#mischance

“You must think me a great coward,” they said.

Their voice was unexpectedly clear for all that they had not lifted their head from their knees. LV stole one glance in their direction. “Not at all,” she said, and looked back to the throng of scarves.

“I think that you are very brave.”

“I don’t know why you keep me.” Mischance ignored her. “You were right in the beginning, to turn me away. I’m no match for you. Everything you do is beyond me. You…you’re fearless. You’re not afraid of anything; you’re more.” They paused, and their voice retreated into their throat. “I hold you back.”

“That isn’t true.”

“You can’t tell me you weren’t put out when I refused to run the experiment.” Mischance glared at her, their expression shrewd, but LV could see that they had been crying. “You’re not subtle.”

“No,” LV looked down, and her crown hung low around her head. “I mean…yes, it’s true that I was disappointed. And I still think”—she placed one hand on either side of her helmet, and exhaled. “I mean I think it was unfair of me. I think that if it was anything I did or said that caused you to feel like this, then it was unfair. I think it does not matter what I wanted, if you did not want it also. I will not—” Now her crown threatened to drip more seriously; she caught a large globule of it in her hand as it dropped down before her face, and curled her fingers around the sludge. “I must not be that. Not with you. No matter what I want, no matter what I say. Do you understand?”

“Of course I do.” Mischance spoke levelly. “And that is why I say what I have said, exactly as I have said it. How could I hold you back if I had no hold on you? I know well that you will never force me: that’s not what I said.” They held her gaze. “I said that I hold you back.”

“And I say that you are very clever, fool, but you are wrong. You said also that I am not afraid.” LV paused, looked down again. “It isn’t true.”

“Oh don’t humour me.”  The jester rolled their eyes and leaned back against the wall. “Apart from petty negotiations I don’t think i’ve ever seen you fearful in my entire life—and you can’t tell me that counts; that’s just absurd.”

“It absolutely does count. Paperwork is horrifying. But that’s not what I was talking about.”

“Then what?”

LV traced a pattern with her finger over her right knee, silent for a spell, and Mischance waited. At length she let her head fall to one side, and caught their eye from under the shadow of her helmet.

“Do you really think that’s why I tried to run you off?”

She spoke now very softly, quiet as a ghost.

“I mean you first came to this place. Do you think it was because I thought you would not measure up—that you would not be brave enough to match me? Because if so, I’m having a hard time imagining how you could have gotten it more wrong. You, Mischance, were the bravest thing I’d seen in years.” She looked down. “I was terrified.”  

“You…what?”

“You terrified me.”

“I’m sorry,” Mischance laughed. “But…how—?”

“It’s difficult to explain.”

The scarves had calmed somewhat now, and Mischance let them swim through the air in a figure eight as she continued to speak. The stream of their shadows rippled over the walls.

“Before you came here,” she said, “I did not hope for anything. And I did not fear anything, either—not for a long time. You’d be surprised how easy that is, when you want nothing. When nothing is wanted of you. I simply was. I was waiting… I assumed that it would be like that forever, until I was not. So when you came here—when you answered the summons that I did not recall having sent, when you overcame the nine gates and demanded my audience, bowed before me as if I were still some great lord, and begged apprenticeship… you hardly seemed possible. I did not know what to make of you. You trembled under my scrutiny, and yet you would not leave. You had the summons. I let you stay, and you were pleased. I could not fathom why. You seemed so interested in everything around you, so reactive. Things startled you and you jumped. A colour would catch your eye: you’d step closer and you’d smile. You ran your tests and you threw your scarves and bent all surfaces to your will. You set goals and you celebrated your progress, and scowled when you found yourself thwarted. You kept on. You made jokes and laughed at them. And then too sometimes you saddened, sometimes you stilled…” She looked up, reached over and took one bell from the jester’s hat between her fingers. “Just like this. “And I thought then that perhaps, after all, you were not so different…” She drew her finger over their nose, and down the line of diamonds on each cheek. “But even in your sadness there was an energy—something I recognised, but had not felt in a very long time. It was full, somehow. Full of want.” She drew back her hand now, let it hover before their face. “And that frightened me. It’s what had frightened me all along. It’s why I’d wanted you to leave—the moment I saw you: everything about you screamed it. You wanted so much. And you were brave enough to try.” She rotated her palm to face her, and stared into it.

“It takes a great deal of courage, you see, to be afraid. You’ll think you’ve cheated it—you’ll think you’re fearless—but there is a deeper fear behind it: one that sleeps, and one that waits. That fear is a tyrant. It will make a coward of you, and you’ll never know: it erases all fears else, lays you to rest…

“I’m afraid of a lot of things, now. I owe you that. I’m afraid of what I was, and what I am. Afraid of the difference. So much that I have ruined, you remind me of: I’m afraid I will destroy you, somehow, or disappoint you—that we will fail. There is such a heaviness in me, sometimes—still—and I’m afraid it will win out, that I’ll go back. And I do not want that, Mischance. Even to fear these things at all: I hold it a great privilege: it is better—so much better. Now you say you are no match for me.” She laughed gently, flexed and un-flexed her hand. “But what would I be, do you think, if you had not come?”

Mischance now sat facing her with their legs crossed, their expression kind. They reached out and caught another drop from her crown, rolled it from hand to hand like a ball of mercury, transfigured it into a globular caterpillar.

“I do not think it quite fair,” they said, “to call yourself a coward.” They placed the caterpillar back atop the rim of her crown. “You were not well. You may have recovered on your own, in time. Or perhaps someone else would have helped you. Maybe even someone better.”

“No.”

“No what?”

LV pulled away, rolled onto her knees and drew herself up tall.

“None of that. No one better.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can,” she said, and she would have looked very grave but for the caterpillar inching around the circumference of crown. “Do you think I would accept just anyone into this position? I am your King. I will not sit here and be insulted in my choice of jester.”

“Hmmmm.” Mischance narrowed their eyes, held out their hand in front of them, palm down. In a flash, a set of cards leapt up to meet it from a crack in the floorboards. Mischance shuffled them in a series of arcs, then held them up in front of of their nose in a fan, peering just over the tops of them.