Iván raises his blade and stands wide-eyed, panting. “What next?”

Aldo whirls his sword around, grinning like a boy receiving his Deliverance Day gift. He loves this. He may be smaller than the other boys, but he has an ease and grace with his body that will make him a dangerous opponent in any fight. “What’s next is you’re ready to attack if I leave myself open, or ready to block my next attack, just like Red said.”

I nod to Aldo.

Pedrón says. “Fine, I get it. But once we master these forms, we can get to the fun stuff, right?”

“Pedrón, these forms are the fun stuff.”

We go through them again, slowly. We’ll have to speed them up, but for now, slowing down the movements allows the recruits time to think and adjust and feel their limbs in motion.

Aldo moves them into Slit the Rope, and Itzal swipes the wrong direction, whacking Pedrón’s thigh with his wooden blade.

“Ow! What did you do that for?”

“Sorry!”

I step over to Itzal, grab his wrists, and gently guide him through the correct motion. “Like this,” I say. “Concentrate on how that feels.”

The next time they move through Slit the Rope, Itzal starts to go in the wrong direction but catches himself and corrects. The third time, he gets it right.

At the end of the third pass, everyone looks at me expectantly. They suck air. Andrés is shimmery with sweat.

“You’re already getting better,” I assure them. “Take a moment to catch your breath, then we’ll go through it again.”

Pedrón smiles in triumph.

But a strange frisson slips down my spine, like the ghost of an unwelcome thought. I watch the boys as they breathe deep and stretch their shoulders. These exercises shouldn’t be difficult. I don’t understand why such simple, controlled movements would be so foreign to them.

Itzal gives his sword an experimental swipe, clumsy but almost serviceable.

The earth tilts.

I was in a cellar with a butcher’s knife, swiping diagonally at the hanging carcass of a skinned dog. Blood and offal soaked the dirt floor. Footsteps on the floor above set my carcass to swinging. Still, my swipes were perfect, creating flawless cuts of meat for Orlín the innkeeper to sell to customers as beef.

My swipes were perfect because they had to be. Orlín stood beside me, skinning another animal. If I jostled him in the slightest, I’d earn myself a blow to the ear.

I was good at this, making myself as tiny as possible. Aware of every part of my body at all times. I could feel his skin beside mine, a heat aura of dangerous space I would never, ever touch.

“Red?”

I slip back into myself. The warmth of the sand is a grounding force, and I say, without even a hitch, “Let’s go again.”

I watch them as they follow Aldo’s lead through the forms. What must it be like to bludgeon your way through life without a care for anyone else? Some of them can’t do the forms well, not because they’re inherently clumsy, but because they’ve never had to control themselves or consider their blundering bodies in relation to someone else’s space. The world has always made space for them.