Page 112 of Happily Ever Witch
The Cheshire Carpet’s multitude of mouths appeared and vanished, as it talked. “Are you ready to play chess, now? You did promise me a game today.”
Crap. Shehadpromised it. It had seemed lonely and she’d been in the middle of seducing Trevelyan. She’d forgotten all about it. “Um, to be honest, I don’t really know how to play chess. So, I doubt I’d be much of an opponent for you.”
“Oh, I don’t know how to play either.” It answered cheerily. “The rules are confusing, so I just make them up as I go.”
That was how Esmeralda played most games, too. “I hate rules.” She agreed.
“Shall we try a game, then?”
“I’m right in the middle of…”
“I’ll be white.” It interrupted. “White goes first.” A chessboard appeared on a table thatalsoappeared. “The goal is to move your pieces as quickly as you can.”
Esmeralda debated the wisdom of pissing off a magic carpet. She wasn’t clear what it could do, magically speaking, and she didn’t need it causing her problems today. She was already dealing with enough trouble. And shehadpromised it.
“Can we do this later, maybe?” She tried.
“Pawns are useless.” The rug said, by way of an answer. “I like moving my queen the best.” The white queen slid across the board, with no one and nothing touching it. “You can win in eight moves, if you play your queen right. Won’t take a moment.”
Esmeralda reluctantly went into the room and moved the red queen. Eight turns shouldn’t take long. She had no idea how to use the piece, so she just dropped it in the middle of the board. “This okay?”
“That’s four spaces.” The rug chided. “A queen only moves one at a time.”
She was pretty sure that wasn’t so. “You said we were making up our own rules.” She argued.
“But we’re notsavages.Now I get to move my queen three more times to catch up.”
Esmeralda rolled her eyes, as the white queen zigzagged around the board. For a creature with no hands or head, the Cheshire Carpet was agile. “What’s the point of this?” She asked, as the rug cheated horribly.
“To win, of course. Or, contrariwise, to make others lose.” The rug laughed. “If you get all the way across the board, you’redoublequeen. And everything counts double-y double today, because it’s Tove.”
“Today’s that weird extra day, added into the middle of the week?”
“Oh yes! It’s always a merry time. Especially this year, with the empress being crowned.”
Esmeralda remembered seeing a little crown drawn on Tove’s calendar date, down in the lab. Shit. “The empress issupposed to be crowned on Tove? Great. That probably makes the Queen of Clubs even more dangerous than usual.”
“I don’t like the Queen of Clubs.”
“Because she’s a kidnapping murderer, trying to take over the kingdom?”
“Because she doesn’t know how to play chess properly. She won’t do for an empress, at all.” The white queen hopped off the board and bounced in a semi-circle around the table top to reenter the game on the other side. “Checkmate!”
Esmeralda frowned down at the arrangement of pieces. Some of them were mismatched tokens from other board games and one was a salt shaker. She didn’t see how any of them had boxed in her king, since she didn’t have one. “This is checkmate?”
“No, I just like saying it.”
“Right. Well, that was about seven moves, so nowIget to catch up.”
The two of them randomly jumped the pieces around, talking about nonsense and nail polish for a few minutes. The Cheshire Carpet didn’t have hands, but it was sure a manicure would look just lovely on its fringed tassels. Esmeralda promised to work on a special formula. The Cheshire Carpet requested pink.
Esmeralda was actually having a good time, but she needed to get on with her wolf rescue. “Double queen.” She slammed the red queen down on the far side of the board, pleased with her victory.
“Doubly-double.” The Cheshire Carpet reminded her with a happy sigh. “I just love Tove.” The chessboard vanishedagain. “That was fun! We should play again, when you get back from the Club Kingdom. Next time, we’ll use a properly colored board. Pink and red.”
“Those are the Heart Kingdom’s colors.” Esmeralda recalled the rug telling her all about it.
“Exactly! I’ll be the pink side and you can stay red. The Heart Queen should always be red. Coincidently, I far prefer pink. Or purple! What do you think of a pink-and-purple chess set?”
