The King Who Never Came Back by Edward H. Arenson
T he old A frican drew his blanket tightly around him and sat down on a low wooden stool beside the smouldering fire. A little boy scuttled up with a load of wood. He added it to the fire and, stooping, blew on the coals until they burst into flame, sending a trail of sparks to dissolve among the stars. This seemed to be a signal to a number of other blanket-draped figures who drifted out from the surrounding huts and joined the old man and the boy around the now fiercely blazing fire. The night was chill and they sat quietly, grateful for warmth and rest after a day in the fields. A baboon barked from its bed in a tree by the lake and from a distance another answered. Low in the southern sky, Scorpio swung his jeweled tail as if to strike the offend ing hills that pushed their way into the pathway of his stars. It was story time around the African campfire. The old man began to speak, slowly and without animation at first. It was a story that he had told many times before. “ There was a time when all of our land 48
was troubled. We had no king.” He paused, then went on. “There was no king and there was no peace. Our campfires were never peaceful ones. Raiders came from the north and south, from the east and from the west. They plundered our villages and carried our people away captive. We had no leader and we had no strength. “ Then one day a man named Luhinda suddenly appeared. No one knew where he came from. Some say he came from the lands of the Nile; that he was an Egyptian. The only thing people knew for certain was that he was a kind man. He saw the distress of the people and set about to help. He travelled from place to place and talked to the raid-weary villagers. This wanderer from another land became our king. He built a small village by the lake to be his headquarters and from there he travelled to all parts of the land to further establish his kingdom. Village after village voluntarily joined with him and soon he had a large kingdom, many miles from THE KING'S BUSINESS
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