
"It's all very well for you," said Bree. "You haven't disgraced yourself. But I've lost everything."
"My good Horse," said the Hermit, who had approached them unnoticed because his bare feet made so little noise on that sweet, dewy grass. "My good Horse, you've lost nothing but your self-conceit. No, no, cousin. Don't put back your ears and shake your mane at me. If you are really so humbled as you sounded a minute ago, you must learn to listen to sense. You're not quite the great horse you had come to think, from living among poor dumb horses. Of course you were braver and cleverer than them. You could hardly help being that. It doesn't follow that you'll be anyone very special in Narnia. But as long as you know you're nobody very special, you'll be a very decent sort of horse, on the whole, and taking one thing with another."
♥ "..Tell me your sorrows."
Shasta was a little reassured by the breath, so he told how he had never known his real father or mother and had been brought up sternly by the fisherman. And then he told the story of his escape and how they were chased by lions and forced to swim for their lives; and of all their dangers in Tashbaan and about his night among the Tombs and how the beasts howled at him out of the desert. And he told about the heat and thirst of their desert journey and how they were almost at their goal when another lion chased them and wounded Aravis. And also, how very long it was since he had had anything to eat.
"I do not call you unfortunate," said the Large Voice.
"Don't you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?" said Shasta.
"There was only one lion," said the Voice.
"What on earth do you mean? I've just told you there were at least two the first night, and-"
"There was only one, but he was swift of foot."
"How do you know?"
"I was the lion." And Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued, "I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. AI was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who have the horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you."
"Then it was you who wounded Aravis?"
"It was I."
"But what for?"
"Child," said the Voice, "I am telling you your own story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own."
"Who are you?" asked Shasta.
"Myself," said the Voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook; and again "Myself," loud and clear and gay; and then the third time "Myself," whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all round you as if the leaves rustled with it.
Shasta was no longer afraid that the Voice belonged to something that would eat him, nor that it was the voice of a ghost. But a new and different sort of trembling came over him. Yet he felt glad too.
..A golden light fell on them from the left. He thought it was the sun.
He turned and saw, pacing beside him, taller than the horse, a Lion. The horse did not seem to be afraid of it or else could not see it. It was from the Lion that the light came. No one ever saw anything more terrible or beautiful.
Luckily Shasta had lived all his life too far south in Calormen to have hard the tales that were whispered in Tashbaan about a dreadful Narnian demon that appeared in the form of a lion. And of course he knew none of the true stories about Aslan, the great Lion, the son of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea, the King above all High Kings in Narnia. But after one glance at the Lion's face, he slipped out of the saddle and fell at its feet. He couldn't say anything, but then he didn't want to say anything, and he knew he needn't say anything.
The High King above all Kings stooped toward him. Its mane, and some strange and solemn perfume that hung about the mane, were all round him. It touched his forehead with its tongue. He lifted his face and their eyes met. Then instantly the pale brightness of the mist and the fiery brightness of the Lion rolled themselves together into a swirling glory and gathered themselves up and disappeared. He was alone with the horse on a grassy hillside under a blue sky. And there were birds singing.
♥
♥ "See what your Highness has done," said King Edmund. "Deprived us of a proved warrior on the very edge of battle."
"I'll take his place, Sire," said Corin.
"Pshaw," said Edmund. "No one doubts your courage. But a boy in battle is a danger only to his own side."
♥ There is no doubt those Calormenes are wonderfully trained. It seemed to Shasta only a second before a whole line of the enemy were on horseback again, wheeling round to meet them, swinging toward them.
And now a gallop. The ground between the two armies grew less every moment. Faster, faster. All swords out now, all shields up to the nose, all prayers said, all teeth clenched. Shasta was dreadfully frightened. But it suddenly came into his head, If you funk this, you'll funk every battle of your life. Now or never.
♥
♥ "Let me down, Edmund," howled Rabadash. "Let me down and fight me like a King and a man; or if you are too great a coward to do that, kill me at once."
"Certainly," began King Edmund, but King Lune interrupted.
"By your Majesty's good leave," said King Lune to Edmund, "not so." Then, turning to Rabadash, he said, "Your royal Highness, if you had given that challenge a week ago, I'll answer for it there was no one in King Edmund's dominion, from the High King down to the smallest talking mouse, who would have refused it. But by attacking our castle of Anvard in time of peace without defiance sent, you have proved yourself no knight, but a traitor, and one rather to be whipped by the hangman than to be suffered to cross swords with any person of honor. Take him down, bind him, and carry him within till our pleasure is further known."
♥ "No doubt," continued Bree, "when they speak of him as a lion they only mean he's as strong as a lion or (to our enemies, of course) as fierce as a lion. Or something of that kind. Even a little girl like you, Aravis, must see that it would be quite absurd to suppose he is a real lion. Indeed it would be disrespectful. If he was a lion he'd have to be a beast just like the rest of us. Why!" (and here Bree began to laugh) "If he was a lion, he'd have four paws, and a tail, and whiskers!...Aie, ooh, hoo-hoo! Help!"
For just as he said the word "whiskers," one of Aslan's had actually tickled his ear. Bree shot away like an arrow to the other side of the enclosure and there turned; the wall was too high for him to jump and he could fly no further. Aravis and Hwin both started back. There was about a second of intense silence.
Then Hwin, though shaking all over, gave a strange little neigh and trotted across to the Lion.
"Please," she said, "you're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else."
"Dearest daughter," said Aslan, planting a lion's kiss on her twitching, velvet nose, "I knew you would not be long in coming to me. Joy shall be yours."
Then he lifted his head and spoke in a louder voice.
"Now, Bree," he said, "you poor, proud, frightened horse, draw near. Nearer still, my son. Do not dare not to dare. Touch me. Smell me. Here are my paws, here is my tail, these are my whiskers. I am a true beast."
"Aslan," said Bree in a shaken voice, "I'm afraid I must be rather a fool."
"Happy the horse who knows that while he is still young. Or the human, either."
♥ "It was I who wounded you," said Aslan. "I am the only lion you met in all your journeyings. Do you know why I tore you?"
"No, sir."
"The scratches on your back, tear for tear, throb for throb, blood for blood, were equal to the stripes laid on the back of your stepmother's slave because of the drugged sleep you cast upon her. You needed to know what it felt like."
"Yes, Sir. Please-"
"Ask on, my dear," said Aslan.
"Will any more harm come to her by what I did?"
"Child," said the Lion, "I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but his own."
♥
"His Royal Highness Prince Cor of Archenland desires an audience of the Lady Aravis," said the herald. Then he and the trumpeter drew aside and bowed and the soldiers saluted and the Prince himself came in. All his attendants withdrew and closed the gate behind them.
The Prince bowed, and a very clumsy bow for a Prince it was. Aravis curtsied in the Calormene style (which is not at all like ours) and did it very well because, of course, she had been taught how. Then she looked up and saw what sort of person this Prince was.
She saw a mere boy. He was bareheaded and his fair hair was encircled with a very thin band of gold, hardly thicker than a wire. His upper tunic was of white cambric, as fine as a handkerchief, so that the bright red tunic beneath it showed through. His left hand, which rested on his enameled sword hilt, was bandaged.
Aravis looked twice at his face before she gasped and said, "Why! It's Shasta!"
♥
♥ "Your Majesty would have a perfect right to strike off his head," said Peridan. "Such an assault as he made puts him on a level with assassins."
"It is very true," said Edmund. "But even a traitor may mend. I have known one that did."
♥ "Shame, Corin," said the King. "Never taunt a man save when he is stronger than you: then, as you please."
♥
"The hour has struck," said Aslan, and Rabadash saw, to his supreme horror, that everyone had begun to laugh.
They couldn't help it. Rabadash had been wagging his ears all the time, and as soon as Aslan said, "The hour has struck!" his ears began to change. They grew longer and more pointed and soon were covered with gray hair. And while everyone was wondering where they had seen ears like that before, Rabadash's face began to change too. It grew longer, and thicker at the top and larger eyed, and the nose sank back into the face (or else the face swelled out and became all nose) and there was hair all over it. And his arms grew longer and came down in front of him till his hands were resting on the ground: only they weren't hands, now they were hoofs. And he was standing on all fours, and his clothes disappeared, and everyone laughed louder and louder (because they couldn't help it) for now what had been Rabadash was, simply and unmistakably, a donkey. The terrible thing was that his human speech lasted just a moment longer than his human shape, so that when he realized the change that was coming over him, he screamed out,
"Oh, not a donkey! Mercy! If it were even a horse-e'en-a-hor-eeh-auh, eeh-auh." And so the words died away into a donkey's bray.
"Now hear me, Rabadash," said Aslan. "Justice shall be mixed with mercy. You shall not always be an ass."
Alt this, of course, the Donkey twitched its ears forward-and that also was so funny that everybody laughed all the more. They tried not to, but they tried in vain.
"You have appealed to Tash," said Aslan. "And in the temple of Tash you shall be healed. You must stand before the altar of Tash in Tashbaan at the great Autumn Feast this year and there, in the sight of all Tashbaan, your ass's shape will fall from you and all men will know you for Prince Rabadash. But as long as you live, if ever you go more than ten miles away from the great temple in Tashbaan you shall instantly become again as you now are. And from that second change there will be no return."
..And here, to get him out of the way, I'd better finish off the story of Rabadash. He (or it) was duly sent back by boat to Tashbaan and brought into the temple of Tash at the great Autumn Festival, and then he became a man again. But, of course, four or five thousand people had seen the transformation and the affair could not possibly be hushed up. And after the old Tisroc's death, when Rabadash became Tisroc in his place, he turned out the most peaceable Tisroc Calormen had ever known. This was because, not daring to go more than ten miles from Tashbaan, he could never go on a war himself; and he didn't want his Tarkaans to win fame in the wars at his expense, for that is the way Tisrocs get overthrown. But though his reasons were selfish, it made things much more comfortable for all the smaller countries round Calormen. His own people never forgot that he had been a donkey. During his reign, and to his face, he was called Rabadash the Peacemaker, but after his death and behind his back he was called Rabadash the Ridiculous, and if you look him up in a good History of Calormen (try the local library) you will find him under that name. And to this day in Calormene schools, if you do anything unusually stupid, you are very likely to be called "a second Rabadash."
♥ "Hurrah! Hurrah!" said Corin. "I shan't have to be King. I shan't have to be King. I'll always be a Prince. It's Princes have all the fun."
"And that's truer than thy brother knows, Cor," said King Lune. "For this is what it means to be a King: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there's hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years), to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land."
♥ Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I'm afraid, even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again, so that years later, when they were grown up, they were so used to quarreling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently.