Knight Errant

By Michael Oren

We're all looking for the ideal mate in life and, with skill and luck, we may someday succeed. Still, on route, there are always checks.

Imagine my astonishment when, after a long, dark bivouac, I am suddenly deployed for battle. Positioned in the rear of two rows, behind the soldiery, wedged between fortress and prelate. Before us, across the sectioned field, the enemy awaits, identically aligned. But I prefer not to look at them, straining instead sidelong at the crowns—one crossed, the other serrated—of our rulers. For them, we will fight, or so I’m told, we will give our lives and take others’. That is our duty: to defend, advance, and capture. Our sole mission, to win.

Truth be told, I’m jittery. A shiny replacement for a veteran somehow mislaid, this is my first engagement. Those around me, most of them worn and chipped, have seen endless conflicts, and seem to regard this one impassibly. But not me. I’m stiff with anxiety over how I’ll perform, whether I’ll falter in the face of adversity or surge onward and crabwise on command. Will I yield to the first shock of combat or be sacrificed so that others more formidable might charge? Or will I, the newcomer, somehow accomplish the impossible, leap over and sidestep the antagonists, eliminate an unwitting few, and reach the rank where the rival king cowers, corner him, and triumph?

Wouldn’t she be proud of me then? The very thought of it bristles my mane. Who? The queen, of course, the only female among us and the deadliest of all. See how she stands there, erect and lording over her languorous husband, regal in her ability to crisscross the realm and dominate it. If the king is the prize, she is the treasure. Was there any way that I, on my very first foray, could not fall achingly in love? Any way that, even now, confronting death, I could not yearn for this older, taller, and most powerful woman?

But feelings like these are expressly forbidden, a violation of our holiest laws. For it is determined that we move in specified fashions, in straight lines or angles, unerringly.

Each knowing our place and potency. The stunted castles that can quash their victims up, down, and across, the mitered bishops invested to diagonally purge. Pawns in their helmets marching stiffly, first two steps then one, only to strike askew. And the knights, the most anomalous of warriors, capable of hurdling allies and foes, and mounting ninety-degree assaults. All that is immutable. Sixty-four squares, eight rows and columns divided, as are we, into white and black. The fixed chiaroscuro of our universe.

And who am I, the youngest cavalier, to challenge that order? How could I even ponder such sacrilege or even dare to think? Yet I can’t help myself, no more than I can from prancing to the front and flanking as the hostilities finally begin. All around me, formations are crumbling. Pawns vanquished, rooks felled. Two moves on, I’m alone in hazardous territory, threatened both obliquely and head-on. Seems I’ve been sent as a decoy. A diversion for stealthier moves, I’m to be sacrificed for long-term gains the enemy has yet to anticipate.

Glancing behind me, I can still see the queen reigning nobly. Indomitable and adored. The thought that my infatuation might not be reciprocated doesn’t occur to me, only the knowledge that I’m unlikely to survive the next turn. Peremptorily, I will be removed and returned to the bivouac, there to languish in darkness again, without her.

The mere thought of that fate is torturous. Worse, it’s unjust. For what good is fighting if not for freedom and what use freedom if not wielded in the service of love? A keen, unbreakable love which, purposely inserted, can pry our shackles apart. Surrounded by foes preparing to pounce, I find myself wondering just who decreed our shapes and movements, who delimited our existence, and consigned us to unending war? Who proscribed us love?  For millennia, these ordinances have gone unquestioned. That is, perhaps, until now.

A castle has me in its crosshairs, a bishop eyes me aslant. I have less than a moment to decide. Unthinking, benumbed, I bound over pawns and horses, zigzag out of jeopardy and retreat to the safety of our lines. One more hop and at last I’m alongside the queen. I can barely breathe much less speak, but with a single snout-sweep, I hoist her over my head. There she cantilevers, teetering between my ears. Yet she does not protest, not even a squirm, as I gallop.

But the path is far from clear. Other forces swerve to block us and not only our own. For the first time in history, the two armies unite. Black and white, clergy and commoners, even the opposing kings come waddling toward us murderously. Together, they bind to preserve reality, to prevent an unraveling which, if unchecked, will dissolve our entire world.

Averting them requires all my knightly skills. Dodging one, vaulting another, and blindsiding a third so mercilessly that the rest of the antagonists freeze, even the enemy queen. Steaming, envious perhaps, she watches as her counterpart is whisked beyond every conceivable square.

Wheezing, I bear her. Outside the board, the table, and imagination, to a place without borders. Without either dimensions or rules. Only color and love. Here, I lower her and make her fully my queen. Here, monarchs of our fate, we will reign in peace together, forever mated and free.