#that is by far the most compelling aspect of MN it is the linchpin of the whole thing

[queenlucythevaliant]

make your choice

Digory didn’t think much on making choices. The whole world would be over when his mother died anyhow.

Of course, this didn’t keep him from being curious or adventurous. It was exciting to meet new people, exciting to go exploring and to speculate about whatever mischief his Uncle Andrew was up to. Being a lively young boy was perhaps the best distraction from being a boy about to lose his mother.

Going after Polly was so obviously right that it might as well not have been a choice at all. What else could he do? It was easy to be righteous in the face of an evil old magician who said things like "Ours is a high and lonely destiny."

Yet once they were there in that rich, in-between place, with all the worlds there were splayed out before them— ((Make your choice, adventurous stranger)) Well. What sort of lively young boy would he be if he turned back now?

Digory could feel the bell’s magic ((strike the bell and bide the danger)) beginning to work on him. There was no use in resisting. He felt tendrils of magic sinking deep beneath his skin, laying claim to any free will he’d ever had. He said as much to Polly, but she wasn’t listening.

Polly said ((or wonder till it drives you mad)) that he looked exactly like his uncle when he said that.

Jadis’s whole world had ended. Everyone had died, and she’d just gone to sleep. She might have stayed sleeping forever if he hadn’t woken her. Sitting outside his mother’s sickroom, Digory wondered ((what would have followed if you had)) if that was really so shocking. Hadn’t he been preparing for just such an end? Were Charn and Mabel Kirke so different?

Narnia was not an end. It was a beginning.

And face to face with the Lion, Digory was forced to admit that the bell had not been magic. Nothing had caused him to strike it. Make your choice, the writing had said. Digory had chosen. 

I’ve spoiled everything. There’s no chance of getting anything for mother now.

The enormous Lion asked him, "Son of Adam, are you ready to undo the wrong that you have done?" and Digory sputtered his maybes.

"I asked, are you ready?" the Lion said again.

At that very moment, an ultimatum flashed through Digory’s mind. If I salvage your beginning, will you prevent my end? If make amends, will you save my mother? He thought of refusing, of holding his choice hostage until his future was secure. Could the Lion be bargained with? Could Digory twist his arm, as he'd twisted Polly's?

But what Digory said was, "Yes."

Jadis conjured such lovely visions of the future. His mother's face would lose its gray sheen and she would say, Why, I'm beginning to feel stronger. There would be no more morphia, no more of the terrible drawn look about her when she slept. She would rise from her sickbed, vibrant and whole ((Come in by the gold gates or not at all)) rise and walk to the door and fling it open and then Digory would go running into her arms. 

He gasped as though he'd been mortally wounded. Perhaps he had been in a way. After all, had the gate not said ((take my fruit for others or forbear))? 

Jadis ((for those who steal and those who climb my wall)) called Digory the Lion's slave. Years later, he would think back over all that those words implied. The Witch seemed to think that Digory had no will, if he was willing to subordinate himself to Aslan.

But was it not Aslan who made Digory realize his own culpability ((shall find their heart's desire and find despair)), and in the same breath gave him a way to repair it? Had not Aslan given his will back to him?

And at the foot of the tree, Aslan gave Digory his future back as well. 

He was old, but now he is young again, watching as the stars fall headlong across the black of the world-that-was. The world is ending at last, but Digory does not fear such things any longer.