Over the next hour, while everyone else is in practice bouts with each other, Gillian works with me. She shows me how to charge, bringing the staff down toward my opponent’s head, and how to block by raising the staff with both hands over my own. Her heavy strikes send jarring tremors down into my elbows. I’m tall enough that my strikes make her stretch for each block, but that’s my only advantage. She wipes the floor with me, and I end up on my ass more often than not.

When Gillian calls time, my wrists and shoulders are aching. “Now I’ll show you how to move to maximize each strike or block. The correct position of your feet provides stability and agility so that you can move quickly into the next movement, be it offensive or defensive. Think of it as a dance.”

I lean against my staff, wincing from a stitch in my side. “Shouldn’t I have learned footwork first, then?”

“How do your ankles feel?”

I rotate a foot. “They hurt.”

“Good.”

I furrow my brow in confusion. She grins, all teeth and cruelty. “Babies learn to walk faster on tile than on carpet. Now you have incentive to get the footwork right.”

I envision slapping her, but the Gillian in my mind has me on my back before I can lift a hand. Her mouth quirks like she knows exactly what I’m thinking.

After showing me how to balance my weight with the staff in various positions, she teaches me how to move forward and backward without tripping or falling. Different holds make movement easier or harder.

By the time Nick pokes his head in, every joint in my body is both painful and unmanageable. My stomach is sore. My glutes are on fire. The webbing between my hands feels like it might tear if I stretch my fingers too far. I collapse to the floor in a heap and look up at the clock; three hours have passed and it’s close to ten.

“How’s it going, Gill?” Nick asks.

Gillian looks me over for a moment. “She’s about as good as you were… when you were eight.”

Nick winces. “It’s her first night.”

The older woman shrugs and plucks the staff from my hand.

Nick helps me to standing, taking my weight when I hop up on sore feet. “At times like these, there are only two words I can offer.”

“Yeah, what are they?” I mutter.

“William’s waiting.”

On the car ride home, I fall into an exhausted, aether-drugged sleep. Nick offers to help me upstairs twice before I wave him away.

The images I dream of melt and bleed into one another like oil over water.

I see my mother, hunched over her desk, writing. When she looks down and smiles, I know I am a child, and this is a memory.

Her face slips into familiar blue-and-white smoke.