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CHAPTER ONE

HOW SHASTA SET OUT ON HIS TRAVELS

THIS is the story of an adventure that happened in Narnia and Calore when Peter was High King in Narnia and his brother and his two sisters were King and Queens under him

In those days, far south in Calormen on a little creek of the sea, there lived a poor fisherman called Arsheesh, and with him there lived a boy who called him Father The boy's name was Shasta On , and in the afternoon he harnessed his donkey to a cart and loaded the cart with fish and went a e to sell it If it had sold well he would co to Shasta, but if it had sold badly he would find fault with hi to find fault with for Shasta had plenty of work to do,the cottage in which they both lived

Shasta was not at all interested in anything that lay south of his hoe with Arsheesh and he knew that there was nothing very interesting there In the village he only , dirty robes, and wooden shoes turned up at the toe, and turbans on their heads, and beards, talking to one another very slowly about things that sounded dull But he was very interested in everything that lay to the North because no one ever went that way and he was never allowed to go there hi the nets, and all alone, he would often look eagerly to the North One could see nothing but a grassy slope running up to a level ridge and beyond that the sky with perhaps a few birds in it

Sometimes if Arsheesh was there Shasta would say, "O my Father, what is there beyond that hill?" And then if the fisherman was in a bad temper he would box Shasta's ears and tell him to attend to his work Or if he was in a peaceable mood he would say, "O my son, do not allow your mind to be distracted by idle questions For one of the poets has said, 'Application to business is the root of prosperity, but those who ask questions that do not concern theence'"

Shasta thought that beyond the hill there htful secret which his father wished to hide from him In reality, however, the fisherman talked like this because he didn't knohat lay to the North Neither did he care He had a very practical mind

One day there caer as unlike anydappled horse with flowing mane and tail and his stirrups and bridle were inlaid with silver The spike of a helmet projected from the middle of his silken turban and he wore a shirt of chainsci at his back, and his right hand grasped a lance His face was dark, but this did not surprise Shasta because all the people of Calormen are like that; what did surprise hileaold on the stranger's bare ar before hins to Shasta to kneel also

The stranger deht which of course the fisherman dared not refuse All the best they had was set before the Tarkaan for supper (and he didn't think much of it) and Shasta, as always happened when the fisheriven a hunk of bread and turned out of the cottage On these occasions he usually slept with the donkey in its little thatched stable But it was o to sleep yet, and Shasta, who had never learned that it is wrong to listen behind doors, sat doith his ear to a crack in the wooden wall of the cottage to hear what the grown-ups were talking about And this is what he heard

"And now, O my host," said the Tarkaan, "I have a mind to buy that boy of yours"

"O my master," replied the fisherreedy look that was probably co into his face as he said it), "what price could induce your servant, poor though he is, to sell into slavery his only child and his own flesh? Has not one of the poets said, 'Natural affection is stronger than soup and offspring more precious than carbuncles?"'