John Colburn | 19
herbalist, and the midwife. No one could extinguish the flame. Finally, out of desperation, the river man was called.
“What can we do?” the king asked. “I will give you one half of my kingdom if you can extinguish the flames shooting from my head.”
“One half,” said the river man, and the king agreed. So the river man in his black cloak, who claimed he knew something about eternal flames, took the king by the arm and led him out of the castle.
They walked toward the river. The night grew strange to the king. The river did not look its usual self. It seemed to stretch boundlessly on.
A boat rocked halfway up the shore, bow on land and stern moving gently in the water. The river man instructed the king to climb into the boat.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked.
“Yes, I guess so,” the king said, surprising himself. The river man pushed off with barely a sound.
The king looked back and saw his queen and all the members of his court waving from the shore. They began talking to each other excitedly. It seemed they were having a party to celebrate his crossing. The king began to feel lonely, overcome, adrift. A great regret crept into his body as if coloring it gray.
The river man said, “We have to put the flame back where it came from,” and this made sense to the king.
“Where did it come from?” he asked.
The river man smiled and pointed ahead, into the darkness, lit now by the king’s flaming head. “The other side of the river,” he said.
“I’ve heard of that,” said the king.
The river man smiled. Everyone said that.
The king waved back to his court from the far shore, but they appeared not to notice him. They threw back their heads, and their laughter carried across the water. Once again he had failed to capture their imaginations.