October Flash Fiction #9 - Night's Beginning

“At this moment her thoughts were interrupted by a loud shouting of ‘Ahoy!  Ahoy!  Check!’ and a Knight, dressed in crimson armour, came galloping down upon her, brandishing a great club.  Just as he reached her, the horse stopped suddenly:  ‘You’re my prisoner!’ the Knight cried, as he tumbled off his horse.” Alice Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 8

It was nearly dark outside the library windows because of the clocks.  Amy wasn’t exactly sure what clocks had to do with light, but the practical result was that she got picked up from the after school program after sunset.  She was looking at the windows because looking at the chess board was getting discouraging.

The board wasn’t actually a board.  It was a cloth about a yard square, woven in black and white.  The chess pieces were wood, flat cutouts slotted into bases and painted with shiny enamel paint.  The brushmarks could have been like manes on the knights, but they weren’t; they all ran vertically.

Amy had lost one of her knights already.  He stood in a paddock made of pawns on Jenny’s side of the board.  In fact, she was down to her pale king, a pawn, one disgruntled rook with lopsided crenellations from being dropped so often, and the other knight.  Jenny slid her queen on the diagonal and took the rook.

For just a moment, Amy felt triumphant; her knight sprang forward and took the queen, but toppled a moment later under Jenny’s castle and her decisive cry:  “Checkmate!”