Like any man, I wanted the world. Like every man, I received less. In the old stories that my father told me there are many things that don't exist in the wake-a-day world. There are always knights and horses, bishops with blood-colored mitres and black gloves, castles with banners sable and banners gules that sit still and flat upon a tarot-azure sky. There are kings, too. Such kings! You always know the good ones by their virtue, my father said, his expression dark as his beard. These ever keep their subjects in a line and see them move, steady, steady, this one at his forge, this one at his rows, still another spinning umber clay upon his wheel, a fourth sliding trays of pearl-hard bread from an oven's tongue. Such kings kneel, nails pressing up red moons against their palms, their brows furrowed with sweat. That was the way to win the gods' favor, so my father said. Such kings were also blind to kind and circumstance; the alderman would know justice as the duke, the yeoman to the count. So said he as he sat me on his knee and offered me his scepter. It was cold and silver to the touch, crowned with the world and laced inside a laurel wreath. It was cold and I was scared, and yet I held it as he spoke. "This is the way of virtue and of kings," my father said. "Yet above all this, above all this, my son, a good king keeps his word." Above all this a good king keeps his word. He would marry his daughter to the man who completed the three tasks and leave him half the kingdom when the soil curved in a cathedral o'er his head. Whether he slept in battle or marble, whether he slept in armor or in silk and when he finally slept in bones and dust, it was his honor that knit up the kingdom. As long as he was just no hurt would come to it, no earthquake rack its walls and no sin stain it like the sweep of a red wing. "But is it true," I once asked when he had done. "Can all kings be so very good as this?" A shudder curled along his knuckles like the churning of some vast and boiling sea beneath a cave. I could not speak, but his fingers gripped my boyhood curls with a craven's intent. So close to his raging lips, I fancied I could hear his heart upon his breath; it overwhelmed my skull as the tide to the sand, louder than his reply. "No more, my son." His voice could then have cracked the arching windows in its frost. "The king who breaks his vows is a thing of nothing. His palace will collapse like bones and death corrupt his days. Nothing wholesome will ever come of he who trades his crown for lies." "But if there are good kings, there must be bad," I cried, ever the young scholastic. His signet met my eyebrow and the stones flew up to meet me. "There are some things that you must never ask if you would keep your honor and my favor." He helped me to my feet, but did not wipe my trembling lip. I never asked again, but polished my thoughts as white as the little chessmen on the board beside the windowsill. Outside November hung like a tattered curtain in the rushing wind. My sire took note of this. "When I am buried with the leaves," he said, his back to me, his eyes upon the storm, "you must wear the crown. You must watch the gate at the entrance and the wall behind the palace. You must never sleep but you sleep last, and you must ever rise first before the chanticleer. Do you hear, boy?" and here he turned his head. I could not escape. "You must honor your daughters as you do the sun and sky, for you will have no sons." I did not question then his prophecy; I never had before. Had he not taught me how to wield a sword, the secrets of his books, the alchemy of ink and quill and desk that could conjure my name across a scroll? Was he not right in this, in everything? But ten years old I swore to him I would ever guard my future girls as I did love our kingdom and the sun-flowering plants behind our granite walls. He closed his eyes. A smile played on his lips; I knew I had his favor. I was a youth when he took to his bed, protesting still that he could ride a horse. Still a youth when the strange princess with a dress raveling into sunlight knit up my hands beneath the wedding canopy. There was a loss, and then another: myself on the waves of wedding sheets and my father in the ground. Nine months later, my bride arched against those sheets and gripped my hand. A child poured from her like rain; a simple thing, I thought. And yet, it was not so. There was a red chain wound like a trumpet vine about the fluted throat. The baby's eyes bulged, and she made a little noise. The women screamed; the midwife's hands blurred against the meaty net; my poor bride's knuckles strained against our sheets, delft-blue and tight. And I? I stood aside as one blasted by lightning. Unnecessary in my ignorance of flesh and darkness, I did but watch. The midwife pulled. The babe's eyes closed. Frost crept upon her face and on my bride's. Still, the midwife labored. Still, the women wept. Still, I stood, still as a statue. When time flowed right again, Spring had returned to one face. In the other, Winter lingered never to lift, never to bloom again. I put my stranger bride to rest against my father in the earth. Here and gone she was, like to the February crocus. I could not love again because I had not loved the first time. And then, there was the babe, her breath against my hands, a pulse upon her eyes. There was no more to do; I passed her limply to the midwife's arms and did not look up until I had closed the doors upon my grief. And yet, what grief was here? One year had we been wed. My father's library still smelled of him, and all the days of dust that trailed in his vanished footsteps. The oxbowed shelves still held his tattered books, the same that were my tutors (the same, I wondered, if my girl would read). There sat his astrolabe and candles, there his desk and that same chair where we sat long ago to hear the tale of goodly kings. There at his chess board sat my chief vizier, his pale hair lank against his eyes, his hands curved on the board's pale, starry side. He rose at my approach, graceful as a candle. "Zugzwang," in loss, in melancholy, in my bottom of my tankards, I would acknowledge him. "My gracious lord," he bowed as I drew near. "I cry your pardon, but I would not have entrance if you had not need." And it was true; as in my father's days my library was barred against intrusion save my own. "You ever mark my motions, Zugzwang," and yet I could not smile. "As the bishop notes the king," my vizier noted, rising from his chair like the heron from his lake. "I have heard the whisperings. The queen, my mistress..." "Yes." Though blind from birth, Zugzwang could find my arm inside a maelstrom; he could now. He led me to my seat, even as I could not move myself. "Come, sire. Since the days 'fore Mars ascended to the stars, chess has been known to clear the mind and to unstop the eyes." A smile played on his lips; he understood, even as I could not, in my distress. I set my scepter aside. Of course, of course I fought a losing match, little more than a scholar's mate. Yet I could breathe when it was done as I could not before. The blind vizier regarded me through the tangle of his hair. Each night, it was as this; there would be a game, then a prophecy. Tonight I longed to hear it, though I rightly feared some fatal conjunction in the January sky. "What will become of her?" "Your daughter," mused my councilor. He leaned back against the seat, the white queen balanced on his star-pale fingertips. He sat a time in thought. At last he spoke, "All will not be well, my lord. She is half empty, as they are who lose so much when still bound to the womb. This goes not well; she will demand a sacrifice." "Say on; I do not understand," but my fluted pulse betrayed me. "What did your father tell you about kings?" "That they must ever honor promises." He tapped his nose and smiled. "Your pardon, lord, but your late sire but showed you half the board. Some kings there are bound up in honesty who blossom as the heavy almond tree. But as old winter trips on autumn's heels, so doth kingship turn upon the wheel of dark necessity. What did he say of dark and fallen kings?" "Why nothing," it was January still—that's why my bones felt numb, I thought that night. "I'll tell you what he missed," my prophet said, "they are but men who find their oaths too heavy. Grain by grain and gear by gear they crush their backs as fortune's wheel to vertebrae. And yet, no evil turns inside their heart but that brought by necessity. The name for these is sorcerer—mark it well. See that the board is clear." I would have spoke but Zugzwang raised his hands. "Peace, peace. The prophecy's wound up." I did not sleep 'til late, but watched the stars. They now seemed cold and heavy through the clouds, both diamond-honed and distant. My dreams, late as the dog star, were stirred with silver and rafter-raising laughter cold as this all-killing snow. But the dawn came then, and so with it my daughter, who I named Caissa (at the hest of her horoscope). She had outlived her mother, but how could it be life? She ate, she walked, she drew breath and she smiled, but it would be five years before she spoke and ten to hold a needle and thread. I watched her in the garden as she sewed, each stitch a single, pale staccato note like those caught in the nightingale's larynx and never born. Winter-pale and spindled as the barren cherry tree, my dear Caissa sat upon her wicker chair as still as snow. Each morning I rose before the chanticleer. Each night I slept with the midnight bell. Each day I watched the gates at north and south and heard complaints from lords and butchers, serfs and yeomen. Each morning, noon and night I knelt upon the chapel stones and clutched my beads so tight I thought the suns they pricked against my palms would save me. I did all things as my father bade it so. His scepter in my hand, his crown upon my head I turned my Book of Hours through sewing and reaping alike. As the pages passed, so did the years. My child grew with the sun and caught it on her needlepoint, yet it was always winter in my heart. Yet, I was patient. I obeyed my vows to love, to cherish and protect as any father would. When April lashed the windows and ringed the turrets in wedding veils of clouds, I brought Caissa to my study, to teach her as I could. A girl of wringing hands and apprehension, she had no wit for arts, no understanding of philosophy. No, she scorned my books, piling them upon my desk in cold defiance. And yet, and yet my daughter did love chess. "What does it do?" She asked one day. Her small hands swept the checkered board like doves pecking up snow. I turned from my fireplace to give an answer, but she had found the pieces. White knight and black alike, she turned them, caressing their cracked faces, their chipped shields, the worn bridles of the horses. "And what are these, Papa?" "It is a game of skill," I explained to her, "wherein a man may learn how to defend and protect what is most valuable." She looked into the distance where the rain lashed the trees. She bit her lip; I thought that I had lost her. "And what is this, Papa?" She offered me a worn and weary king, his face and robes and crown more grey than alabaster. "Why, that's the king," I pulled my chair close to the table heeding not the thunderstone. As night descended through the dashing trees I taught my strange and sickly daughter the way of chess; the way of bishops, castles, knights and kings, the painful steps of pawns. She took to it as the lark to the clear air, the smile upon her face more deeply hewn than any of the players. Save the queen. It went slow at first, sure as the rain upon the glass. But like the frosting, ambitious blizzards soon enough she had bested me. Ever after it was always chess; her needle pricked out daisies on her cloth and I thought I scented Spring inside the bitterroots. Her hands were nimble, and her interest in the stratagems so keen I did forget the past. "Mercury in retrograde," explained Zugzwang. "What breaks in us will mend in her, my lord," he turned to me, eyes pale beneath his hair. "The stars cannot explain her game; indeed the oldest magic too is silent. Yet it is rare and precious as winter roses." I looked at her. She looked at me. She moved a pawn and smiled. The sun cycled through the pages of my book, and still she grew. Soon she was slender and sixteen, and suitors came to sue. I knew the good king's vows: three tests, and to the victor goes all things—the waking, sleeping, judging and, one day when he too is a king, the honor pledge. From lands distant and close they came, dark knights and fair on steeds with burnished hooves. Each task I set before them as a pomegranate on a silver plate; devour or be devoured. Most failed to find an answer for the Sphinx; of those who did few could survive the dragon's jaws. The last remaining ones could not checkmate her father, though they would castle, gambit, en passant. All failed, all fell, all were consumed but one: the knight named Patzer. "Check and mate it is," I took the errant's hand; it was warm and I approved. I would not dent my scepter on his pate, I thanked the gods; I had seen too much blood. "Good knight, you have proved your cunning, strength and more; you have shown your mind to be like to my daughter's. Thus I will say it, you are her love-match and may Hymen smile upon you." He did not bow. That should have been enough to make me cast him from my gates, to hurl him from the highest parapet. But it is as they say; men know no more than what they wish. It was April when I set Caissa on his pale horse, the warm air thick with apple blossoms, the cowslips filled with rain. In June there was silence, just the heat upon the tiles and the amber drone of bees. But September brought a crashing down. I awoke to a silence more fit to depths of Winter than the first gusts of Autumn. It was so deep naught but the splinter of glass could have pierced it. Soon as I thought, it followed. In my shift and slippers, robes sweeping from my shoulder blades like waterspouts, I ran before I knew where I did go. I ran into my library where she sat upon the floor; my dark-eyed daughter, moon-washed and trembling at the elbows, the chess board on the floor, its pieces thrown like sand. The table had shattered in her fall and pierced her hands like briars. I did not have to ask her; she spoke first, reciting as a nightingale when swept by frost. "He called me stupid," said my dark-haired girl, trembling in nothing but her shift. "Ugly, dull, not fit to sweep floors or bring in wood. He sends me back, he says, like the last course of a meal. He is full of me, and I..." here she touched her waist where it ran red with blood. "This is my dowry, he said. Is it true?" She was so brave, my girl. She did not collapse when I raised her in my arms and took her to the physic. He prescribed for her a bed and bandages and said all would be well, yet it was not. "Where is the Knight, Caissa?" "Sir, I do not know." She was so tired I let her sleep and sought my answer elsewhere. Zugzwang being in his orisons, I sought the porter, the stable hands, the scullery maids, the char girl and the cook. None had seen him enter nor escape. It was as if the Knight had never been. "An enchanter?" I asked Zugzwang when he joined me. "A man," my vizier corrected, "and the pity: no cleverer than any." I had never struck my vizier, but I shook him now until the hair flew from his eyes, until his neck popped; he did not resist. "You should have foreseen!" "I read what I can read," he said when I had tired. "Not all things can be seen, nor all prevented." "How may we avenge?" I cried, my hands tight on my scepter. The silver boiled beneath my palms; my vizier sighed. "Though we seek high and low, he will not be found," he said, dusting his robes. "He has vanished like the fish into a ripple." "Then I must break my vows," I could not bring myself to right the chess board. A spreading-out like ice bloomed in my gut, something wet and sharp as I had never felt the like. "I have done everything, and yet, and yet—" It was too terrible. My vizier set about the restoration of the board. "You have and you have not," he said, holding his hand before my face. The white queen balanced on his palm; she had been cracked from base to crown. "There still remains a way, but it will go hard, my lord. Are you prepared?" I was, and told him so, though I was past all hope. "To keep it you must break it," and he offered me the queen. "There is a vacancy upon the board, but you may only fill the square if you exchange your scepter for a staff," his voice pitched low as the wind through leaves. "You must become a sorcerer." "And crack our castle walls?" "Some things require a sacrifice," my vizier replied. "A pawn for the queen, and all for the king, such is the gambit. For was it not said in the tales of old that the thorns would twine about the palace walls and cast all in a sleep, and but a knight to wake the maiden?" "I've had too much of knights," I told him. "What good will my falling away do for her?" "When there is a sacrifice," the prophet said, his arms tucked in his sleeves, "there may also be hope, however faint. For where there is a sorcerer, my lord, there must come a true Knight to slay him." I nodded, yet I knew my kingdom, crown and soul, that all were lost. "Zugzwang, is this the future you bespeak or but a shadow?" But I may not have asked. "There are some things that are done when done and cannot be unmade," my prophet said. I bowed my head to him, alone within this room. "Then tell me how I must become this thing." It was as simple as the clearing of a board, for on that very night the full moon blossomed through the scarlet leaves. No time to waste, Zugzwang and I climbed the highest turret where the wind bayed through our flesh. Here I removed my robes and crown and spread them on the parapets. Naked to the sky, I raised my scepter as I was commanded. If the ancients are honest, and the gods are more than myth, I pray now even now that they look on me more in pity than revenge. For when I plunged the scepter to my chest and bathed it in heart's blood, all I did, all, all, all I did for—what, I cannot say, but it was deep. As I fell to the crumbling dark below, I thought that Zugzwang smiled. How may I describe the waking up in red? How well may I describe my vizier, who draped my shoulders anew in scarlet robes (so different from the pale ones we had worn!)? How well may I describe my shattered crown, my aching bones, the jangling of my limbs? But worse than this, far worse! How may I speak of the shattered scepter, and the mark upon my brow like a red hand? The first, my scarlet Zugzwang said would be my staff, the second, my damnation. "So it goes," he said. When I returned, knock-kneed to my library, all things had changed. The books had sprouted teeth and incantations, the spiders spun their webs about the beams. The chessboard matched my robes, yet still the queen was lost. "What must I do?" Though a sorcerer I was but new-made. My vizier's lips curled on his teeth. "You lack a queen," he said, "no magic in the world can bring her back, but she may be replaced." He said no more, I knew it to be true. My bones were crooked in my flesh, and yet she did not wake when I crawled like a spider to her room. The blood had dried upon her dress; her women had not changed her. Once I would have suffered them but now I burned. So would they, so would they, but first things first. I laid my hands across the stain. The incantation sprang from me like a snake, coiled and biting. When I stood, she was clean and sleeping—fresh, I thought, as summer clouds. There was little left to do then. Here I pause, for my hands shook even then. The calcification of flesh and hair, the sealing up of eyes—all this is grisly labor. Yet I forced my eyes to open as I worked. Soon enough, I had done. But as I'd made the chessboard whole again, so did my kingship ravel. The little things were first: I slept early, I rose late, I could find no patience for a broken fence or a disputed pig. My subjects first grew restless, then afraid. Still, I treated all who did not grumble well—enough, at least, to keep them from complaint. But the calendar turned and the weathercock spun to face the North, and I grew tired of begging. By then I had worn out my pawns with playing stratagems (for I consulted my red-sleeved oracle each night). I needed continual supply. Soon all complaints were stilled inside my streets. And with each sea-changed subject, my potency increased. It was so hard at first; each baker, yeoman, duke and count I knew by name. I'd heard their grievances, witnessed their births, and guarded them by night and day just as my father said. I'd prayed for them until my nails pressed suns into my palms, yes even to the drawing out of blood. "That should have been sign enough," my vizier said. He had changed much, I noted, in these years (how many years were they?). Though blind and pale, he now looked terrible inside his carmine robes. But not so terrible as what I learned from the mouths of my new books. A sorcerer may draw from life only what he can claim, the books explained. The sacrifice that made him took away the part that once was king; as he once purged the blood of the general, so he must draw from them. I held my hunger 'til my jangled bones (torn in the fall, my too-wise bishop said) pressed heavy on my skin. Then it was I had no choice. I brought them to me, one upon the next, with names like Robert, Wolfgang, Paul, Emmanuel—some men I'd laughed withal, some men I'd nursed, all men I'd loved as dearly as myself. Once I had taken from them they marched on upon my chess board. Then there grew the briars. At first they just pricked up the heels of careless boys; soon they were tall and coiled up to the sky, higher than the turrets. And all the while, all the while, I waited at the center of my library, hands tangling my chess set like a web. It is said that when a king becomes a sorcerer, all manner of darkness is laid before him. Where once he saw honor, he now must only see potential; where reigned restraint, now only sovereign strategy. Soon my chess set was all the world and all the world my chess set. Each day I pushed my pawns, each day I castled, each afternoon I escaped, exchanged and checked and yet my middle games ended as stale as the bread I never touched, the ale I never drank. For even as I tried to draw all things ever to the center, no knights could breech my gate who were not pinioned on the briars, as flies and common moths. And still, and still my daughter sat, and still and still she moved where I would point. Yet for all my magic, I could never end. "What must I do?" I asked my bishop on one night, when I had burnt out fifteen pawns in a single game. "It is your stratagem," Zugzwang replied. "I am nothing but your bishop now." And yet, he looked so tired. I wondered then if bishops could regret as they moved back and forth, or if fate seemed as meaningless to them as a line of empty tiles. "Then you must be a bad one." "So I am." We said no more that night, or any night. I had nothing to say. And then, one day I heard a rush of air. Turning my head I saw the figure through the webs that draped the rafters (how long had I sat?). I could have wept in joy, but it was then I saw her robes, her crown, her sable dress. "Who are you," I croaked, upon my feet before she could unsheathe her sword. "My name, sir is my own," she reached into her raven hair and extracted a briar as if it were a scarab. My breath caught in my throat. "You are the first these long and several years to brave the briars." Her full lips pulled into a waning smile. "And you have paid too much attention to the knight, for he is a minor piece." Her skirts swept up the dust as she approached, but I did not sit down. "Your story and your daughter's, sorcerer, have traveled far, even to the borders of my realm," her throat was lined with satin like her sleeves. "Then you have come to challenge me," I breathed. "Of course. And you'll play red?" What choice had I to cast her from my cell? The strongest magic underneath the sky can not expel a one who has met with thorns and overcome, even if, "You are not a Knight." "Even so," her robes swirled as she sat. "I am a queen, and red to play." I had spent eight life times studying this board, eight life times of attacks and blockades I had learned to overcome. Yet in all the years I siphoned from my subjects, through all the pawns I broke upon my squares, I had never seen such brilliancy as this. The queen moved left and right, forwards and back and all of my defenses fell like rain. "She's winning," hissed my vizier. But I ignored his directions. I had listened to his fates, his rules, his prophecies for so long they rattled like wind; as insensible and dry as bones. A few more moves and the rattling stopped for good. I scarcely noticed, though. I was too intent upon the black queen's face. She reminded me of one I had forgot, a someone once upon a time and so many years ago whom I had loved and named. "What does it do? And what are these, Papa?" "Check." "It is a game of skill, wherein a man may learn how to defend and protect what is most valuable." "Check." "And what is this, Papa?" "Why, that's the king," The king. The king! "Checkmate." He lay among the ruins of the pawns, as dead as any fly, as dead as all ambition. "Why have you come?" I could not look at her, but I could feel her eyes. "I have come to do what you've asked of the world, but only one could manage." Her black-gloved hand reached across the center squares and grasped for my last piece. "I've come to take the queen, for I've fought long and earned her." I did not move; she took the piece herself. The little statue sat upon her hand as she bent double like an orchid dying, or a lily in full bloom. "What is your name?" I cried. When she looked at me, it was as if my pulse and recollection finally met. She met my eyes with pity and with rage. "You have forgotten it, but you will see." She kissed the chess-queen firmly on the lips, and inside the room a wind picked up that swirled the cobwebs and threw her hair out wide. Rain fell, clouds moved and the webs wove into a plain white shift that filled out in the air as if to hold me one last time. Then it, too, fell away. "Caissa." The black queen my daughter smiled. "Father," and there was a sorrow to it. I turned away in shame, not asking how but why. "There is a magic deeper than all things," she told me, drawing close. She frowned when I pulled back, but made no more advance. "A magic that lies underneath the board, that lines all destines into a path. When you first taught me stratagem, I saw. It was this that saved me on my wedding night, and it was this that set me free." "Caissa," how her name fell upon me. Yet I could no more command my legs than I could rule the body of Zugzwang. Red in his robes, he lay now at my feet, a bishop snapped in threes. "He has done his task now, let him rest," Caissa said. "And now, let you rest, too, for I have overcome the briars, Papa. I have slain the dragon, I have played the chess master and I, at last, have answered the riddle." "And what is this, my girl?" "The game of skill, wherein a man may learn how to defend and protect what is most valuable." She kissed me on the cheek, and then goodbye. I stood inside the rubble of myself and watched her steps, amazed at how she bore her life, struck in her brilliancy. Like any man, I wanted the world. Like every man, I received less: a kingdom of bones, a shattered wall and a sun that cracks through my high window panes as I sat at my board. I no more play chess because I can't remember, yet the board will not let me forget. There is no power here. My bishop's prophecies have bled the life from him; I have snapped my staff and placed it in the ruins, for I cannot change it back into the scepter it once was, just as I can no more hear my father's voice. It whispers like the trees, of honor and of kings and of protection. Yet I am here, and old, and I fade a little each second. There are none left within my realm to eat, no not a soul. And yet my heart ticks on. I wondered why until the day I found it in the mouth of the last book not eaten by the dust. I have not died because I am a father. Like any father, I tried to hold until my knuckles cracked, like every father I knew nothing more than the ghosts of old tales and the stratagems of chess. Yet, it is strange. I broke and endured breaking for a thing that would have come, and but I had held it close and taught it chess. Like every father now, I hear the wind and wonder at myself. *** JoSelle Vanderhooft graduated from the University of Utah in 2004 and has been roaming around the United States ever since. Her first poetry collection, 10,000 Several Doors, will be released later this year from Cat's Eye Publishing, and she is currently editing an anthology of lesbian-themed fairytales for Torquere Press to be released in May 2006. Additional poetic works can be found in upcoming issues of Star*Line Magazine and the Prime Books anthology Jabberwocky #1. Her essay "The Most Important Letter of Your Life" is also slated to appear in an anthology of young gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender writing. A benefit for the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) it will be released from Random House/Knopf in 2006. She also writes for several newspapers and magazines. *** Image: Serpent Rising: original artwork by Aria Nadii. Please visit her website at www.arianadii.com for more information about the artist and her works. *** back to fiction archives ***      Design ©2005 Cabinet des Fées, page content ©JoSelle Vanderhooft.