by Claire Luana
“I hope we don’t have to stay here for long,” I said, surveying the warehouse with distaste. Though, at least for the moment, the space seemed safe.
“Read the clue,” Orin suggested.
I ripped open the envelope and retrieved the piece of cardstock inside. “It’s a poem. Or a riddle.” I read it aloud.
It’s time to prove your mastery,
Of color and piece and square,
One at a time you’ll find them,
Those you love so fair.
But if you are to end it,
You mustn’t take the bait,
Across the board you’ll soldier,
‘Till king becomes your mate.
“What the fuck does that mean?” I asked when I’d finished reading.
Orin shook his head. “Damned if I know.”
“We have to make friends with the Faerie king?” I ventured a guess. “Or find him? If this is another trial tailored for Tristam, I’m going to scream.”
Orin scowled. “And I’ll join you. But, the king’s at the palace. Do we just need to get back to there?”
“It seems too simple.” I shrugged. “What’s this other stuff? Those you love so fair? Taking the bait?”
“I suspect we’ll find out.”
“So, best we can figure, we head back to the palace?” I asked.
“Until we know more…that’s my best guess,” Orin agreed.
“Feels like a bit of a letdown.”
“Just wait until the monsters start popping out.” Orin opened the door and gestured for me to go first.
I stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked around. It was quiet here. Too quiet. A breeze ruffled a nearby tree, making me jump. I was seriously on edge.
“The sidewalk is painted white,” Orin said. He frowned and looked back over his shoulder into the shadow of the building. “Like the interior.”
“Weird,” I said and started walking. The sooner we got done with this trial, the better.
We walked down the sidewalk in the general direction of the palace. Its tall white spires were visible from nearly everywhere in Elfame, so getting there was just a matter of pointing ourselves in that direction and walking.
I was about to step off the sidewalk to cross a vacant street when Orin threw out an arm to block me. “Wait.”
I froze and looked around quickly. The street was deserted. “What?”
He pointed. “The street is painted black. Look at the dividing line here.”
I looked down beneath my boots. He was right. While we stood on the white sidewalk, the street and the sidewalk on the other side were painted black. “Do you think it’s like, hot lava?” I joked weakly.
“What?” Orin furrowed his brow. “Why would you think that? It looks cool and stable to me—”
“Never mind,” I said. “It’s a kid’s game.”
He shot me a look like, what crazy kind of kid were you, but he knelt down tentatively to poke the black-painted street. His finger hit what I could only describe as a…force field.
“Woah,” I said, and Orin stood quickly, stepping back. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, it was unpleasant, but not painful,” he said. He reached out a hand slowly and pressed it against the air. A violet field appeared around his hand, undulating in the air.
What in god’s name…
Orin grimaced and pressed harder, trying to shove the field back. Nothing. He couldn’t budge it.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked, looking down at the riddle in my hand. There was something we were missing here.
But another voice answered—not Orin’s, and not Ruth’s. It was low and scratchy and came from directly behind us. “Maybe I can answer that.”
9
I whirled around, readying myself for danger, but the voice turned out to belong to a squat creature with green-tinged skin, pointed ears, and a flat nose. While he was small and didn’t appear to be threatening, I kept my guard up, not trusting the appearance of anything in this hellhole.
“It’s a leprechaun,” Orin whispered in my ear. “Attracted to gold, wily as a cat and completely insane.”
“I can hear you,” the creature sang, doing a set of surprisingly acrobatic cartwheels around us. “And I’m not completely insane, only partially. Plus, we’re the only ones on this street, so I’m all you’ve got.”
I shook my head, trying to take everything in. I thought leprechauns were traditionally meant to be lucky? Something told me that wasn’t the case with this guy. He pulled three live mice from his pockets and began to juggle them. “So, do you want to get through the barrier or not?”
“Yes, please,” I replied. I didn’t particularly like the idea of needing help, but if he could get us closer to the palace, I’d take what he had to offer.
“No,” Orin grabbed my hand and pulled me back from the leprechaun. He lowered his voice, turning to me. “Have you learned nothing about this race? No one in here is our friend, and no one wants to help us. We’d be better off figuring this out ourselves.”
“I can still hear you,” The leprechaun shouted at us, but his tone wasn’t hostile. It was almost…gleeful. “And I’ll be your friend if you want me to. My name’s Peachkin. Would either of you like a mouse?”
Ignoring him, I turned back to Orin. “I agree, but unless you know how to get through this force field, we’re stuck here. At least, following him might get us a little closer to where we need to be. He doesn’t seem dangerous. He’s too busy juggling mice for a start.” I snorted in laughter, a grin creeping over my face at the absurdity of it all. That grin was short-lived, however,—as I looked back at the leprechaun—er, Peachkin—I caught him eating one of the mice while juggling the other two with one hand. Blood dripped down his chin as he chewed on the mouse.
Bile rose in my throat at the sight of it. Poor little mouse.
“What was it you were saying?” Orin asked, batting his impossibly long eyelashes at me.
I huffed. Damn it, I really needed to get out of this place.
“Don’t you at least want to see what I can do?” Peachkin asked. He scurried between Orin and I, up to the line where the road turned from white to black. He held his finger up in the air. The other two mice had been stashed in his pocket, presumably for a snack later.
“Come on, let’s find another way to go,” Orin said, taking my hand, but I was rooted to the spot, grossly fascinated by the strange little faerie. What was he waiting for?
The leprechaun cocked his head to the side, and as he did, a distant sound filled the air. It sounded like… a resounding gong.
Peachkin did a little jig on the spot and jumped across onto the black side of the street.
“I guess we can pass now,” I said, following the leprechaun. Orin trailed reluctantly after as I held my hand out over the line where the magical field had been. I waited for the shock or whatever it was that had stopped Orin, but nothing came. Taking a deep breath, I stepped forward onto the black-painted street.
“It’s fine.” I turned back to Orin.
Reluctantly he followed my lead and passed through without incident.
“That way?” I asked, pointing down the street. Ramshackle houses and shops flanked the black-painted cobblestone thoroughfare. As I took in the sinister street, a sense of foreboding hit me so strongly that I almost expected scary music to start blaring out at us like in a horror movie. But the peaks of the palace turrets could be seen over the top of the houses, and this appeared to be the natural path. There was nowhere to go but forwards. Besides, if I froze every time I got the heebie-jeebies in this place, I’d never go anywhere.
We walked the street for a mile or so before it once again turned white beneath our feet. At the border between black and white, I expected there to be another magical field like the last border, but we passed through with no resistance.
I gripped Orin’s hand as we walked cautiously down the street. Everything was so dark and still, even with the white paint on the
cobblestones. We passed rows of abandoned shops. A grocery store, a spell bookshop, a toyshop. Had the king cleared all of this out, just for the race? Peachkin skipped next to us, whistling a merry tune. I still didn’t trust the little guy, but he seemed to know something about what was going on. So I was okay letting him accompany us. For now.
All of it put me on edge. The silence and shadows of our surroundings juxtaposed with the merry little flesh-eating leprechaun. I was glad when we reached the end of the street, and once again, the world became black. As I stepped across the line where white turned to black, my foot bumped up against a purple haze, and an invisible wall of magic pushed me back.
“Ow,” I complained, my toes smarting.
“You can’t go yet,” Peachkin said gleefully. “It’s not your turn.” He pulled a flute out from his other pocket and began to play a tune while tap dancing on the spot.
“Not our turn?” Orin growled at the leprechaun in frustration. “What does that even mean?”
Peachkin shrugged his little shoulders and gave Orin a grin.
My eyes widened as the clues began to click into place. Not our turn...We were playing a game.
“Orin,” I exclaimed, grabbing his shoulders. “Give me the clue again.”
He fished it out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me.
I scanned the clue, testing the language against my hypothesis. Piece and square…board…king…Holy crap!
It’s time to prove your mastery,
Of color and piece and square,
One at a time you’ll find them,
Those you love so fair.
But if you are to end it,
You mustn’t take the bait,
Across the board you’ll soldier,
‘Till king becomes your mate.
I looked up at Orin, shocked. “It’s chess. We’re in a game of chess. Look at this.” I turned the clue to him. “The old city has been turned into the gameboard. White and black squares. We don’t need to befriend the Faerie king, we need to beat him! Checkmate!”
Peachkin clapped his hands together in glee then carried on his playful tune.
Orin nodded slowly. “You’re right, Jacq.”
“We can’t move until Tristam and Sophia have taken their turn. They need to figure out what they’re doing, too.”
“I never learned to play chess. I know there are multiple playing pieces.”
Pride and excitement flooded me. Finally, a trial I’d be good at. A trial that I’d know what the hell I was doing. I knew chess. I’d played hundreds of games with my father when I was younger. “I know how to play. The most common pieces are the pawns. The pawns can move one space forwards except at the start when they can move two if they wish. To be able to take an opponent, they can only do it diagonally and then only by moving one space.”
Orin shook his head. “Are we pawns then? Who are the other playing pieces? If we’re looking for the king, surely there have to be two to make this a fair game?”
I bit my lip. “Yeah. So maybe it’s not the Faerie king after all. But then, who is it we’re supposed to find?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it has to do with these lines of the clue: Those you love so fair? Not taking the bait?”
“Maybe,” I admitted.
He was asking so many questions, questions that I didn’t know the answer to yet. I knew this was chess, I just didn’t know how it was being played out in real life. If we were waiting for Tristam and Sophia to figure it out and make their move, we were probably in for a long wait.
“I saw a toy shop a few stores back. Let’s see if there are any chess sets in there, and I’ll give you a crash course.”
Orin looked like he’d rather do anything than walk back down the street, but he relented. Really, he had little choice because we couldn’t pass through the barrier to the white square yet. This trial was about cunning and patience, and we both had to learn that particular skill.
The toy store was marked by a hanging sign with gold lettering. Expecting it to be locked, I tentatively tried the handle. Surprisingly, it opened easily. The shop smelled musty and had a fine layer of dust on the floor, but footsteps in the dust told me that someone had been here recently. I followed the trail of prints. They led to the games section. Whoever had come in here had walked out again because the same prints led back out to the door.
This was nothing like any toyshop I’d ever been in on Earth. It was as dark as the street outside with macabre objects on each shelf. The only source of light coming from an aisle a few rows away. The doll section creeped me out as we passed. They looked more likely to murder someone with their red eyes than comfort a little child. “If you all grew up with toys like this, I’m not surprised the fae are so bizarre and deadly,” I said, picking up a particularly worrying doll with a dark green body and terrifying face.
“This isn’t a toy shop,” Orin said with horror. “This is a DM toy shop. Strictly adults only. And give me that doll. Some of the magic in shops like this is seriously messed up. Look at the label.” He grabbed the doll from my hands like it was a ticking time bomb and put it back on the shelf.
I leaned in to read the label. Tibetan Head Shrinking doll. Hold this for more than ten minutes, and your head will shrink to a quarter of its size. Perfect for enemies.
I swallowed hard.
“In fact, don’t touch anything,” said Orin. “Half the objects in here could accidentally kill you. Or curse you.”
I moved to the center of the aisle to be as far from the shelves as possible so as to not accidentally shrink my head or worse. “DM Toys?” I asked. It sounded like some sort of kinky faerie sex shop.
“Dark Magic. The faeries that frequent this shop are not the kind you want to meet in a dark alley.” I declined to point out that category included almost any kind of faerie at all. Orin continued, “I’m sure some of the stuff gets used for harmless pranks, but I’d be willing to bet that the customers of a place like this are thieves, murderers, and vagabonds. Let’s find what we came for and get out of here quickly.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to find a chess set now. If a doll could shrink my head, what could an evil magical chess set do? But then I saw one on the shelf and changed my mind.
“I think we were supposed to find this,” I said, approaching cautiously. The set was at least twice the size of a normal chess set to account for the layout of the city. A dome of glass covered it, and it was here that we found the source of the blue light that lit up the dreary shop. I wondered if the FFR producers had purposely placed it in our path. Would we have found it somewhere else if we hadn’t stumbled in here?
The playing pieces were formed of glowing magic, and it didn’t take long to find my and Orin’s likenesses standing on a black square near the edge of the board. Flicking my eyes to the other side, I saw Tristam and Sophia, just one square from the start. Had they figured out what was going on yet, or had they just stumbled across? Either way, we were in the lead. I was filled with a sense of glee that was completely unjustified. We’d literally only moved two squares after all, and chess could be a long game. Still, it was nice to know we were beating Tristam and Sophia.
Orin grabbed my hand and pointed to the board. “The king isn’t the king. Look.”
I moved my eyes to where he was pointing—the square where our team’s king should be. A handsome man wearing a crown stood on the square. I didn’t recognize him, but I brought my hand to my mouth as I saw who the queen next to him was.
“That’s my mom,” I cried in a strangled voice.
“And our king is my father,” replied Orin. “The FFR has gotten our family involved!” His hands balled into fists. “We aren’t playing a game, Jacq. This is a war.”
10
I fought against my rising panic. “She must be so terrified!” I said, peering at the little piece. It was motionless, its little face a still mask. The pieces must just mark locations the board, not reflect what was going on with the actual human or faeri
e players. “We have to go to her!”
“But we can’t leave our square,” Orin said as we passed out of the toyshop back into the dark street.
Peachkin was doing a handstand in the middle of the street.
I looked back down at the chessboard, which I was holding before me like a tray of hors d’oeuvres. “Peachkin,” I called out to the leprechaun. “Are you one of our pawns?”
He righted himself and giggled gleefully. “Right-o!”
I guess we were stuck with him.
“Can you shrink this thing?” I asked Orin as I struggled to balance the chessboard.
Orin nodded and waved his hand. Purple magic swirled around it, and the chessboard shrunk to the size of a book. Much better.
“Peachkin, how can we get to the queen’s square?” I asked. “Peachkin!” I snapped my fingers. The little faerie was practicing his backflips, which by the look of it, he hadn’t quite mastered. Ow.
“I can’t go with you,” was all he said.
I grimaced and turned back to the miniature board. “Do you think we’re stuck on this square until it’s our turn?” I asked Orin. He peered through the glass at the board.
“No, that doesn’t make sense. How would we move the other pieces then?”
“But, we tried to cross, and it didn’t let us until the gong sounded.” I assumed the gong was Sophia and Tristam’s turn running out, but they hadn’t realized they needed to move. So this was timed, like a professional chess game. That made it even more challenging. But it made sense that the race producers would want to keep things moving.
“We were here, right?” Orin pointed at a white square on the board. “We moved Peachkin here, up two. Maybe we can’t move into the center of the board without moving one of our pieces. But what if we tried to go back the other way, to these squares that hold our other pieces? Maybe we can move that way.”