Beast

It's very dreary, being a dragon.

I'd never heard before of anything like the thing that I've become. At least, not really. Edmund and Lucy seem to know exactly what kind of beast I am. I wonder if it's better than the kind of beast I was before I changed.

The impulses that seize me sometimes are rather alarming. At least, they are when I realize I should be alarmed by them but am not at first. Things seem natural that shouldn't be natural. I suppose that what's natural for a dragon wouldn't be at all natural to a human, so it is natural now that I am a dragon, but it still feels wrong, somehow.

Half the time, I'm too muddled and confused to do much thinking. It's hard to think in words—much less try to write them on the sand to try to talk to Lucy or the others. It's mostly pictures in my head now—great, over-exaggerated things that make me wonder why someone had the cheek to even think that one picture is worth a thousand words. I'd give a thousand pictures to be able to think in words again faster than…than the panther I caught last night for supper.

That's another thing. I never even thought about hunting, or even eating something like a panther before. Hang it, I never hunted anything before—not even a bird or a rabbit or a snake. And now I can kill things with a swipe of my hands—claws—that not even Caspian and Edmund together could take on.

There are so many things about myself that I have yet to learn. I didn't know my wings worked—or even that I had wings—until I jumped and was suddenly flying. Yet the process of taking off, of spreading my wings to soar, came as naturally as the running on all fours (I tried running on two for a day or so before giving it up as hopeless). Edmund says I can breathe fire, too, and Lucy said that wanting to sleep in my cave—oh blimey, my cave!—with my treasure is quite normal.

I used to be a pacifist, back when I was human. And now I kill every day for food and hardly think twice about it. So much for Plumptree's Vitaminized Nerve Food.

I can still remember the taste of it—and of that horrid spiced wine stuff that I'd almost got to like when all of this happened—and the biscuits we had on the Dawn Treader the day before I wandered off. I like remembering things, because it helps me remember what I used to be, and who I was.

I wonder if I will eventually lose myself, and forget that I was ever human in the first place. Sometimes, when I'm alone, flying high over the island, a sort of wildness comes over me, and I don't remember anything except the windrushspeedjoyhighness and then I remember and have to land before I start crying (at least, before my eyes start watering) because it's hard to fly when you can't see where you're going.

The forgetting only happens when I leave the others, when I'm alone. For brief instants (they're getting longer) I lose myself in the vastness of the body of this monster, and become a mere beast. I hate to think of what might occur if it happened when I was actually with the others. But they all still call me Eustace, which helps me keep remembering, and Lucy keeps telling me about home and that I'll be as right as rain once they figure out how to disenchant me.

And now they're going to leave, quite soon, and I will be alone here. Alone with myself and the wildness.

I wonder how long I will remember. I wonder how long until I do not know who Eustace and Alberta and Harold and Caspian and Lucy and Edmund are. The physical change has already occurred—how long will it take for the mental one to solidify?

And yet, it makes me wonder how many people here in Narnia—hang it, in our world too—are like me, except the other way 'round. I was a beast before, but on the inside. Now, as Lucy likes to say, I may look like a beast, but I've certainly got a human heart. I never thought about my being a beast before, because why should a person who looks human and thinks human words and speaks with a human voice be anything other than human?

But I was. Perhaps having my appearance and attitude toward others switched was for the better. For now the ugliness of my soul has become my face and form, and the truth of what I am is hidden deep within myself. And now that I, too, can see that ugliness for what it is, I can see that it is hateful—beastly, even.

It is hot tonight, and my arm aches so. Leg, rather. Reepicheep's story is still running through my mind—or at least, the pictures that I imagined when he told it to me.

Windrushspeedjoyhighness

NO! I am Eustace. I am boy. I am not a beast. I have changed—I have, truly! I've learned my lesson, but it seems I've learned it too late. They're leaving tomorrow. Tomorrow. I shall be alone. Forever. Alone.

What on earth will become of me?

It's very dreary, being a dragon.

Finis

"I was lying awake and wondering what on earth would become of me. And then…I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly towards me…"