The Castle

I drew this for a friend of mine. It's a castle, a fortress. It protects everyone inside it.

It has a moat, too deep to wade across, with steep banks on one side and sheer walls on the other, and probably full of man-eating creatures. There's no way the enemy is getting across that.

It has thick stone walls. An enemy once tried to break the walls down by heaving boulders at it. You can see on one turret that the boulders did nothing but chip the stucco.

The tall, thin windows you see are ports for the archers. They are too narrow for an attacker to climb into, but they give the archers a great view — and great protection while they rain arrows down on the enemy from above.

On top of the turrets, and along the walls, you see the crenellations or battlements.These give protection to the defenders while they roll their catapults, onagers, pots of boiling oil, and ... okay, Gatling guns ... into the openings and pour death down on their attackers.

The only way in and out of this fortress is through the drawbridge at the front of the castle. There is a portcullis behind the drawbridge, but of course you cannot see it. The tracks on the road indicate that there is a great deal of traffic in and out of the castle during times of peace, when the drawbridge is down. But when the drawbridge is up, the castle is protected, invulnerable.

But what's that on the right, towards the rear of the castle? It's a tiny door, and a dock just the right size for a small rowboat. This is a secret entrance, used by the king to sneak out at night and do un-kingly deeds in secret.

For all of its strength, and all of its offensive and defensive features, that secret entrance is the castle's (and the king's) downfall. For, just as the king can sneak out of that door by night, so his enemies can sneak in at night, stealing silently through the castle and capturing or killing all of its defenders.

In your life, you have built up strong defenses to protect you from evil and from attack by your enemies. What is your hidden weakness, the one that you don't think anybody knows about? When will your enemy discover it and use it to conquer you — or, at the very least, to hurt you badly? Don't you think it's time to tear down that dock and wall up that door?

ADDENDUM, SEP 11, 2023: I recently found the original castle that I had drawn, about ten years before I drew this one. Click here to see it.

The castle images are © 2014 Ray Depew. Unauthorized use is prohibited.