Marroo’s earliest memories included an older brother. He was silver eyed and pale skinned, different, like Marroo and their father, but with his mother’s dark brown hair. In his mind, those memories would always be “the happy times”, the times before his brother disappeared from his memories of play, before they moved from a sprawling home with gardens full of trees to the fourth story apartment in a large tenement building with an empty spare room. Before his father began training him in the use of the sword.

“You are weak, you hit without any intention of doing harm.”

Marroo never knew his father to raise his voice, never really knew him to express anything in his face or his tone, even so, he learned to understand his father’s moods from the way he held the hilt of his sword, or the tension in his shoulders and the things he chose to talk about in their training.

“What will you do when someone comes after you, if you are not willing to break them?”

Marroo did not answer. He was only six, but had learned, quickly, that silence was a better answer than a guess. A rock sat on a shelf in a corner of the makeshift training room they’d made of the spare room that filled his mind each time he was asked such a question. The stone was black and smooth as glass, and in Marroo’s experience, dense and heavy. Instead of answering, Marroo continued to swing his practice sword in the configurations his father expected while his father paced around him and watched with disapproving silver eyes. After a year of constant practice he could move fluidly with the sword, cut up, cut down, stab, swivel his feet left to right, then right to left as he cut, always stopping his sword in one of three “ready positions” that transitioned him into other attacks, his sword sheathed, held upright across his chest, or pointing downwards from his hip. He could move through the thirty steps his father expected of him without a mistake, without thought, except of the stone on the shelf at the corner of the practice room, and his father’s eyes, following him as he moved.

“Stop.”

Marroo stopped, sword held upright across his chest, feet spread for maximum stability. When he’d first begun to learn his father had made him take the stance and pushed him and knocked him around ordering him to hold his stance, to hold still, until he could rock without moving his feet and hold his ground even against a heavier opponent.

His father paced around him once, twice, then he stood directly in front of Marroo. His practice sword sighed as he pulled it from its sheath and he took up the same stance in front of Marroo. “Hit me.” He commanded.

Marroo struck without thought. His blade flashed out as his father had taught him. A stab to distract, then a twirl and a second stab his father had taught him was meant to kill, if the blade was sharp. His father deflected it easily and Marro transitioned, sword from hip to slash forward, then to drive sideways at his father when it was deflected, then to come up at his chest in a jab when it was deflected again. He danced sideways to cut at his father’s side, only to meet the wood of his father’s weighted practice sword.

His father’s foot slammed into Marroo’s arm and Marroo’s sword clattered against the floor as the limb went numb. His father’s sword came fractions of a second later aimed for Marroo’s head. He ducked and danced backwards and his father remained where he was, sword in one hand, in a stance he would not allow Marroo to practice yet. Two pairs of silver eyes met over the training floor.

“I told you to hit me.”

The kick had stunned Marroo, and the strike aimed for his head had his heart thumping in his chest. His hands shook as he retrieved his sword and he kept his eyes on his father, waiting for him to leap and kick at him again, or swing the sword, or pick up the stone. He set the hilt at his hip, blade angled down in what he liked to think of as his running stance, and faced his father.

This time when he swung his father made no move to block. The blunted practice sword hit his father full in the chest then bounced off as though it had hit steel. Marroo staggered, his form disrupted by his successful hit.

When he recovered, sword across his chest in a defensive posture, he found his father still glaring at him.

“Sheath your sword.” His father told him. “Then sit.”

Marroo hesitated for a moment, then crossed his legs and sat, feet tucked beneath him.

Darro Bolle sat down across from his son and told Marroo to close his eyes. “You are young, and you are small.” He rasped. “So, you cannot put weight behind your blows as you will when you are an adult, but you do not need to be large to hit hard. Listen to your body.”

Marroo tried. What he heard instead, was the way his father breathed only a few feet away from him in the small room.

“Not with your ears.” His father told him. “But with your breath.”

Marroo opened his eyes to find his father with his eyes closed in front of him, his breathing even, sword across his lap. After watching his father for a moment, Marroo put his own sword across his lap and closed his eyes again in order to breath. He tried listening to his breath, but felt his attention move from the sound of his own breathing, to the way his muscles moved as he did so, tensing, then relaxing, tensing, then relaxing, and something deeper moving within his body.

“Do you feel it?”, his father asked after a long time. Marroo’s eyes snapped open, and he found his father watching him. Neither said a word, then Marroo’s father closed his eyes and breathed deep and even again. “There is strength there, in the breath, that can move throughout your body. Breath again, boy, and listen to it moving within you.”

Marroo did as he was told. He felt his lungs move and the way his body responded. He felt the tense knot in his chest uncurl a little bit to release heat like blood that swirled around inside of him.

“You are small, and weak.” His father said again, and the knot tightened in Marroo’s chest. “But if you cultivate that strength inside of you, you can learn to strike with force greater than any physical strength could ever bring to bear.”

Marroo’s eyes opened, and he found his father standing in front of him. Sword sheathed, empty hand at his side. Marroo stood and put one hand on the hilt of his sword in uncertainty.

“Hit me.” His father said. “and this time, feel your breath moving inside of you as you strike me.”

Marroo hesitated, then drew his practice sword and set the hilt at his hip.

“In my chest.” His father said. “Do not worry, you cannot hurt me.”

Marroo swung.

“Again.” His father said. “Again. Again.”

In the happy times, when they’d lived on the house of trees with his brother, his mother used to take the two of them to a small corner park with a fountain and circles of brick laid out on the street where he and his brother could play with other children their own age. Marroo remembered splashing and drawing pictures on core warmed bricks with wet fingers and chasing squealing girls and older boys in endless games of tag amidst rows of columns set around the park. When they moved, they no longer went on such outings, and for a long time Marroo was not allowed outside the house. His mother read to him on those days, from cardboard picture books and boxes of dusty paperbacks he helped her sort onto empty shelves and long scrolls projected by her familiar for the two of them to read tucked into bed while the night plains cast the world outside into shadow. His father spent much of that time away, apparently busy at whatever work he did, but when he returned and Marroo began his training his mother decided it was time for him to spend some time with other children as they had before.

“Don’t be nervous.” She told him when they reached the park. She was a tall thin woman, pale like his father but with long dark brown hair almost black, and pale blue eyes like cheap imitations of Marroo’s. In her dark dress she looked like one of his practice swords in it’s sheath as she surveyed the other women at the park and clutched his hand in a sweaty palm of her own. Her familiar danced around her as a bright blue sprite, and Marroo hovered at her feet like it’s shadow. She looked down at him, from a mother’s daunting height, and gave him a little push towards the other children. “You’ll be alright.” She told him. “I’ll be right here.” She propelled him towards the ragged decorative shrubs standing in the shadow of the park’s trees, and smiled at him nervously with a little wave when he looked back at her.

Marroo went, eventually, but he didn’t join the other children’s game of tag. He watched for a while from the side of a tree and hoped they would tell him how to play. When they ignored him, he found a patch of dirt where he could see his mother with the other women, dark skinned and different from her, who had also brought their children and he waited for her to tell him it was time to go while he played with his model aircar, building towers in the dirt with sticks and flying it around as though it were his father on some important business. A beetle crawled along and he laid his head on his hands to watch it scramble around in the city he’d made.

“What have you got there?” a boy asked.

Marroo jerked around to find one of the older boys looking down at him from some of the bushes a short distance away. When Marroo didn’t say anything the boy sauntered over, hands in the pockets of his robes. He looked down at Marroo’s little city and shook his head gravely. “Mom says we aren’t supposed to break sticks off of the bushes.” The boy said. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

The boy squatted down next to Marroo’s city and scooped Marroo’s aircar from the dirt before Marroo could reclaim it. He puttered it through the towers, and snatched it away when Marroo reached for it. “You’re not supposed to break sticks.” The boy said, and scooted a little away to continue playing with Marroo’s car. “I’m nine.” The boy added. “I know what I’m talking about.”

“Give it back.” Marroo said.

The boy ignored him and continued to drive it through the city. It made a screeching halt that slid it sideways and knocked down some of Marroo’s towers.

Marroo stood, but didn’t know what to do. His fists curlced and uncurled next to him, and he looked to his mother for help, but she sat on the edge of the circle of other women and leaned forward, listening to someone telling a story near the middle of the group. He looked back at the boy and just, stood there, feeling things he didn’t know what to do with.

“Are you gonna look at me all day?” The boy asked. “Are you stupid or something? Don’t you talk?”

Marroo couldn’t think what to say. “Go away.” He tried. “That’s mine.”

“You weren’t playing with it.” The boy said. “Besides, you shouldn’t have broken those sticks. My mom says the bushes will all die if we break all the sticks, and we won’t be allowed to play here anymore.”

Marroo looked to his mother again, then shoved the boy. The nine year old barely rocked on his haunches.

“You shouldn’t push me.” The boy said. “I’m bigger than you are.”

Marroo only pushed him again, a little harder this time. This time, the boy didn’t rock on his haunches. He stood up and looked down at Marroo, head and shoulders taller than the six year old boy with silver eyes and too pale skin. The scrawny six year old didn’t wait for the older boy to say anything, he swung his fist, just like his father taught him, straight into the older boy’s solar plexus.

It barely seemed to have an effect.

The older boy took a half step back then raised a fist. “Do you want me to hurt you?” he asked.

Marroo’s stance shifted, he took a breath, felt the power his father told him to cultivate move within him, then drove his fist forward into the nine year old’s ribs. The other boy dropped his arm as though to grab Marroo but Marroo’s hand didn’t budge. It rammed into the nine year old and Marroo felt his breath move through him, through his arm, through his fist, through his “target”. He watched the boy’s eyes go wide before he crumpled and Marroo scooped up his toy. He went back to his makeshift city and tried to play but the boy’s screaming brought other kids out of the bushes and a woman rushed from the circle of mothers to fall next to the nine year old shouting something while her familiar darted between the fallen boy and the clip on her shoulder.

The nine year old pointed towards Marroo who by that time had his ears covered as he watched.

“What happened to him?” The woman yelled at Marroo. “What happened?”

Marroo shrank back from the tall woman but he didn’t say anything until his mother appeared, pushing through the thin row of bushes to take him by the shoulders. Her eyes were wide and her eyebrows knit in ways that said “worry” as his father’s face never did.

“What happened?”, she asked him as she knelt in front of him.

“I punched him.” Marroo told her.

“You punched him!” The woman bent over the now whimpering boy shouted. “He has a fractured rib! What did you punch him with?”

Marroo didn’t look at her, he looked at his mother who turned and apologized to the woman, then took Marroo by the shoulder. “I’m going to talk to my son.”, she said, then looked down at Marroo. “Come on, We’re leaving.”

Marroo had to break away from her after they’d taken a few steps to run back and grab his toy off the ground. He did not look at the way the woman and her son glared at him, or the way the other eyes followed him as he scooped up his toy and hurried back to his mother. When he did look back, before they rounded the corner out of the small park, he saw one of the other kids kicking his model city while the mother lifted her son carefully into her arms.

When they were out of sight, Marroo’s mother pushed him to the edge of the walkway and knelt down next to him in an alcove that led to a set of stairs.

“Did you punch him?” She asked.

Marroo nodded.

“Why?” She looked at him as though she couldn’t believe what she’d heard.

“He took my car.” Marroo replied.

“Did you ask him to give it back?”

Marroo shifted and looked away from her. “I told him to give it back.”

“But did you ask?” His mother said again.

“He didn’t listen to me!”

One of the women from the group rushed by and he and his mother fell silent as she disappeared down the street. When his mother turned back she was frowning and angry. “Listen to me Marroo, you can’t be hurting people like that. You want to make friend’s here don’t you?”

“But he didn’t give it back.” Marroo said, and felt hot tears coming to his eyes. “He wouldn’t listen!”

“I don’t care.” His mother replied. “Come on.” She took Marroo by the hand, and marched him back to the park. Marroo tried to hide his tears from the other children but could feel them staring at him when he tried to look away. He studied the ground instead and counted the bricks as they wavered in tear warped vision. The screaming was gone, as was the boy he’d injured, and they spent a good five minutes wandering among the other adults trying to make sure everything was alright. Eventually they left, but they stopped again when they were out of the park and she knelt down in front of him.

“You can’t be hurting people.” She said again. “Ever. Do you understand me?”

Marroo nodded and wet tears dripped from his nose.

“Here.” His mother pulled out a handkerchief and wiped at his nose and cheeks until he was relatively dry again. “How are we supposed to make friends up here if you go around hurting them?” She asked as she stared into his eyes.

“I don’t want to make friends with them.” His voice was harsh from crying, almost as harsh as his father’s.

“No? You’d rather be alone all your life?” She asked, a fire in her eyes he’d never seen there before.

He looked away and didn’t answer, but she grabbed his chin and turned him back to her.

“When we come back tomorrow, you are going to apologize to that boy, do you understand?”

“But he didn’t-”

“I don’t care.” His mother cut him off. He started to cry again and she wiped at the snot running out of his nose. “The next time we see them, you are going to tell him that you’re sorry, and that you didn’t mean to break his ribs, and you’re going to give him that toy. Do you hear me?”

“But mom!”

“I don’t want to hear it.” She gave up trying to clean him up as he started crying in earnest and just took his hand to march him down the street again. “You cannot hurt people.” She said when his tears had slowed.

Marroo didn’t answer her and she went on.

“If you start hurting people, we’re always going to be alone.”

When they returned the next day, he apologized to the boy, as his mother said, then gave him the toy. The nine year old’s mother told the boy to thank Marroo and say that he forgave him, but when Marroo went out to watch them play their games, the other children wouldn’t look at him, and when he tried to sit down next to some kids playing squares on some of the bricks in the shade of a tall willow tree they got up and moved away.

At home his father only looked at him when he heard the story and seemed to examine Marroo’s tear stained cheeks. He sat in the window nook, full of the core’s light with one of his cultivation manuals in his hand. “Did you use your breath?” He rasped.

“He broke the other boy’s ribs.” His mother said. “Darro. He’s six years old.”

Marroo’s father said nothing. He just looked at Marroo until Marroo nodded.

His father glanced at his mother, then back to Marroo. “Then they won’t mess with you again.” He said in that terrible flat voice of his. “You were stronger. There is nothing for you to be ashamed of.”

It was the first lesson his father truly taught him. The one that stuck with Marroo the longest and occupied his mind during most of their lessons together.

“Hit me boy.” His father commanded a five year old Marroo, just as he would again, much later, when he taught him to use his breath.

At the time Marroo thought it was a game, a bit of fun, the first bit of fun they’d had since his brother… left… but when he tired and still hadn’t hit his father his father began to swing his own practice sword at the boy, shouting for him to block. Marroo blocked. He blocked and blocked and dodged, and said he didn’t want to play anymore even as his father bore down on him with the sword.

“Either you’ll hit me, or I’ll hit you.” He said. “The choice is up to you.”

Marroo tried, a few times. He swung the wooden sword as hard as he could at his father only to hit his father’s practice sword, again, and again, and again, until he’d gone back to blocking when his father wouldn’t let him stop. Then the wooden practice sword smacked into Marroo’s fingers instead of the wood of the practice blade and Marroo dropped the blade and screamed with shock and pain.

“What the matter?” his father asked. “Did you hurt your hand?” He swung his wooden sword at Marroo again and Marroo ducked away just in time, cradling his fingers. “Pick up your sword.” His father ordered.

Marroo shook his head and his father stepped towards him, sword raised for another swing. “You still have to hit me, boy.” He growled. He swung again.

Marroo dodged again but began to cry.

“Stop crying and fight.” His father growled, but Marroo ducked away from the next blow and fled.

He found his mother sorting books into piles on the rough wooden floor and buried his face in her shoulder while he cried. He shook his head when she asked what was the matter and his father arrived, wooden sword in hand.

“Nothing happened.” He grated when she asked. “I hit his hand.”

“Can I see your hand?”, his mother asked. She kissed the fingers when Marroo showed them to her. “Are you going to be alright?” she asked.

Marroo shook his head and she gave him a hug.

“I think practice is done for the day.” She looked at his father.

“I don’t think so.” His father replied. “He has another hour at least, if not more.”

“I think he’s done.” She cradled Marroo and stood. When she turned away, Marroo got a glimpse of his father’s face rigid, as it always way, but tense in a way he’d never seen before.

“You’re coddling him.” His father grated. His hand was tight around the sword hilt, but his voice remained as flat and sharp as the sword he took with him in his work. “He’ll have more than a few bruised fingers if he doesn’t learn.”

“Not yet.” Her voice could take on the aspect of steel too, and one hand stroked Marroo’s neck.

Marroo was looking down at the floor, so when it happened, he saw the way splinters flew out of the cut that appeared in front of her as she started to step towards Marroo’s bedroom. She stopped, and everyone seemed to freeze.

“You’re making him weak.” His father rasped. “Just like the other one.”

Maroo’s mother didn’t respond. She held him, and stared into the distance.

“If I hadn’t been so easy on him…” His father’s voice dropped away to almost nothing, but new cuts appeared in the walls around him, along the floor, and across his mother’s shelves. It wasn’t the first time Marroo had seen his father touch the icon and project it into his aura, but it was the first time he’d seen it done with the possibility of harm to him or someone else that he cared for.

His mother, for her part, seemed not to see the danger as she stood with him in her arms. She set Marroo down without looking at him, then turned back to his father as woodchips and bits of plaster fell from the ceiling around them.

“You won’t take him from me.” She hissed.

The man in front of them just looked at her with flat silver eyes. “What can you do?” He asked.

“You know very well what I can do.” She replied, and Marroo’s father stopped. Plaster from the ceiling sprinkled downwards as more shallow cuts appeared while nobody moved and Marroo hid halfway behind the door frame. The first person to move was his father. He didn’t blink or balk. He made no sound, but the invisible blades cutting lines into the world around them stopped. He broke eye contact with his mother to look at Marroo. “We do the same again, tomorrow morning.” He told him. “And every day, until you hit me. There will be no exceptions.”

He glanced up at Marroo’s mother and the lines of his face grew tight. “But that is all, for today.”

He turned and left, but his mother remained where she was, hunched in the middle of the hallway, facing the place he’d occupied when he issued his ultimatum.

They didn’t spar the next morning, as his father threatened. His father went to a shelf in the corner instead and pulled down a stone.

“Sit.” He commanded, and Marroo sat.

“You will receive no mercy for being weak.” His father told him. “The world does not care if you are in pain, or alone, or suffering, so you must learn not to care as well.” He held the stone in front of Marroo, a solid black sphere that shone in the light which filtered in through the windows. He told him to put out his hands and Marroo did so. “The world only cares whether you are strong.” His father said. “So, you must learn to be stronger than anyone who can hurt you, beginning with yourself.” He dropped the rock into Marroo’s hand and Marroo felt pain radiate out from the stone across his body like fire ripping apart the very fabric of his muscles.

He yelped and dropped the stone.

His father lifted it back up and held it in front of him, bare palm wrapped around the sphere as though it meant nothing to him. “This stone is pain.” He said. “It should mean as little to you as a harsh word, or a gust of wind. You should be in complete control of yourself. Only then can you begin to grow strong. I expect you to hold this for five seconds.” He dropped the rock back into Marroo’s hands and Marroo immediately dropped it again. This time, when Marroo’s father picked it up, he placed it into Marroo’s palms then clamped his own hands around Marroo’s. “If you cannot, then we’ll just keep trying.”

The pain burned up Marroo’s wrist, climbing him like the breath he would later feel leave his body when he committed himself to a strike. In his father’s hand, the stone looked small, almost inconsequential, but it was heavy, and barely fit in the palms of both Marroo’s hands bunched together. He wanted to cry out, to let the rock fall, but that morning he’d seen his mother peeling books out of the shelves torn apart by his father’s spirit and he’d stopped to run a finger over the cut left in the wood of the floor. The pain burned, and made his eyes water, but he would give his father no new excuse to scare his mother. He would not be the reason they fought. He looked up into his father’s silver eyes, and he wept, but in complete silence.

When his father released his hands an eternity later, Marroo gasped and dropped the stone. His father picked it up, held it in front of him again. “That was one second.” He said. “Again.”

Marroo stretched out his hands and his father dropped the stone into them. Through the pain, he heard his father’s pronouncement. “I will not let you remain weak.”

Marroo didn’t feel strong when he watched the boy he’d hurt playing with the rest of the children in the park. He didn’t feel pain either, or the shame his mother seemed to expect. He just felt alone, and empty in a way that no amount of cultivation would ever seem to fill.