by Rocco LoBosco
Once upon a time a set of male triplets was born to the king and queen of Babylon, a thriving little kingdom in a far away land. “Oh, what great joy is mine today!” cried the king when he learned of the multiple births. “Three sons in one harvest!” Now my kingdom will surely flourish and my name will he heard through every surrounding kingdom!”
The first son out of the womb grew up to be a great banker, the second a renowned psychologist, but the third, having little worldly ambition, grew to be a sore disappointment to his father. The queen, wiser than her husband in many ways, favored this third son who’d sit about chewing blades of grass and gazing at the sky for unnaturally long periods of time. She encouraged him early in his life to read books and ponder the great questions: Where do I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going?
When they young prince felt energetic he’d set off to visit one of the four water towers that stood on the borders of Babylon. In his teen years he liked each tower about the same, but as he grew older he favored the north tower for it was the highest. His attraction to these towers seemed puzzling, even to him, but he loved to gaze at their immense gleaming beauty; often he wished he could live on top of such a tower and not in a fancy palace.
“What kind of fool have I seeded!” shouted the king to his strange son one day, “who in his gaudy dreaming disgraces himself and his father, even casting a shadows over the twin glories of his brothers? Tell me, misty eyed dolt, what commission shall I grant you that you may still bring some honor to your royal family?”
Whit downcast eyes the young prince humbly requested that his father make him the caretaker of the four towers. “It’s a large task, Father. The plumbing must be maintained, the water pressures checked every fourth day, the beacons changed periodically, and the towers painted every seven years, I’d like very much to attempt it.”
Now for an ordinary peasant such a job would have been highly prestigious, but for a prince it was almost unthinkable.
“You lazy zero!” the king shouted. “May your eyes cloud with fog and your ears ring with a thousand bells!”
Nevertheless the prince persisted in his request and the queen applied pressure to her husband to grant it and so the king finally relented, though he turned his back to his son afterward, refusing even the smallest favor or courtesy.
The young prince enjoyed his job as keeper of the four towers. His favorite, the north tower, offered the finest view. From its apex he could look down on the undulating green hills, the emerald treetops and the brightly painted houses that peeked out from the greenery south, east and west of the tower. North of the tower lay the roiling sea, a vast panorama of motion and change, a turbulent stirrer of his dreams.
When his mind become noisy with his solitary pursuit of knowledge, when he become depressed with struggling, he’d set off for the north tower. Four miles away from it, he’d already begin feeling better. It loomed up over the trees, brilliant, gigantic, shining like some chrome plated beast, its hug lantern winking at the sky. Then the long thousand foot climb up the ladder was as much joy as work because the view from the top conquered what was left of his agitation and sorrow. Sometimes he’d be overwhelmed with joy and he’d shout from the tower top, “It’s true what Mother says! Our roots are in the sky.”
One night the young prince read an article by a prominent physicist who specialized in Quantum Theory and subscribed to the alternate worlds viewpoint. The article boggled the prince’s mind and deeply disturbed him. The possibility that any number of him could be living alternate lives in co-existing dimensions was hard enough to consider; but the idea that every life he could have ever lived was actually being lived by his other-worldly counterparts was simply unbearable. And to further confound his misery he barely understood much of the article though it had been watered down for the layman and the prince had read it four times!
He set off for the north tower immediately.
That night the climb seemed terribly difficult. When he reached the last rung of the ladder and peeked over the top, he nearly fell back into the night, for near the center of the large circular roof squatted a hunchbacked hag, her back to the half-moon, her face going light and dark with the blinking tower beacon.
“Come up my boy, hurry now. I won’t hurt you.”
Climbing on to the roof, the prince cautiously approached the old woman, stopping a few feet away from her. “H-How did you come to be here? he asked “It’s such a long climb and you’re –“
“Now, now, I do hope you left your stupidity home tonight because I’ve come here especially for you and I’ll answer any three questions you may care to ask. Pray let that not be one of them.”
W ell, if alternate worlds are possible, thought the prince, so was this. “Well then, old woman, tell me – is there a God?”
“Such an obvious and corrupt question!” I’ve been asked it countless times. And there are seven answers, none of them truly correct! Why not ask instead, ‘Is there an immortal form of what I imagine myself to be and does it think as I do?’ Don’t be a fool with your next question!”
“Alright,” he stammered, “Tell me instead, what should I do while I’m here? My father says I have no ambition and this seems true enough. At times I feel so paralyzed by uncertainty.”
“Ha! You’re just like the others! ” the old woman shouted, charging him and seizing him with the strength of a giant. Holding him by his left ankle she dangled him over the edge of the tower and laughed when he urinated in his pants.
“A question for you, fool. What is it you want most right now?”
“FOR YOU NOT TO LET GO! I DON’T WANT TO DIE! PUT ME DOWN!”
She stood the prince upright and patted his cheek. “That’s right, my boy, you want to live. That’s good. And when your desire to know what you are to do while you are here is half as strong as was your desire to live but a moment ago, you will be twice as near to your answer. What’s your third question?”
“Uh, perhaps we could leave off for now?” the prince begged, “I’d rather not ask my last question right now. I’d like to think about it.”
“Very well. But try to give the third question more than mere thought. I’ll return another time to hear it.”
Saying that, the old hag leapt off the tower, spinning against the background of the half-moon momentarily, before becoming a sleek shadow melting into the darkness below.
Twelve months passed and during this time the prince would have become obsessed with the idea of his third question had not three unfortunate and distracting events befallen his family. His father became ill, his brother the banker went bankrupt, and his brother the psychologist experienced several psychotic breaks with paranoid delusions. Between tending the towers and his suffering family, he had little time to get caught up with his third question. His leisure moments, few as they were, he spent on the north tower, reading, enjoying the view and emptying himself in meditation.
In the last year the prince had changed; his meeting with the old woman, his family hardships, and his conscious solitude on the north tower had nurtured a secret strength inside. One afternoon he was on the north tower replacing a bad beacon when the old woman’s voice came from behind him, startling him so badly he nearly stumbled off the roof.
“Damn, old witch, must you frighten me like that?”
She laughed, “Well, young prince, tell me now or never, what is your third question?”
“To tell you the truth, I haven’t given it as much consideration as I would have liked to. There were some questions that came and went …nothing profound really …though there is something you could tell me, I suppose. How may I better help my brothers?”
She chuckled softly and her gaze swept the tower view as she spoke. “This is truly a wonderful tower. So high, nearly in the clouds. To look down from such a height is to feel powerful and vulnerable at once. Standing in the sky, you are brought closer to something in yourself you cannot name. Yes? So you love towers, especially this north one. Perhaps you can teach your brothers something about towers.”
The old woman approached him, kissed him on the cheek, turned into a beautiful raven and flew away.
The prince left the north tower in a state of illumination. As the days passed he was gradually able to coax his brothers to the tower and assist their recovery. Eventually the banker would set up a highly successful economic recovery program for the kingdom’s poor; the psychologist would become a true healer of minds and the prince would marry a princess from a neighboring kingdom. After his mother’s death the prince and his wife would, with great caution and some reluctance, assume the throne.
The old king had died holding the hand of his third son.
end