As he rose to his feet he noticed that he was neither dripping nor panting for breath as anyone would expect after being under water. His clothes were perfectly dry. He was standing by the edge of a small pool - not more than ten feet from side to side in a wood. The trees grew close together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light that came through the leaves: but there must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green daylight was bright and warm. It was the quietest wood you could possibly imagine. There were no birds, no insects, no animals, and no wind. You could almost feel the trees growing. The pool he had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others - a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive. When he tried to describe it afterwards,Digory always said, "It was a rich place: as rich as plumcake.
In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it. The horse seemed to like it too; he gave the sort of whinney a horse would give if, after years of being a cab-horse, it found itself back in the old field where it had played as a foal, and saw someone whom it remembered and loved coming across the field to bring it a lump of sugar. "Gawd!" said the Cabby. "Ain't it lovely?" Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn't come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out - single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world. There were no clouds. The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing. "Glory be!" said the Cabby. "I'd ha' been a better man all my life if I'd known there were things like this." 黑暗中终于有了动静。远方,一个声音开始歌唱。迪格雷分辨不清在哪个方向。有时,声音似乎从四面八方同时传过来,有时又好像就在他们的脚下。这声音低沉得犹如大地发出的声音。没有歌词,也没有旋律,却是迪格雷听到过的最美妙的声音。那声音如此动人,使他难以忍受。那匹马似乎也喜欢;它低低地嘶叫着,仿佛拉了多年的车以后.又回到了童年时代嬉戏的故乡,看见所记得和所爱的人拿着糖块,穿过田野向它走来。 “天哪,”马车夫说,“真好听啊!” 此刻,两个奇迹同时发生了。一个是,突然间,数不清的冷峻、战栗、银铃般的声音掺合到那个声音之中,与之和谐地组合在一起,但音量却高得多。第二个是,头上的黑暗中突然群星闪烁。不是夏夜中一颗接一颗悄悄出现的星星,而是在一团漆黑之中,霎时问跳跃出的成千上万颗恒星、星丛和行星,比我们世界里看到的要大得多、亮得多。没有一朵云。新的星星和新的声音同时出现。如果你像迪格雷一样亲眼看见和亲耳听见的话,你会相当肯定地觉得是星星自己在唱歌,而唤出它们并使它们歌唱的是那低沉的第一个声音。 “多奇妙啊!”马车夫说,“如果我早知道世上还有这么美好的事,我这辈子就会做一个更好的人。”
"Go then, Fools," called the Witch. "Think of me, Boy, when you lie old and weak and dying, and remember how you threw away the chance of endless youth! It won't be offered you again." They were already so high that they could only just hear her. Nor did the Witch waste any time gazing up at them; they saw her set off northward down the slope of the hill. They had started early that morning and what happened in the garden had not taken very long, so that Fledge and Polly both said they would easily get back to Narnia before nightfall. Digory never spoke on the way back, and the others were shy of speaking to him. He was very sad and he wasn't even sure all the time that he had done the right thing; but whenever he remembered the shining tears in Aslan's eyes he became sure. “走吧,傻瓜们,”女巫叫着,“当你老了,虚弱得快死的时候就想想我,小男孩,记住你是怎样把永葆青春的机会扔掉的,机不可失,时不再来。” 他们已经飞上了高空,只听见她的声音,但听不清她在说什么。女巫也不愿浪费时间目送他们,只见她朝北边的山坡下走去了。 那天早上,他们走得很早,花园里发生的事没有耽误太多的时间,弗兰奇和波莉都说他们可以很容易地在天黑前赶回纳尼亚。回去的路上,迪格雷一言不发,其他两位也不好意思跟他说话。他极度悲哀,一直拿不准自己是否做对了,但只要他想起阿斯兰眼中闪烁的泪光,他就坚信自己没有错。