Before the Pevensie children traveled through the magic wardrobe into Narnia, Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer found their way to the dawn of Narnia's creation.
When a boy looks over the wall into Polly's yard, she is curious: the boy looks like he's been crying, and there have never been children there before. She asks him his name and comments on his appearance. To which Digory snaps at her: his father is in India and his mother is ill so they are staying with his crazy uncle in the grubby city. Polly is curious about Digory's strange uncle next door and begins asking him questions. The uncle, Andrew Ketterley, is a strange man who makes weird noises and talks about going to strange places in the attic.
One rainy day, Polly and Digory are exploring a tunnel that connects the attic spaces of the row-houses they live in when they decide to find a door into the vacant house beyond Digory's. They count out where the house should be and climb to it. When they open the door they find a furnished sitting room, with what looks like tools for a laboratory spread about the room. On a tray Polly finds several green and yellow rings that seem to fill the room with humming. Digory wants to go back: they've obviously invaded someone's home. Before he can insist though, Uncle Andrew appears and bolts both the door into the house and the tunnel, trapping the children.
Polly and Digory ask to be released for dinner, and at first Uncle Andrew doesn't bend, but eventually he relents and offers Polly one of the rings. When she touches it she vanishes, startling Digory. Uncle Andrew explains where the rings come from; they are made with a powder from another world that tries to return. The yellow ring Andrew gave Polly took her to that other world and Digory would have to go with a green ring to bring her back.
When Digory touches the ring, he is taken to a world full of trees and pools of water. Polly is waiting, but the place has a muffling affect on them: the children feel as if they have always been there, but remember a time before the world of pools and trees. When they wake from the soporific effects of the world, they try jumping into the pool they rose from to get home. After splashing in the pool they came from, Digory remembers to put on the green ring, but before they jump into the pool that goes home he stops. What if the pools all go to different worlds? Polly and Digory decide to try out one of the other pools.
When they jump through the new pool the children find themselves in a world much older than Earth. Something about the world frightens Polly, but Digory teases her about being afraid to explore and she decides to go where he goes. There doesn't seem to be anything living in this new world; the castle around the children is falling into ruins, nothing moves. Digory leads the way through the castle and the two find a room with rows upon rows of statues of people, each person more mean-looking and frightening than the last. The final statue is the most beautiful, but also the most cruel-looking.
Digory finds a pillar with a bell and hammer on it. An inscription suggests danger, but he is curious. Polly doesn't want to ring the bell, but before she can escape back to the Wood Between Worlds, Digory grabs her hand and rings the bell. The sound grows, then silences. Then the final figure rises from her throne. The woman challenges how the children came to be in her world, insisting it wasn't their own magic. Digory tells her about Uncle Andrew, and she tells them about her world.
Jadis is the last queen of Charn, when her sister refused to hand over the throne a battle ensued. As her soldiers died, Jadis uttered the "Deplorable Word" and all life but her own ceased to exist. Her world is old and dying, so when Digory reveals that Earth's sun in much younger than Charn's Jadis insists on being brought to England. They don't want to bring the strange woman home, but Jadis grabs Polly's hair just as she touches the yellow ring, transporting the three of them to the Wood Between Worlds. Jadis's strength leaves her in the Wood, but just before Digory and Polly leap into Earth's pool she manages to grab Digory and come with them.
When they arrive in Uncle Andrew's attic he is in awe of Jadis. The children fear her, but when she storms out to "conquer" the world they make plans to send her home. Jadis discovers that though she is the size of a giant, her magic has no power on Earth. Instead she uses her strength to create mayhem. Digory waits for her to return and calls to Polly to bring her ring. The children manage to get the witch away from Earth, but with them comes Uncle Andrew, a cabbie, his horse, and the cab. In the wood between worlds Digory leads them into a random pool and they land on something solid in the complete dark of nothingness.
Suddenly they begin to hear a beautiful singing; the stars appear and the sun rises to reveal a giant lion, singing the world into creation. He sings the plants into being, the animals to life and gifting some with speech, and the waters from the earth. The lion continues to create, but Digory approaches him hoping to find a way to help his ailing mother. The Lion, Aslan, tasks Digory with finding an apple from a particular garden in the West of Narnia and bringing it back. He makes the cabbie and his wife the first king and queen of Narnia.
Polly, Digory and the cabbie's horse (now a talking Pegasus, thanks to Aslan) go to the garden where Digory is tempted by the witch. He returned to Aslan, they ended up planting the apple and an apple from the tree brings Digory's mother back to health. Aslan sends the children and Uncle Andrew back to the Wood Between Worlds, showing them the pool that lead to Charn--it has dried up--a warning to the people of Earth.
When they return home, Digory and Polly find that time appears to have stopped. Digory feeds the apple to his mother, and buries the core in the yard. Polly takes the remainder of Uncle Andrew's rings and buries them around the apple. The tree grows and produces delicious fruit, until it is blown over in a storm, by then Digory Kirke was a professor and owner of Ketterlely house. Rather than use the tree as firewood, Digory made a wardrobe out it, but it was someone else who discovered its magical properties.
This prequel to The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe describes the beginning of Narnia and the Wardrobe, and tells the Witch's backstory. The story has darker elements than some of the other chronicles, but Polly and Digory are relate-able characters that draw the reader in. The target audience is third grade and older.
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