The Moving Image

 Once there was a king and he ruled over a beautiful realm of verdant undulating hills where the voices of children singing songs could be heard emerging from the spaces between glades of trees. The villagers would gather daily to dance and share stories of brave exploits and intrepid expeditions in far away kingdoms where beautiful mountains shimmered under a magical sun. One day the King, who had begun to feel unwell, was told by the best physician that his health would fail unless he could do something to help them discover a cure? I can’t think clearly enough to find the right solution complained the physician. Perhaps if the villagers could just stop dancing everyday then I would be able to think more clearly. And so it was decided that the villagers would stop dancing for a week to allow the physician to think. At the end of the week he was summoned to the king who had already grown weaker and had to report that he had still not thought of a cure for his ailment. The King was growing weary and now took to his bed. Alright I will give you one more week without dancing in order to find a cure. And dutifully the physician retreated to his study to scour his shelves for an answer to the problem of curing the King. This continued for a fortnight more and just as he was about to scream out of the window in a fit of abstract rage a book spine caught his eye. The book was called cures for the common cold. Why had he never seen this book before he asked himself? Hastily he grabbed the step ladder for the book was high on the shelves and he took down the volume. Opening the book in the index he found the words “king, ailing” and turned to the corresponding page. Anyone watching him would have seen the physician begin to nod his head and stroke his beard for a full minute before clapping the book shut, scooping up his cloak and rushing out towards the royal palace. Before long he found himself being ushered into the royal bed chamber and kneeling at the king’s bedside he declared “Your highness I have a cure!”. The King who was greatly relieved sat himself up in bed with the help of his attendants and demanded to be told. “Your highness the cure is simple,” said the physician. “You must visit a woodland glade and take part in a village dance whilst breathing in the scent of pine in the fresh air. Of course boomed the King why didn’t I think of that?” "Perhaps you did", said the physician in fact I think it was your idea! And so the king was bundled up and taken with his inner court to a woodland glade where the villagers had gathered to dance and instruct his royal highness in the rituals of movement. Standing in a circle the villagers began to look from face to face and their expressions formed into those of sheer bafflement. It seemed that in the month that had passed they had not been able to keep familiar with their collective rituals. Incredible as it may seem they had forgotten how to dance. This was a disaster how would they now save the King? Thinking quickly the physician called for the most famous scientist in the land and the greatest draftsperson and conveyed his idea to them. And so it came to pass that the King was sat up in his bed and entertained by accurately created pictures replicating the movement of the dance. These images in the candlelight appeared to dance and though the resulting effect on his royal personage was not as dramatic as the physician had hoped the King was sustained in health by regularly looking at these images of the dancers which were initial paraded before him but then overtime became bound in a beautiful leather tooled volume called, ironically enough, still images. Using this book of still images the good King was able to live on though he never again left the confines of his ornately carved wooden bed. Later people would learn to magically utilise the power of lightning to project these images onto clouds providing an even more astounding illusion of movement for the King, which is reported to have had a very beneficial effect on his health.