Page
The second Protector book details Kel's remaining years as a page. She struggles to understand her changing body and opinions. For example, her first menstruation period arrives and she develops a crush on her best friend Neal. With the help of her very reserved maidservant, Lalasa, Kel manages to surmount all the challenges that nature throws at her.
Joren, her archenemy, appears to have stopped tormenting her. At first, Kel is distrustful of this apparent reversal of opinions, but gradually, she forgets to be cautious. When the ultimate attempt to force Kel to stop her training occurs, she must ask herself if Joren is really as repentant as he appears to be, and what it is worth to allow her fears to control her.
Kel's aptitude as a true leader is shown when she and her friends are attacked by bandits while camping in the Royal Forest. Kel keeps a cool head and gives orders, leading the boys to safety until Lord Wyldon and his troops arrive. In later training, Kel's growing skill with the lance and bow is clear, and she continues to prove her leadership skills in mock fights between her squad and another squad. Her fear of heights is shown here, when Lord Wyldon forces her to climb every height she sees as punishments for her actions. Kel tries hard to master her fear, and finally overcomes her fear after she is forced to climb the rickety, rusty, spiral staircase on the outside of Balor's Needle to save her maid. In order to save Lalassa, she knows that she will be late for the big examinations that will determine if she becomes a squire or not, and that the punishment for being late is that she will have to repeat all four years as a page. She decides that Lalasa's need is greater than her own, and puts her fears aside to climb to the top of Balor's Needle and rescue Lalasa. In the end, Kel is allowed to participate in the examinations by herself and passes, officially becoming a Squire. At the end of her tests, she receives another gift from her mysterious benefactor.
Read more about this topic: Protector Of The Small
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“They who say that women do not desire the right of suffrage, that they prefer masculine domination to self-government, falsify every page of history, every fact in human experience. It has taken the whole power of the civil and canon law to hold woman in the subordinate position which it is said she willingly accepts.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
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“A book is like a man—clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.”
—John Steinbeck (1902–1968)