Loss is our earliest memory as a race. There was a time before the Fall, a time before we gambled all our happiness in hopes to win a happiness beyond the lot of mortals and discovered that the boundaries set to mortal being are absolute; a time before the terror, astonishment, and above all shame of knowing that we suddenly had a secret from God, one we would give anything not to have to tell Him.

The Horse and His Boy begins with the boy of the title. Or rather, it doesn’t begin there, but with a short preamble telling us that this story happened during the days of the Pevensie reign. This is the golden age of Narnia, when myth had become fact and all was at last, according to the old rhyme, set to rights.