This time Jill and Eustace walked together. They had been feeling very brave when they were begging to be allowed to come with the others, but now they didn’t feel brave at all.
“Pole,” said Eustace in a whisper. “I may as well tell you I’ve got the wind up.”
“Oh, you’re all right, Scrubb,” said Jill. “You can fight. But I—I’m just shaking, if you want to know the truth.”
“Oh, shaking’s nothing,” said Eustace. “I’m feeling I’m going to be sick. . . .
“Pole,” said Eustace presently.
“What?” said she.
“What’ll happen if we get killed here?”
“Well we’ll be dead, I suppose.”
“But I mean, what will happen in our own world? Shall we wake up and find ourselves back in that train? Or shall we just vanish and never be heard of any more? Or shall we be dead in England?”
“Gosh. I never thought of that.”
“It’ll be rum for Peter and the others if they saw me waving out of the window and then when the train comes in we’re nowhere to be found! Or if they found two—I mean, if we’re dead over there in England.”
“Ugh!” said Jill. “What a horrid idea.”
“It wouldn’t be horrid for us,” said Eustace. “We shouldn’t be there.”
“I almost wish—no I don’t, though,” said Jill.
“What were you going to say?”
“I was going to say I wished we’d never come. But I don’t, I don’t, I don’t. Even if we are killed. I’d rather be killed fighting for Narnia than grow old and stupid at home and perhaps go about in a bath-chair and then die in the end just the same.”
• From The Last Battle
• Compiled in A Year with Aslan
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