King of Prussia, by Kristy

There were many kings of Prussia. Most were named either William or Frederick. Most did things to increase their land holdings and their power. Then there was Frederick William IV, who reigned from 1840 to 1861. Amidst the revolutions that occurred during his reign, he was offered the chance to become Emperor of the Germans. He turned it down.

This story is not about any King of Prussia, not even Frederick William IV. It is about a woman who once thought about Frederick William IV and wondered why he had not decided to become Emperor. There could be many motives for a decision like this. Maybe he had known it would not be in his best interest. Maybe he thought it was silly. Maybe he wanted less power instead of more, although this seemed unlikely. The woman tried to think of other reasons why he might have said no. She did not want to be so cynical, but she was.

Then she moved into the mountains. This is where the story begins.

There once was a woman living in a cave high up in the mountains. She wanted to love everyone in the whole world because it was the right thing to do. She thought that the best way to do this was to live far away from the people in the town below. When she had lived in town, sometimes the traffic made her angry. Sometimes people stole from her. Sometimes she saw people being mean to other people. All of these things made her feel sad, angry, and hopeless. When she lived in the cave on the mountainside, she did not feel sad, angry, or hopeless.

It was beautiful up on the mountain. The clouds seemed to touch her outstretched fingertips. At night each star shone as brightly as a lamp. During storms, and after them, the sky turned amazing colors. Birds sang in the few mountainside trees. Small, bright, sturdy flowers covered the land outside her cave.

The woman was often cold inside the cave, but she had a fireplace and a handmade woolen blanket to warm her.

Sometimes, especially when the sky turned colors, the woman felt exhilarated. Other times she felt lonely. As the years passed, she felt bored most of all. She couldn’t see any people from the mountain or hear them or smell them and it was hard to even imagine them. But if she closed her eyes and thought about it really hard, she could feel love toward all the people in the world.

Then the woman became an old woman. She remembered how she used to feel when she lived in town. It was hard to keep her temper in town. It was hard to like people in town, let alone love them. The old woman closed her eyes and tried very hard to imagine the people down below so she could love them. She could not imagine them at all. She could not remember how they looked or sounded or smelled. She could not love them. She did not even know them anymore.

The old woman had learned just enough (or forgotten just enough) while living on the mountain to know that she must go down to the town and live there again.

‘After all,’ she thought, ‘I cannot love them from up here anymore.’

So the old woman moved down to the town. No one offered to help her move her few things into her new home. No one came over to say hello. The traffic was worse than ever. She was almost afraid to go outside. There was a cloud of smog around the town and in the hot weather there were unpleasant smells.

The woman looked out her window and saw two boys in the street. One was big and one was small. The small boy was carrying a loaf of fresh-baked bread and smiling. The big boy pushed the small boy until he fell down, crying, and then the big boy took the small boy’s bread and ran away. The old woman felt angry. She wished the big boy were not in town at all. For a minute she thought about ways to make the big boy unhappy. She thought so hard about it that she forgot to love any person, let alone all the people in the world. Then she saw the small boy get up and walk down the street.

She thought, ‘He wanted his bread. I have some bread on my table.’

The old woman took her bread and walked outside. The smells were bad and the traffic outside her door was bad, but she forgot all about those things trying to catch up with the small boy.

Right before she caught up to him, she saw the big boy lying in the road up ahead. He had tripped and fallen. The bread lay on the road beside him. As the old woman saw all this, the small boy ran up and stomped on the bread.

“Ha!” he said. “Now you can’t have it either!”

The big boy sat up. “Hey! I was bringing that to my sister!”

The small boy said, “That was my bread! I was going to eat it when I got home!”

The old woman stood between them. “That bread is gone,” she said. “But here is some more. You can each have half of this loaf.”

The boys took their halves from the old woman and ran away. She was surprised that they had not thanked her.

As she walked home, she saw the sun set in a haze of smog. The colors were brilliant. She could not understand why, but her heart felt light. She saw the front door to her house.

‘Maybe I will walk just a little further down the road and see what I find,’ she thought.

She passed her house. As she did, a warm feeling crept all over her. It felt familiar, though the old woman had almost forgotten it.

The feeling was love.