A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

Just as those with power should help and protect those without it, the story suggests that each person also has a responsibility to leverage one’s talents, no matter how small, in service to the community. Though Mona is only a 14-year-old girl with no social or legal authority, she becomes a person with power by virtue of being the last wizard in the city. Thus, though she is afraid and doubts her own abilities, she steps up in a time of crisis to use her magic and cleverness to their best effect.

Early in the novel, Mona believes that her magical ability is minor, weak, and useless. She continually insists that she works with bread, “just bread,” a motif that echoes throughout the novel. She seems convinced that magic is only useful if it adheres to specific ideas of power (like controlling lightning). People often only see another person’s strength and ability from the outside and therefore believe that everyone else is more powerful or useful. This is a common misconception that Mona applies not only to official royal wizards like Lord Ethan and Master Gildaen but even to other minor wizards like Knackering Molly, comparing herself unfavorably in each case. However, this story emphasizes that the size and strength of a magical ability (or any kind of talent) is not important; rather, it is how one uses creativity and determination to leverage any ability to its greatest effect that matters.

Lord Ethan makes this argument in his letter to Mona during the Carex siege. He states that “in magic, creativity is as important as knowledge” (228), adding that the best wizard he ever knew personally possessed a relatively “minor talent” just like Mona but was “relentless in finding ways to make things work with what he had” (228). Similarly, in the brief conversation Gildaen has with Mona, he offers extensive advice about how to use magic most effectively. Responding to Mona’s insistence that she works with “just bread,” Gildaen retorts that he works with “just water” (166). He adds that “wizards have done more with less” (168). The point of his argument is not merely that Mona is capable of more than she thinks but also that all people have a responsibility to do what they can with what they possess. This is as true for Knackering Molly, Spindle, and Aunt Tabitha, as it is for Mona herself. Aunt Tabitha arrives at the palace to help Mona prepare for the siege because she can, and because Riverbraid is her home, and she has as much duty to its protection as any member of the army.

Similarly, Spindle offers to ferry Mona’s gingerbread saboteurs out of the wall to attack the Carex camp, despite Mona’s desire to keep him safe, because he wants to do his part. He does not possess magic, and he is too small to physically fight, but his skills as a street thief allow him to do this effectively. Even Molly, who is traumatized by her past experiences with armies and battle, eventually understands that she is one of the last remaining wizards in the city and, just like Mona, has an ethical duty to help however she can. This, in the end, is the moral backbone of the novel: Everyone should leverage whatever talents they possess in service to the community.