This chapter is a bit of a filler... and it's a bit silly, sorry! But still...

Chapter Five: Eustace Wakes Up

~o*o~

Two weeks went by. Those last days of September suddenly decided to be warm and beautiful and Lucy began to wonder if she had actually dreamt the whole thing. They played cricket, explored the woods, went swimming in the lake and the professor found them an old rowboat; with it, they explored the shore of the lake, imagining they were explorers on a distant, unknown coast.

"I wonder if there are any cannibals?" Lucy had wondered.

Then another day of rain came, and the five children were cooped up in the house again, listening to the Andrews Sisters intermixed with news about the German Pocket Battleship Admiral Graf Spee and how it was on a hunting spree in the Atlantic. Poland had finally fallen and the Axis powers were turning to inspect new prey. Russia invaded Latvian air space and Germany was beginning to think about Belgium. British troops were moving in to intercept.

"Why can't we come up with something interesting to do?" Eustace mumbled.

"Like what?" Peter asked.

"What about my insect book?" Eustace suggested. "That's pretty interesting."

Lucy turned slightly green.

"Do you think we will have rain tomorrow, too?" Susan asked, changing subject.

~o*o~

"I think we have rain today," Lucy stood in her pajamas, looking dismally out the window as the rain came pouring down.

"Oh," Susan said, "I hope it won't be a day like yesterday."

~o*o~

"Oh Edmund, stir a leg…"

Edmund squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to hear Peter's persistent voice. "Wake me up in the morning Pete." Edmund murmured.

"It is morning Ed!" Peter said, "The Nile is not a river in Egypt."

Edmund sat bolt upright, "of course it is!"

"You are denied that its daytime, so I'm going to deny that the Nile is a river in Egypt." Peter reasoned.

"That's pathetic, Peter," Edmund mumbled, "You don't know any logic."

That's when Edmund saw the window.

"Oh it would be raining!" he moaned. "What are we going to do today? not what we did yesterday I hope."

"Well we could explore the house, we haven't gotten to do that yet," Peter suggested. "But put on your clothes, we still have to wake up Eustace."

~o*o~

Peter and Edmund stood one on either side of Eustace's bed.

"How are we going to go about this?" Edmund asked, pulling the blankets off of Eustace, who curled up into a ball. "Just like a grub."

"Well we can each take an end, stick him in the bathtub and run cold water on his feet," Peter said, "one…two…three... heave!"

They lifted Eustace and the latter swung between them, still fast asleep.

"He's awfully heavy," Edmund gasped, "I'm not sure if I can hold him."

"Of course you can!" Peter called encouragement and his younger brother. "A little more to the left Ed."

~o*o~

"What's all the noise in the boys room?" Susan asked as she finished braiding Lucy's hair in two stubby little braids.

"I don't know," Lucy said, "do you think it has something to do with the boys?"

"I know it has something to do with the boys," Susan said grimly.

Both girls went to the door, opened it and looked out in the hallway just in time to see the boys come down the hallway with Eustace slung between them.

"Oh Peter! what have you done?" Susan cried, catching Eustace's feet just as Edmund dropped them.

"We are just waking him up," Peter explained.

"I'll say!" Susan exclaimed.

"We were just going to stick him in the bathtub and run cold water over his feet," Peter said, "nothing drastic."

Susan snorted.

Lucy laughed.

They reached the bathroom and carefully lowered Eustace into the tub.

"Is he still sleeping?" Lucy asked.

"Yes," Edmund said, "snoring too."

"Jolly loudly," Peter said, "now you'll bunch get out of here, then I'll turn the water on and run for it."

Peter waited for them to get out the hallway before he turned the water on. No one ran as fast as Peter did at that moment, but Eustace's shriek was well worth the effort.

As soon as Eustace was awake enough to figure out what happened his face turned very red and he bolted out of the bathtub. He raced into the hallway and nearly collided with Edmund and Peter coming out of the boys' room.

"There are only four people in this house who could've done that," Eustace's voice shook with emotion, "and there are only two that are big enough!"

Giggles emitted from the cracked door of the girls room. Eustace spun around and the door slammed shut.

"You're going to pay, Peter Pevensie," Eustace's voice was very low, then he turned around with a flourish that he tried to make impressive and stormed into the boys' room, slamming the door hard behind him.