Bulwark the Steady

Bulwark had not always built things.

When he was small, he scattered his pieces everywhere — one here, one there, spread all across the board, feeling like he covered so much water. But his lonely pieces never held anything. The other player sailed right between them, landed wherever she liked, and Bulwark could never stop her going where she wanted. He'd pull his head into his shell, grumpy and small, sure he just wasn't fast enough to chase her down.

An old tortoise, slow and solid, settled beside him one evening. "You spread yourself thin as morning mist," she said, "so of course nothing holds. A single piece all alone doesn't stop anyone — she just steps around it." She nudged two of his pieces together onto one spot. "But two, together, on one spot — now that's a door she cannot open. And two more beside it. Build your doors in a row, little one, and you'll have a wall. You don't need to be fast. You need to be STEADY — two pieces, one door, over and over, until you've built something that holds."

Bulwark tucked his pieces into pairs, and made a door, then another, and felt the whole board go firm around him — a wall where before there'd been only scattered, helpless dots. The thin, can't-hold-anything feeling grew solid and calm. He'd never been too slow. He'd only been scattering, when he could have been building.

He walked to PipQuest when he was old enough, because it was a place for voyagers who liked to build things that lasted.

Peg, the mentor, met him at the dock and asked him to show what he knew.

Bulwark didn't say clever things. He set two pieces onto a spot. Then two more beside it. Then two more — a small, neat row of doors. Then he showed how the other player's pieces, behind the row, simply had nowhere to sail.

"You built a wall," Peg said.

"Two pieces make a door," Bulwark said. "A row of doors makes a wall. I don't chase the fleet. I close the water in front of it."

Peg smiled. "You belong here."

A young hare came to Bulwark one afternoon, cross and stompy.

"I keep losing!" she said. "The other player goes wherever she wants and I can't STOP her! I chase and chase and I never catch up!"

Bulwark knew that helpless feeling all the way down. He'd scattered his pieces once, too.

"Show me your board," he said. Her pieces were spread thin, one here, one there, all alone. "See? Every piece by itself. She just steps around each one." He gathered two of them onto a single spot. "Now this spot is YOURS — a door she can't open. Make another beside it." The hare did. And another. Soon the other player's pieces were stuck behind a little wall of the hare's closed doors, unable to pass. The hare's eyes went round.

"They can't get through!" she said. "I didn't even bump them — I just... built a wall in front of them!"

"That's it exactly," Bulwark said, warm and pleased. "You don't have to chase what you can BLOCK. Two pieces, one door. A row of doors, a wall. Build it steady, one at a time, and the whole fleet stops — held by a wall you made yourself."

The hare built a row of doors, and watched the other player stall behind them, and her stompy cross feeling turned into a slow, proud grin.