Week 11 Story: The Infertile King

The Infertile King

There once was a king who ruled a vast empire. He and his wife, the queen, were unable to have children so he was forced to rely on his brother to provide him with a nephew fit to rule. The king hoped his successor would be stronger and more cunning than he was. 

When the king's brother had his first son, the king closely watched as his nephew grew up. He noticed that his brother and his wife coddled their son and came to his aid every time they cried. He was worried that his nephew would grow up to be weak-minded and too soft to rule the empire. 

When his nephew was a few years old, he finally decided that something must be done to ensure the future stability of the empire and killed his nephew in hopes that his brother would raise his second son differently. Alas, the king's brother did have a second son but he was just as spoiled as the first. The king felt he had no choice but to order his second nephew to death as well. 

The queen understood her husband's concerns for the empire but was heartbroken to see her nephews put to death. Her husband's brother and his wife begged the queen to help them keep their next son safe from harm. She agreed and told them that they should conceal the gender of their next son and make every effort to convince the king that the child was a girl. The brother and his wife agreed and did as they were told when they had their third son.

The king saw that his niece, like his nephews, was coddled by her parent but because only boys were viable heirs to the throne, the king did not harm his niece. As he watched her grow up, the king started to notice his niece's shoulders grew broad and muscular like a man's. He also noticed that her face was unusually hairy. The king started to suspect that his niece may not be a girl at all. One day he secretly watched as niece undressed to test his suspicions.

Upon discovering that his niece was indeed his nephew his first instinct was to kill him as the king had done to his another nephews. The king, however, had hope that pretending to be a girl had instilled a strong wit within the boy. So the king decided to devise a test for his nephew. 

One afternoon, the king summoned his nephew and invited him to help collect firewood. So the king and his nephew went deep out into the forest in search of the finest wood. When the two came across a large log the king said to his nephew, "This is great piece of wood crawl inside and bring back a good wedge".

The nephew did as he was told and crawled into the log to find a solid wedge of wood. Then the king shoved several wedges into the log trapping his nephew inside and left his nephew to fend for himself. When he realized he was trapped, the nephew tried pushing on the wedges with all his might but they would not budge. He quickly realized his strength would be of no use and that he would need to devise a plan to get out of the log. The nephew then remembered he had packed berries to eat if he got hungry in his pocket. He then found a small hole in the log and stuck a berry half way out of the hole. Shortly afterwards a bird landed on the log and saw the berry. The bird tried to eat the berry but he could not get it out so he used his beak to make the hole larger. Once the bird started pecking, the boy pulled the berry back into the log. Frustrated the bird began pecking furiously all the more and made the hole larger and larger. Finally the bird had made a hole so large that the boy could escape from the log so he threw all his berries to the bird and climbed through the hole. After getting out of the log, the nephew finished collecting firewood and left what he collected at his uncle's doorstep.

When the king saw the firewood, he was surprised to see his nephew had passed his test. Was his nephew really so intelligent or was it just luck? The king had one more idea to find out the truth...

The Infertile King (pxhere)

Author's Note: My story is based on the Kodiak story of the Jealous Uncle. The original does not explain why the uncle kills his nephews and the characters action didn't completely make sense to me. All the other character just submit to the jealous uncle so I decided to make the uncle a king to help explain why everyone was so obedient to him. I also took the uncle's test and changed the way the boy escapes. In the original the nephew escapes by rubbing a sour berry onto the log and the log just magically opens but I wanted his escape to seem more calculated and intelligent. 

The source story is part of the Native American Hero Tales unit. Story source: Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson (1929).