Adolfo stepped close and put a hand on his shoulder. “Boy, you’re not ready for this. The energy here today ... it will kill you.”

Benicio felt his lip curl into a sneer. Adolfo was a sentimental old fool. He’d been a good teacher—even a good matador once, it was rumored—but those days were long gone. Now he was as timid as a woman. His sisters, or his mother, weeping in the stands deserved more respect than this doddering idiot. Benicio shrugged his hand away.

“I am the fastest, strongest torero in all of Cadiz, and you know it. The bull hasn’t been born that can put me in any danger. I should have been allowed to fight in the big ring one, maybe two years ago. But you never let me. That’s why I changed teachers. And that is why I’m going into the ring without you.”

“It’s not about your strength. It’s not about the speed. Your mind is not ready for this plaza. This ring, here, with this crowd, by the sea. You won’t live through it.”

Benicio turned resolutely to the door and nodded to the peon standing beside it. The man unlatched the wooden barrier and he was through, onto the glorious sand bathed by the midday sun.

Cheers rained down on him. Everyone in the crowd knew his story: he wasn’t some famous fighter from Seville, he was the local boy who’d grown up running the streets of the port city and who represented their best chance for a showing on the national stage. This was his first time in the Plaza in the port.

Benicio bowed to the presidente, but his mind was elsewhere.

There.

Seated just to the left of the official balcony, as befitted her family’s status, was Elisa. She glowed in the light. After years of watching her from afar, of chafing as she bestowed her admiration on lesser men, he stared straight into her dark eyes and knew that her applause, on this occasion, was for him.

Perhaps there was something in what the old man said. He felt the cheers lifting him, and knew he was at risk if he let his concentration lapse. Basking in the glory of the corrida was a good way to forget that the bull was not there to enjoy itself. But Adolfo knew that he could focus on the task at hand, not be swept away in the emotion; he’d spent his whole life preparing for this day.

The corral door opened. Every bullfighter he’d spoken to told him that this was the crucial moment. They told him that he might feel a certain weakness in the knees, and that the trick was to move quickly, not stand still. The Tercio de Varas—the first act of the bullfight—was a time of study, but also a time to steady the nerves for what was to come.

The bull was not particularly strong or fast, but he dismissed his irritation at the fact. That was often the lot of first-time toreros. The organizers were trying to protect him ... and he hadn’t yet earned the right to anything else. He would have a better animal in his second turn.

As he draped the cape over the bull’s head in a veronica that was met with enthusiastic olés, he smiled to himself. They could put the devil’s own bull in the ring with him ... he would send it to the faena all the same.

Into the second Tercio, he found his rhythm. It was the other thing the old hands had told him would happen: if he didn’t get himself gored within the first couple of minutes, he’d get his footing and begin his next move before the bull itself knew what it was going to do.

He exulted in the feeling, allowing the animal to come a little closer before each pass. The crowd roared its approval and amazement, but basking in the admiration took a back seat to the ecstasy of the dance. All that mattered, all that existed, was the bull, the hot sand, the blood, and, every once in a while, one of the picadors, appearing from outside of his universe to shove a lance home.

And Adolfo had wanted to keep him out, to make him miss this.

Benicio let the bull’s horn graze him. The crowd’s gasp exploded into cheering when they realized he’d done it on purpose.

The tide of energy felt like it was going to send him into space. The sun beating from above, the animal, a force of nature, shedding power from multitudes of bleeding cuts and punctures. He felt the energy of the sea, just a short walk away, somehow resonating with it all. And the people, screaming for their hometown hero, adding to the mix.

The sheer force of the magic made the stadium disappear: the stands where royals had once watched their national heroes, the sand which had drunk the blood of countless noble animals and more than a handful of the men who dared to face them. His family and friends in the stands. Elisa. All gone.

In their place stood a black night and a cloud of stars, as if he and the bull had somehow been transported to the middle of space on a cloudless evening.

But the animal, the only thing that mattered, was still with him. It was a creature of light now, a streak flashing through the sky. But he could tell where it was coming from, where it was going. Benicio still knew, in the deepest recesses of his bones, what the bull would do. With each pass, he allowed it to come as close as he dared, rewarded by yet another surge of energy from the crowd—unseen but felt.

He didn’t question the sudden change around him. There wasn’t room in his mind for that. The second Tercio was ending, and soon, it would be time for the estocada, the killing blow.

The bull was tiring, the streaks slowing, the crowd growing more excited. Some additional door must have burst in the night around him, the energy drawing a new kind of spectator; wisps of crystal light, grey and green and sea-colored, began to accumulate around them.

At first, the new spectators kept themselves to the margins, occupying the same places that the flesh and blood onlookers did in the stadium, but, with every pass, they spiraled closer. Soon, they were close enough that Benicio could see forms.

Horrid, deformed figures they were. The browns and greens were the colors of mud and decay and the eyes were mere patches of darkness, as if they opened up to the black velvet beyond them. Mouths—he was certain they were mouths—contorted into rictuses of pure glee at the suffering of the bull, the danger of the human. One of the shapes passed through his cape on a particularly close pass. Benicio could have sworn he felt a tug.

He steeled himself. Was he hallucinating? He didn’t know, but even a slow bull was more than capable of tearing him in half. He wasn’t fooled by its body of light; its weight brushed alongside with each pass, he sensed the heat from its exertions. Whatever form it took, it was certainly there, a presence larger than anything he’d ever been with before.

So Benicio kept his attention on the bull. The creatures of air harassed and surrounded him, but he ignored their presence. It was nearly time for the sword. That was the most dangerous moment in a bullfight.

One final pass, one last surge of energy from the invisible crowd and he took a step back from the exhausted figure of light. He pulled out the espada and his footing, which had seemed so secure a moment before, even as he floated in space, suddenly became light, as if he would fly away.

The stunted gnomes around him disappeared as he held the blade aloft for the unseen crowd to see. Their absence revealed another group of beings, these formed of the purest blue light. He knew it was a court of the gods. Gods of sea and land and earth, gathered for the spectacle. Every eye was on him: those of the great broad-shouldered creature in the center, all the courtiers and billowing lords and ladies and ...

Then he saw her. The personification of the perfect woman. Tall, slim, her curves barely concealed by a transparent gown of light. Not a monster, not a strange goddess, just the perfect maid of stardust. Her attention was locked on him.

His breath caught, he missed a step.

The bull hit him. A horn went deep into his body, right beneath the sternum.

He rose into the darkness of space lifted partly by the horn lodged inside him and partly by another surge of blissful energy from the crowd.

Benicio landed on the scalding sand with a dull thud.

“Where is ...” but the words failed him. The desperation of having lost her hurt more than the fact that he was bleeding to death in the ring.

One of his eyes was buried in the sand, the other fixed on the royal balcony, staring at the gross fleshy forms of the presidente and his entourage. His eyes drifted to Elisa, one hand covering her mouth.

He could barely contain his disgust at the figure of clay, of nothing but meat, that he’d once idolized. Though he hadn’t known, though his eyes hadn’t yet been opened, Benicio couldn’t forgive himself such baseness. Now, those same eyes shifted again, to watch the river of blood that had already ruined his tunic slowly turning the sand into black mud.

Adolfo was the first to reach him. He cradled Benicio’s head under his hand. The old fool had tears in his eyes.

Benicio wanted to tell him not to cry for him, for he’d seen the truth behind the corrida, the reason that men were willing to fight to keep the tradition alive in the face of ever more strident calls for its banishment. It would be worth anything to see them. To see her.

“I knew you would get there. You were too good for your own good. The crowd, the sea ... even though the bull was weak, I knew the sky would open before you were ready,” Adolfo said. “Most fighters only arrive there as older men, when they can play the crowd to open the gate. But you ... you were too much for this crowd.”

The doctors arrived and cut away at his clothing. Their serious faces told Benicio what he already knew. With the last of his strength, he clutched Adolfo’s shirt and pulled him closer.

“I ...” but that was all he managed.

“You saw her. I know. I was watching for the moment.” The old man bent close. “Then you have truly lived the life of a torero. You would have tried to find her again with every single fight. Most only see her once. That is what kills us, not bulls.”

Benicio tried to nod, to express his understanding, but he was too weak.

His eyes closed.