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It had been two days since I sent Ransom off, and I was becoming more and more uncertain whether I would ever see the man again.
It seemed to me that there was more an element of unpredictability in his travels than there was in mine. Of course, neither of us have much control over what happens to us when we’re whisked away to other worlds—him to an unexplored planet and me to whatever time or place I’m sent. Yet, the thought of being alone and unaided on some mission to a planet that no one has ever seen before, with all one’s understanding of nature in some way changed and with very little knowledge of the purpose of one’s journey, seems far more terrible than being sent to a different universe, with the presence of the Lord ever beside me and the firm knowledge that I am there only to learn.
You have been chosen for far more than that, child, a familiar voice reminded me. The voice was always accompanied by a low rumble and a vision of golden fur.
Perhaps Ransom’s experiences were not much different than mine at all. Perhaps he has the same sort of assurance that I do, that he has been chosen for some purpose and that one day he will be returned safely to his home. In the meantime, there was nothing really to do but wait.
The impression that Oxford gave me after that strange turn of events was not the same as it had been when I left. The university, and in fact the whole world, seemed to be holding its breath. It was with mixed feelings of anticipation and dread that I determined that some great change was soon to fall upon mankind.
The first change came in the form of the Blitz. Until recently, the War had been mostly France’s affair and only a little of ours. Now, with Italy having joined against us only months before and the Germans finally bringing the War to the English home front, the Great War was becoming more and more a global conflict. Though Oxford was safe in this regard, at least from the bombs, nothing could prevent the deep feeling of helplessness that fell upon all of us. The evening wireless programs and the general unrest around me led to many a sleepless night during those first few weeks. My dreams were often filled with droning engines and great explosions and the horrible feeling of burying a friend alive. It was only with great effort that I managed to ever get much rest. I had resorted to short naps in my study between classes, but these didn’t do me much good. They did even less good to the stack of ungraded papers at the edge of my study table.
It was during one of these noddings-off that I found myself transported for the first time in several years. I was standing, awake and alert, in the middle of a much grander garden than any I had seen in England. The palace beyond appeared to be very ancient, not in the sense that it was a ruin, but in the sense that it belonged to a time long past.
Two young girls, along with a red-bearded man, were sitting in the grass a few yards away from me. The man appeared to be teaching a lesson; one of the girls had given him her full attention, while the other was plucking distractedly at the green blades next to her knee. I was surprised at how silent my footsteps were as I approached the trio. None of them looked up at me, even as I sat down among them and listened to the man speak. He was telling the story of Aphrodite and Anchises in a low, lilting voice.
Before now, I had always found myself playing some role in the worlds into which I was thrown. I could speak to and interact with people, and they often asked me where I had come from or where I was going. This time it quickly became clear to me that I was not really here at all. I was merely an observer in this story.
The bearded man had finished recounting the myth, and his tone changed quickly from solemn to dismissive as he looked at the attentive girl. “Not that this ever really happened,” he said. “It’s only lies of poets, lies of poets, child. Not in accordance with nature.” The girl seemed to doubt this statement. I am ashamed to say that one of the first things I noticed about her was that she was very ugly.
The passing of time on this particular journey was something that I couldn’t quite define. I watched the child grow into a youth, and then into a young woman, and later into adulthood, queenship, and eventually I saw her die in the middle of her frantic writing upon a scroll. She had been writing in this scroll for a long time, and though I couldn’t pick it up to read it (I couldn’t touch anything in this journey), I knew from all that I had seen exactly what she was writing about. She was Orual, the sister of Psyche, and she was writing a defense of herself against the gods. For most of her life, she was a wretched woman, and there was very little about her that anyone could like or admire. But I understood her. I think that understanding was what kept me from hating her.
I wasn’t there for every part of her story—only the most important parts—but these were numerous enough that I felt like I must have spent years of my own life simply watching hers. Of course, time in these other dimensions doesn’t work quite like that. I can feel in the very same instant as if I was wandering for both an eternity and a mere fragment of a second. I knew from past experiences that I would return to my own time and place nearly at the moment I had left.
Finding myself in one of these alternate worlds again (though this one was perhaps more a point in history than an alternate world), I could not help but think of the conversation Ransom and I had had before he was forced to leave. He had been speaking of the bent Oyarsa’s attempts to reach Perelandra and that Oyarsa’s inability to get there himself. “He must be attempting Perelandra in some different way,” Ransom had said.
”And where do you come in?”
”Well—simply I’ve been ordered there,” he had replied. He’d seemed uncertain, but not at all concerned.
”By the—by Oyarsa, you mean?” I had asked.
”No. The order comes from much higher up. They all do, you know, in the long run.”
Although it hadn’t occurred to me then, it occurred to me now that I knew exactly what he’d meant. I once again considered the possibility that Ransom and I weren’t on such different journeys after all and that perhaps God was just as much by Ransom’s side as he was by mine. He might very well have been sent to Perelandra for some far grander purpose than either of us had imagined.
Near the end of queen Orual’s life, my perspective seemed to change. Though I was still looking on from the outside, I seemed to be transported with her into a series of visions that would ultimately serve as the means for her redemption. To this day I still remember, as clearly as if I were standing upon the plaintiff’s stand, the great hall in which the judge heard Orual’s complaint against the gods. I remember her repeating her same wretched story over and over, claiming that the gods had stolen her Psyche away from her. I remember when the judge cried, “enough,” and realization dawned upon Orual’s face.
”Are you answered?” the judge had asked.
”Yes.”
I have thought of the following visions and Orual’s ultimate redemption nearly every day since. I think it would take me a long time to learn how to write it. I’ve found since then that Christ is reflected, be it brightly or dimly, in everything. Even the pagans and their myths seem to show an element of the True and Good. If I can capture that nature in my writings on the journey, then I will have accomplished all that I need accomplish. Christ permeates everything.
I awoke in my study not long after Orual’s death. I sat up quickly, searching for any empty notebook in which to write my thoughts, but then it occurred to me to check my watch, and I found that I had only ten minutes to get to my next lecture. I gathered my materials and hurried off.
The first six months of Ransom’s absence passed very slowly. Despite my brief assurance that he was safe and looked after just the same as I, the old uncertainty over his ever returning plagued me again and again. I had seen nothing of Oyarsa, not even a hint of his presence. Part of me wondered again if I had really gone mad, if the whole business was not merely a dream or hallucination and Ransom had really died of heart failure or a German bomb. I tried to avoid giving myself much time to think about it.
There was a week or so during that sixth month when the wireless programs told of an air raid threat at Oxford. We had a siren on the campus that I had only ever heard once, and that time had been a false alarm. Now they were testing it again. My students and I could hear it clearly even in the lecture hall.
That week I had many of those long evenings which found me in my study long after dark. One particular night I was busy grading papers for several hours; I had neglected to build a fire, and the room was growing cold. I had forgotten to take dinner as well and was beginning to feel hungry, but there was no place open at this time of night. I found myself nodding off before long. A vague image of a lamp post shining on a snow-covered forest passed through my mind.
I woke to find myself standing in a crowd on a dark, dirty city street at twilight. I remember feeling confused and a little uncertain for a moment, but that feeling quickly faded and I imagined that I had been in this place for many hundreds of years. The crowd, I realized, was a bus stop queue.
Though the queue seemed infinitely long at first, so many people left the line that I was on the bus within a few minutes. As we were lifting off into the air, I realized that the place we were leaving was Hell. I could only assume that the place we were going was Heaven.
I have written all of that journey down already and intend to publish it as soon as I’ve finished publishing Ransom’s travels. It was an easy journey to write. I won’t go into much detail of it here, since you can read it there, but I will tell you a little of what I learned. Firstly, I learned that men who ask such questions as “why does God send people to hell?” or “if He is a good God, then why does He care so little about his creation?” are either very misinformed, very ignorant, determined to dislike God, or a little of all three. This journey made it clear to me the nature of sin and of human suffering. I think of examples like the Big Ghost who had been an industry boss during his life or the Mother Ghost who was so attached to her son that she was blind to everything else. “I only want my rights,” the Big Ghost would say over and over, too proud to accept charity or to deny himself in favor of God. “You will become solid enough for Michael to perceive you when you learn to want Someone Else besides Michael,” the Mother Ghost’s brother told her, but she was so convinced of the purity of her love that she couldn’t accept that anything better could exist—either for her or for her son. All of the Ghosts I met during my journey could have been redeemed, but they were all so wrapped up in their own sin that they couldn’t see anything beyond it. Looking back on my life before Christ, I was amazed at how much of my own story was reflected in the stories of the various Ghosts I met.
Secondly, I learned that Dante’s perspective was not that far off. Maybe it was something of a divine literary device that I was given my own Virgil for this journey—in the form of George MacDonald—but literary device or not, having a teacher to guide and instruct me in heaven certainly made it easier for me to understand and relay the events on paper. You’ll learn a little more about that if you decide to read my work on it.
I woke at the end of that journey with a stack of books falling on my head and an ink-stained cloth clutched in my hand. I had fallen out of my chair in my sleep. The air raid siren was wailing, and a small shaft of light was shining from the street lamp outside my window onto the clock on the wall. I saw that it was three in the morning. I grabbed a pen and the only empty notebook I could find and rushed out of my study.
There was no attack. I, along with several others who were still on campus, stayed in the bomb shelter until morning, but nothing happened. We all went about our day. I did notice that my students seemed more distracted than usual.
One night about eight months later I returned home to find Oyarsa standing in my parlor. His strange, half-visible but wholly encompassing presence so startled me that my first thought was to slam the door, lock it, and go back to Oxford. It wouldn’t hurt to sleep in my study chair again. I got as far as fumbling with my key in the lock before I realized what I was doing, and why Oyarsa was there. A thrill of both relief and terror passed over me as I opened my door again and stepped inside.
I’m not sure how I understood what Oyarsa was saying. Perhaps I didn’t understand a word of it and knew what I was meant to do by his presence itself. The impression at the time, however, was that he spoke to me in English, telling me to go at once to Humphrey and get the both of us on a train to Ransom’s house. That was exactly what I did. I remember feeling a tangible uncertainty during the whole of the trip—something a bit like nausea—until the moment that we were standing in Ransom’s overgrown garden with the casket thrown open in front of us and Ransom squinting and blinking in the sunlight. I realized then that I had really expected him to be dead.
“Jack,” he said, rather cheerfully, when he saw me. I don’t believe he ever called me anything other than “Lewis” before then. He called Humphrey by his Christian name as well, which was also unusual, and we helped him out of the casket. “How are you both?” he said. “You’re looking rather knocked up.”
It took Ransom all day and part of the night to tell us the story of what happened to him on Perelandra. All that I will tell in my book. After he finished the tale, he seemed to become aware of the pain in his ankle and frowned down at it. Humphrey had done a fine job of bandaging it, but the bandages were now nearly soaked through with blood. Humphrey quickly re-dressed and rebandaged the cut and ordered Ransom off to bed. Ransom agreed, and with a final smile and a “wonderful to see both of you,” he disappeared up the stairs.
All this time I had been taking notes in the same notebook that contained my journey to Heaven. I had avoided taking down too many direct quotes this first time through, as they take too much time to write in longhand, but one thing Ransom said had so struck me that I had written it out and underlined it. “It is not for nothing that you are named Ransom,” the Voice had said to him. “My name is also Ransom.”
I closed my notebook with a great sigh of relief. I could finally get a good night’s rest.