AN: Sorry I haven't updated this in a little while, I was busy with the first two chapters of my new fic and didn't get around to this one until now.

Eustace had indeed met Aslan. He told Edmund that somehow or other, the Lion had changed him back into a boy and then dressed him in brand new clothing.

"They're the ones I've got on now." He explained, motioning down at the greenish-gray tunic and tights he was wearing. They were dragonish colours but on the new Eustace, this nicer not-so-dragon-like boy, they looked rather nice.

"I see." Was all Edmund said.

"I am very sorry, Edmund." Eustace's voice was low now, nearly a whisper. "I didn't realize I was being so horrid."

Edmund sighed and put his hand on Eustace's shoulder. "Don't feel too bad."

"But I was horrible." He reminded him. "All of the mean things I said...and about that wonderful Lion too!"

"You haven't been as bad as I was on my first trip to Narnia." Edmund told him, taking a deep breath.

"What do you mean?" Eustace looked up at him in confusion. "You've always been the good one."

"No." Edmund sighed, removing his hand and looking down at it dejectedly. "I haven't. Not like you think."

"What happened?" Eustace looked concerned.

"You were an ass, Eustace, it's true." Edmund admitted with a half-joking sort of smile. "But you don't know what I was. I never told you, why would I have?"

"Told me what?" Eustace asked, not certain that he was going to like the answer.

"I was a traitor, Eustace." Edmund said shortly and gravely.

Eustace felt like a cold breath of wind had just smacked him in the face. "Don't tell me about it then, okay?"

"You don't want to know?" Edmund hid his relief.

Eustace shook his head and smiled weakly.

"Say, whatever happened to that gold bracelet?" Edmund asked, by way of changing the subject.

Eustace laughed. It was a very different sort of laugh than Edmund had ever heard him use before. "Here it is." He took it out of his tunic pocket and handed it to him.

"Well it must be a relief to have it off." Edmund said, his fingers playing with the little gold hammer dangling off the bottom of it. "I guess this might have belonged to one of the lost Lords Caspian's looking for." He started to hand it back to Eustace who pushed it back towards him.

"You keep it."

"But I don't want it." Edmund told him.

"You think I do?" Eustace laughed. "After what just happened? How do I know if it wasn't the bracelet that changed me in the first place?"

"What should we do with it then?" Edmund wondered aloud.

"We could burry it." Eustace suggested.

"That could work." Edmund agreed, standing up and heading back towards the camp.

Everyone was glad to see Eustace looking like himself again (not to mention over-joyed that they didn't have to bring a full-sized dragon with them on the rest of their voyage).

"Welcome back." Caspian had said, giving him a friendly hug.

"Thank you, Lucy." Eustace said as soon as he was free from Caspian's grip. "I'll never forget what you did for me."

"It was nothing." Lucy said modestly. "You would have done the same for me."

"I wish." Eustace muttered before bending down and kissing her on the cheek.

"What was that for?" Lucy asked, a surprised smile forming on her face.

"You kissed me when I was a dragon and you worried about me when I was an ass." Eustace said softly, looking at her with more compassion than he ever had shown before.

"You are my cousin." Lucy reminded him.

"Yeah." Eustace stretched out his hand. "Friends?"

Lucy beamed at him and shook his hand firmly. "Friends."

"It is wonderful to see you looking like yourself again." Ramandu's daughter commented in a polite low voice, placing a hand on one of Eustace's shoulders.

"You see?" Reepicheep said, coming over now that he saw Eustace was a human boy again. "I told you everything would turn out alright."

Eustace was about to bend down and hug the adorable little rodent when Lucy quickly whispered to him that he shouldn't do so. It would have offended the little creature greatly, doing more harm than good. So he nodded thankfully at him instead. Then he bent down on one knee so that he and the mouse were eye-to-eye and said a very formal thank you to him.

They named the island 'Dragon Island' (What more fitting name could they have given it?) and got back on board the dawn treader. Sailing on for a while, things where going well. Occasionally, Eustace-who now really tried very hard to be agreeable-would have a relapse which would put nearly everyone into a fowl mood, but for the most part things really were 'going well' there wasn't much else that could be said for it.

They found a few smaller not very important islands that are not really worth a mention and sailed on for a while longer until they came to the first large island they had seen in a quite a while.

"I'm glad we've come somewhere at last, I was starting to worry about our water-supplies again." Caspian confessed, breathing a sigh of deep relief as the boat came to a surprisingly gentle stop on the sandy-shore.

"It will be nice to get off of this blas-" Eustace stopped and shook his head, remembering he was a changed boy now. "Never mind."

"He is trying." Lucy reminded Edmund, who's left eye was starting to twitch a bit.

"I know," Edmund whispered back to her. "That's why I can't smack him."

Something in his tone cued Lucy in to the fact that he was joking and she reacted with a faint giggle.

The island was rich in soil and the vines grew thickly over dozens and dozens of untouched gray boulders. The sand-line stopped barely a foot or so inwards leading around to rose-coloured cliffs; making it seem more like a tropic jungle than a simple island off the coast of nowhere.

Most of the crew had stayed behind on the boat but Caspian, Winks, Edmund, Eustace, Lucy, and Ramandu's daughter were all in favor of exploring and saw all of this wonder for themselves.

Lucy thought she saw-for a split-second-a little monkey peering at her through the leaves of one of the large trees that formed the cool green canopy above them.

Of course it wouldn't be a talking monkey, she reminded herself when it vanished into a thicket as soon as it realized it had been spotted.

"I have to say this is rather nice." Eustace said, being good-natured now that he wasn't being rocked on wooden decks day and night. "You wouldn't expect it to be so cool and breezy in a place like this but it is."

"It's only early morning." Caspian reminded him. "And we are under a canopy. It may get a bit worse later on."

"I suppose." Eustace agreed. "But is nice now."

Lucy looked up and noticed a place in the dark green shadows above them where tiny pink rose-buds were sporting almost unnaturally fast and then blooming and falling to the ground like showers of petals.

"It's so beautiful." Lucy said in a tone of awe-struck wonder.

Edmund glanced over at her. Her round cheeks flushed pink like the roses that fell all around her and a smile of pure delight was on her face; he wondered how anyone in their world could have thought her plain, calling his sister the beautiful one. Lucy was so lovely at moments like this, when she smiled unexpectedly for sheer pleasure. He wondered if she knew how deep his admiration of her went and at times thought quite sadly that she did not. For how could he tell her? What words could really explain it? None that he had ever learned. It would take a whole new language with words of perfectly pure meanings just to begin to explain.

"Yes," Edmund finally managed to stammer. "Beautiful."

Winks choked back a laugh and elbowed Eustace who mouthed, "I know." raising his eyebrows as if to say, "Isn't it funny?"

They walked on until they reached the end of the canopy and found themselves in a muggy fog and almost unholy heat. They stopped trying to wipe the sweat off of their foreheads and struggled to ignore the sting it gave their eyes when the beads of it hit their pupils.

"Oh, look!" Caspian's wife cried out happily. "A body of water!"

"At last!" Eustace practically bawled. "Anything to get out of this heat!"

"A swim would be nice." Lucy agreed hoarsely, her throat sort of dry.

Edmund nodded in agreement. "How near to it are we?" He called over to Caspian.

"Only a few feet. Look, we're coming near it now." He announced happily.

They were all prepared to dive in clothes on and everything when Lucy blurted out, "I say, what's that thing?" And pointed to something in the center of the water pool.

The others all looked to see what she was talking about. There among the coral-coloured bottom, was something that looked like a large gold statue of a nobleman.

"Oh!" Caspian gasped. "Gold, I think."

"Can we get it out?" Eustace wondered aloud.

"It'll be too heavy if it's real gold." Winks decided.

"Couldn't we dive for it?" Ramandu's daughter wanted to know. "I mean if a bunch of us were to lift it at once..."

"Might be too deep." Edmund said, reaching for a the hunting spear he'd brought along with him as a sort of walking-stick. "I'll test it." Carefully, he dipped it into the water.

"I don't think it's gold after all, Ed." Lucy told him, coming a little closer, pointing to the spear in the water. "Your spear is the same colour now; it must be the lighting."

Suddenly Edmund grunted and dropped the spear into the water making a slight splash, a few drops from which landed on one of his boots and on the side of Lucy's dress.

"King Edmund, why did you drop it?" Caspian asked.

"It got so heavy I-" He looked down at his boots and then over at the place where the water had hit Lucy's dress. "Oh dear Aslan! Get back all of you! Don't go any closer to the water."

"Why not?" Eustace nearly whined.

"Look!" He lifted the side of Lucy's dress to show them. "It's gold. The water it-"

"Turns things into gold; real gold!" Winks exclaimed.

"The king who owned this island would be the richest man to ever live." Caspian realized, looking for a frightening moment that made Lucy want to shiver and vomit, not unlike his uncle Miraz.

"I think we should go." She said quickly.

No one paid any attention to her now.

"No one is to breathe a word of this on threat of their life." Caspian ordered.

"Hey, who are you bossing?" Edmund demanded. "I'm not your subject. You are king under the former high king, Peter. And I used to rule with him in the golden age."

"So it's come to that, has it?" Caspian said rather nastily.

"Oh hush." Edmund blurted out absent-mindedly.

"Don't tell me what to do!" Caspian hissed at him.

"I'm allowed to do what I want." Edmund insisted rather childishly.

Caspian's hand went to the hilt of his sword. Edmund's hand went to his own sword.

Eustace, Winks, and Ramandu's daughter stood there, doing nothing to calm either of the angry kings down, much to Lucy's deep annoyance. She watched in complete disgust as a full-blown sword fight almost resulted.

"Ooh!" Lucy finally exploded, stamping her foot. "Stop it, both of you! That's the worst of doing anything with boys! You're all a bunch of no-good, sword-swinging, idiots! I'm going back to the boat; if you ask me, this should be called, 'death water island' and neither of you greedy beasts should have it." with that she tossed her head and walked back through the canopy with her head held high.

"Lucy, wait!" Edmund said, realizing how horrible he must have seemed to her. He put his sword back in its place and went after her.

She didn't slow down. She kept walking firm and determinedly.

"Lucy, I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me." Edmund said breathlessly, struggling to keep up with her.

"I don't like what I saw, Ed." Lucy said, looking-much to Edmund's dismay-like she had been betrayed. "I didn't know you were like that. I thought you were different."

"I am, I mean, look here-" Edmund stammered. trying and failing to say the right thing.

"Forget it." Lucy turned around and started walking away again.

"Please, Lucy." Edmund raced ahead and jumped in front of her. "I don't care about the gold, it was stupid of me."

"Maybe I just don't believe you." Lucy whispered, tears starting to form in her eyes.

"I'm not perfect, Lu." Edmund told her. "I made a mistake. Please, try to understand."

"You aren't like that?" Lucy whispered weakly.

"You know I'm not." Edmund said, reaching for her hands.

She didn't pull away. "I do, it's just-"

"Look at me, it's alright." Edmund whispered, pulling her closer. "I agree with you, let's call it 'death water' and whomever wants it can have it."

Lucy felt flushed and bewildered all of a sudden. "There's something wrong with this place."

"Tell me about it." Edmund agreed, pulling her closer still.

"Ed?" Lucy realized he was looking at her sort of funny.

"Oh my." He breathed slowly, letting a deep realization that he might have known all along put itself into words at last. "Lucy, I love you."

AN: Please review!