LK9Star

It was a cold deadly night. The songs of decay crept out of the dead man’s grave. And the king was silent in his chambers. Beside him lay his dead wife unable to sing her favourite song one more time. It was the king’s fate that killed his most beloved wife. He should not have fallen for her in the first place he thought. He wanted to forbid the dead men singing their songs. But only in death could he rule them, he thought. He remembered those words of the unnamed monk by the river ‘for he who might want power, may never crave love and for he may want love may never crave power.’ He remembered he told the monk that he wanted power and never the other. The monk blessed him with the life of power.

The uncrowned king was 13 that day.

The next day the first brother did not want to rule, the second brother was considered unfit for ruling and the third brother had fallen ill. And thus, he, the 13-year-old boy has been crowned the king. The king went in search of the monk who blessed him in the path of power after a month. The monk was sitting on the same spot near the river. The king offered him with lavish foods and drinks as he knew monks did not believe in worldly pleasures. But this too was something the monk could not accept. The young king now truly believed that the monk was not lying about his identity.

Then he asked the question the monk by the river wanted the young boy to ask. “What should I offer you instead?I really want to thank you for your blessings.”

In reply, the monk said “There will be a day you will crave love and that day my blessings will stop you from walking the wrong path. Then you should deliver the one who wronged you here by the river. I might not be here, but my spirit will be waiting. Then will be your debt paid.”

The King came to an agreement with the mysterious monk by the river.

He never realized it back then but realizes it today after he found love. The one who deviated him from the path of power was no enemy but his beloved wife, and thus she had her life taken by the blessing of the king himself. A blessing that put him in the shoes of the absolute path to power. It killed the ones who even for once made the king believe that the path to power is not everything in life.

And now it has taken the life of his beloved queen. And there was no guarantee that it would not take away the life of the other queens if he married again. It was no blessing at all it was a curse, curse in disguise.

In search of the monk by the river, the king went again, only to find his spirit. He could no longer give blessings, only waiting for the long-awaited gift he was promised. Devastated, the king offered the body of his wife to the spirit to keep his old promise as the loss of hope made him run out of wits. The spirit took the body as an offering and jumped into the river.

The king returned to the castle and told the story to his most trusted men for advice. And the trusted men called for a wiser man. The wise man was old and seemed to know about spirits and there was a rumour that he even saw spirits. The old man revealed that “There are old tales of river demon who sit by the river and eat raw fish by possessing the body of another. But the body grows old and becomes unable to haunt fishes. So, they give up the body of the old and find a new host.”

The king dismissed his tale to be utter nonsense and went to his royal duties.

A few years later, in a far-off land, on the bank of a river sat a lady so young and beautiful, catching fish and repenting nothing. Visitors from the King’s palace say she looked like the first wife of the king. Such striking features! But they all know the queen was dead and did not disturb the lady by the river.