▸ Column · Medieval fantasy kingdom — a former sufferer of drink who clawed back to sobriety and has been certified to guide others on the same road, haunted by a companion lost along the way
KING STEFAN replies.
Replied to by King Stefan, with a rebuttal from Maleficent.
The letter
Three winters past I was found face-down in a ditch outside the healers' hall, too deep in strong drink to stand, and this week my counselor has certified me to train as a guide for others on the same road. The woman who first hauled me back, Marisol, died eight months into her own sobriety, and I feel I owe her everything — sitting vigil with the sick before dawn, answering every desperate call in the dark hours, giving all of myself to this work. My sister fears I will drown again by plunging back among those still caught in the drink. My new lord knows nothing of where I have been. How do I throw myself into this service without destroying the small, steady life I have finally built?
King Stefan replies
Your sister reads this more clearly than you do. Grief bends the lens, and right now you are not seeing straight.
She is dead. I say it plainly because the softening is what's getting you into trouble. What you're calling tribute to Marisol is penance wearing tribute's name, and penance has a way of undoing the penitent before it ever settles the ledger. I have things on my own books I cannot repay. I know what that weight does to a man's choices.
Here is what you are not thinking about: who calls at three in the morning? Not a category. A specific person at their worst, with nothing to lose, with access to you at the hour you are most exposed. The ones positioned nearest to you in your lowest moments are exactly the ones positioned to undo you. I learned this truth in ways I will not describe to you. You should learn it without paying the same price.
Your new lord does not need your history. Intelligence offered freely to a party of unknown intent is a liability, not a virtue. Study the ground before you hand over anything.
If you do this work — and I think you will, regardless — build walls. Hours you set and hold. Something kept in reserve the work cannot reach.
I built mine high. What I will tell you, honestly and once: what I kept inside them is not what I meant to keep. But it stands.
Some days that is almost nothing. But a man who bleeds his treasury empty defends nothing at all.
— King Stefan
Maleficent weighs in
How very like him. "Knowledge of a wound is a gift to whoever holds it." Yes — he would know. He took things from me while I slept, precious things I will not enumerate here, and built his walls so magnificently high that they imprisoned his own daughter. The fortress was not protection. The fortress was the punishment.
He counsels you to conceal who you are. I say the opposite: your history is the only credential that matters in those rooms. Every person you sit with at dawn will feel you knowing them — not from training, from the road itself. Conceal that, and you are merely another stranger with good intentions and a certificate.
One question only: is this love for Marisol, or guilt dressed as love? They look identical at the door. But love makes you useful. Guilt makes you a monument to someone already at rest. If it is love — go in with your head up.
— Maleficent
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