CHAPTER SIXTEEN FAREWELL TO SHADOWLANDS（第3/3页）

The light ahead was growing stronger. Lucy saw that a great series of many-coloured cliffs led up in front of them like a giant’s staircase. And then she forgot everything else，because Aslan himself was coming，leaping down from cliff to cliff like a living cataract of power and beauty．

And the very first person whom Aslan called to him was Puzzle the Donkey. You never saw a donkey look feebler and sillier than Puzzle did as he walked up to Aslan，and he looked，beside Aslan，as small as a kitten looks beside a St Bernard. The Lion bowed down his head and whispered something to Puzzle at which his long ears went down，but then he said something else at which the ears perked up again. The humans couldn’t hear what he had said either time. Then Aslan turned to them and said：

“You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.”

Lucy said，“We’re so afraid of being sent away，Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.”

“No fear of that，”said Aslan.“Have you not guessed ？”

Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them．

“There was a real railway accident，”said Aslan softly．

“Your father and mother and all of you are-as you used to call it in the Shadowlands-dead. The term is over：the holidays have begun. The dream is ended：this is the morning.”

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories，and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page：now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read：which goes on forever：in which every chapter is better than the one before．

[1]编注：尤斯塔斯这个名字来源于希腊语，含义是“五谷丰登”，斯克罗布(Scrubb) 有“矮个子”的意思。读者读了下文就知道这里说的“名副其实”有挖苦的意味。

[2]原文中尤斯塔斯的名字“Eustace”与“useless”（没用处）的发音相近。　

[3]　“码”是英制长度单位，1 码（yard）=3 英尺（foot）=91.44 厘米。