Once Upon a Wardrobe(58)

George knows this quest will be the adventure of his life. He snuggles closer to Padraig’s warm woolen scarf as Padraig talks in a lyrical storytelling voice.

“The Scottish clan of McQuillan built the castle on the cliff edge—”

George interrupts. “When Megs starts a story for me she says, ‘Once upon a wardrobe not very long ago and not very far away’ and then she tells the rest. It’s the beginning.”

Padraig laughs and his shoulders shake. “Well, look at that. Your sister is a storyteller.” He glances back at and her and jiggles George’s legs. “Okay, here we go. Once upon a wardrobe, not very long ago and not very far away, the Scottish clan of McQuillan built the castle on a cliff edge, believing it would keep them from being conquered, but it didn’t.” He points. “The McDonough clan had spies that helped them scale the cliff walls there with ropes and baskets to conquer the McQuillans.”

George listens. He doesn’t have to dive so deep into his imagination as when Megs tells him all the facts, because Padraig is really good at telling a story.

“And there”—Padraig points up to the far edge of the castle—“Is where the kitchen crumbled and tumbled right into the sea.”

“You’re making that up,” George says.

“Sure, I make up loads of stories, but that’s true as true can be.”

George laughs. “Were people in the kitchen when it happened?”

“Oh, yes. It’s said that a young boy ran to get something for the cook, and when he returned they were all gone—kitchen included, as if it had disappeared into thin air.”

“Oh, tell me another one.” George realizes that real stories can be just as fantastic as made-up ones.

“Underneath the castle,” Padraig says as they bow into the wind and make their way closer, “is a cave. They call it the Mermaid’s Cave.”

Padraig keeps talking, and his words whip about them as he weaves stories of mermaids and pirates. Padraig walks across a long stone bridge that arches over a craggy furrow of land. George feels safe on Padraig’s shoulders, watching as an eagle might. The stone bridge leads inside the castle, which of course is nothing but squares of earth and rock, of broken walls, the rooms and furnishings centuries gone. Where they have gone—the people and the kitchen and the furniture and the decorations—is a mystery, but what remains are stories. And George wants to hear every one of them.

After they cross the bridge, Padraig sets George down on the earth. Megs is behind them, and they are the only people there. “It is Cair Paravel,” George says.

“You know,” Padraig says as if he’s just thought of it, staring far off over the darkening sea, “in Gaelic, kaer means ‘castle.’”

Megs takes in a quick breath and George feels the night coming fast. No one speaks. They stand at the edge of the cliff, roped off and safe high above the rocks where waves crash, turning into white and silver foam.

*

I look at George, and he is more spirited than he has ever been. I see it in his eyes and in his straight shoulders. He’s facing the medieval world that helped build the world of Narnia. Our trio stands there for a long while above the wild sea, silent and watching. George wanders a few feet away to the far end of the ruins, hobbling in the layers and layers of coat and sweaters I have made him wear.

“This is . . .” I pause for a lack of words.

Padraig fills in the blank spaces. “It’s an adventure of our own making.”

“Yes, it is,” I say.

Dunluce Castle is not just a pile of old stones on emerald hills. It’s an ancient whisper of Ireland and her stories. It’s the seed of a story where a great lion appears, and it is the symbol of my brother’s bravery.

It is much, much more than a pile of old stones.

George stands at the edge of a shattered wall where he runs his hand along the rocks.

“You know why he wanted to see this, don’t you?” I ask Padraig, my voice tremulous. I am so grateful to him, and I don’t know how to tell him. It’s too big of a feeling for me to speak.

“Yes, I know why,” Padraig says. “George knows you can take the bad parts in a life, all the hard and dismal parts, and turn them into something of beauty. You can take what hurts and aches and perform magic with it so it becomes something else, something that never would have been, except you make it so with your spells and stories and with your life.”

Tears overflow my eyes. I can’t stop them. I don’t even want to. “Mr. Lewis said not to try and assign bits of a life to a story—”

“I know,” Padraig says.

“But all the bits and pieces and scraps of a person’s internal life are the ingredients of a life story. Here I can see that clearly,” I say.

“And there’s something more,” Padraig says, so quietly that it almost sounds as if the whistling wind in the stones repeats his words. “Something undefinable. That’s where Mr. Lewis’s stories break all the bonds, Megs.”

I’m transported by Padraig’s wisdom. With Dunluce Castle rising above us, I start to understand. “Mr. Lewis’s kinds of stories—the fairy tales, the myths, the universes all wrapping themselves around other worlds—are inside ours.” I look to Padraig. “These stories make us remember something we forgot. They make a young boy want to hop out of a bed and see the ruins of a castle. These kinds of stories wake us up.”