The Magician’s Nephew: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Uncle Andrew cowers as the Witch demands to know when her chariot will arrive. Aunt Letty coldly demands to know who “this young person” might be. Uncle Andrew stammers that the Witch is a “distinguished foreigner,” but Aunt Letty tells the “shameless hussy” to leave, thinking she looks like a circus performer. Enraged, the Witch casts a spell to destroy Letty, only to find that her magical powers are worthless in this world.

Just before the hansom cab arrives, the Witch scoops up Aunt Letty and hurls her across the room, to Uncle Andrew’s feeble protests. Digory runs downstairs just as the Witch and Uncle Andrew head off into the streets of London. He and Sarah the housemaid check on Aunt Letty, who has luckily landed on the mattress she was mending and is barely hurt. Aunt Letty sends Sarah to alert the police about the “dangerous lunatic at large.”

Digory tries to figure out how to send the Witch back to her own world as soon as possible—he knows her intention is to conquer this one. Now that he knows that the magic rings work like magnets, it seems easy enough to pull her back to the Wood between the Worlds—but however will he find her? Finally, he decides that his only option is to hover at the front door so that when the Witch and Uncle Andrew return, he can grab her at the first opportunity. He wonders what Polly is doing; it turns out that Polly, after giving vague answers to her parents’ questions about her absence, was given a meager dinner and sent to bed for two hours. Now both she and Digory wait anxiously for whatever will happen next.

While Digory waits, a small, significant thing happens. A lady stops by with some grapes for his mother, and Digory overhears Aunt Letty admiring the gift and lamenting that Mabel Kirke would need “fruit from the land of youth” to heal her completely. Now that Digory himself has visited another world, this turn of phrase sticks with him. What if there is a true “Land of Youth” somewhere, containing fruit that really would heal his mother? After experiencing magic firsthand, he can’t stop himself from hoping for something miraculous. For a moment, he even forgets all about the Witch.

Suddenly, Digory hears a fire engine. He sees a hansom cab coming down the street. On the roof stands the Queen, flogging the horse mercilessly. The horse rears up in front of the Ketterleys’ front door, the hansom crashing into a lamppost. The Queen jumps clear of the wreckage and lands on the horse’s back, whispering something in the horse’s ear which frightens it.

A bunch of other things happen at once. Two other hansom cabs arrive, bearing policemen, and are soon followed by a crowd of boys on bicycles and other enthusiastic onlookers. Uncle Andrew emerges shakily from one of the cabs. Amid the commotion, a shopkeeper accuses Jadis of having stolen thousands of pounds’ worth of goods from his store, and others accuse Uncle Andrew of having put the Queen up to it all. Digory gingerly makes his way through the crowd in an effort to touch the Queen, fearful of spooking the already harried horse.

A cabby in a bowler hat emerges from the crowd, saying that the Queen has stolen his horse. She mustn’t overexcite the horse, which is the offspring of a famous war horse. He tries addressing Jadis directly, suggesting that she’ll be happier if she just goes home and has a nice cup of tea. When he speaks soothingly to “Strawberry” the horse, the Queen snarls, “Dog, unhand our royal charger. We are the Empress Jadis.”