Yumi and the Nightmare Painter(76)

He shook his head. “We’ll be fine.”

“How do you know?” she asked.

“Because this day is too perfect to be ruined now.”



* * *




Twenty minutes later, Liyun found him kneeling in the shrine, the very picture of innocence. If his tobok was askew, well, he’d only just started dressing himself—so it made sense he’d get it wrong. If he was breathing a little heavily, sweaty as if from an extended run, then he’d obviously been praying with vigor; communing with the spirits could be strenuous for the devoted. Finally, if there were twigs in his hair, well, the shrine was in an orchard. Those sorts of things fall from trees, I’m told.

Liyun folded her arms, inspecting him.

“Oh?” Painter said, turning. “Is it time already?”

“Did you see someone suspicious skulking through here?” she said. “There has been…hooliganism afoot in the city.”

Ah, he thought. That’s where she got it. Makes sense.

“I have been too busy with my meditations to notice,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“It is…not your fault, Chosen. It is well that you are trying extra hard to petition the spirits, considering your failings lately.” She gestured. “Shall we go? The scholars have gotten their machine working at last.”

“Have they?” he said. “How unfortunate.”

He rose and followed Liyun, Yumi trailing along behind him as if trying to hide in his shadow. Her expression kept alternating between ashamed and elated—the result of some strange emotional short circuit where both of her blinkers turned on at once and utterly confused everyone following behind.

“You’re sure,” he whispered to her, letting Liyun get ahead so the woman wouldn’t hear, “you saw hion lines?”

“Absolutely,” Yumi whispered back. “What does it mean?”

“Your people must be close to discovering how to harness hion,” he said. “You’re on the cusp of the industrial revolution. Things are about to change in your world, Yumi.”

“Will it get dark,” she whispered, “like on your world?”

“You mean the shroud? No, that existed before we discovered hion. Rather, before we learned how to harness it. Those were…difficult days. People wandering through the smoke, living only near bursts of light rising from the ground where plants could grow…”

He shivered, thinking about how it must have been. Traveling through the shroud via train was bad enough. Walking through it? Living in it? True, nightmares hadn’t been as common back then, but still.

“I have a history book in my school things somewhere,” he said to Yumi. “You can read it when you’re in my body. It will explain what might be coming for your people.”

“What was that, Chosen One?” Liyun said.

“Just a prayer,” Painter said, realizing he’d let his voice stray from a whisper.

Outside the orchard, they picked up Chaeyung and Hwanji—and for once Painter crossed the town without being gawked at. Everyone was gathered at the place of ritual. As he approached, they made way for him, letting him step up near the tent. Here, the scholars had deposited their four-foot-wide machine amid a large number of stones. These were generally smaller than the ones in the place of ritual, but the mechanical thing was moving with eerily smooth motions, making four separate stacks of rocks at once.

“We can beat that,” Yumi said. “Look at how pedestrian those stacks are! Straight up and down.”

Painter was intimidated anyway—even as the machine accidentally knocked over one stack and had to clear it away with three arms before starting again. Yumi might have been able to beat it, but his stacks were nowhere near as good as these.

Still, bolstered by her determination, he stepped into the place of ritual and set to work. He was surprised to find he welcomed the activity of stacking. A lot had happened in the last day, and this return to something normal comforted him. Which says a lot about the human ability to redefine what the word “normal” means.

He soon worked up a sweat—but his stack fell at the seventh stone. The next one only made it to six. He growled and slammed his fist into the ground, barely noticing its heat.

“Relax,” Yumi said. “Meditate a moment. You can’t stack if your hands are shaking.”

He fought down his annoyance. She was right. He took a few deep breaths, then started over.

Hours passed, but most of the townspeople didn’t leave. They seemed to sense something was happening here as Painter managed a stack of ten, then a stack of nine, then a stack of twelve all in a row. Leaving those three in a line, he started into a fourth one, wiping his hands on his skirt to dry them before placing rocks one after another—more bold this time.

And he felt something. Didn’t he? A Connection to the land itself? It felt silly to try to express it, but something pulled on him. Tugging directly on his emotions; as he worked, he tugged back.

Something peeked out of the ground nearby. It vanished as he glanced toward it, but Yumi gasped, then clasped her hands before her, grinning like a maniac. She waved for him to continue, then apparently remembered her duty as a coach and encouraged him to breathe. To be calm.

That wasn’t so easy, as the crowd was beginning to get louder, people murmuring and chattering. Painter launched into his eighth stack—remarkably without any of the others having fallen. He could almost visualize this one before he placed the stones. He’d make it the tallest of them all. He had the rocks, and knew how they’d fit together. He could make his tower appear to lean, but really be sturdy because of the weight of this rock here…