Excerpt: The First Castle

The First Castle
Chapter One: The Chess Set

Jordan Castle looked down at the chess set and frowned. The action was not uncommon for him; every time he looked down at it he frowned. All the same, he kept in his bedroom as a reminder. At the moment, he was cleaning his room. His mother had been harping on him all summer and somehow all summer he had managed to avoid the task. Now, however, his mother had put her foot down. Her son’s bedroom resembled nothing so much as a waste dump now and with school starting she wasn’t going to allow him to leave it that way any longer. “I let you get away with it while you were inhabiting it, but I’m not going to be left alone with your mess all day while you’re at school,” she had told him and that was that. Thus, instead of spending the last day of his summer vacation relaxing or practicing soccer, which he desperately needed to do if he wanted his position on the team secured, he spent the day carting laundry baskets full of dirty clothes to the basement to be doused with Spell-It-Out and washed. But even when confronted with a mountain of dirty socks and old pop cans, Jordan still looked down at the chess set and frowned.

It was a handsome chess set, made of obsidian and ivory which had been polished until the obsidian gleamed. The set had been passed down to him by his great uncle and it possessed an antique sort of elegance that he had noticed things made now lacked, the air that someone had put some care into making it. What made him frown was the white rook on the right hand side or, at least, what should have been the white rook, as the piece was missing. He had inherited that way, with that single piece gone. When they had cleared out his great uncle’s house when he died five years ago, Jordan had searched the place up and down for the missing piece, but he had not found it. He had failed to find anything interesting at all. The chess set had been the only thing his great uncle left to him.

Jordan shook his head and cleared his line of thought. He dropped the two crushed pop cans that were in his hand into the quickly filling trash bag on his floor, then thought better of it, dug them out and tossed them into the recycling bin that had been stationed outside of his door in the hall as he passed it heading for the stairs. He went down the stairs two at a time and nearly broke his neck tripping over the shin guards his had left on the landing.

“Agh,” he said as he caught himself against the wall.

“I told you to move those,” his mother said from the kitchen.

Jordan frowned again. “How’d you know?” he called. He then walked into the kitchen where she was cooking something, which smelled fantastic, for dinner.

“I’m your mother, it’s my job to know,” she said. “Now what are you doing down here? I know you’re not done with that sty you call a bedroom yet.”

“I’m taking a break,” he said.

“Taking a break?” his mother answered. She looked at him and narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

“And getting a drink,” he added. He opened the refrigerator door and pulled out a can of pop.

“Because you really need another can cluttering up your bedroom?” his mother said.

“I’m working on it, mom,” Jordan sighed with exaggerated exasperation. “Really, the last day of my summer and you have me doing this? I start high school tomorrow; I should be out buying the latest pair of shoes and scuffing them up a little so it doesn’t look like I try too hard.”

His mother gave a snort of laughter. “Is that what kids these days do? In my day it was the hair.”

Jordan grimaced. “I’ve seen the sort of hair kids had in your day,” he said and then laughed. “I’d be lucky not to be beaten up by every other boy in school, the tech club kids included.”

“Whatever, smart mouth,” Jordan’s mother said. “Try the sauce. I made it specially for you.” She lifted the spoon up to his mouth and he tasted it.

“Mmm. It’s wonderful,” he said.

“I’m glad,” she answered. “Now get back to your room.”

She went back to stirring the sauce, but rather than returning to his room, Jordan leaned up against the counter and took a sip of his pop. The television that was sitting on the counter next to the stove was turned on. Jordan assumed it was one of those late afternoon talk shows that his mother liked to watch, but for the moment there were only commercials. He sat through Fresh-Right Toothpaste, guaranteed by spell to keep your breath fresh all day, Sparkle’N’Shine Dish Soap, the only thing to get that classic clean, an advertisement for John P. Borden, attorney at law, and associates (“We Sue for You!”), and two car commercials before and advertisement for Egan’s Beauty-Bewitched Face Masks came on. It brought back Jordan’s frown. “Always been the plain girl in the room, ladies?” Egan’s smiling face came on. “Unsightly pimples? Too many wrinkles? Well, I have the product for you. The pinnacle product produced by today’s magic, Egan’s Beauty-Bewitched Face Masks will take you from being the Plain Jane or the Ugly Stepsister so that you too can be the belle of the ball.” It continued from there, but Jordan stopped listening. He finished off the last half of his pop in one long chug and tossed it in the recycling.

“Call me when dinner’s ready,” he told his mother. As he left the room, Egan’s advertisement was closing with an announcer rapidly relaying the cost of a Beauty-Bewitched Mask, which was to Jordan an exorbitant amount, with the closing message, faster than most could make out, “Effects last for a limited time only. Glamour only remains with repeated application.” He shook his head and signed, going back up the stairs, this time grabbing his shin guards instead of tripping over them and carrying them up to his room. He tossed them on his bed as entered, stepped over the bag of trash and his latest small heap of dirty laundry and plopped down on his desk chair.