Yumi and the Nightmare Painter(117)

These places were fourteen nature preserves, you might say, each designed for a single occupant. The yoki-hijo were placed into these prisons, with their memories erased each night. Then they were given a single day to live over and over, calling fake spirits formed from the shroud.

A clunky system, yes, but it worked. For centuries it kept these extremely dangerous souls captive not by force of arm, but by pure force of mundanity.

Their keepers were the souls of those they had once known. Best I can tell, Liyun spent the last seventeen centuries or so living the same day over and over. She was exactly as presented. That was her, the actual person, the exact soul that raised Yumi. Released from the shroud, partially controlled by the machine, partially given self-governance.

Liyun was one of hundreds of souls forced into this strange half life. Their memories were, of course, erased each day—but I think part of them understood that something was wrong. Because each night, while the yoki-hijo slept, the machine would let its will slacken. Its attention no longer on these servants, they would lose their shape and sense of self, becoming vague blobs of blackness.

Each night, during this time of slumber, some of these servants would break free. They’d stalk the land, ghosts without memories, on a prowling search for meaning. For understanding. For life. And like most unbound Investiture—like the spirits themselves—the souls of the dead were drawn to the imaginations of the living.

These nightmares forgot how to be people when not compelled directly by the machine. But they longed, lusted, for the lives they’d lost. Maddened by their state of half-existence, they’d sneak into cities, hunting dreaming minds with powerful imaginations. There, Painter and his kind would trap them into some semblance of physicality and banish them back to the shroud—where the machine, each day, would recycle them again and set them to work in its prisons.

This was Liyun’s life. The machine didn’t mind that she prowled at night as a nightmare; why would it? The job was done, the yoki-hijo contained. Theoretically. A curious aspect of machines, even ones partially Awakened like this one: They don’t plan. They don’t think about the future. Most machines can only react to the state of things in the now.

Therefore it didn’t, couldn’t, account for Yumi spending centuries perfecting her art. Yes, her memories were wiped each day, but something remained. Muscle memory. Skills that sank in deep, infusing her soul, like rum in a cake. Her skill couldn’t be separated from her; she had earned it.

So it was that on the day our story began, something remarkable occurred. Seventeen hundred years of repeating the same day, and something finally snapped. Because Yumi, her skill reaching a crescendo, stacked so well that she pulled a single spirit away from the machine.

This changed everything.

That spirit, grateful for a moment of freedom, yet knowing it would soon be captured again, contacted her. Looking for a way out. At the same time, Liyun—unnerved—knew something strange had happened with Yumi. She went hunting that night as a nightmare, stronger than she’d ever been before. And the briefly freed spirit watched her, followed her, until she encountered Painter.

He wasn’t anyone special, at least on paper. Yes, he was of above-average painting skill, but that wasn’t what drew the attention of the spirit. Instead it was the fact that he saved the life of a young boy.

Turns out that was enough; the spirit found in him the soul of a hero. It wasn’t the boasts, the pretending, the superficial actions. It was the fact that when he could have just headed home to relax, he’d instead turned back. To protect the people of Kilahito, even when he didn’t feel like it.

You know the rest. Painter and Yumi linked. And Liyun? Her disquiet grew. She escaped each night, prowling Kilahito, searching for her yoki-hijo. She didn’t know who she was during these times—only that there was a Connection driving her to search for this young woman. She absolutely had tried to kill Yumi when she had found her after the carnival, and she might actually have managed it. This wouldn’t have solved the machine’s problems, as then Liyun would have absorbed all that power and become a danger. But it would have ended Yumi’s problems, technically—by leaving her dead.

You’ll have to forgive Liyun for the near-murder of someone she loved and was sworn to protect. She wasn’t feeling like herself at the time—in fact, she hadn’t felt like herself for seventeen hundred years.



* * *




Yumi scrambled through the town, frenzied, hunted. Remembering that unyielding coldness from the night when the monster—Liyun—had nearly absorbed her. Yumi felt echoes of that icy death. Like she’d been submerged, sinking far, far, far from the heat and light.

The four scholars, no longer the least bit recognizable, followed her. Nightmares on the prowl, hideous creations from the dreams of people’s deepest torments. Shaped by fears, given substance by the terrible machine. She couldn’t outrun them. She couldn’t paint them, not without tools. Would they respond to stacking? Would she even get a chance to put two stones upon one another before they reached her?

She almost tried. But then she thought of a better way.

Painter’s way.

She ran for the place of ritual, passing right through the fence. The sound of claws on stone chased her farther, to where the scholars had once kept their tent. Chained behind that spot, to give the tent shade, were several trees.