When the dragon Eustace came to the well, he thought the water would soothe his pain.

The Lion had something much bigger in mind.

For a moment Eustace was puzzled. How was he to undress?

Then he KNEW. He knew about animals with scales and how they shed them. His collection of facts finally seemed to be making itself useful.

But Eustace’s understanding was still too near the surface. His imagination was too small to comprehend that the depths of his need penetrated to his heart.

Three failed attempts revealed that he had no answers left in himself.

The Lion was the only answer, and the realization terrified him.

Eustace expected pain. But what came next took him far beyond what he knew of pain…and of pleasure.

For a moment Eustace was tender, exposed to the unknown. As vulnerable as he had been when he fell into a painting and nearly drowned. But when he hit the water this time, he did not resist.

He was in over his head, but somehow—through no effort of his own—he was swimming.

The Lion was the most terrifying thing he’d ever faced, and it was the Lion who was saving him.

From that day on, Eustace began to grow into a different person. He still made pedantic remarks, and he didn’t respond well to being trounced at chess. But he faced the Unknown instead of fleeing and let it take him beyond the limits of his imagination instead of trying to stuff it in a box. He ran toward a sea serpent with a sword he didn’t know how to use. He volunteered to sit through the long night at Ramandu’s table and wait for whatever the morning would bring. And he was one of the few who ever saw the wonders at the end of that world.

The closer Eustace got to the journey’s end, the less was heard from him. His words faded away and he seemed to forget about himself as he became absorbed in the experience before him.

The end of the Dawn Treader’s journey was just the beginning of Eustace’s story. His cousins would not return to Narnia. But Narnia had only begun to make a true child of Eustace.

The End

Thank you for reading! This is the final part of a series exploring the value of curiosity through the eyes of Eustace Scrubb from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis.