The Eyes of the Dragon

68

0n the eighteenth day of Thomas’s reign, the first napkin was on Peter’s breakfast tray when it was delivered in the morning. It was so large and the breakfast so small that it actually covered the meal completely. Peter smiled for the first time since he had come to this cold, high place. His cheeks and chin were shadowed with the beginnings of a beard which would grow full and long in these two drafty rooms, and he looked quite a desperate character… until he smiled. The smile lit his face with magical power, made it strong and radiant, a beacon to which one could imagine soldiers rallying in battle.

“Ben,” he muttered, picking the napkin up by one corner. His hand shook a bit. “I knew you’d do it. Thank you, my friend. Thank you.”

The first thing Peter did with his first napkin was to wipe away the tears that now ran freely down his cheeks.

The peephole in the stout wooden door popped open. Two Lesser Warders appeared again like the two heads of Flagg’s parrot, packed into the tiny space cheek to scruffy cheek.

“Hope that baby won’t forget to wipe his chinny-chin!” one cried in a cracked, warbling voice.

“Hope that baby won’t forget to wipe the eggy off his shirty!” the other cried, and then both screamed with derisive laughter. But Peter did not look at them, and his smile did not fade.

The warders saw that smile and made no more jokes. There was something about it which forbade joking.

Eventually they closed the peephole and left Peter alone.

A napkin came with his lunch that day.

With his dinner that night.

The napkins came to Peter in his lonely cell in the sky for the next five years.