Mr. King sat down at the long table alone. That is how he did everything – alone. He did not need people; he had things. He thought things were enough (he was wrong). He had his Knights to take care of his needs and follow his orders. He was a “King” after all. But acting like a king had corrupted him. Once –a long time ago– he had ambitions of kindness, but greed and power had flooded him and washed all the kindness out of him. The power of getting what he wanted and having the Night Knights to control had not been good for Mr. King.
Soon he would have his treasure (but as you and I know, it was not his treasure because the treasure belongs to no one). As he thought about the treasure and all of his power, he felt something inside of him that was close to happiness, but it was not. He had replaced happiness with greed, and what he thought of as happiness was just a momentary relief from the insatiable selfishness that now lived inside him. He smiled a selfish smile, and began to greedily shovel food into his mouth.
The Night Knights led the two frightened (and yet very brave) children into the shadows of the stony castle. The main courtyard was dark, and they continued to walk on into the big hall that connected all the other rooms. The chandelier flickered light and a memory of happier times. They walked by the hallway that led to the dungeon that was holding Rob and Finn, and into the main dining room.
There, sitting at the head of a long table, was Mr. King. He was eating, and his fingers dripped with grease from the meal.
“Welcome children! I am so glad that you could join me. Sit, sit,” said Mr. King as he waved them closer with his oily hands.
Woggy and Sara walked into the room. The food smelled amazing, and they both remembered how hungry they were. They passed many chairs and finally ended up standing just a few seats away from Mr. King.
“We don’t have time to sit,” said Woggy. “Our friends are trapped in a dungeon, and we’d like to get them out.”
“Well, aren’t you a rude little boy,” sneered Mr. King. “We will go when I am ready. As you can see, I am still eating. Have a seat. I was considering sharing some of this food with you, but that doesn’t look like it's going to happen now, since you were so impolite.” He looked up at them, expecting them to apologize or beg, and when they did not, he turned his attention to the Night Knights. “Why don’t you two go do something useful and guard my prisoners?”
Woggy and Sara did not turn to look, but they heard the sound of clanging metal tromp out of the room. Mr. King sat in front of them, gnawing on a bone. They pulled out chairs a few seats away and sat down.
“Ha! You don’t have to sit so far away. I’m not going to bite,” he said with a face full of food. “How did you children come here to A-Dream? This is my domain.”
“We came by boat,” said Woggy flatly.
“Don’t toy with me, boy. It is not that easy. You have to come in just the right way to get here.”
“I guess we got lucky,” Woggy replied.
Mr. King stared at him, not sure what else to say.
“Can we see our friends now?” asked Sara.
“You’ll see your friends when I see my treasure,” said Mr. King.
Woggy thought about just giving Mr. King the key and seeing if he would trade the key for Rob and Finn, but he did not think that Mr. King would take that trade, and something told him that it was better to keep the key. Just in case. Just in case of what? He was not quite sure.
“If it’s your treasure, why do you need us to get to it?” Sara asked.
Mr. King glared at her. “This is no time to ask questions. It is my treasure. Do you want to see your friends or not?”
“Let’s go then,” said Woggy. “We are ready when you are.” He thought it was better not to mention that Mr. King had just said it was no time for questions, and then he, himself had asked a question.
Mr. King set the bone that he was chewing on down on his plate with a clank. He wiped his greasy fingers on the table cloth (which is a terrible thing to do). He stood up. The chair squealed as he pushed it back to stand.
“Let’s go,” said Mr. King. “But first I need to go check on my prisoners.”
They walked out of the large dining room, and down the darkened hallway that led to the dungeon. Standing in front of the dungeon door were the two Night Knights. The tarnished one stood at attention with his face forward. The shiny one was still working on polishing his smudged arm.
“Pay attention!” shouted Mr. King.
Both knights stood up a little straighter, and the shiny one dropped his polishing cloth.
“We are going to get my treasure,” said Mr. King. “Do not, under any circumstances, let these prisoners out without my permission.” The knights nodded their heads in affirmation.
Mr. King was a user. He loved things. And he always used people to do things for him so he could get the things he loved. The problem is that he got it backwards. Things are meant to be used and people are meant to be loved. This is something that many people mix up, and it is the reason for most of the bad things in the world.
“We will be back soon to let you out!” shouted Sara to the prison door. She wanted to give her friends, sitting in the darkness, a glimmer of hope.
“Lead the way,” said Mr. King with a motion of his hand.
Woggy took the lead, and led Mr. King and Sara back through all of the doors and winding corridors that led to the treasure room.
“You are going the wrong way,” said Mr. King when they turned away from the sign that said: ‘This way to extraordinary treasure.’ “If I don’t get what I want, then you will never see your friends again.”
“Are you going to trust the people who have actually been to the treasure room?” Sara asked. “You should just follow us. And maybe you could be a little less mean about everything,” said Sara, who was getting tired of being yelled at.
Mr. King huffed and glared at them both. “Fine, but no tricks.”
“No tricks,” assured Woggy. “We want to free our friends more than we care about any treasure.”
They kept walking and finally entered the art gallery. Mr. King walked past all of the art, paying no attention to any of the paintings on the walls. Sara stared at him, astounded. To her, this room was more of a treasure than the gold.
There was only one door in this room, and Mr. King noticed this fact. “This is not treasure. I have already been in this room. There is nothing here.”
“Art is treasure,” said Sara defensively.
Woggy walked up to the painting of the river and reached into it. He turned the handle disguised as a rock and pulled open the painting, revealing the doorway. The hall was dark, and they could hear the water trickling on the sides of the narrow pathway. Mr. King looked in, and gave a greedy smile.
“A secret passageway! I am not going in there without a light,” said Mr. King, “I do not trust you.”
Woggy and Sara looked at each other in disbelief. Mr. King was a difficult man. They still had the torch, but it was not lit, and they did not have any way to light it. They really felt the loss of Spark, and they both wished that he was there. They looked up at the chandeliers that Spark had lit for them earlier and they tried to think of a way to get to them to light the torch. If only Rob was there to fly up to the light. They felt the loss of all of their friends. They really wanted to just get Mr. King to the treasure so they could be reunited with their friends again.
“Well, we have a torch, but we don’t have any way to light it,” said Woggy.
“Fine, if you are going to be so needy, you can have one of my matches,” said Mr. King. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a box of matches. He lit one as Woggy held out the torch against it. The torch caught flame and crackled to life.
This would be a lot easier if Mr. King was nice, thought Woggy, but he did not dare say it. It felt like Mr. King just did not know how to be helpful, even when it would help himself in the end. I think that is what happens when someone is constantly trying to command other people around. They end up thinking that everyone else needs to do everything for them.
Woggy stepped through the opening where the painting had once been, and lit up the hallway with the torch. Mr. King rudely stepped in front of Sara, and followed Woggy. Sara just rolled her eyes, and followed them both.
They were soon standing in the room where they found the treasure room key and where the door to the treasure room was. Woggy walked up to the door and pulled the key out of his pocket. He put it in the lock, but it would not turn.
What Woggy did not know was that this was not an ordinary key. This key could open any lock in A-Dream. But the key only opened what the person holding the key wanted most, and what Woggy wanted most was certainly not treasure, it was his friends.
“That is weird,” said Woggy. “It worked last time.”
“Out of my way, boy,” said Mr. King as he pushed Woggy out of the way.
“His name is Woggy,” said Sara defensively.
“Woggy!?” scoffed Mr. King. “What a ridiculous name.”
Mr. King grabbed the key and turned it. The door opened. He grabbed the torch and walked into the room. The room lit up and shimmered just as it had before. Light reflected up on the walls like a disco ball.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” said Mr. King, as he stepped down into the room. Woggy and Sara just stood in the doorway. They looked up at the sign and wondered what Mr. King needed so badly. But the thing was, Mr. King did not need anything, He was just greedy, and greed and need are two very different things.
As Mr. King walked into the room, his boot stomped on the corner of Sara’s picture, and gave it an unfortunate smudge. This picture was what Sara had given to the treasure room. Her art was what she had to give, and it had added value to the room, a value that was beyond what Mr. King could recognize.
Mr. King kept walking and smiling, and periodically he gave a cackle of a laugh. As he walked he shoved handfuls of coins into his pockets. This was more treasure than he had imagined. Granted, he did have a very limited imagination.
He did not notice the sign that hung over the treasure. Now that he was there, he just thought that everything was for him. He did not know that this treasure “belonged to no one, and belonged to everyone.”
After looking through the treasure, Mr. King found what he wanted. It was the very heavy treasure chest at the far corner of the room. He grabbed one of the handles, and slid it along the treasure covered floor. The chest was heavy. Soon Mr. King was breathing heavily.
“Don’t just stand there, boy. Come give me a hand!”
Woggy hesitated, but he eventually decided to set down what he was carrying so he could be more helpful. He put the torch in the stand on the wall, and handed the rope and grappling hook to Sara who stayed in the doorway. Woggy stepped down into the treasure room.
Together Woggy and Mr. King pulled the big treasure chest through the room. Even with both of them pulling, the chest was very heavy. They pushed and pulled until they pulled it right past the exact center of the room. I only know that it was the exact center of the room because when the treasure chest passed that point something happened.
There was a slight creaking sound.
Then a louder creaking sound.
Suddenly the floor slowly started opening up right in the middle! The room had been booby trapped. As the hole got larger, treasure began sliding down into a whirlpool of water below. Shiny coins plopped into the spinning waters. Woggy and Mr. King stumbled on the slanted floor, scrambling for something to hold onto, but the treasure was all loose and gave them nothing firm to grip.
Sara thought quickly. She hooked the grappling hook around the frame of the door, and threw the other end of the rope down to Woggy.
Woggy reached out and grabbed the rope with one hand, letting go of the treasure chest. He reached down his other hand and grabbed Mr. King’s wrist.
“Let go of the treasure! Grab the rope!” shouted Woggy.
Mr. King looked up at Woggy and then back down at the treasure chest which was starting to slide down with all of the other treasure into the churning waters below. Mr. King gripped the chest tightly.
The slant in the opening floor was getting steeper by the second. All the cups and bracelets and pieces of gold slid and sank into the water below. Woggy held to the rope, but felt his body sliding more and more with the weight of Mr. King. His arms were getting tired.
The coins that Rob had left behind, the colorful shell that Finn sat down, even the picture that Sara drew, were soon engulfed in water, and then gone.
The water frothed and roared. It splashed up at them as coins and cups and jewelry plunked into the swirling pool. Sara looked down helplessly from the doorway.
“I can’t hold you,” pleaded Woggy.
Mr. King looked up at Woggy.
“It’s not worth it!” shouted Woggy with a saving hand on Mr. King’s wrist. And something in Woggy’s face awakened a memory of kindness and goodness within Mr. King.
Here is what I wish had happened. I wish that Mr. King had let go of his greed and taken Woggy’s helping hand. I wish that he had said sorry for imprisoning their friends and using them to get what he wanted. They could have all become friends. They could have all enjoyed the rest of A-Dream together and let greed and gold and anger go.
There was a flash of a moment where Mr. King was deciding what to do where that could have been the reality. But greed soon filled his mind, and he held his grip on the sinking treasure instead of reaching for the rope.
Woggy’s grasp began to slip.
The treasure chest slid down and pulled Mr. King away from Woggy. Woggy squeezed as tightly as he could, but he could not hold on. Inch by inch Mr. King slid away from Woggy. Soon he was just holding on to fingertips, then nothing.
Mr. King slid away and plunged into the dark, surging waters below. The back of Mr. King’s head was the last thing that Woggy saw of him since, even as he fell, Mr. King’s greedy eyes were on the treasure chest.