“Was ist das?” Levi asked as he took a seat at the head of the table. “Did Seth talk you into playing chess with him?”
“He didn’t have to talk me into it,” Phoebe asserted as she made her move. “I enjoy the game.”
Levi groaned. “Ach, don’t tell me you’re a strategist too.”
“I wouldn’t call the way I play strategic. I’m more of a spontaneous, instinctual player.”
“That explains a lot,” Seth said.
Levi lifted a brow but didn’t comment further.
When she and Seth finished their match, Levi halted Seth’s attempts to pick up the game and turned to Phoebe. “Let’s see if you’re as good at checkers as you are at chess.”
Phoebe spread her hands. “But I lost.”
“Jah, but you gave him a run for his money. It’s more than I’ve ever been able to do.”
That surprised her. “You play?”
“I do. But not nearly as well as Seth. Which is why I don’t play him anymore.”
“You quit playing because you can’t win?”
He shrugged. “It’s no fun to play when you know you’ll never win.”
“I disagree. The fun is in the game itself. I love the give-and-take, the way I can watch my opponent study the board for the best moves and countermoves, the way conversation seems to go deeper when you’re sitting across the board from each other.” She leaned forward, trying to make him understand what she was saying. “In all the times I played my grossdaadi I only ever beat him once, not counting the times he just let me win while he was teaching me. It was the same with my daed. But I cherish my memories of each and every game we played because it was time I spent with just them and me.”
Levi raised a brow. “Is that how you feel when you play against Seth?”
She cut a quick glance Seth’s way to see he was busy storing the chess pieces in the drawer. “It’s how I feel when I play anyone.”
“Well, I still intend to see what kind of checkers player you are.”
She laughed. “All right. But I warn you, I’ve won many more checkers matches than I have chess.”
“Challenge accepted.”
Seth decided not to stay and watch the checkers match. He moved to the mudroom and grabbed his jacket.
“You aren’t going back to work, are you?”
He turned to see Phoebe studying him in some concern.
“I’m behind on my orders—everyone wants their sets before Christmas. I need to work on them every hour I can.”
He saw that she started to respond but before she could, Daniel jumped in.
“I want the next game,” his bruder demanded.
With a grin and a shrug, Seth walked out the door. Before he could close it behind him he heard Kish demand the game after that one.
As he trudged to his workshop he thought over what she’d told Levi about liking the game whether she won or not, that the enjoyment for her came from the time she spent with her opponent.
Did that include him—did she enjoy the time they spent together? He certainly did. Mainly because it was nice to have someone willing to play against him, of course.
Some time later, Seth leaned back and rotated his shoulders, trying to ease his cramped muscles. He’d completed the carving on three more pieces and he was quite pleased with the look of them. He reached for another small block of wood then paused when he heard the sound of laughter coming from outside.
Curious, he stood and opened his workshop door. The sight that met his eyes brought a smile to his face. Phoebe and all of his brieder except Mark were engaged in an energetic game of some sort—it looked like a version of blind man’s buff.
Phoebe was standing at the end of a pair of makeshift obstacle courses. His four brieder had paired off into teams with one of each duo wearing a blindfold. And each team was trying to navigate the obstacle courses, with the seeing member giving instructions to the blindfolded one. As he watched he grinned at the missteps and blunders they were making. And those who were falling behind seemed to be having just as much fun as those who were in the lead.
Phoebe spotted him first. “Kum, join us,” she said, waving him over.
But Seth shook his head. “I have work to do and you all seem to be paired up just fine.” He was the odd man out, as usual when it came to his brieder. Which was how it should be when one was acting as daed.
Levi, who’d just stubbed his toe on a post, pulled a portion of his blindfold up revealing one eye. “You can take my place,” he said in mock-disgust. “Kish doesn’t seem to know his right from his left.”
“Hey,” Kish said indignantly, “it’s you who can’t seem to follow directions.”
“Now you have to join us,” Phoebe said. “You must settle this dispute one way or the other.”
“Jah,” Kish said. “Kum help me show what I can do with a partner who knows what he’s doing.”
Daniel and Jesse had halted their progress as well and added their own invitations to join in.
Putting aside his deadline worries with only a small twinge of guilt, Seth gave in. “All right, just one round of whatever this is,” he said as he sauntered over.
Phoebe clapped her hands. “Back to the start, everyone.” She turned back to Seth. “It’s an obstacle course game. If you look out across the yard you can see we set up various obstacles with buckets, fence posts, hay bales, and other things we were able to find pairs of. There are also four coffee mugs placed at intervals along each course. The way you play is you try to guide your blindfolded partner through the course without touching him or allowing him to touch any of the items in his path. And you need to talk him through collecting those mugs as he goes. Those can be handed off to his partner, by the way.”
