Return Through the Wardrobe

The Return Through the Wardrobe marks the abrupt and disorienting conclusion of the Pevensie children's reign in Narnia, transforming them in an instant from adult kings and queens back into the school-aged children who had hidden in the wardrobe. This event is the decisive reversal of the entire adventure, collapsing years of rule into a single moment and re-establishing the boundary between the two worlds.

The Hunt for the White Stag

Years into their reign, the four monarchs—King Peter the Magnificent, Queen Susan the Gentle, King Edmund the Just, and Queen Lucy the Valiant—received news from the now middle-aged Faun Tumnus that the White Stag, a magical beast that grants wishes to anyone who catches it, had reappeared in the Western Woods. They rode out with their court, horns and hounds, to hunt it. The stag led them at a great pace over rough and smooth terrain until the horses of all the courtiers were exhausted, leaving only the four sovereigns still in pursuit. When the stag entered a thicket where their horses could not follow, King Peter declared, "Fair Consorts, let us now alight from our horses and follow this beast into the thicket; for in all my days I never hunted a nobler quarry." The others agreed, and they tied their horses to trees and proceeded on foot.

The Discovery of the Lamp-post

As they entered the thick wood, Queen Susan was the first to notice a marvel: what appeared to be a tree of iron. King Edmund corrected her, identifying it as a pillar of iron with a lantern set on top. King Peter remarked on the strangeness of placing a lantern where the trees clustered so thickly that its light would reach no one. Queen Lucy reasoned that the post and lamp must have been set there when the trees were smaller or fewer, for the iron post was old and the wood was young. As they stood looking upon it, King Edmund confessed that the lamp-post worked upon him strangely, as if he had seen the like before "in a dream, or in the dream of a dream." All the others felt the same. Queen Lucy added a foreboding that if they passed this post and lantern, they would either find strange adventures or some great change of their fortunes. King Edmund and King Peter shared the premonition, and Queen Susan proposed they return to their horses and follow the White Stag no further. King Peter refused, citing their unbroken record of never having given over any high matter they had undertaken. Queen Lucy supported him, saying they would be shamed if they turned back from so noble a beast out of fear. King Edmund declared he would not turn back for the richest jewel in all Narnia and the islands. Queen Susan, yielding, said, "Then in the name of Aslan, if ye will all have it so, let us go on and take the adventure that shall fall to us."

The Sudden Return

The kings and queens entered the thicket, and within a score of paces they all remembered that the thing they had seen was called a lamp-post. Before they had gone twenty more, they noticed they were making their way not through branches but through coats. The next moment, they all came tumbling out of a wardrobe door into the empty room, no longer kings and queens in their hunting array but just Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy in their old clothes. It was the same day and the same hour of the day on which they had all gone into the wardrobe to hide. Mrs. Macready and the visitors were still talking in the passage, but luckily they never came into the empty room, so the children were not caught.

Aftermath and the Professor's Wisdom

The children felt they must explain to the Professor why four coats from his wardrobe were missing. The Professor, a very remarkable man, did not accuse them of lying or silliness but believed the whole story. He told them it would be no good trying to go back through the wardrobe door to get the coats, as they would not get into Narnia again by that route. He assured them they would return to Narnia some day, saying, "Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia." But he warned them not to try to use the same route twice, nor to try to get there at all, for "It'll happen when you're not looking for it." He advised them not to talk too much about it even among themselves, and not to mention it to anyone else unless they found that person had had adventures of the same sort. He concluded with characteristic bemusement: "Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?" The narrator notes that if the Professor was right, this was only the beginning of the adventures of Narnia.