Chapter 1: ch.1 [The Queen Who Ate The Board]

The first time Seth Pawn heard someone say a girl had eaten an entire chessboard, he was eight years old, and he believed it completely.

"And she has devoured the knight! The bishop! Now she’s coming for the rook!"

Seth stopped chewing his cereal.

The TV in the living room was too loud, but no one was there to tell him to turn it down.

It was never anyone’s job to tell him anything.

The apartment was quiet the way a closed room is quiet, and the television was the only thing in it that sounded alive.

On the fridge, under a magnet shaped like a lemon, hung a note in neat, cold handwriting.

Dinner is in the freezer.

Don’t wait up. - M.

He hadn’t waited up in a long time.

Seth carried his bowl over and sat on the carpet, close enough to the screen that his nose almost touched it.

He had only turned the TV on because he hated the silence.

He didn’t know what chess was.

He thought the little carved horses were toys.

But the announcers kept saying the same name, again and again, like it was something sacred.

"Astrid Lind. Seventeen years old. Norway’s prodigy. She has not lost a single game in this tournament."

"If she wins today, she’ll be the first woman in history to become World Chess Champion."

Seth didn’t know what a champion was either.

But the way the announcers said it made his chest feel tight and warm at the same time.

Then the camera cut to her.

The spoon slipped out of his hand.

She sat very straight in a black jacket with a white collar. Her hair was white, truly white, like fresh snow, falling past her shoulders without a single strand out of place.

Her skin was pale, her fingers were long and still, and when she raised her eyes, they were red.

Not angry red.

Deep red, like a candle seen through a window on a winter night.

She looked like someone from a storybook.

A queen who had walked out of the pages by mistake and sat down at a table in the real world.

Seth forgot to breathe.

She’s so pretty, he thought, in the simple, helpless way eight-year-olds think things.

She’s like a princess. No. She’s like a queen.

On the screen, her opponent, a gray-haired man with a damp forehead, reached for a piece, hesitated, and pulled his hand back. He did this three times.

Astrid did not hesitate once.

She moved in a smooth, quiet motion, as if she were setting down a cup of tea.

Click.

Her piece landed.

The man’s piece vanished from the board in her hand.

"And there goes another one. She just eats them up!" the announcer cried.

Seth gasped.

"She really eats them!"

He pictured it clearly.

A girl with white hair, calmly picking up little wooden horses and swallowing them one by one while the grown-ups in the room stared at her in terror.

He pressed his hands over his mouth, thrilled and horrified at the same time.

She must be really, really hungry, he thought. And really, really strong.

The game went on.

He couldn’t follow any of it, but he could feel it, the way you can feel a storm coming without knowing what clouds are.

The man was sweating more.

The crowd was holding its breath.

Astrid sat perfectly still, calm as a frozen lake.

Then the man’s shoulders sagged.

He reached out with a trembling hand, took his own king, and tipped it onto its side.

The room exploded.

People stood and cheered.

Cameras flashed so brightly the screen turned white.

The announcers shouted until their voices cracked.

"History! This is history! The first woman World Champion, and at seventeen!"

And Astrid Lind...

She did almost nothing.

She nodded once.

She shook the man’s hand.

She stood with perfect posture and bowed her head slightly, like someone finishing a piece of homework.

Seth frowned.

"Why isn’t she happy?"

The cameras swarmed her. Flowers, microphones, flashing lights.

People shouted questions in a dozen languages, and she answered them all with the same calm, polite face.

Then, for just one second, as the crowd pushed in around her, she looked straight into the camera.

It was a small look. Tired. A little lost.

The look of a girl standing in the middle of a huge room full of noise, and still completely alone.

Seth felt it land in the center of his chest.

He knew that look.

He saw it every night in the dark window of the living room, when he looked at his own reflection beside an empty chair.

On the screen, her face smoothed over again, calm as ice.

The moment was gone.

Probably no one else in the world had even noticed it.

But Seth had.

He stayed on the carpet long after the broadcast ended and the news anchors moved on to the weather.

His cereal had turned soggy.

His heart was beating oddly fast.

He wanted to know what she was thinking.

He wanted to know if she was lonely.

He wanted, more than he had ever wanted anything, to meet her.

It took him three days to find out how.

He asked a boy at school.

The boy looked at him like he was crazy.

"You play chess against her. Duh."

So that night, Seth tore a piece of cardboard from an old cereal box, drew sixty-four wobbly squares on it with a crayon, and colored half of them in.

He didn’t have any pieces, so he used bottle caps.

Red caps for himself. Blue ones for her.

He gave the biggest cap to the queen.

Then he sat in front of the board, cross-legged, chin in his hands, with no idea what to do next.

So he did the only thing he could think of.

He looked at the empty chair across from him, the one where no one ever sat, and spoke with great seriousness.

"I’m going to get really good. And someday I’m going to play you."

The chair didn’t answer.

"And I’m going to eat all your pieces."

It seemed like the polite thing to add.

The apartment stayed silent.

But for the first time in a long while, it didn’t feel quite as empty.

? ? ?

Eleven years later.

Blunder.

The word flashed across Seth’s phone screen in red letters, and he stared at it with the dead eyes of a man watching his own house burn down.

"No..."

He whispered it.

"No, no, no, no. That was free. Why did I give it a free queen?"

The chess app did not answer.

It simply rubbed salt into the wound by showing him his rating: 412.

Seth Pawn, nineteen years old, skinny, black-haired, round glasses sliding halfway down his nose, pressed his forehead against the counter of the convenience store and groaned.

It was 2:47 in the morning.

The fluorescent lights hummed.

The only customer in the last hour had been a man who bought one banana and left.

Seth’s shift ended at six, his dorm room was the size of a closet, and his tuition payment was due in two weeks.

His life had no direction whatsoever.

But every night, on his break, he played one more game.

And every night, he lost.

He panicked when pieces were threatened.

He had never read a single page of opening theory.

He moved fast, blundered faster, and had once resigned a game because he was sure he was losing, when he was actually one move from winning.

"Eleven years..." he muttered into the counter.

"Eleven years, and I still can’t even see a fork."

His phone buzzed.

A news notification slid down from the top of the screen, and Seth almost ignored it.

Then the words registered, and every thought in his head came to a complete stop.

FACE THE WORLD CHAMPION- Astrid Lind to take on open challengers in live exhibition.

Registration closes tonight.

His hands began to shake.

He opened the article.

There was a photo, and there she was.

Older now, twenty-eight, taller than he had pictured, her white hair tied back neatly, wearing a dark tailored coat.

Her red eyes looked directly into the camera, sharp and calm, with the same faint, tired distance he had seen when he was eight.

She hadn’t changed.

And Seth, on a quiet night at a convenience store counter, with a rating of 412 and more than a decade of unspoken promises, smiled like a complete fool.

"I can meet her..." he whispered.

The door chimed.

A customer walked in and looked at him strangely.

"Uh... sir? Are you okay?"

"I’m great."

Seth beamed, tears prickling in the corners of his eyes.

"I’m the best I’ve ever been."

His thumb hovered over the Register button.

There was just one small problem.

He was absolutely terrible at chess.