He suggested that Helen would never be able to dance the royal dance again in person, which she had pioneered and loved, and had used as a basis for healing others. "But we have this privilege still," said Steve.

      Steve suggested that no one knows what steps we may face beyond the present sphere of our living, "nor do we need to know," he added, "since we tend to ignore and throw away the riches that we have presently at hand." Steve said that the implied urgency to accept life to its fullest is one of the great legacies that Helen had impressed upon him.

      "Now I am puzzled," Wai-yi responded. She reminded Steve that he had never used the word, royal, in a positive sense before. "Why the sudden reversal?"

      Steve smiled. "In order to explain this I must tell you the story of a king with a good heart." He told Wai-yi that this story involves a peculiar healing, and that it was Helen's story, which illustrates her unique healing outreach.

      Steve brought a tall bar chair from the bar in the lounge, set it up, and began to tell the story as a storyteller would.

      He said there existed a kingdom a long time ago that was ruled by a noble king who had a very human heart and soul. Still, he was not well loved by his people, and for that reason he found it impossible to love himself. But all of that changed. The change didn't happen instantly. It began almost imperceptibly one day when the king received visitors from a far away land. The visitors were not royalty, nor philosophers, nor priests. One of the visitors was a poet, another a composer and performer of music, another was a man of science, and so forth. They were travelling together to explore the beauty that is involved in being human. Rumors had it that wherever these visitors went, people became uplifted by their wisdom.

      So it was that they came before the king, and the king was pleased with their performances, their stories, and their wisdom, for which they were honored. They stayed for three days in this fashion, and were honored for three days. It happened on the fourth day, during the royal banquet that was held in their honor, before their departure, that the poet asked the king if he was happy being isolated from his people by his wealth.

      The king was astonished at the question. It was the very question he had asked himself a thousand times. He answered that he wasn't at all happy about it, but he was also unable to do anything to change that. He explained to his visitors that if he gave away all of his possessions, it wouldn't help many people and he would be as poor in the end, as the rest of them. He told his visitors that this approach wouldn't solve anything, and that there was no other approach possible.

      The poet agreed with the king, that this wasn't a solution. The musician, however, had an idea of how the problem could be solved in a positive manner. He conferred with the poet and with the man of science, who both agreed that the composer's idea could work. The composer then presented the idea to the king.

      He explained to the king that he had been told during his travels that there lives a man in the king's realm who had been endowed with an exceptional ear for music, but that the man is poor and his musical instrument were of a poor quality. The composer suggested to the king that he, the king, should purchase a violin for that man, which the composer described as "an instrument that sings the melodies of the heart." He told the king that such an instrument could be obtained in a foreign country at a price far above of what the man could afford to pay, while the king could afford it easily and present it to the man as a gift of his love for the humanity of his people.

      The king protested. He protested, because if he did this, as he said, the lineup of beggars at his door would be endless. He was sure of that.

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Stories about War from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche