The boy was more rattled than anyone else.
His intention wasn’t to pull the sword
from the stone but to get a sword for his brother,
who needed one for a match on New Year’s Day.
He knew nothing of his small, transformative power:
he could pull out the sword and replace it
again and again. No one else could.
So by accident or destiny, he had to be king.
The whole world turned to him, edgy.
He was big-hearted but unprepared.
Lords gathered against him, thousands of knights,
waves he had to withstand in battle after battle.
Even then, the ground he stood on shifted.
Especially when it came to love, he faltered,
unwittingly, taking his sister and losing his wife.
So went the empty dream of Camelot.
The king had a notion early on.
He saw a beast in the forest, a monstrous mix
of snake and leopard, odd animal parts,
raising a riot of howls from inside its belly.
It sounded to the king like unborn hounds questing
after the beast who carried them yet.
That was his vision of tragedy for the realm,
destined to appall by tearing itself down.
It got away from him, the beast, the kingdom,
all of it. Perhaps it was destiny.
An accidental monarch wouldn’t have had
such connection, such terrible insight.
A pretender would have had other things
in mind like whatever small, transformative power
he had for sleight of hand, misdirection—
for show—to grab the kingdom for his own purpose.
Such an accidental king would have
been the beast himself, nurturing calamity,
breeding blind hunger that consumes everything.
There’d be no limits. There’d be no saving grace.
There’d be nothing to put in the kingdom’s place
but hunger with unopen eyes.
Copyright © 2025 by Sam S. Dodd