The Guinea Between the Worlds

I found this little pocket mirror on Etsy today, made by parsnip & pear. Not only is it adorable, but it depicts a scene from one of my favorite stories, The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis (the first in The Chronicles of Narnia). The illustrations in this copy of this book are by Pauline Baynes.

You may recall that in the story, the EVIL Uncle Andrew used cute, sweet, innocent little Guinea's to test his magic rings. As Uncle Andrew put it: "My earlier experiments were all failures. I tried them on guinea-pigs. Some of them only died. Some exploded like little bombs--."

What!! Creep.

Then later Polly and Digory (the guinea lovin' good guys) are in 'The Wood Between the Worlds' (you'll just have to read it if you have no idea what I'm talking about): "Why! it's a guinea-pig," said the girl [Polly]. And it was--a fat guinea-pig nosing about in the grass. But round the middle of the guinea-pig there ran a tape, and, tied on to it by the tape, was a bright yellow ring."

This is the scene depicted in the image at the top.

Thankfully, Polly and Digory decide to leave the GP to eat grass in 'The Wood Between the Worlds' for all eternity, rather than take it back to HORRIBLE Uncle Andrew. A happy ending!! Well actually there's more to the story (the Guinea part is pretty small), but it is a happy ending in regards to Guinea Culture anyway. This book is for a younger audience, but is a classic. If you haven't read it and love The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, you have to read this -- it explains how the wardrobe came about and who the professor is, among other things... and even better... there is at least one cute G to be found within its pages.