So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. Well, exactly the same thing happened again.
So I scratched and tore again and this under skin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe. Oh, that’s all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.īut just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it.
And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. Oh, of course, thought I, that’s what the lion means. I was just going to say that I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Part 2 from The Voyage of the Dawntreader:īut the lion told me I must undress first. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on - and threw me into the water. And there was I smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. “Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. “I know exactly what you mean,” said Edmund. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.” You know - if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. The only thing that made me able to bear it was jut the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. “The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.
So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. “Then the lion said - but I don’t know if it spoke - You will have to let me undress you.
Part 3 from The Voyage of the Dawntreader: