The King Who Let Go

"You sure about this, Your Majesty?"

King Aldric looked up from his breakfast - cold porridge once again, nobody went to the trouble of heating it any more - and nodded at his councillor. "Yeah, Garrett. I'm sure."

The old man tapped his foot from one position to another. Been performing that same fidgety dance for thirty years now. "But the prophecy explicitly says that—"

"Watch it, you little whippersnapper. Some kid's gonna push me off my throne. I heard you the first time." Aldric pushed the bowl off the table and leaned back in his chair. "Hell, I heard you the second and third time as well."

Reality, however, was that when the Oracle handed her miniature fortune cookie message to Aldric three months earlier, his response had been the usual king playbook. Gather up all baby boys born during that week. Maybe broaden the search to encompass girls just in case. Send the soldiers off, make some mothers cry, put a few more frightening visions into his repertoire.

But then he'd return home that night and stood in front of the mirror. The gray creeping into his beard, the creases around his eyes that hadn't been there five years ago. The way his crown felt a little heavier each morning.

"Garrett, you have children?"

"Three sons, sire. You know this."

"Yes. And if someone approached you and informed you one of them would be great, what would you do?"

Garrett blinked. "I. I think I'd be proud, Your Majesty."

"Exactly." Aldric stood up, knees protesting like they did these days. "So why am I scared of some kid who's clearly good enough to beat me on a level playing field?"

The advisor's jaw dropped and then snapped shut and dropped open again. Made Aldric remind him of a fish. "Because. because you're the king?"

"And maybe I won't be for ever. Maybe that's all right."

Aldric wasn't really stupid. He'd had the histories read to him - well, had them read to him anyway, but same thing. Every king who'd ever tried to cheat fate had ended up making it harder for him. Kill the wrong baby, the right one lives with a bad grudge. Lock yourself in a tower, miss the guy going up the side of the wall. It was like. what did his daughter used to say. reverse psychology, but with the universe.

His daughter. Mira would be twenty-three years old now if she hadn't gotten sick. Would've been a wonderful queen.

"Sir?" Garrett still hung around, looking lost.

"Tell you what," said Aldric, heading for the window. "Instead of wasting time looking for some mysterious kid, why don't we simply focus on not providing them with a reason to desire my position?"

"I don't get it."

Aldric gestured out over the landscape below. His kingdom - and yes, it remained his for the time being - stretched out before him under gray morning sky. Irrigated fields that might be more productive. Roads that needed fixing. Citizens who deserved better than a king who worried about prophecies.

"Perhaps the boy's supposed to defeat me because I'll have earned it. Perhaps. perhaps I have to prove the right to continue wearing this crown, rather than sit here waiting for someone to take it away."

Garrett did that fishy face for the second time. "Your Majesty, if I may, that's not the way kingdoms are run."

"Yeah? Perhaps then it's time they should."

During the next several months, Aldric did something no one was expecting, even him. He started to really rule. Not just sign papers and sit in court twice a week, but get out. Go to farms, talk to merchants, hear complaints that had been piling up in stacks on his desk for years.

The peculiar thing was, people were. dismayed by it. As though they'd grown so used to some distant king that when he came along asking after yields, it seemed almost wrong.

"Sire," Elena, a baker in the southern ward, replied, "you genuinely don't need to worry about the price of flour."

"Course I do. You can't bake bread without flour, people can't eat without bread. Seems right important to me."

She stared at him as if he had grown a second head. "But you're the king."

"Yeah, and you're my subject. Your problems are my problems."

It wasn't this grand transformation or anything. Aldric didn't suddenly turn into this perfect ruler who solved all his problems with wisdom and understanding. He still lost his cool every now and then, still made decisions that inevitably went wrong, still had days when the crown became too heavy and he wished he could throw it out the window.

But he tried. For the first time in decades.

And on the way, he'd caught something humorous. He'd stopped glancing over his shoulder for the child prophesied. Not because he'd forgotten the prediction - far from it - but because he'd gotten too busy to care.

"Garrett," he said one night, a year or so after the Oracle's call. They were sort of reviewing tax records, and that was as exciting as it really is, but it had to be done.

"Yes, sire?"

"You believe the kid is out there somewhere? The one from the prophecy?"

Garrett looked up from his book. "Truly? No idea. Could be anyone. Could be the kid who delivers your lunch - what's his name, Tobias? Could be the blacksmith's daughter. Could be some infant who won't even be able to walk for another year."

"Annoys you? Not knowing?"

"Used to." Garrett set down his quill. "But I saw you last year. I do not know, sire. Maybe it does not concern them. Maybe what concerns me is what kind of kingdom they will have."

Aldric nodded purposefully. He'd been pondering exactly that.

Two years later, when fifteen-year-old Tobias - aha, turned out to be the lunchboy after all - stood in the throne room with a letter from the neighboring kingdom's army behind him and a pretty reasonable proposition that Aldric step down, the old king was smiling.

"You know," Aldric replied, looking at the boy who'd been bringing him lunch for three years, "I always wondered what you were thinking when you brought those deliveries."

Tobias fidgeted. He was trying to sound authoritative, but his voice still broke when he talked. "I was. I was thinking about how things could be different. Better."

"Better how?"

"More. equitable, I suppose? I mean, why should some people have everything and others nothing?"

Aldric gave Garrett a glance, who was again trying to make his fish face. "That is an excellent question. What's your answer?"

"They shouldn't. Nobody should starve while others eat. Nobody should freeze while others have warm castles."

"And you believe you can alter that?"

Tobias straightened. "I believe I must attempt it."

Aldric slowly rose - his knees were actually terrible now - and stepped down from the throne. The soldiers stiffened, but he wasn't heading for a sword. He was heading for his crown.

"Well then," he said, holding it out to the boy, "I suppose you'd best get started."

Tobias stared at the crown like it might bite him. "Just. just like that?"

"Like that. Though." Aldric paused. "One piece of advice?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Don't get so complacent you forget to hear the people who led you here. Power makes you forget why you even made it a point to start with."

Tobias took the crown with shaking hands. It was too big for his head - they would have to get it resized - but somehow it didn't feel so very wrong on him.

"What are you going to do now?" the boy asked.

Aldric shrugged. "Think I'll travel. See the kingdom from street level. Maybe write a book about it. 'How to Lose Your Throne and Actually Feel Good About It.'"

Garrett cleared his throat. "Your Majesty - I mean, Your Former Majesty - what of the prophecy?"

Aldric walked towards the door, his heart lighter than it had been in years. "What of it? Kid was supposed to take my throne, and he did. Prophecy fulfilled. Everyone's happy."

"But don't you feel. defeated?"

Aldric turned back to Tobias, still holding the crown as if it would disappear if he let it out of his eyes.

"Garrett, look at him. See defeat there?"

The old counselor blinked at their new king - their very young, very nervous, very determined new king.

"No," he growled. "I see hope."

"Exactly. Sometimes the wisest thing a king can do is know when to stop being a king."

And thus, Aldric left his throne room for the last time, whistling a song that his daughter used to sing. Behind him, Tobias was already asking Garrett about the kingdom's finances.

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