Stephen Bentley

An old ape named Shift finds a dead lion's skin floating in a pool. He sits down with a needle and thick thread, and every time a bird flies over, he stops sewing and waits for it to pass. He knows exactly what he's making, and he doesn't want anyone in the sky to see it. C.S. Lewis wrote that scene in 1956, in the last Narnia book. It's the one most of us never got to as kids. I only read it a few years ago. When his friend Puzzle the donkey comes back from market, Shift ties the skin onto him and tells him to stand in the shadows. Then he tells the whole of Narnia that Aslan has come back. Lewis tells you how it works. No one who had ever seen a real lion would have been taken in for a moment. It only works from far away, at night, by firelight, with the donkey kept quiet while the ape does all the talking. Puzzle gets scared and says what if the real Aslan comes. Shift laughs and says Aslan never turns up nowadays. Right then there's a crack of thunder and the ground shakes under them. Puzzle says it's a warning. Shift says yes, it's a sign, and it means Aslan approves. Now Gerwig's Aslan has Bowie's face and Meryl Streep's voice. The lion who sang a whole world into being in The Magician's Nephew, the voice so deep it shook the ground, talks like someone else now. Shift did the same thing. He kept the lion's face and changed who was talking. Lewis is gentle with the donkey, and I want to be too. Puzzle isn't evil. He's tired and trusting, and someone he believed kept telling him he wasn't clever enough to judge for himself. Lewis saves his anger for the ape with the needle. A dad told me he was reading that first chapter to his kids and had to put the book down, because it read like these Hollywood headlines. Pick up the real books. Read all seven out loud, every night, until your kids know that voice. A child who has heard the real lion can't be sold a donkey in a skin.