It was more from default than any dedication on my part, that I found myself in the mansion's gym and not back on the street. The truth of the matter was I really didn't have anywhere to go, and being exposed as a fraud (I didn't really want to die), I figured I might as well make the best of the situation. I still thought OD was mad, and M, emotionally and psychologically damaged. Freya, was just an immature kid.

I had dispensed with the wheelchair and was on my hands. As a result of using my arms like a person would use their legs, they were about the same size. Freya, dressed in black leggings and top, was looking down at me warily. Personally I didn't know why OD had asked me to train the girl and not M.

"I want you to go up to that vault horse. Stand, with both feet firmly planted on the ground and then jump up onto it."

She looked at the vault horse, looked at me, and then back at the horse. "I can't do it. It's too high."

"You haven't even tried."

"I know what I can do and what I can't do," she said already in frustration. "This, I can not do."

"If I can do it, will you at least try?" Her plan was to wear me down by obstinate arguement. I had to change the playing field if I was going to get anywhere.

She almost smiled. At least I had her attention.

"What?"

"I sure you've noticed, but you don't have any legs."

I looked down at where my shirt dragged on the floor and cried out in panic. I dropped down and began to flop about. "My legs! My legs! Where did they go?"

She laughed.

"No, serious. All kidding aside. If I can clear the vault, you'll try?"

She nodded. "I'll try, if you clear the vault."

So, I did, several times.

She gazed at me in awe. "How did you do that?"

"Practice. What I've noticed, in any training system, is that the body responds to practice. You see what you want to do and then figure out what you have to do to get there."

"But you have no legs."

"You're looking at what I don't have, not what I have. That fellow that tried to rape you dismissed me and I beat him."

"But they came back and almost killed you."

"Yeah, well, they got lucky. Now, the vault. You promised."

"Can I take a run?"

"No, you can't."

"Fine."

She stood in front of the vault horse bent her knees, like I had told her, and sprung. She skinned her shins and fell backwards onto her back. We were now at the same level. "You're better than me and you have no legs."

I rolled over to her and grinned. "Yeah, but my arms are as thick as your legs. Now, let's try that again. I'll set it lower this time and we'll work upward, all right."

She puffed air out of her nostrils. There were tears in her eyes.

I knew a little about albinism, enough to know that that particular gene mutation gave you different degrees of sight, of sun tolerance. I even knew it could be called oculocutaneous albinism. A person could have it only in the eyes.

"How much of the vault can you see?" I asked her.

"I can see it fine," she said stubbornly. "I'm not blind. I can tell a good looking man for an ugly one." She was looking directly at me. I figured I fell in the latter category.

I grinned. The intended barb bounced off me. Looks stopped mattering a long time ago. "Thank you. I'll take that as a compliment. Now, if I was looking through your eyes, what would I see?"

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She set her chin in a determined way and then decided that my question was acceptable. "The problem is my depth of field. If I'm approaching something and the background is similar to the object, the object is very hard to see."

I looked at the vault and noticed that the wall was made up of a dark coloured wood, the same colour as the top of the vault horse. With some effort we were able to move the vault until it was in front of a cream coloured wall, where there was some contrast.

"Can you see it now?"

She nodded.

"Now, try the jump again."

This time, although she nearly fell off, she managed it. She stood on the top and wobbled.

"Bend your knees, extend your arms. That way you're better able to maintain your balance."

"I did it," she said with a bewildered look on her face.

 I nodded with no littile satisfaction and made her jump up and down until she nearly fell again. When she was panting and sweat was dripping from her nose I pulled myself up to her. From my vantage point I was looking up. It's strange how the point of view can transfer to dominance. Those who tower, dominate, those who are close to the ground, do not. Nothing could be more decieving. 

"When the man in the woods attacked you, what did you do?"

Her eyes were shifting back and forth as she struggled to see the expression on my face. "What do you mean?" she said hesitantly not knowing why I was talking about this.

"What did you do? Did you scream? Did you try to run away? Did you fight?"

"I...I didn't do anything..." she said suddenly flustered.

"They depend on that, a predator. They depend on freezing you." I held up a hand in front of her face and began to wave it back and forth. "Snake style in Kung Fu, is beautiful. The movements of the hand are intended to hypnotize, and then..." I snapped my hand forward tapping her nose. "Then it's too late. Never be hypnotized."

She sat down and let out an exasperated puff of air. "I can't see, when things are moving fast. I didn't see your hand at all."

I shrugged. "Things can move so fast, that even if your sight was perfect, you wouldn't be able to see it."

"Then what's the sense of this?"

"Your grandfather asked me to train you, and I said, I'd do what I can do." I gave her a sudden push, sending her off her haunches and onto her back end again.

"Hey, why did you do that for?"

I gave her another push. This time I only got a bit of her and knocked her to the side.

"What are you doing?" she protested.

"If you don't like it, do something about it." I pushed her again. From her mannerisims, the way she dissected things, I knew she was very intelligent. I went to shove her again and she kicked me in the chest knocking me backwards. It was a clumsy kick with no power in it, but it took care of me, long enough for her to put distance between us.

"Good, good," I said praising her. Then I noticed she was crying. Throughout the gym there were a number of plants in large, ceramic pots. Freya was supporting herself against one of these while she cried. Her tears ran down her face and dripped into the soil. I suppressed the compassion welling up inside me by summoning the image of her being raped on that cold night that seemed suddenly so immediate. Trauma had a way of doing that, of making the mind experience the feelings, the sight, the smell of things all over again as though it was just happening. Trauma was terrible. Then I saw something happening to the tree, or so I thought. The plant was a Norfolk pine with its swooping, draped like branches. It had looked a little 'off-colour', but now it virtually glowed. It also looked taller, bushier then it had been. "You're crying. Why are you crying?"

"I pushed you," her face was wet and pink.

I pulled myself over to her and handed her a towel. "That's the idea. It was a pretty good push. That's the first step of self defence, either to get away from the person trying to hurt you or you pushe them away."

She shook her head as though I didn't understand. "I don't want to hurt anyone. I just want...I just want the world to be better," she blubbered breaking into a new course of tears.

I sighed. Training her was going to prove difficult. I was going to have to get her to suspended her passivism and get her to see the training as just an exercise. Then when it came time to use violence, it would be second nature. 

There were those whose philosophy of man said that we are killers, natural born killers. That play fighting in young adolescent males was in preparation to be murderers. I didn't believe it. Martial arts prepared the body, the mind for the use of violence. Fists, knees, elbows, feet, head, they were all tools to be employed. It was natural to abhore violence, we had to learn the path to violence. It was one of those funny eastern opposites: to be free of violence one had to embrace it. M should have been teaching Freya. She had embraced it so much that she had become it.

"Are you all right?"

It wasn't me who asked the question. It was M who had silently glided into the room like a shadow hovering over Freya. She was a cloud trying to wrap itself around the sun. M gave me an accusatory glare as if to say 'what have you done.'

"What? OD asked me to teach her how to defend herself."

She didn't say anything as she enfolded Freya in her arms and raised her up. She looked down at me. "You can't teach her to hurt others."

I felt not only the sting of not having legs, but of not having any morality to stand on. "Of course it's wrong," I blurted out. "War is wrong. Violence wrong, but are you going to let someone hurt you?"

She continued to stare at me, those dark, bottomless eyes boring into what was left of my soul. "I will protect her."

"Fine," I shouted a little too loud. "Where were you in the park? Where were you when she was assaulted?"

I saw her flinch. I had made my point. M gave a reticent nod and stepped away from Freya. "If you hurt her, I'll kill you."

Then the cloud was gone and the sun sniffled.

"Come here," I said roughly.

Freya knelt down and in the process of cleaning off the girl's face I felt the wet damp of a tear on my hand. The wet vibrated like an electric shock that thrummed through my very being. It was...wonderful and very, very strange, but that was Freya.