“So our time together has come to an end.” said Doctor Warner the next day.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “The powers that be have decided that since you speak and read at a high school level, self study will be all that you require going forward. Also, they are mad at me for introducing you to Mia.”

  “Will you be alright for angering powerful people?”

  “Oh, I will be fine. I am under contract with the DoD to teach languages to military people. Teaching English was actually an interesting diversion for me.” he said as he packed some books back into their boxes.

  “What do they plan to do with me?”

  “Someone will join us for lunch to talk to you about it.”

  “I will need Mia.” I decided.

  “She will be there. She has some things for you too.” he finished packing the books he wasn’t leaving with me and put the last of the boxes by the door.

  Mia met me in the cafeteria again.

  “First, take this.” she handed me a small box. Opening it, I saw a reflective device. “Oh, this is one of your telephones! No one was allowed to have one near me.”

  “Yeah, that was to keep pictures of you from spreading around.” Mia informed me. “People are talking, so the ah.. Cat is… you know, never mind the colloquialisms. People know you exist. A lot of people think you are a hoax or not real, but the word is out.”

  “So how does this work?” I asked.

  Mia gave me a short run down of how to work the phone, how to call her, and how to write short letters she called ‘texts’. By that time, one of the men in green showed up; this time not wearing green. This one was an older man who had probably been wearing green for many years. With him was a younger woman, who had a steady gaze. I felt she was measuring me with every look.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Fuller.” The man introduced himself and he shook my hand as the humans here do. The woman stayed silent as we all sat.

  “Your lawyer here has rather forcefully reminded us that we have no legal basis to detain you, and as such you should be released.” Mia nodded. I just let the man continue. “It goes without saying that we would very much like to keep you around, for many reasons.” He scratched his chin, an obvious tic. “As such, Ms. Dlamini suggested we try to come to an agreement with you.”

  “The two most pressing reasons are that you know things we would very much like to know, and we know you can do things that we cannot replicate with our current understanding. Also, we would very much like to keep you out of the hands of others who would use your knowledge to put us at a competitive disadvantage.”

  I indicated for him to pause while I looked up a few of the words he used, and he waited with an amused look on his face.

  “Before you decide to look smug, know that I know many more words than you, most of which you do not know, and I am learning all the ones you do know very quickly.” I retorted to his reaction to my search for definitions.

  “Sorry, I was more reacting to the concept of being stopped when I was speaking. That doesn’t happen often for me.” he chuckled.

  “Much like my old teacher. Please go on, I understand what you said now.”

  “So we offer protection, and a job. We would like you to study why you can use magic here and none of us can. The protection is a coin that has two sides, as all coins do. We keep people from taking you, but you are less free to move around. This is because we have to keep your protectors close to you, which means movement requires planning.”

  “I understand.” I said after some thought. Important people from my own world didn’t move around much either. It made sense. “If I agree I will want to decide if the protectors are good.”

  “I am sure my boys will meet your standard.” he affirmed. “Also, I would like to introduce to you Special Agent Ashley Robins of the United States Secret Service. If you agree to our terms, Agent Robins will be assigned to you full time.”

  “I don’t need… word word… helper.” I explained.

  “That is debateable, but one of the responsibilities of the Secret Service is to guard people the US government regards as important.” Mia explained to me.

  “Oh, you are a guard!” I exclaimed. “I will test you as soon as I can find a place to do so.”

  “I am not sure how I feel about that.” muttered Robins. “The plan is for me to live with you, and I go wherever you go. My job is to keep people from hurting you or taking you, and if I can’t do it by myself I call in Colonel Fuller’s men.”

  “And on that note:” Fuller broke in. “The hospital here in Guam isn’t conducive to any of this. We would like to move you to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.” That got Mia’s attention.

  “Why is this surprising?” I asked her.

  “Camp Lejeune is basically the home of the Marines. I can’t think of a better place to put you if they want to offer you a life that doesn’t feel like you are in a cage.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Does this place have a forest?” I asked the man in green.

  “It has the best forest!” he exclaimed.

  “That is the subjective opinion of a Marine, so take it with a grain of salt.” countered Robins.

  “Alright, I will go with you to this place, but we decide regularly if I stay or go elsewhere.” I demanded.

  “Done.” he held out his hand again, and I again shook it in the style of the local humans.

  “I’ll have an agreement with terms typed up this evening, and I expect we will get it signed before Kos-Api gets on a plane.” Mia warned.

  “We can get that signed. Send it here.” he handed Mia a card. “As for now, Agent Robins stays with you.” he said to me.

  “Here in the hospital?” I asked.

  “I’ve slept in worse places than a hospital bed.” she quipped.

  When we got back to the room where my bed was, I saw that the clothes I had been wearing when I arrived in the ocean had been returned. They smelled faintly of the strange chemicals the humans here used to clean things. My bow had also been returned, but it was missing the string. It was fine, I still had replacements for that in my storage.

  I sat on the corner of my bed and faced Robins.

  “First, how do I call you?”

  “I saw you have a phone, I will need to trade numbers.” she started.

  “No, I mean I don’t want to say Special Agent Ashley Robins every time I call you. What do I call you?” I clarified.

  “Oh, Ashley is fine. We are going to be spending a lot of time together.”

  “Ashley, important question. How you are to protect me?”

  “Well, if someone comes for you, I shoot them.” she answered casually.

  “You shoot them?” I asked. I gave a significantly long glance to my bow in the corner, and then back to her.

  “I am armed.” she answered, and pulled aside her coat to show a device strapped to her side. I had seen the men in green carry them on their belts, but no one had ever explained what it did.

  “That is a bow?”

  “Better.”

  “And are you fast with it?”

  “I would like to think so. My qualification scores agree.”

  I was across the room and had her on the ground with a knife I removed from my storage at her throat as soon as she finished the boast. I did see that she had fallen well and had her hands on her jacket before she realized her peril and stopped. I returned the knife to my storage and helped her up.

  “We can work on that.”

  “I… what?” she stammered. “What was that, a sword?”

  “All of the tribe is trained in knife and bow. All of the tribe have a knife and bow close to hand all the time.”

  “Where are you keeping that thing?” She looked me over, trying to determine where in the folds of my hospital clothes I was hiding my knife.

  “Magic.” I answered.

  “You expect me to believe you are keeping a blade that size under your hat?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You mean like, magic magic?”

  “I don’t understand, does saying magic twice make it more magic?”

  “Maybe? I don’t know how magic works.”

  “If I can figure out why you not have magic, maybe someday you will.”

  “That being said, do you have any more surprises? I am not used to the subject of a protective detail being armed.”

  “I am all the surprises. All of them.” I assured her. She didn’t look like she was reassured. I sat her down. “When you live in forest home, combat all the time. Some rare combat with lawless people, but mostly combat with monsters. Live in a world strong with magic, creatures learn magic much like people do. Creatures strong, and hard to kill. Lots of combat, to learn to kill monsters. But sometimes we have to kill people too.”

  “All of that is fine, but it is important to the people protecting you that they know how you will move when under fire so we don’t make mistakes that can get you or others hurt or killed. So you need to do what we say without argument in situations where we are protecting you.” Ashley countered with her own argument.

  “Okay. Food?”

  “Sure. What is the hospital serving today?” Ashley asked.

  “A fish they call sammond.”

  “Salmon?”

  “Yeah, that. It is SO. GOOD. Have you had it before?” I sang its praises.

  “I mean, yeah. It’s a very common fish.”

  After dinner my new telephone made a noise and Mia’s face appeared on the shiny side. I completed the scrying by sliding my thumb along the bottom shape like she showed me earlier and put the phone up by my ear. Ashley just looked at me strangely and I realized I had been wearing my knit cap the whole time.

  “Mia? Did I do it right?”

  “Yes, but you should really put the phone on speaker since your ears are in a different spot. If you have the phone above your head your mouth is too far from the part that hears you and so you are faint.”

  I did so.

  “So do you have news?”

  “The Marines signed your contract. You are scheduled to get on a plane tomorrow to go to North Carolina. Special Agent Robins can show you where that is. The DoD will handle everything for immigration for you. I will be going back to California in another few days.

  “You will be going to the beach like Doctor Warner said?”

  “Probably. Now the important part is that I am not licensed to practice law in North Carolina. I will still represent you in Federal matters but my firm will be referring you to a lawyer in North Carolina to handle your case.”

  “I do not understand much of what you said, but I will look up words tonight. I can still use this telephone to speak to you, yes?”

  “Yes, but have Robins explain time zones to you tonight if you don’t already know what they are.”

  “Rest well then Mia, and enjoy the beach. Also, what is the beach?”

  “Get off of my phone, girl.” Mia ended the scrying.

  I pulled off my hat to show Ashley my ears. She just sat heavily in a chair and put her head in her hands.

  “Did they not tell you everything?” I asked.