Coattail

Coattail used to play as if alone in the world. In early games Coattail hopped only over his own pegs, ignored everyone else's entirely, and got jammed constantly — stuck behind a rival's cluster, waiting for it to move, convinced the other players' marbles were nothing but roadblocks in his way. It felt lonely and grim, like the whole board was against him: I have to do this all by myself, and everyone's in my path.

Cairn, the pathfinding coach, watched Coattail wait glumly behind a rival's line and asked, "Why are you going around those pegs?" "They're not mine," Coattail said. "On this star," Cairn said, "that doesn't matter — you can hop over any peg, and none of them ever get taken. That cluster you're avoiding is a ladder somebody else built for free. Ride it." Coattail leapt his marble straight over the rival's pegs and chained clear up the board, astonished. The lonely grimness lifted. He wasn't alone against everyone. The whole board — every player's pegs — was his to hop.

A boy named Dov came to Coattail frustrated and isolated. "I get so stuck," he said. "The other players' pegs are always blocking me and I just have to wait." Coattail laughed, warm and knowing. "You're only using half the board," he said. "Those aren't blocks — they're a free staircase. You can hop their pegs, and nobody loses anything. Show me where you're stuck." Dov pointed at a rival's cluster hemming his marble in.

"Now count a chain that hops over their pegs," Coattail said. Dov traced it, hesitant — hopping a rival's marble felt almost rude — and found his own peg could bound over the whole enemy cluster and land far ahead, a chain he'd never have seen while treating their pegs as walls. He did it, half-laughing at the cheek of it. "That's allowed?" "Nobody gets captured — it's encouraged," Coattail said. They played on; Dov started reading the whole board, borrowing rivals' pegs and his own alike, and the longest leaps of his game came from ladders other people had built without meaning to. His "everyone's in my way" loneliness turned into something almost generous: we're all building the staircase together, even the ones I'm racing.