Wood Between the Worlds

The Wood Between the Worlds is the name given to a common access portal allowing travel between many different worlds, Charn, Earth, and Narnia being the only ones we know about. It had the form of a quiet forest dotted with many wide pools of water. Each pool was a portal to a world, and jumping in transports a person to that world. This was the first means of access to Narnia. It was used by Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer to go first to Charn, then return from Charn to Earth with Queen Jadis, then take Jadis, with Frank, Strawberry, and Andrew Ketterley, to Narnia.

Travel between worlds


In order to use the portals, a person must be touching one of the magical rings made by Andrew Ketterley, Digory's magician uncle. The rings are of two types. Yellow rings transport a person from a world to the Wood. If a person on Earth touches a yellow ring, for example, he will disappear and appear in the Earth pool in the Wood. The green rings transport a person out of the Wood to a world. If a person in the Wood wants to go to Charn, for example, he steps in the Charn pool while touching a green ring, and materializes on Charn. What determines the location where the traveller materializes, is not clear.

Contact with the ring must be by skin. Another feature of the rings is that the effect works like electricity, by chain of contact; you don't have to be touching a ring, merely touching someone who is touching one.

The rings themselves were created from a magical powder, originally in the possession of Uncle Andrew's godmother. This powder had come, via the lost island of Atlantis, from another world. Thus originally the dust must have been used in travelling between worlds, and it is implied that in the past, travel from our world to others such as Charn, may have been more common. This offers explination of how in "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe", Jadis is described by the beavers as descended from Adam's first wife Lilith, while at the same time she is the last of the royal house of Charn.

Neither Uncle Andrew, who made the rings, nor Digory and Polly, who were tricked by Andrew into trying them out, understood any of this. This resulted in Digory and Polly blundering into Charn, then accidently transporting Jadis with them back to Earth by the 'chain of contact' effect when she grabbed Polly's hair as they were leaving. The next time they used the rings, to get Jadis off of Earth, they understood them better, and used the 'chain of contact' effect, holding hands while Digory grabbed Jadis's heel and Polly touched the ring. Unfortunately the chain of contact included Uncle Andrew, Frank the cabbie, his horse Strawberry, and even the cab, which all got transported to Narnia.

An interesting detail is that the initial choice of Narnia as a world to go to, which began all the contact between Narnia and Earth, was made by Strawberry the horse, who blundered into the first pool he saw because he was thirsty, which happened to lead to Narnia.

When Charn the world was destroyed, the Charn pool in the Wood dried up.

Access to the Wood between the Worlds was lost after Digory and Polly returned from Narnia, when they burned the magic rings so Uncle Andrew couldn't use them again.

The Wood itself
The Wood itself is not a 'world' in the sense of Charn, Earth, or Narnia. It seems to be uninhabited, which is understandable since spending time there seems to cause amnesia, and perhaps sleepiness. Digory and Polly nearly lost all memory of who they were in a short time there. Perhaps this effect was deliberately added when the Wood was created, so it would only be used as a portal, and not be captured and held by any one race. Something about the environment was toxic to Jadis, who lost her strength and vitality while there; however, Polly suspected the Queen was shamming until they returned later from the Fight at the Lamp-Post and the entire party, save Digory, Polly, the Cabby and Strawberry felt quite ill. Though the Wood is not home to any native creatures, it is presumably still inhabited by the guinea pigs used by Uncle Andrew in his experiments with the rings.