The Liberation of the Statues

The Liberation of the Statues is the decisive reversal of the White Witch's reign of terror, the moment when Aslan's resurrected power directly undoes her signature magic of petrification. After leaping over the castle wall with Susan and Lucy on his back, Aslan lands in a wide stone courtyard filled with statues—the frozen remains of the Witch's victims. This event transforms a place of death and silence into a scene of vibrant, chaotic life, and it directly enables the final battle against the Witch by restoring her prisoners to their true forms and rallying them to Aslan's cause.

Aslan's Leap and the Courtyard of Stone

Aslan, carrying Susan and Lucy, rushes straight at the Witch's castle, a fortress of pointed towers that looms before them. Without slackening his pace, he gathers himself for a leap greater than any before and jumps—or flies—right over the castle wall. The children tumble off his back in the middle of a wide stone courtyard, breathless but unhurt. The courtyard is filled with statues: stone animals, stone people, and stone creatures of every kind, standing in eerie stillness. Lucy exclaims that it is like a museum, a place of dead, preserved specimens. Aslan immediately begins his work, bounding up to a stone lion and breathing on it. Without waiting, he whirls around and breathes on a stone dwarf standing nearby, then pounces on a tall stone Dryad, turns aside to deal with a stone rabbit, and rushes on to two centaurs.

The Restoration of Life

The effect of Aslan's breath is gradual and visible. When he breathes on the stone lion, for a second nothing seems to happen. Then a tiny streak of gold begins to run along its white marble back, spreading like a flame licking across paper. The color suffuses the lion's body: its hind-quarters are still obviously stone when it shakes its mane and the heavy, stony folds ripple into living hair. It opens a great red mouth, warm and living, and gives a prodigious yawn. Its hind legs come to life, and it lifts one to scratch itself. Catching sight of Aslan, it bounds after him, frisking around him, whimpering with delight and jumping up to lick his face. The entire courtyard transforms from a museum into a zoo. Creatures run after Aslan and dance around him until he is almost hidden in the crowd. The deadly white of the statues gives way to a blaze of colors: glossy chestnut sides of centaurs, indigo horns of unicorns, dazzling plumage of birds, reddy-brown of foxes, dogs, and satyrs, yellow stockings and crimson hoods of dwarfs, birch-girls in silver, beech-girls in fresh transparent green, and larch-girls in green so bright it is almost yellow. The deadly silence is replaced by happy roarings, brayings, yelpings, barkings, squealings, cooings, neighings, stampings, shouts, hurrahs, songs, and laughter.

The Rescue of Mr. Tumnus and the Giant

Among the liberated statues is Mr. Tumnus, the Faun who had been Lucy's first friend in Narnia. Lucy rushes upstairs shouting, "Aslan! Aslan! I've found Mr. Tumnus. Oh, do come quick." A moment later, Lucy and the little Faun are holding one another by both hands and dancing round and round for joy. Mr. Tumnus is none the worse for having been a statue and is very interested in all Lucy has to tell him. Aslan also breathes on the feet of a stone giant, explaining that once the feet are put right, all the rest of him will follow. The change creeps up the Giant's legs, and he moves his feet, lifts his club off his shoulder, rubs his eyes, and speaks. This is Giant Rumblebuffin, who, once he understands what has happened, bows down and touches his cap repeatedly to Aslan, beaming all over his honest, ugly face.

The Ransacking of the Castle and the Escape

The entire castle is ransacked. Every door and window is opened, and light and sweet spring air flood into all the dark and evil places. The liberated statues surge back into the courtyard. The problem of escape arises: Aslan got in by a jump, and the gates are still locked. Aslan calls on Giant Rumblebuffin to let them out. The Giant strides to the gate and brings his huge club down: bang—bang—bang. The gates creak at the first blow, crack at the second, and shiver at the third. He then tackles the towers on each side, and after a few minutes of crashing and thudding, both towers and a good bit of the wall on each side thunder down in a mass of rubble. Through the gap, the freed creatures see the grass, waving trees, and sparkling streams of the forest, the blue hills beyond, and beyond them the sky. Aslan then calls for silence and announces that the day's work is not yet over: the Witch must be finally defeated before bedtime. He organizes the company, with those who cannot keep up riding on the backs of those who can, and they set out through the gap in the castle wall to find the battle.