第三次物种大灭绝原因 《魔法师的外甥》第22期:灭绝咒(4)

《魔法师的外甥》第22期:灭绝咒(4)  

"Beast!" muttered Polly.
"The last great battle
" said the Queen
"raged for three days here in Charn itself. For three days I looked down upon it from this very spot. I did not use my power till the last of my soldiers had fallen
and the accursed woman
my sister
at the head of her rebels was halfway up those great stairs that lead up from the city to the terrace. Then I waited till we were so close that we could see one another's faces. She flashed her horrible
wicked eYes upon me and said
"Victory." "Yes
" said I
"Victory
but not yours." Then I spoke the Deplorable Word. A moment later I was the only living thing beneath the sun."

"But the people?" gasped Digory.
"What people
boy?" asked the Queen.
"All the ordinary people
" said Polly
"who'd never done you any harm. And the women
and the children
and the animals."
"Don't you understand?" said the Queen (still speaking to Digory). "I was the Queen. They were all my people. What else were they there for but to do my will?"
"It was rather hard luck on them
all the same
" said he.
"I had fotten that you are only a mon boy. How should you understand reasons of State? You must learn
child
that what would be wrong for you or for any of the mon people is not wrong in a great Queen such as I. The weight of the world is on our shoulders. We must be freed from all rules. Ours is a high and lonely destiny."
Digory suddenly remembered that Uncle Andrew had used exactly the same words. But they sounded much grander when Queen Jadis said them; perhaps because Uncle Andrew was not seven feet tall and dazzlingly beautiful.
"And what did you do then?" said Digory.
"I had already cast strong spells on the hall where the images of my ancestors sit. And the force of those spells was that I should sleep among them
like an image myself
and need neither food nor fire
though it were a thousand years
till one came and struck the bell and awoke me."
"Was it the Deplorable Word that made the sun like that?" asked Digory.
"Like what?" said Jadis
"So big
so red
and so cold."
"It has always been so
" said Jadis. "At least
for hundreds of thousands of years. Have you a different sort of sun in your world?"
"Yes
it's smaller and yellower. And it gives a good deal more heat."
The Queen gave a long drawn "A-a-ah!" And Digory saw on her face that same hungry and greedy look which he had lately seen on Uncle Andrew's. "So
" she said
"yours is a younger world."
She paused for a moment to look once more at the deserted city - and if she was sorry for all the evil she had done there
she certainly didn't show it - and then said: "Now
let us be going. It is cold here at the end of all a the ages."
"Going where?" asked both the children.
"Where?" repeated Jadis in surprise. "To your world
of course."