[Bureaucracy, Peacefully]

  I was about three feet deep in the hole. One of my blisters had started to bleed. The only tool I’m used to holding is a pen. The only other time I’d picked up a shovel was just after granny gave me her cottage, Lu and I had planted a vegetable garden, just before going off on our five day trip to Wyldwood. After signing a seven year apprenticeship just a few months ago, I wouldn’t be reaping the benefits of that garden.

  “Rose, your hand is bleeding, want me to take over.”

  “No, Mossbeard, I have this.”

  “Please don’t stop milady, you are close, so close.”

  “I’m not going to stop.”

  I continued to dig. Sparky and Draco looked on, ready to defend me if necessary. If the shield tried anything, I was going to jump to Juliet’s World and Draco would melt the shield with dragon’s fire. There wasn’t much that dragon’s fire couldn’t melt. I’d seen its effects just a few weeks ago where Draco had turned a dirt road to glass. I didn’t know much about Sparky’s repertoire of spells but he’d confided to Draco and I that he knew teleport. So if the shield made one aggressive move he’d teleport it to the moon. If it didn’t like being buried in a hole it’d hate being banished to the moon.

  I thrust the shovel into the dirt, I heard a clink, then an. “Ouch, that hurt milady. Please be careful with that shovel.”

  “How can a shovel hurt a magical shield?”

  “It has a very sharp point.”

  “It’s round and I had a very hard time digging with it. How are you going to protect me from ten thousand knights if you are hurt by an old rounded shovel?”

  “That was more metaphorical, milady, please be careful with the shovel you almost hit me again."

  “Are you even a shield?”

  “I’m shaped like a shield, milady.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m a replica of Henry’s shield, I was a gift, milady.”

  “A gift to whom?”

  “To the Bard himself, milady from the queen herself, to protect him.”

  “To protect him from what?”

  “Many things, milady?”

  “Such as?”

  “First and foremost from the fathers of the good queen’s ladies in waiting. They never had to do much waiting when Shakespeare was around, if you get my meaning, milady. The Bard was very, very popular with the ladies, the fathers not so much. There were accusations of impropriety, with the ladies, the fathers wanted blood. But I was his shield. If a father accused the Bard of some depravity and the sheriff became involved all Will had to do was show me to said sheriff and the charges were made to disappear, along with the father if necessary.”

  “So, you are nothing more than a fancy get out of jail card.”

  “No, milady much more, aside from protecting Will from the results of his dalliances, I was meant to protect him from the tavern brawls, John Dee himself weaved my enchantments. After Marlowe was murdered the queen demanded that the Bard be protected. It is impossible for a knife to hurt whoever wears me, milady. But I was also enchanted to stimulate the muses and the good queen wanted Will to write a play about her great great great great grandfather, Henry V. So I was fashioned as a shield that a playwright might wear at all times and for a multitude of other purposes, I protected Will and his dalliances from the pox, the drip and the clap. Which I pledge to protect you from as well, milady.”

  Sparky started to laugh. I’d never, I mean never heard Sparky laugh before. It startled me. The most I’d seen from Sparky before today to show that Sparky even possessed a sense of humor was a wan smile.

  “What’s so funny, small pox was a serious disease before they invented the vaccine.”

  “It’s not that kind of pox Rose, best you look it up in the dictionary, along with the other dread diseases that the ‘shield’ will protect you from. I’m going back to the store. Your shield is less powerful than Daisy, but it may possibly be able to turn aside a knife blade, but nothing more.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “It’s okay Rose I’ll wait with you as you dig it up and you were right to be cautious, but Sparky is right, Daisy has more magical power, then whatever that thing is. But if it stimulates the muse that can’t be a bad thing for a writer.”

  I looked at the dirt, and saw a flash of blue and gold. I knelt down and started sweeping the dirt away with my fingers.”

  “Yes Milady, please just wipe away the dirt, no more shovel, I pray thee.”

  Pretty soon I had it uncovered, it was indeed shield shaped, square at the top, tapering down to a point at the bottom. The design on the front was split into four quadrants, top left was blue with three fleur-de-lis kitty-corner was the same, while the top right quadrant and bottom left corner was red with three golden lions. I asked Doug to show me a picture later of Henry’s shield, it was an exact match in miniature.

  “Rose, do you want me to send Opal back?”

  “No, thank you Draco, it’s too late to enclose this estate today. She did enough today. She’s amazing, her magical control. She watched me gathering, saw my arms and said they looked like a cartoon characters' forearms. So as I was talking her through how to do it, I told her to imagine giant arms like mine with an anchor tattoo, and they just popped into existence. You are doing an amazing job teaching her.”

  “She has a considerable amount of talent and she really applies herself to every lesson, she adores you and is working hard to make sure you don’t leave her behind. Magic is so much harder than Bibliomancy. Whatever thought pops into your head can become reality in a fictional world, it’s good that she is ahead of you here in the real world, but it’s also good that the two of you are out here working together. I think she was disappointed that when Sparky went away, you didn’t remain her magic teacher.”

  “How could I Draco, on the very first day, of her magic lessons from me she was already better. Magic seems more art than science at least it does to me. I know that you and Sparky are more rigorous than me, I didn’t want to steer her on the wrong path and stunt her development. I’d love spending more time with her but the solution might just lie in a reversal.”

  “A reversal of what, her magic?”

  “No, no, not at all, a reversal of instructors. We’ll continue to work out here on the estates with magical fields. I feel like I have enough experience with them and have created enough large ones that I might be able to help her with them. But as for the rest of magic, I only know the one spell, Locate. So as Opal, learns a spell, no matter how minor or useless, I’d like to have her teach me the spell, so we can practice together. They say the best way to learn something is to teach someone else how to do it. You can’t teach something you don’t understand yourself.”

  “That’s a good idea, I’ve just been working on building Opal’s magical strength. It’s the best way to effectively make someone a powerful mage. But I’ll start teaching her some easy but useful spells, like light, fire, detect magic. Then we’ll task her with teaching you the spells, maybe you could work on a spellbook together. That’s what I’ll teach her first, how to create magical tomes. Then after she learns her first spell, she can teach it to you and then the two of you can create your very own spell book. You should create a magical workshop in the tower, where the two of you can work on the spellbook undisturbed. Include a room for magical sparring.”

  “No, I don’t want us to learn to fight, Draco.”

  “Rose you want her to have defensive spells surely, I’m not talking about making her a warrior, but what if some army attacks the town, like they just did. She has to know how to defend herself. To throw up a shield. Magical fields are great against bullets but it won’t stop a sword and that’s what most people around here fight with. They understand the limitations of ranged weapons. Do you want her to be defenseless in the face of something like this, or do you want to prepare her so she’s not forced at some last desperate moment to pick up a weapon and kill just to survive. When I few tried and true spells will keep her safe from most common rabble.”

  “Well I’ll need to speak to Ruby, that is something that she should ultimately decide.”

  “Just don’t let your own bias against this, taint Ruby’s decision. In fact if she says no, ask her to please speak to me. The way I see it, the first and best option is to escape, runaway. But what if that leaves Ruby in danger, will Opal be able to abandon her sister just to save her own life. I doubt it, I doubt she’d run if it left you facing danger alone too, even if you told her to. So first best option is escape, when that isn’t an option for whatever reason, next best option is defend, last and hopefully never used option offensive spells like confusion, blindness, fear. An evil mage that can throw fireball after fireball spells at her can’t even tie his shoes if she hits him with a confusion first, then she grabs her sister and escapes before he recovers from the confusion spell.”

  “Alright, you’ve made your point, confusion, blindness and fear are temporary effects correct, she wouldn’t be blinding the person for life?”

  “No, all three of those last for a few minutes, a little longer if thrown by a really good mage against a weaker target. But a weaker mage could hit her with those same spells for devastating effect.”

  “Draco, I’ll talk to her, a frank conversation, I won’t try to talk her out of it and if she decides on her own that she doesn’t want Opal to learn them, then I’ll ask her to speak to you.”

  “If she's dead set against it, she might have to speak to Sparky, she’s her sister but Opal’s his apprentice.”

  “Are you saying that Sparky could force her to learn magic that her sister is opposed to?”

  “Sure by the terms of your apprentice / master contracts he would be well within his rights, he’d be looking out for his apprentice, if he thought her sister was making the wrong decision about her magical education. Same with you for that matter, if he decreed it, you’d have to learn whatever spells he deems that you should know. Just so you know, that works in the opposite direction too. Most mages want to learn offensive spells first and argue with their master that they are forced to learn minor spells or defensive spells first. These are the kind of mages either of you might face in Quintessence, mages that shoot magic missiles or fireball spells and ask questions later.”

  “Sparky’s never mentioned any kinds of offensive or defensive spells.”

  “Well you had really low magic capacity, you might get off one confusion spell and your magic would be drained, you have a larger capacity now from all the work you’ve done on creating magical fields. Look, we fought a war and no one was killed, we used a lot of spells both from me and from the trees, fighting really just means standing up for what you believe is right, just because they aim to hurt you, doesn’t mean you have to hurt them. That’s just the human impulse for revenge, nothing to do with being smart and keeping safe.”