Yumi and the Nightmare Painter(104)

“Ah…” Design said. “It feels so good to come here and be near real art. Be back quicker than a chasmfiend gobbles a chull.” She darted away, leaving Yumi and Painter.

“Do you think she’s getting more eccentric?” Painter said, sitting on the floor. “Or is she just comfortable enough with us to let it show?”

“The latter,” Yumi said, looking up and finding numbers written even on the ceiling. “Definitely the latter.”

Design returned a few minutes later with Masaka in tow. Short, too much dark makeup, black skirt and her customary black sweater, collar all the way to her chin, hands lost in her sleeves.

“Ha!” Painter said, leaping to his feet. He pointed. “Ha! I knew it. I knew she wasn’t human.”

“Yumi,” Design said, “meet Chinikdakordich, the sixtieth horde of the Natricatich strain.”

Masaka pulled into her sweater a little farther, like a tortoise seeking the safety of its shell during the heat of the day. “We prefer the name Masaka,” she said softly. “We’re being human, Design. We’re getting very good at it.”

“I know you are,” Design said, patting her.

“So it’s true?” Yumi asked, feeling intimidated. “You’re…a creature like Design?”

“Not entirely like her, but yes,” Masaka said, looking down. “Is it…so obvious, Yumi? We’re figuring out many things. Human girls like cute things. We like cute things.” She looked up, and almost seemed ready to cry. “We made such a good human. You can’t even see the seams in our skin, so long as we wear makeup, and clothing with long neck portions! The trick is to make the entire face one piece. Took years of breeding.”

Breeding? One piece? Seams?

Uh… Yumi steeled herself.

Painter, laughing, sat back down. She shot him a glare, but he shrugged.

“Yumi,” he said, “Masaka being an alien is literally the first thing about any of this that has made sense to me.”

“I think,” Yumi said to Masaka—who evidently couldn’t see or hear Painter—“you are doing an excellent job. You’re, um, a very cute young woman.”

“We are?” Masaka said. She smiled, then stepped closer. Yumi forcibly prevented herself from backing up as the girl—thing—took her hand. “Thank you, Yumi. Thank you. Here, this is for you.” She slipped something from her pocket and handed it to Yumi. A…

A knife.

“Very good at cracking shells,” Masaka said, pointing at the hooked end. “And prying out the insides. Look, look.” She pointed at the handle. “Flowers inscribed here. Very cute.”

“Very cute,” Yumi repeated.

“Don’t tell anyone what we are, please,” Masaka said. “We are tired of people being scared of us. We are tired of wars. We like painting. Please.”

“I…won’t tell anyone,” Yumi said. “But please, we need help. You…know about what’s out in the darkness?”

“No horde,” Design said, holding up a finger, “settles on a planet without knowing everything about the terrain. I’ll bet she’s been sending out…um, scouts. Little scouts. To investigate the entire place.”

Masaka looked out at the kitchens, then shut the door. “Is it important?” she asked Yumi. “As important as Design said?”

“Yes,” Yumi said. “I think it really is.”

Masaka took a deep breath. “We… I am not so paranoid as others, Design. I am trying to be human. To avoid the conflicts. But I have sent hordelings out. Most of the landscape beyond the cities is wasteland, enveloped in this strange Investiture. Like the slag castoffs of half-refined souls. But there are places we cannot go.”

“Cannot go?” Yumi asked, looking at Painter. “What do you mean?”

“Hard places,” Masaka explained. “Walls in the blackness, where the Investiture has become solid. Rising up high in the sky, into the atmosphere. Like columns. One vast one a few miles away. Other small ones, circles all of them, like…fortifications.”

“Around towns?” Painter asked, standing up, then waving for Yumi to say it—which she did.

“No way to tell,” Masaka said. “I can’t get through.” She wilted. “I am young. I am not so…eager as some of my kind. I don’t have the knowledge, have not gathered the power, to deal with things like this. I came here to hide.”

“It might be enough,” Yumi said, “if you draw out a little map of it, maybe? Where these places are?”

Masaka nodded, and Design went to fetch some paper.

“Towns,” Painter repeated, stepping up beside Yumi. “Those circles she found. They’re your towns!”

“It’s impossible,” Yumi said. “I’d know if I’d been living in little enclaves inside a vast darkness. We can see all the way to the horizon!”

“The shroud can look like anything,” he said. “Design said it could fool us. And you yourself said that people from your lands rarely travel between villages because of the heat of the stone in between. So it could all be some kind of strange cover-up.”

“And you really think,” she replied, “that of the thousands upon thousands of people who live in my kingdom, none would stroll out and find one of these barriers? That a flyer would never smack into an invisible wall in the sky? You think this could have been hidden from all of us for such a long time?”