almost identical, but not quite. Look closely enough and you can see Sir Lancelot, the great swordsman but at heart impure, an adulterer. On the other side is Sir Gawain, young, but standing straight and loyal. To me they have become like real people, my companions over the last few months. I have never been as proud of any chess set I’ve carved as I am of this one. I know this is my masterpiece. I almost wish Dr. Wilson had not paid up front because if the set were mine I could keep it forever, maybe in a glass case. Then, when I grow old and my hands get stiff so I can only carve rough furniture, I could look at it proudly and say, “Once I carved this!” I tell Dr. Wilson that the set will be ready in a week and he comes in every day to watch me. I wonder why he is here and not at the university teaching his students. Finally I am done. The set has been sanded and burnished until the rosewood glows. I can think of nothing further to stretch out the task. Dr. Wilson pays me the last of the money he owes and I take down the box lined with silk that I have prepared for the set. To stretch out the last moments before it will leave my workshop I ask where he will display my chess pieces – somewhere just for himself or where everyone can admire it? He lifts his eyes from the pieces and looks at me for the first time. Now even I can see that he is not quite sane. “I am Merlin!” he says. “I created Camelot. It was my masterpiece. I made it a place of beauty and goodness but they corrupted it and made it evil. Now I must destroy it.” He picks up the chessboard with all the pieces and very carefully lowers it to the floor. Then he stamps on it. Stamps and stamps again, shattering every single piece, grinding each one angrily into the floor with his heels. Then he turns and stumbles out. I kneel on the floor running shreds of golden rosewood through my fingers. By some miracle I find the cheek and beard of King Arthur and I cling to the tiny fragment with my finger-tips. I don’t even realize that tears are running down my face until my wife comes in with a dustpan and brush. “Why are you crying?” she asks. “He paid you for it, didn’t he?”
------------------------------------------------------------------- copyright Valerie Adolph