The Eyes of the Dragon - Stephen King [4]
Undoubtedly it would, but by the time things degenerated to the food-throwing stage, she and Peter would long since have retired. What concerned Sasha was that attitude of who cares. She thought it was the worst idea anyone could ever plant in the head of a little boy destined to be King.
So Sasha instructed Peter carefully, and she observed him carefully on the night of the banquet. And later, as-he lay sleepy in his bed, she talked to him.
Because she was a good mother, she first complimented him lovingly on his behavior and manners-and this was right, because for the most part they had been exemplary. But she knew that no one would correct him where he went wrong unless she did it herself, and she knew she must do it now, in these few years when he idolized her. So when she was finished complimenting him, she said:
"You did one thing wrong, Pete, and I never want to see you do it again."
Peter lay in his bed, his dark blue eyes looking at her solemnly. "What was that, Mother?"
"You didn't use your napkin," said she. "You left it folded by your plate, and it made me sorry to see it. You ate the roast chicken with your fingers, and that was fine, because that is how men do it. But when you put the chicken down again, you wiped your fingers on your shirt, and that is not right."
"But Father and Mr. Flagg and the other nobles "
"Bother Flagg, and bother all the nobles in Delain!" she cried with such force that Peter cringed back in his bed a little. He was afraid and ashamed for having made those roses bloom in her cheeks. "What your father does is right, for he is the King, and what you do when you are King will always be right. But Flagg is not King, no matter how much he would like to be, and the nobles are not Kings, and you are not King yet, but only a little boy who forgot his manners."
She saw he was afraid, and smiled. She laid her hand on his brow.
"Be calm, Peter," she said. "It is a small thing, but still important because you'll be King in your own time. Now run and fetch your slate."
"But it's bedtime-"
"Bother bedtime, too. Bedtime can wait. Bring your slate."
Peter ran for his slate.
Sasha took the chalk tied to the side and carefully printed three letters. "Can you read this word, Peter?"
Peter nodded. There were only a few words that he could read, although he knew most of the Great Letters. This happened to be one of the words. "It says con."
Yes that's right. Now write it backward and see what you fin `';:.. Backward a: Peter said doubtfully.
"Yes, that's right. Ť
Peter did so, his letters staggering childishly across the slate below his mother's neat printing. He was astounded to find another of the few words he could read.
DOG! Mamma! It says DOG!"
"Yes. It says dog." The sadness in her voice quenched Peter's excitement at once. His mother pointed from GOD to DOG. "These are the two natures of man," she said. "Never forget them, because someday you will be King and Kings grow to be great and tall-as great and tall as dragons in their ninth moltings."
"Father isn't great and tall," objected Peter. Roland was, in fact, short and rather bowlegged. Also, he carried a great belly in front of him from all the beer and mead he had consumed.
Sasha smiled.
"He is, though. Kings grow invisibly, Peter, and it happens all at once, as soon as they grasp the scepter and the crown is put on their heads in the Plaza of the Needle!"
"They do?" Peter's eyes grew large and round. He thought that the subject had wandered far from his failure to use his napkin at the banquet, but he was not sorry to see such an embarrassing topic lost in favor of this tremendously interesting one. Besides, he had already resolved that he would never forget to use his napkin again-if it was important