The Magician's Nephew: Chapter 6 wrote:Now that you saw her in the wood, Queen Jadis looked different. She was much paler than she had been; so pale that hardly any of her beauty was left. And she was stooped and seemed to be finding it hard to breathe, as if the air of that place stifled her. Neither of the children felt in the least afraid of her now. . . . . . . They both turned and struggled with her. They were stronger than she, and in a few seconds they had forced her to let go. She reeled back, panting, and there was a look of terror in her eyes. . . . . . . . . . . "Help! Help! Mercy!" cried the Witch in a fain voice, staggering after them. "Take me with you. You cannot mean to leave me in the horrible place. It is killing me."
(ellipses indicate irrelevant passages that have been removed for the sake of brevity)
Later on in the chapter, C.S. Lewis gives us this tidbit:
The children were no afraid that Jadis would have something to say to them about what had happened in the wood. As it turned out, however, she never mentioned it either then or afterward. I think (and Digory thinks too) that her mind was of a sort which cannot remember that quiet place at all, and however often you took her there, and however long you left her there, she would still know nothing about it.
It is revealed soon after this that Jadis has lost her power to turn people to dust. So, with this in mind, a few questions arose in my head as I was reading this passage. First off, why did Jadis have this particular reaction to being in the Wood? What exactly was it about the wood, that caused this to happen? Second, was it this weakening of her strength within the wood that "zapped her power" so to speak, crippling her eternally? I ask this, because in no other books does Jadis have the power to turn people to dust; the power never shows up again, and while I understand that this storyline was developed after most of the books were written, we still have to wonder. Do you think that Jadis came out of the wood with all of her powers in tact (therefore implying that some force in our world was able to block her powers [save for her strength])
I have my own opinions, but I'm much more interested in what everybody else thinks (of course. . . I'll spill my guts eventually ).