The next morning, Tryle awoke to the sound of hollow logs bashing against each other, broken occasionally by a meaty smacking sound. Interspersed among the unfamiliar medley of noise were dull shouts. He groggily threw off his blankets and went to the window.

In the front yard, Connor was facing off against Sir Cadoc, each brandishing wooden fencing swords. The tall knight had shed his armor and was dressed in a simple green tunic. Other than a pair of baggy black trousers, Connor was shirtless, his well-muscled arms and back gleaming with sweat in the early sun.

Cadoc bent his legs in a defensive stance, gripping his sword with both hands at the center of his body. Connor pointed his practice blade straight out with one hand.

“You leave yourself wide open, my lord,” said Cadoc, his voice muffled by the window glass. “Gamesmanship has no place in a duel. You must focus on —”

Connor lunged forward faster than Tryle could blink. His sword dropped and flashed through the air in a whirl of motion. His strikes whipped through the air with enough speed to turn the stick of wood into a faint blur. The hem of his pants flowed about his ankles like water.

Yet Cadoc kept pace with the onslaught. His sword was slightly longer, weaving gracefully to block each blow in the exact center of the other blade. Sometimes, he slashed or stabbed in return, and every time Connor either blocked it easily or sidestepped with agile grace.

Slice, block, stab, counter, slice again — wood clacked so hard and fast that it sounded like rain. The joust went on for two more furious minutes like that. Their movements linked together in an eye-watering series of blurs like turns in a chess match, every move calculated and improvised all at once under time pressure. But if Tryle hadn’t known better, he’d have assumed the entire fight had been planned beforehand.

Connor swung his sword at Cadoc’s head. Cadoc ducked low and shuffled in at an angle, cutting low at Connor’s knee. Connor lifted his leg away in time, and Cadoc saw the gap in his defenses, quickly stepping in and chopping straight down at his head.

Lithe as a panther, Connor twirled to the side of the descending blade and kicked Cadoc’s sword out of his hand. He danced in and rapped Cadoc three times in rapid succession — thigh, hip, and chest — all along the sides of his body.

“It seems the conditioning regimen you’ve drawn up for me is paying off, Sir Cadoc. Don’t I deserve a prize?”

Cadoc grinned crookedly. “Enough of the cheek, my lord. Reya! Come show Connor what a real fight looks like.”

Reya rose where she had been sitting beside the fence, hefting her own sparring sword. While they took up their positions, Tryle filled a glass of water and watched from the dining table.

The next match began and ended just as furiously as the last. The exchange of blows was both tense and hypnotizing, like watching puzzle pieces fit together and break apart at the closest moment of resolution. Reya’s fighting style was different than Cadoc’s, featuring quicker stabs and abrupt blocks that struggled to keep pace with the furious rate of Connor’s slashes. However, her strikes were just as fast as Connor’s (if that were possible), though to Tryle it looked like Connor was holding back the power of his blows.

After half an hour of Cadoc and Reya alternating as fighting partners, the three humans came back inside, their clothes dark with perspiration.

“Good morning,” said Tryle.

Reya brushed her hair out of her sweaty face and gave Tryle a quick smile as she passed. Cadoc nodded wordlessly at him and noticed Connor was stretching his arms just outside the doorway. “Are you not going to wash, my lord?”

“You can take the baths. I will cleanse the heat of my labor in the river first.”

Cadoc frowned. “My lord, perhaps I should stand guard while you —”

“You worry too much, Cadoc. The sun is high and not a soul is around. I can look out for myself, unless you want Reya to watch over me.”

He grinned at Reya, who flushed, then immediately looked furious at herself for doing so. Cadoc’s frown grew even deeper, but he bowed. “As you wish, my lord. Please do be careful.”

“That I will. Perhaps I’ll pay my respects to the water sprite while doing so.” Connor made eye contact with Tryle and smirked, wiggling his hips in a mocking approximation of a jig before closing the door. Tryle scowled after him.

As Cadoc disappeared down the hallway to ready his bath, Reya ladled a steaming helping of porridge into a bowl and offered it to Tryle.

“The Queen made us breakfast,” she said quietly. Tryle had hardly heard her speak until then. Her voice fluttered like bird wings, quiet but strong.

Tryle turned away from the door and accepted the bowl gratefully. “Thank you.”

Reya smiled again and inclined her head. They sat in companionable silence, sipping quietly at their porridge, which contained salted egg yolk chunks and fresh green onion slices.

Unable to think of anything else to say, Tryle asked: “Where is Grandma Henna? The Queen, I mean.”

Reya shrugged. “She left for an errand and is due to be back tonight. I’m sure Sir Cadoc knows approximately when.”

“Is he your boss or something?”

“My senior in the Knight-Guard, yes.”

“You look young for a human.”

“I am thirteen.”

“The same age as Connor.”

“Yes…I suppose.”

“Why’d you get so flustered when Connor suggested you watch him at the river?”

A light flush entered Reya’s cheeks, but she merely tilted her head appraisingly. “You ask many questions, Bodkin.”

“A lot of goblins have told me that.”

Reya sipped a spoonful of porridge. “I’m assigned to protect the princess, not Prince Connor. He is Sir Cadoc’s charge.”

“So you were following protocol?”

“That’s right.”

Tryle looked closely at her, a little baffled. Humans faces were so much harder to read; their eyebrows could be rather distracting, like hairy caterpillars. “You seem uncomfortable.”

“I am not,” said Reya emphatically.

“Oh, okay. But then, where’s Gabriela? Shouldn’t you be watching her?”

“She went out to the fields to practice her magic, but I know not where, exactly.”

“You’re a bit of an odd guard to not know where the person you’re protecting is at.”

“She requested she not be disturbed. The princess values her concentration while she practices.”

“I won’t disturb her. I’m just gonna talk to her.”

Reya gave Tryle a bemused look. “If I may so, you are a bit of an odd goblin, Bodkin.”

“A lot of goblins have told me that also.” Tryle dropped his bowl of porridge into the sink and rinsed it. Then he walked out to the meadows.

Finding Gabriela wasn’t hard. Tryle just had to follow the exploding lights.

About a quarter mile away, a giant, blue bubble expanded and collapsed at irregular intervals like the puffing pouch of a bullfrog.

The air boiled and distorted around the bubble’s edges, and subtle vibrations rippled unseen over the ground. Its unearthly motion stood out among the gently rolling slopes of the meadows, where the most visible movements were gophers poking their heads to see what all the commotion was about.

As Tryle got closer, he saw Gabriela Wei standing just off the side of one of the roads crisscrossing the meadows. Scattered around her were jumbles of half-buried rock formations. She stood alone, her eyes closed.

In front of her, she gripped a long staff with its butt planted solidly on the ground. It was ivory white with a leather grip in the center, crowned by an iridescent gem-like orb the color of green peacock feathers. Strips of webbed wood cradled the bottom of the orb, where its base met the highest point of the staff.

Gabriela’s brow furrowed in concentration. At some unspoken trigger, the staff’s orb blazed with light, emitting a sliding, high-pitched tone that ended in a careering blast of sound.

Fram!

Faster than the eye could see, a powerful light pulsed off its surface and enveloped Gabriela in a large, shining dome. She was still visible through the translucent layer of energy, her body tinted blue. Up close, Tryle could see the walls of the dome were made of a geometric lattice of interlocking hexagonal plates.

He hesitated. Then he said: “I heard you were doing magic.”

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Inside the bubble, Gabriela’s face relaxed in surprise. The bubble collapsed instantly, its glimmering veneer of light winking out of existence.

She cracked open one eye. “You might have also heard I prefer doing it by myself.”

“I just wanted to ask you some questions. Is now a bad time?”

Gabriela arched an eyebrow. Then she sighed theatrically. “Grandma did warn me about this. Said you were like a dog with a bone when it came to anything pertaining to magical science. You’re the goblin in your village with the learning disorder, right?”

“No,” said Tryle, confused. “What exactly did Grandma Henna tell you?”

“I’m joking, Tryle! You are aware of what a joke is, aren’t you?”

“In theory. They have set-ups and punch-lines. That much I know.”

“Oh, you’re funny. I can see why Grandma enjoyed your company so much.”

“Not so much recently, seeing as she’s gone away somewhere.”

“Don’t worry, she only left to buy food from the market in the next town over. She wants to make a feast ‘good enough to make our mouths wish they had three tongues’. Her words, not mine. I confess to not have the slightest idea what she meant.” She winked at Tryle. “Are you scared to be stuck all on your lonesome with a bunch of strange humans?”

“I’ve already been stuck with Grandma Henna for a couple weeks. Don’t think I have much more to be afraid of. The scariest thing about her is when she airs out her toes in the evenings.”

Gabriela let out laugh that sounded like birdsong, high and sweet.

“What?”

“You’re unfazed by my family’s royal status. I just find it refreshing.”

“I’d like to ask my questions now.”

Gabriela leaned on her staff and grinned. “Sure, fire away.”

“What did you do just now?”

“Do what?”

“The big bubble you made.”

“Oh, that. It’s for self-defense. Well, technically it’s called a shield spell. But unless you’re really good at materializing incomplete slices, you can’t really use it for anything else but to block things from getting near you.”

“It blocks all states of matter except for gases?”

“Right. The protective barrier doesn’t form a vacuum. It wouldn’t be much of a shield spell if you couldn’t breathe inside of it.”

“Uh-huh.” Tryle pointed at the staff. “Do you need the staff to cast your magic?”

“Not necessarily. It’s a good channeling device and helps amplify the power of some spells, but I can do without it just fine.” In demonstration, Gabriela held out a clenched fist. It began to glow a sultry shade of mint green.

“Why does your hand and staff get a different color from the shield spell?”

“I don’t really know. Some mages think it has something to do with how we humans interact with the universal field of energy that interacts with all the magic in the world, but it’s only one theory of several. True natures and primordial replication and all that philosophy of origin stuff. It’s complicated. For all intents and purposes, it’s a cosmetic quirk of spell-casting.”

Tryle’s thoughts were racing, and he began to speak rapid-fire. “What universal field of energy are you talking about? Is it the electromagnetic field? Does magic itself have measurable properties to it?”

Gabriela put up a hand pacifyingly. “How about we do an exchange, Tryle? You ask me some questions, then I do.”

Tryle mentally reeled himself back in, slightly deflated. “Uh, okay. Sure.”

“Why are you so interested in magical science, anyhow?”

Tryle shrugged. “I’m confused why anybody wouldn’t be interested in it. It’s the most amazing thing in the world. What magic can you do?”

“Now, wait a second — that wasn’t a real answer.”

“I don’t know what else to say.”

“How did you come across the subject? Books? Your village school? Your elders?”

Tryle snorted. “Books, mostly. Maybe Elder Paz could offer a useful observation or two, but I never asked him. Most of the other village elders wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a stinkworm and their own farts.”

“So you learned everything you know through self-study. No teachers at all? No guided curriculum?”

“And my own experiments. To test out the theories I read about. Or to develop new ones.”

“You design your own experiments, huh?”

Tryle nodded. “I like taking an empirical approach to most things. Theory can only take you so far.”

“What kinds of experiments do you do?”

“Oh, this and that,” said Tryle evasively. “Mostly kinds to expand my understanding of what I’ve read — like visualizing light refractions through different liquid densities, that sort of thing. I might try to get into horticultural topics next once I’m more confident in my biology understanding. I’ve also tried to make a series of temporary floating platforms out of cave crystals and natural gums and some other binding agents, but it didn’t go so well.”

He rambled on, going into intricate detail about how he had gone about collecting his materials, his study of K values and reaction times, the process by which he selected only the highest-quality turquoi crystals for the final product (you could gauge the purity of the crystals by their depth of color and how high they floated).

When he’d just finished describing the layout of his makeshift laboratory, Gabriela said, “Wow, all that sounds like a lot of work.”

Tryle saw she was trying to hide a smile.

“Hey, I don’t have an infrastructure for fancy university learning,” he said defensively. “I get most of my water from dipping buckets in the river.”

“Sorry, I’m just trying to come to terms with how far you’ve come on your own. To be honest, I’m a little jealous.”

“Jealous? Why? You get to go to school for this stuff.”

“School isn’t what it’s made out to be, sometimes. Maybe it’s just me. Actually, it probably is just me. But sitting in a lecture hall was absolute torture. I was being forced to listen to these old professors drone on and on about their dusty theories in front of their dusty blackboards and I just couldn’t concentrate. I’d rather just read the books and get on with it, you know? My mind was always running ahead of where they wanted me to go. In truth, I’ve never felt so alive when I was unconstrained by the rules of the classroom.”

Tryle knew what she meant about her mind running ahead of herself. He scratched his head. “But don’t you think it’s so frustrating when you get stuck on a concept you don’t understand? Trying to solve a problem is different than fixing a gap in my knowledge altogether. I’d like somebody to explain something to me instead of always having to figure things out on my own.”

Gabriela shrugged. “When I have to sit in a classroom, I get agitated, but yet my mind goes blank. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I’d rather have my mind full of mildly frustrating thoughts than nothing at all. Sometimes it’s good to have an empty mind when casting spells — ‘clear mind, close focus’, my teachers always say. But when I’m trying to learn something new, well… you can deduce how not thinking can prevent you from constructing frameworks to understand magic on a deeper level.”

Tryle leaned forward. “But what is it exactly? Magic, I mean. Do you access an external source of free energy in the atmosphere? Or is it an extension of your will? I know Zheng Qiubai’s Theory of Eternal Soul allows for the possibility of causality by manifestation, but it’s never been proven.”

“I…well…” Gabriela looked a bit taken aback. “That sort of thing is actually pretty high-level. We don’t study that kind of thing until upper-level classes.”

“You have levels?”

“Oh, yeah. Depending on the branch of magic and curriculum standards, you can have anywhere from five to over fifty, including all the sub-levels.”

Before Tryle could open his mouth for another question, Gabriela held up a finger. “I know what you’re about to ask. What are the branches of magic?”

Tryle nodded fervently.

“I’ll give you a brief overview. There are four main ones: Elemental, Immaterium, Sorcery, and Arcana. As the name implies, Elemental magic involves the manipulation four figurative elements of water, earth, air, and fire. Immaterium covers all the squishier topics: scrying, astral projection, physical phasing, soul possession…you get the idea. Sorcery deals with the control of spirits and spiritual energy. As for Arcana, it’s more of a catch-all category. Miscellaneous things.”

“Like cleaning the dirt off clothes,” recalled Tryle from her comment to Grandma Henna the day before.

Gabriela grinned cheekily. “For one, yeah. Or specialized shields to keep away prying goblins.”

“Is there really a spell like that?” said Tryle.

“You’d have to make one. My feeling is that I could probably design a rudimentary chain of spells to achieve the same effect, but it would take a couple years to even do that. And really, it’s my ego talking. Creating new spells is way above my level of expertise. I’d have to consult an experienced magicist to do it.”

“What’s a magicist?”

“The mages that produce entirely new spells and study new perspectives on every branch of magic. They’re the true innovators of our time. I’d like to be one someday, in addition to my royal duties.”

“You said you could at the very least make a chain of spells. Why not try to do it, anyway? A super simple one.”

Gabriela looked at him like he was crazy. “I would likely fail. A properly working spell — especially the multi-step kinds — takes careful calibration of cause-and-effect. Like a chain reaction. Counterintuitive, I know, since the essence of magic itself is paracausal. But if I don’t get the precise effect of each step exactly right, the final result of the spell would surely be different from what I envisioned in my head.”

“Would you get hurt if it went horribly wrong?”

Gabriela scratched her head. “Probably not. I’d probably stay on the smaller side of things for my first original spell — like bewitching a ball of yarn to stitch itself into a pair of mittens or something.”

“Then what’s the harm in trying?”

“You say that like you’ve never encountered failure.”

“Oh, I’ve come across it a few times,” said Tryle matter-of-factly. “I just try not to tally my losses too closely. It gets in the way of true innovation.” He didn’t mention the most recent lab explosion, nor did he not delve into the other unimpressive string of failures and mishaps plaguing his research record. Gabriela was a university student, after all; it wouldn’t do to come off as a totally incompetent scientist.

Even as he said this, however, a little voice of doubt in his head raised a noise of protest. It sprang up whenever he said something he never totally believed, which was confusing, because everything he had just said he thought to be totally accurate. So what wasn’t right? His assertion of not counting his failures, or his belief that he’d only truly failed a few times?

Pushing those thoughts aside, Tryle said: “So could you show me some non-original spells?”

Gabriela spun her staff casually with both hands. “Sure, what do you want to see first?”

“Anything, really.”

“Okay, give me something you can fit in your palm.”

Tryle cast about for a pebble and handed it to her. Gabriela held out her palm and looked at the rock frankly. “For simple magic like this, I don’t need my staff.”

The pebble rose gradually into the air, floating several inches, then half a foot, then two feet, until it hovered well above Gabriela’s head.

“You might have noticed already,” said Gabriela, keeping her eyes trained on the pebble. “But I’m using the wind to lift it. In purely physical terms, I’m creating a miniature wind tunnel to counteract the gravity trying to pull the rock down.”

Tryle nodded wisely as if he had indeed spotted this little detail, but in reality he was too dumbfounded to speak. He’d witnessed isolated cases of magic before. The Woodlands were full of both natural and unnatural phenomena such as the Timeful Grove — a grouping of trees whose saplings grew from seedlings to saplings to mighty trunks and back again, irrespective of the weather — or the Everlasting Clouds clustered on the northern side of Bighorn Mountain, which poured an unending amount of rain into the Great River and the other major waterways snaking throughout the Woodlands.

But never before had he seen magic cast up close. What power! Tryle’s mind raced with the possibilities.

“Now, I can manipulate it however I want.” Gabriela easily moved the pebble in an elliptical circle around them, like a tiny moon orbiting the two sentient planets beneath it. “Controlling it from a distance is a bit harder through the Elemental approach. Arcana methods are generally more well-suited for that. But I can take a crack at it.”

She turned her attention to one of the gophers nearby that had been watching her earlier, It was now steadily digging a new tunnel for its burrow. Its furry rear end was swaying back and forth as it kicked waves of dirt behind it.

The pebble floated over to the hole like a curious dragonfly. Gabriela curled her fingers and rotated her wrist, and in response the pebble thumped into the mound of dug-up dirt the gopher had created, causing soil to stream back down the hole.

At first, the gopher kicked more forcefully as it dug, not knowing why its tunnel was filling itself up on its own. When it turned around and finally spotted the floating rock, it chattered angrily. In response, Gabriela made the rock dance tauntingly just of reach, nudging even more soil down the tunnel. Seemingly unbothered that it was being harassed by a rock suspended in the air, the gopher gave one last mad chatter before attacking the tunnel with renewed vigor, furiously throwing dirt in an attempt to bury the pebble altogether.

Gabriela laughed and let the pebble drop. “Okay, Mr. Gopher, you win.”

Tryle finally decided he liked this human girl. Her passion for magic was authentic and contagious. In a weird way, her playful irreverence reminded him of Opal. She was obviously very intelligent and well-read, but played it off like it wasn’t very special at all. Not that Tryle was bothered. Her modesty was genuine, and it did little to reduce Tryle’s admiration.