As Yumi watched, some dozen rice plants caught a rogue night thermal and jetted into the air, then drifted lazily back down. Small creatures scurried underneath looking for something to nibble on while avoiding serpents. Both prey and hunter slept in trees during the heat. If they were fortunate—or unfortunate, depending on the perspective—they picked different trees.
A gust across the field made the plants shiver and sway to one side, but night farmers moved along, waving large fans to keep the crops contained. Somewhere distant in the town, a giant crow cawed. （They aren’t as big as everyone says; I’ve never seen one the size of a full-grown man. More like the size of a seven-or eight-year-old.） A village corvider soon hushed the animal with soothing words.
Yumi wished she had someone to comfort her. Instead she rested aching arms on the windowsill and stared out at the placid crops as they turned lazily, occasionally jetting into the air. A tree leashed to the side of the wagon quivered in the breeze, its branches casting lines of shadow across Yumi’s face.
She could maybe just…crawl out of the window and start walking. No night farmer would stop a yoki-hijo. She should have felt ashamed at the thought, but she was full up with shame at the moment. A cup filled to the top can’t hold anything more. It spills out over the rim, then boils onto the floor.
She wouldn’t leave, but that night she wished she could. Wished she could escape the prison of her ceremonial nightgown. She wasn’t allowed to sleep as a normal person. She had to be reminded even by her undergarments of what she was. Chosen at birth. Blessed at birth. Imprisoned at birth.
I… a voice said in her mind. I understand…
Yumi started, spinning around. Then she felt it. A…a spirit. Her soul vibrated with its presence, a powerful one.
Bound… it said. You are bound…
Spirits understood her thoughts. That was part of her blessing. But they very, very rarely responded to anything a yoki-hijo thought. She’d heard of it happening only in stories.
I am blessed, she thought toward it, bowing her head, suddenly feeling extremely foolish. How had she let her fatigue drive her to such insane contemplations? She would anger the spirits. Suddenly she had a terrible premonition: The spirits refusing to be drawn to her performances. Villages going without light, without food, because of her. How could she reject—？
No… the spirit thought. You are trapped. And we…we are trapped…like you…
Yumi frowned, turning back to the window. Something was different about this voice. This spirit. It seemed…so very tired. And it was distant? Barely able to reach her? She looked up to the sparkling sky—and the bright daystar, stronger than them all. Was…the spirit…talking to her from there?
You worked so hard today, the spirit said. Can we give you something? A gift?
Yumi’s breath caught.
She’d read that story.
Most cultures have something similar. Some are terrible, but this wasn’t one of those places. Here the boons of spirits were always associated with wondrous adventure.
She shouldn’t want adventure though. She hesitated. Teetered, like a stone unbalanced. Then, in what was the most difficult moment of her life, she lowered her eyes.
You have already blessed me, she said. With the greatest gift a mortal can have. I accept my burden. It is for the best of my people. Forgive my idle thoughts earlier.
As you wish… the distant spirit said. Then…could you give…us a boon?
Yumi looked up. That…never happened in the stories.
How? she asked.
We are bound. Trapped.
She glanced toward the corner of the room, where a spirit light—the spheres touching to turn the light off for sleep—lay on a counter. It was identical to those she’d made earlier today. One light sphere, one dark. Trapped?
No, the spirit thought. That is not our prison… We…have a more terrible…existence. Can you free us? Will you…try? There is one who can help you.
Spirits in trouble? She didn’t know what she could do, but it was her duty to see them cared for. Her life was to serve. She was the yoki-hijo. The girl of commanding primal spirits.
Yes, she said, bowing her head again. Tell me what you need, and I will do whatever I can.
Please, it said. Free. Us.
All went black.
Painter wound through the next set of streets, tracking the nightmare as the rain tapped him on the head. The trail was difficult to follow; the dark wisps seemed to vanish in the haze. He backtracked twice as the streets grew narrower, winding through the huddled tenements of the city’s outer rings.
The hion lines overhead here were as thin as twine, barely giving him enough light to see by. It got so bad that he eventually decided he’d lost the trail and turned to go home, passing a slit of a window he’d neglected to glance through earlier.
He checked it this time and found the nightmare inside, crouched at the head of a bed.
The room was lit by a faint line of teal hion tracing the ceiling, making shadows of the room’s meager furniture and frameless mattress, which held three figures: parents the nightmare had ignored, and a child who made for more…tender prey.
The little boy was perhaps four. He huddled on his side, eyes squeezed shut, holding to a worn pillow that had eyes sewn on it—a poorer family’s approximation of a stuffed toy. Treasured regardless.
The nightmare was tall enough that it had to bend over, or its head would have hit the ceiling. A sinuous, boneless neck. A body with lupine features, legs that bent the wrong way, a face with a snout. With a sense of dread, Painter realized why this one had been so difficult to track. Virtually no smoke rose from its body. Most telling, it had eyes. Bone white as if drawn in chalk, but as deep as sockets in a skull.
This nightmare barely dripped darkness from its face. It was almost fully stable. No longer formless. No longer aimless.
No longer harmless.
This thing must have been incredibly crafty to have escaped notice during so many trips to the city. It took around ten feedings for a nightmare to coalesce to this level. Only a few more, and it would be fully solid. Painter stepped backward, trembling. It already had substance. Things like this could…could slaughter hundreds. The entire city of Futinoro had been destroyed by stable nightmares only thirty years earlier.
This was above his pay grade. Quite literally. There was an entire specialized division of painters tasked with stopping stable nightmares. They traveled the land, going to towns where one was spotted.
The sound of a small sniffle broke through Painter’s panic. He ripped his eyes from the nightmare to look at the bed, where the child—trembling—had squeezed his eyes closed even tighter.
The child was awake.
At this stage, the nightmare could feed on conscious terror as easily as it did the formless fear of a dream. It ran clawed fingers across the child’s cheek, trailing streaks of blood from split skin. The gesture was almost tender. And why shouldn’t it be? The child had given the thing shape and substance, ripped directly out of his deepest fears.
Now, the story thus far might have given you an unflattering picture of Painter. And yes, much of that picture is justified. Many of his problems in life were his own fault—and rather than trying to fix them, he alternated between comfortable self-delusion and pointless self-pity.