The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chronicles of Narnia, #5) (Publication Order, #3)

by C.S. Lewis

For his mind was full of forlorn hopes, death-or-glory charges, and last stands.

Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon’s lair but, as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books.

Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.

It was, however, clear to everyone that Eustace’s character had been rather improved by becoming a dragon.

The pleasure (quite new to him) of being liked and, still more, of liking other people, was what kept Eustace from despair.

There he would explain that what had happened to Eustace was a striking illustration of the turn of Fortune’s wheel, and that if he had Eustace at his own house in Narnia (it was really a hole not a house and the dragon’s head, let alone his body, would not have fitted in) he could show him more than a hundred examples of emperors, kings, dukes, knights, poets, lovers, astronomers, philosophers, and magicians, who had fallen from prosperity into the most distressing circumstances, and of whom many had recovered and lived happily ever afterward.

“That’s all right,” said Edmund. “Between ourselves, you haven’t been as bad as I was on my first trip to Narnia. You were only an ass, but I was a traitor.”

It would be nice, and fairly nearly true, to say that “from that time forth Eustace was a different boy.” To be strictly accurate, he began to be a different boy. He had relapses. There were still many days when he could be very tiresome. But most of those I shall not notice. The cure had begun.

“Please, Aslan,” said Lucy, “what do you call soon?” “I call all times soon,” said Aslan;

“Come,” said the Magician. “All times may be soon to Aslan; but in my home all hungry times are one o’clock.”

But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, “Courage, dear heart,” and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan’s, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.

You shall not please yourself with adventures as if you were a private person.

“Oh, Aslan,” said Lucy. “Will you tell us how to get into your country from our world?” “I shall be telling you all the time,” said Aslan. “But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder. And now come; I will open the door in the sky and send you to your own land.”

“I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”