Before I could even think about complaining further, another baseball whizzed towards me. I could actually see this one coming, so I guessed that Ken hadn't whipped another fastball at me, and I was able to get a shield up in time to deflect it. It bounced off of my shield and hit a nearby worktable.

"I want you to try to curve and angle your shield so that the balls hit the outside wall of the room," Ken said. "Think you can do that?"

I considered that for a moment…during which time another baseball struck my shield.

"Hey!" I protested.

"You're not going to have time to think about this in a real fight," Ken said sternly. "You need to react more quickly."

I was about to say something in return with another baseball slammed into my shield, this one faster and harder than the previous one. As it hit, I twisted the shield a bit and sent the ball spinning into the wall.

"Better!" Ken said. "But that leaves you partly unprotected. I could hit you right now." He frowned a little. "I need to get a bucket of bean bags next time instead…"

Seeing a fresh baseball lifting out of the bucket, I set myself and quickly reshaped my shield, curving it outwards from me and angling it just the slightest bit towards the wall. I kept it entirely between me and Ken, and the next half-dozen baseballs struck it and bounced cleanly to the wall.

"This can't seriously be the way shields are taught!" I protested, blocking another baseball.

"I've heard that some wizards-in-training get it worse," Ken said. "I could be doing this with chunks of rock."

I winced as another baseball thudded into my shield. This time, I noticed that after the impact, my shield didn't look quite as solid to me, as if it had faded a bit, so I pushed more energy into it and it resumed its steady blue-white glow.

A half-dozen baseballs struck my shield in quick succession, and I staggered back a step. While my shield was stopping them, it was still transferring some of their kinetic energy to me. "Is there any way to keep it from doing that?"

"Eventually I'll teach you how, but it's a more advanced sort of shield," Ken said. "And I don't think you're quite ready to wrap your mind around it yet."

"Why not?" I asked, trying not to feel just a bit insulted.

"Because it violates inertia and conservation of energy," Ken said with a smile.

"Wait, what?" Before I could convince him to answer, my shield was struck by another barrage of balls, and once again I found myself staggering back a little.

"You're doing really well," Ken said, "but I want to see how long you can hold that shield."

I was starting to feel the strain a bit. "It's getting harder," I said, putting both hands behind it and pushing more energy into it.

"But look at how many you've stopped," Ken said encouragingly, as baseballs rolled across the floor and hopped back into his bucket. "And you're not likely to have to sustain a shield under a constant barrage like this very often. Keep it up!"

I leaned into it a bit this time as the baseballs began flying again, thudding one after another into my shield. Finally really concentrating on it, I began to notice that it was getting a little bit harder to keep the shield up with every impact. Each blow drew a bit more energy from me, and a bit more, and a bit more.

"You're doing great!" Ken said. "Let's see what happens with a really solid blow."

My eyes widened. "These haven't been - "

A half-dozen baseballs hit my shield all at once. This time I really felt the energy drain from it, my head swimming a bit as I kept the shield from faltering. "Ken…"

"Don't doubt yourself, Caley, you're doing fantastically!" Ken's enthusiasm had definitely gotten the better of him. I saw another round of balls clustering up to fly at me and braced myself.

Eight baseballs hit my shield in a cluster. I managed to stop seven of them.

The eighth passed through my shield like it was a thin layer of jelly that slowed it down a bit, but didn't stop it. My failing shield also served to alter the ball's trajectory slightly, which was a good thing…instead of hitting me in the stomach, it clipped my left hip.

With a grunt of pain, I twisted to the left. My equilibrium, wobbly from the constant effort of keeping the shield up, tipped in that direction too, and down I went. My shield, of course, vanished instantly.

I was so dizzy that it took me a moment to realize that Sparkle - once again the size of a teenager - had caught me before I could hit the floor. I was now cradled half in her lap and she was on her knees, holding me close. Her gentle purple radiance encompassed me and I felt my dizziness rapidly fade away, leaving me feeling drained and a bit wobbly. But at least the world wasn't spinning anymore.

Then Ken was kneeling beside us, somehow contriving to look paler than his usual misty white. "Caley, I'm sorry, I didn't think…your father's notes about shield lessons said that I should - "

"My father," I interrupted him rudely, "has - as far as I can tell - made a pile of awful mistakes surrounding my life!"

It took me a moment to realize that I'd actually shouted the last few words. Sister Sarah always told me, "Caley, when you're so upset that you start shouting, I want you to take a deep breath and look inward. Getting that upset never helps anyone, but if you can calm yourself down and figure out why you're shouting, you'll often see that doing so isn't going to help."

So I took a deep breath and examined my mental state. It was, as I'd expected, pretty rocky. The intense exertion of keeping my shield up without the aid of my mother's ring definitely hadn't helped. Lots of people get cranky when they're tired, and I'm one of them.

But some of the discontent with my father's choices and methods that had been growing for months had boiled out as well. I quickly suppressed it…I was not going to waste time being angry with a dead man who'd been trying to do the best he could under what appeared to be difficult circumstances.

Ken sighed. "Perhaps his decisions surrounding your childhood weren't very good ones, but - "

"Childhood?" I said with more bitterness than I'd intended. I tried to get up, but was at such a strange angle - and didn't want to hurt Sparkle - that all I could do was wobble unsteadily.

Sparkle, bless her, immediately understood and rose effortlessly, setting me on my feet. I wondered briefly how she'd done that, but was too upset for the thought to linger. She stayed protectively close to me, steadying me with one hand on my left elbow, the other at the small of my back.

"Ken," I said, "Growing up anonymously in an orphanage may have kept me away from the prying eyes of whoever or whatever my father thought wanted to hurt me, but it sucked."

"You're shouting again," Sparkle murmured in my ear, and her voice was incredibly soothing to my rattled nerves.

I took another deep breath and closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them again, Ken was watching me with a mixture of sadness and frustration on his face. "It sucked," I said again, quietly this time. "Kids were in and out all the time, but the good ones never stayed for long. That left me with the anti-social ones, the bullies, the 'problem children.' Sister Sarah did her very best for me, and I love her dearly, but I was mostly on my own until I was doing my A levels…before that, even kids at school were only distantly nice to me, because I looked different and was an orphan."

Ken opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again and just looked sad. Sparkle's arm slid around my back and she hugged me very gently.

I opened my mouth to keep going…then stopped myself, closed my eyes again for a moment and started pushing all of the old hurts back into their little compartments. I was not going to do this.

"We," Sparkle announced firmly as she gently started to turn me, "are going to spend some time in the garden."

It was as serious as I'd ever heard her, and it made me turn a little to look at her. Her expression was serene, but her eyes held concern and and pain as they met mine. It made me blink in surprise, and she took a moment to hug me gently again before starting us toward the door. My feet followed her guidance without resistance.

"I'll…round up some bean bags," Ken said weakly, "and…put some dinner together?"

"That sounds like an excellent idea," Sparkle said calmly. "Bring it to the garden, please?"

"Of course," Ken agreed.

Then Sparkle and I were out in the hallway, and she was guiding me deeper into the house. "Sparkle - "

"Nope," she cut me off. "No protests. The garden will be good for you."

I thought fleetingly about arguing her…but she'd been right the first time she took me there, and she seemed to be very good at watching over my state of mind. So I let her guide me, and was glad of her support. I still felt kind of wobbly. And my hip hurt. I was going to have quite a bruise there, I suspected.

I apparently felt no urgency to reach the garden, because it took us almost ten minutes of walking through halls to get there. Or perhaps this particular room, which felt deep inside the house, really was. Either way, by the time we arrived I had my feet back under me, though Sparkle stayed with one arm around me until I slowly settled into one of the chairs by the door.

Dara appeared out of her tree the moment we came through the doors, and reached us as I sat down. She looked at me pensively, then sighed and looked at Sparkle. "What happened?"

Sparkle shook her head. "I don't understand, but Caley is hurting inside, and I didn't know what else to do."

Dara smiled gently and cupped Sparkle's cheek in one hand for a moment. "Well, you did the right thing." She pulled over another chair and sat down facing me, so close that our knees were almost touching. "May I review your recent memories, Caley?"

I opened my mouth, couldn't find the words, closed my mouth again, and finally just nodded mutely. Sparkle, perhaps sensing she'd done all she could for now, settled to her knees in the grass beside my chair.

Dara's fingertips brushed my temples, then settled there. Her eyes closed, and a small frown creased her brow. After a minute she sat back and sighed. "Well, it's not surprising. What is surprising is that you managed to repress those feelings for so long." She gave me a warm, concerned look. "Would you like to talk about it?"

I looked down at my hands, folded in my lap. Then past them, to the striped purple and black tights Sparkle had chosen for me. That made me smile a little, and I reached over to rest a hand lightly on Sparkle's nearest shoulder. Her hands came up and took mine, squeezing gently and not letting go, her warmth washing over me in a soothing wave.

I started to talk quietly, and was surprised to find that - now, for the first time - the words came easily. How lonely I'd been at the orphanage, even with Sister Sarah bending every rule to give me extra attention. The bullying I'd experienced in primary school because of my hair and eye colors, and because of how effortlessly learning came to me. How I'd worked hard to graduate to secondary school early just to get away from that, only to find it was even worse now that the other girls were getting older and were jealous of my 'exotic' looks.

Dara sighed, interrupting my flood of words to nod. "In my limited experience, the children of every species can be cruel to those who are different or gifted in some way."

Sparkle nodded. "It's like that with the Sidhe, too. Not that they have children often anymore."

I let those thoughts simmer for a moment before continuing, talking about studying for my A levels and how older students at the same level had taken advantage of 'the gifted girl' to help them along, pretending to be my friends until I realized I was just doing their work for them a lot of the time. That had been nipped in the bud by the teachers when they realized what was going on, which had lead to me being the outsider once again.

And college, undergrad and postgrad. It had been better, studying with people who were actually peers rather than just the same age. But then I learned about the difficulties of being a pretty girl in a world that was still largely male-dominated. Not that I was unusual in that respect, but it was another layer of frustration.

"And," I said finally, beginning to wind down as I ran out of steam, "I can trace much of my pain back to my father sending me away. Why did he do it?"

They both opened their mouths to reply, and I waved the question off with my free hand. "Rhetorical question. Intellectually I understand his reasoning, but…wouldn't I have been better off here? With him? Learning all of this from a young age, so I'd be ready now instead of struggling to find my footing in a world that I barely understand anymore?"

"And that," Dara said, "I think, is the crux of the matter." She smiled wryly. "I think the rest of the problems you've internalized are things young people have wrestled with since the dawn of Humanity's domination of this world. Nothing you said there surprises me, anyway. I remember hearing Human children complain about similar things before the Hall was built around me."

"It's nice to know I'm not alone in those sentiments, at least," I said dryly.

Dara smiled a little and nodded. "Indeed. As to your father…" She sighed. "James kept his own council on such matters. I often felt that Chessie was the only person in the whole world he trusted without reservation. He never spoke of his past, but…I don't think his childhood and upbringing were particularly good ones."

"I agree. And he definitely didn't trust his old employers at the ICOA," Ken said quietly from behind me, pushing a cart up beside the table and starting to unload covered platters onto it. "Caley, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to - "

I shook my head and gave him what I suspected was a rather wan smile. "It's as much my fault as yours, Ken. I played along when I could've said no, because I wanted to do a good job for you."

He slid one of the platters over to me and took the lid off of it. I lifted an eyebrow and looked up at him. "Chicken tenders?"

"With barbecue sauce," he said with a small smile. "I figured you'd want something simple to start, and you need the protein to recharge." He passed me a glass of apple juice. "And some sugars."

Sparkle perked up at the mention of sugar, at which point Ken took the lid off of a second plate, revealing a large slice of chocolate cake. "For taking better care of Caley than I was."

Sparkle released my hand and rose, walked over to where he floated, and gave his ephemeral cheek a little kiss. Then, in a burst of purple pixie dust, she was her natural size again and dove onto the slice of cake with her usual abandon.

Ken moved around the table and sat in one of the empty chairs, sighing. "I've been trying to follow the curriculum vitae your father left behind as closely as possible…but even with the practical changes I made to it, the longer we try to work within it, the less I think he knew what was best for your magical education. Which makes me doubt his other decisions."

Dara nodded seriously. "As I understand it, you've already modified them to some extent…"

"As much as I could without disrupting the flow of training he laid out for her," Ken said, frowning down at his hands. "I introduced transfiguration early because Caley enjoys it. And Master James left no notes at all about her physical self-defense training. I'm not sure it ever occurred to him. So I've just been building off what she already knows there."

"Which was a good way to start," I said between bites of chicken. "I've been enjoying the Jeet Kune Do. And Bruce's book was a fascinating read."

Ken nodded slowly, then smiled a little. "You remember what he said about accepting your limitations?"

I nodded around a bite.

"Your father never did, not really," he said. "He was constantly trying to overcome them and get around them. And to him, one of the worst limitations he saw was one that was going to be placed on you…growing up alone, in this house, with no one your own age for company."

Ken frowned a little before continuing. "And yet…I see that in thinking that way, he placed limitations on himself, perhaps without realizing it. He was so afraid for your safety, that he felt that having you live in an orphanage, anonymously, away from Oakwood, was better for you than living alone with him here." He rubbed his face for a moment. "I…I think he was wrong. But he was afraid for you. And that fear became his greatest limitation." He hesitated briefly, then added, "I'm not sure that made sense."

"Actually," Dara said, "it made excellent sense. At least to me." She smiled lopsidedly. "For a spirit of intellect, you showed uncommon wisdom there."

Sprawled on her plate, Sparkle belched and giggled. Ken rolled his eyes, but he smiled.

"Manners, little Sparkle," Dara said gently.

"What're those?" Sparkle giggled again.

Yeah, definitely a long-running joke between them. But Sparkle had broken up the tension of the moment at just the right time, and - looking at the adorably smug little expression on her face - she had done it on purpose.

I put down the piece of chicken I'd been about to dunk in sauce and sighed. "I…guess I didn't realize how angry I was with my father."

Dara tipped her head a little and gave me a very pointed look.

I winced a little. "You're right. At least unconsciously, I knew how angry I was with him, but I've been repressing it."

"Along with a fair number of other old, and really fairly normal pains," Dara said gently, smiling a little now. "And you were transferring some of that anger onto Ken, I think."

"But not intentionally," I said quickly.

Ken smiled reassuringly. "I know that, Caley. And I really should have done a better job of adjusting his lesson plans." He grimaced a little. "And I should've dug up those bean bags first, rather than using baseballs on your first day casting shields without your mother's focus. How's your hip?"

"It hurts a little," I admitted. "Feels like I'm going to have quite a bruise there."

"I can take care of that!" Sparkle said cheerfully, zooming past my face as if she hadn't been sprawled in cake crumbs a moment earlier. In an instant, she was teenager-sized again and by my side. "You should've said you were hurting," she chided me gently as she knelt down beside me. "Where? Here?"

She found the spot on my hip and pressed her hands against it gently. After a moment, I felt her warmth spreading into my hip, easing the soreness and loosening the feeling of tightness I associated with bruising. When she sat back a moment later, the pain was completely gone.

"Wow, Sparkle," I said, smiling down at her. "I didn't know you could do that! Thank you!" I bent and kissed her forehead gently.

She glowed brightly for a moment, looking up at me with her happy 'I'm helping' expression. "You're welcome, Caley!" Then, without another word, she laid her head in my lap and hugged my legs gently.

I looked at Dara, who just smiled and shrugged, then at Ken, who was watching Sparkle with curiosity and affection. He saw me watching and he shrugged too.

It was just the way she was. So I rested my left hand lightly on her hair and went back to eating. Sparkle, in turn, sighed happily and hugged my legs tighter for a moment.

"Do you at least feel a little bit better, having gotten all of that off your chest?" Dara asked.

I gave her a small smile. "You're an excellent therapist. Yes, I think I actually do. But I feel drained, and not just physically."

"I'm not surprised," Dara said. "You'd been repressing those feelings for some time, after all. Just remember, it's okay to feel angry, as long as you don't let that anger dominate you."

"And I think we'll take the day off tomorrow," Ken said. "You had a stressful day today."

"Oh?" Dara asked.

So Sparkle and I filled Dara in on our encounter with Bellinus von Einhardt - a name that she sadly didn't recognize - and our rushed escape from him.

"That was very clever of you, Sparkle," she said, "camouflaging Caley like that. You did very well."

Sparkle beamed - and glowed - brightly for a moment. "Thank you!"

"She really - " I broke off to hide a yawn behind my hand. The day really was catching up with me. "She really did."

"Bedtime!" Sparkle said firmly, seeming to levitate to her feet. She took my hands and pulled me to my feet as Ken rose and began gathering up the dishes.

"I'll just take these out to the kitchen and do my nightly check," Ken said, "then I'll check on you."

Dara smiled and rose as well. "And I will always be right here whenever you need me."

I moved forward and hugged Dara tightly, murmuring my thanks. Then, exhausted, I headed to my room, and bed.