One Thousand and One Knights

When the Night Goes Dark

When the night goes dark, and all little boys and girls go to sleep, there are many, many creatures that awake. Some are good, some are bad, and the world around the sleeping child, is where they do battle.

It is on the window sill, by the lamp shade, and on the bedhead that they fight, brave hearts against cool shadows, as our defenders watch over our children, against the shadows that come with the night.

On this night, the defender is Sir Quickpaws, and his hamlet was the bedroom of a young girl, no older than two. She was at the wonderful age that the world was interesting, fascinating, and she clutched him tight as she fell asleep. She didn't question his somewhat miraculous ability to reappear in the mornings in another place. She didn't question it if he accidentally left a piece of armour or a weapon out.

Sir Quickpaws was an older type of teddy bear, he wasn't the soft plush kind, he was the older solid kind, the kind that scratched your face and felt like hugging a brick. He had lost eyes and buttons off his hand-sewn bright red woollen coat. And yet, his girl hugged him tight, each night. And as she drifted off to sleep, his one button eye became active, and he smiled, wriggly out of her grip.

Sir Quickpaws carefully stepped around tendrils of hair, and backflipped up onto the post of the bed, delicately poised on one foot, and he spun slowly, and then leapt forward, grabbing the underside of the lamp post, pulling a sword from it's hidden alcove there, and flipped again, landing on his feet, facing the open window.

His stitched smile twisted slowly into a determined grin.

With the tooth-pick sized sword in his hand, his roving eyes watched the windows, and sure enough, the shadows began to creep in, and he grinned lop-sidedly, "Come again, to play, with your favourite bear?"

The shadow reared up, forming a knight in armour, and drew it's sword.

Sir Quickpaws flicked his small sword and grinned.

The shadow glared at him, "Why protect this home, why protect the child? A nightmare or two... Is harmless."

Sir Quickpaws rubbed where a button eye had been once, long ago, and he shook his head, "No. Perhaps not, but I will not allow it. I am her protector, till the day she forgets me."

"Why?" The dark knight demanded, and Sir Quickpaws smiled, "She loves me."

The shadow melted in front of his determination, fleeing.

Sir Quickpaws flipped upwards onto the window sill, dropping the sword to be held in the crux of his leg, and he closed the windows gently, leaping upwards to drag the latch shut.

It always intrigued him, why the parents wanted the windows so wide open, even when the night grew from cool to cold.

It was fascinating.

It flicked the sword up into a hand, and stabbed it down behind him, pinching through his touch canvas skin, and he paced the room, waiting.

The shadows always returned, and the calmly sleeping girl, with her beautiful smile, would always dream of unicorns and picnics whilst Sir Quickpaws remained as her teddy bear.

His smile twitched upwards at the corners, the nights were his.