“So now that you are speaking at a functional level, we need to have a talk about your future.” said Doctor Warner after six weeks of instruction at the fastest pace I could sustain.

  “This seems… Scary.”

  “Ominous. Root word Omen.” he helpfully supplied. I flipped through the dictionary in front of me.

  “Yes, that is right word.” I agreed.

  “That is the correct word.” he admonished. I made a new note on my growing list of small cards.

  “So what about the future?” I asked.

  “I have explained to you how our country functions, as you no doubt recall.”

  “Yes, no King and many important people of different levels of power. Make… the… law, do the law, and decide if the law is right or done right.”

  “Close enough. So while we discussed that our nation is a nation of law, all nations are also nations of policy. Some are more of one, and some are more of the other.”

  “Policy?” He waved to the dictionary and I spent about 15 minutes looking up successive words. “OK, I understand.”

  “So the President commands many groups. Some of these are groups that concentrate on law and some are groups that concentrate on policy.”

  “You say like the difference is… important.”

  “I am saying it like the difference is important because the difference is very important.”

  “I understand.” I made more notes.

  “So if Policy is harmful to you, the Law can often protect you from it, but only if you can properly invoke the Law.”

  “And you feel that I need to invoke the law?”

  “When interacting with people of the Law or people of Policy, you should always invoke the Law.”

  “How do I invoke the law?”

  “You hire the services of someone who specializes in the Law.”

  “One, ah… minute.” I looked up the definition of specialization. “OK, where is someone who does Law?”

  “I have a friend I have asked to take a vacation to see how beautiful the island of Guam is. She graciously accepted and will be here tomorrow.”

  I looked up some new words.

  “More important question. Why do I need to find someone who does Law?”

  “You need to find someone who practices Law; I know that is not an ideal word for a term of art. It is a peculiarity of the language. Anyway, you need to find someone to practice law for you because people who enact policy want to talk to you. They should get here in a few days.”

  The next day I met my new lawyer. She was a tall woman with black hair and very dark skin that was as black as her hair. I had heard humans got this dark sometimes, but it was my first time seeing it. Now I was no child, and I was highly educated by a true scholar from a community beyond the forests I called home, but I was obviously still pretty sheltered and I guess it showed.

  “Close your mouth dear, before a bug flies into it.” she prompted. I belatedly remembered my manners.

  “I am please to meet you and want to be your friend very much.”

  “That wouldn’t be appropriate if and while I represent you, but we can table it for the day you no longer need my services. Do you understand why?”

  I shook my head.

  “No, I don’t understand why. You understand why though, and I trust experts to expert correctly.”

  Doctor Warner put his face in his hands.

  “She is usually better than this. I think you broke her.”

  “Hmm, I do happen to be good at that.” She held out her hand. “Mia Dlamini, Esquire.”

  “You do family name here. Is Esquire family name?” I shook her hand as I had been taught.

  “It means that I am professionally licensed to practice law. It’s like someone with a Doctorate degree from a college saying they are a Doctor.”

  I… one moment.” I started flipping through the dictionary wildly.

  “This is likely going to happen a lot.” Warner advised.

  “Ahh! License! Kos-Api have… I have, er, I am… was… two license!”

  “We should slow down and have a chat so I understand who you are. The powers-that-be could interrupt at any time, and even faster if they find out I am already here.” Mia prodded. She looked over to the man in green standing against the wall, who was texting quickly on his phone. “I suspect we have just a few minutes to get the important stuff out of the way.”

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  We sat down at the closest table in the cafeteria and Mia pulled some papers out of the animal skin covered box she carried at her side.

  “This is a representation agreement. The terms are pretty standard. It says I will represent you until either or both of us decide in writing to sever the agreement. My law firm will not charge you any money for this right now due to your financial status, although we will keep track of what our fees would be. If your financial status changes we may review these fees with you in the future and determine what part of these costs you would be expected to pay, if any. As part of my ethical responsibilities, I am encouraged to do work at no charge for people who can’t afford legal services. This qualifies.”

  “I get papers to read later?” I asked.

  “Yes.” She handed me a pen. Yes, I knew what the people here wrote with now, and I liked them a lot more than the fountain pens I had trained with. “I would ordinarily recommend you not sign it until you have read it all the way though, but I think our time is running out.” She looked over to the door, where three more men in green were talking to the one that had been watching me. Warner pointed to a spot on the last page as the four started walking over, and I hurriedly wrote my name on it in English.

  Mia scooped it up and traded it for a new one from her box as they arrived. She dropped it on the table and then smoothly shackled herself to the box and clicked it closed as if she had spent a considerable time practicing.

  “That was impressive.” I commented as the Sergeant sputtered at Mia.

  “Ma’am, you can’t be here.” he opined.

  “Since this hospital serves the public, I most certainly can.” Mia countered. “Or are you saying that I am not permitted to meet with my client?”

  She patted his arm. “Don’t look so stressed, McNally. I’m not your problem any more. Report to your OIC and let them kick around what to do about me.”

  The Sergeant gave the other soldier a dirty look as they left the room. I spent the rest of the afternoon getting acquainted with Mia and learning where “South Africa” and “San Francisco" was. That broke down into a talk about the size of the world and the places on it where people lived.

  So. MANY. PEOPLE. We did some math as well. Since we knew how big the world was back home even though we had not been able to visit the bulk of it we figured out that my world was slightly larger than the Earth. The days were a bit shorter, but the year was substantially longer. While I was well into my 27th year in my world, here I would be over 33 and one half!

  “And you don’t look a day over 25!” remarked Mia. “Good skin care routine?”

  “Magic.” I answered truthfully. I don’t think she believed me. A demonstration later with a Minor Working and she did.

  Before dinner Mia called it a day, but she left me with some parting instructions.

  “If they decide to interview you while I am not here, say nothing except that you would like your lawyer, and stick to that. Say nothing but ‘Please inform my lawyer that you would like to speak to me.” Nothing else but that.” She put her hand on my shoulder for emphasis. “Do you understand why?”

  “Not fully, but I will follow your instructions.” I answered.

  Two days later I had the occasion to do so. When Misters Fletcher and Beaumont led me to a conference room after breakfast it wasn’t long before the men in green let Mia in.

  “I’m glad you gentlemen decided to keep this civil.” she said to them as she walked in the door.

  “A lot of people have a lot of questions, the most common of which is “Are you kidding me?” so right now we are just here to work out what some of the answers are.” informed Mister Fletcher. Or was it Beaumont? They spoke quickly when they introduced themselves and I couldn’t keep up.

  Introductions and small white papers got passed around and I got them sorted out. They handed me the small papers as well, and after glancing at them to figure out what they were I followed Mia’s lead and tucked them away.

  Fletcher put a small box on the table and started talking to the air. He introduced himself again and then asked everyone to introduce themselves again. Beaumont did and then Mia and he looked at me.

  “We just did this? You gave me a card.” I prompted, confused.

  “This time it is for the recording.” he gestured vaguely to the box.

  “This thing is recording?” I picked it up to get a good look at it.

  “Yes, and please leave it where it was.” He took it from me and repositioned it.

  “So if we can start just by getting a sense for what happened on the day you ended up here that would be good. Can you walk us through the day?” asked Fletcher.

  Mia turned to me before I could answer. “At this point anything you say is voluntary. You are not required to answer anything. So if there is anything private or sensitive you can keep it to yourself.”

  I nodded.

  “The only thing I am sorry for is falling into water and drowning.” This raised some eyebrows.

  “Kos-Api was unresponsive and not breathing when the Navy fished her out of the ocean. They performed CPR on the helicopter.” Mia answered, waving a folded piece of brown paper with some white papers inside the fold.

  “What can you tell us about where you came from?” asked Beaumont.

  “I live in a very old forest. My tribe moves around the forest so we all stay alive. There are few above 100 of us.”

  “And what is your role in the tribe?”

  “All the people of the tribe are trained in bow and knife to defend the tribe and hunt for food. Some of us are trained better to deal with monster attacks and to do jobs when the tribe needs to trade for… word word….” I flipped through my dictionary. Not finding anything helpful quickly, I pressed on.

  “Trade for things tribe cannot make.”

  “And you are one of these better trained people?

  “Yes. Twelve years of magic training and eight years more of combat training.”

  “It should be noted we figured out her years are longer.” Mia interrupted. “Add four years, ballpark, to that total.”

  “Wait. Back up. Magic.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you show us what you mean by magic?” asked Fletcher.

  “No.” interrupted Mia. “Moving on.”

  “You can’t just expect us to take our notes back on something like this.” protested Beaumont.

  “Kos-Api demonstrated it to my satisfaction this weekend. She has no need nor particularly good reason to demonstrate it to you.” Mia retorted. “Moving. On.”

  “Fine.” Beaumont huffed. Fletcher just looked at me like I was lying to him.

  Mia left them with a lot of unanswered questions that afternoon. I was left wondering why. Later, she told me.

  “You don’t owe them explanations, and certainly not that demonstration they asked for. They aren’t qualified to evaluate it, so you would just be doing it over and over again in front of more and more people who could do nothing more than gaze sternly like they are accomplishing something and pass the responsibility. If they want to see it they can ask someone like a judge to compel you to show it, and then I can counter with a demand that it be shown to someone who can actually work the instrumentation to measure it. That way you only have to do it when it matters.”