He was growing tired of that emotion. He couldn’t summon the motivation to feel ashamed. Unfortunately, Yumi hurried over in a distracting state of half-dress herself—and that was far more difficult to ignore.
“Bow!” she said.
He reluctantly sank to his knees and bowed forward, putting his hands on the ground and touching his forehead to his knuckles. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Oddly, Liyun knelt and bowed as well. He could see the motions even with his head lowered. She seemed just as ashamed.
“What is happening, Honored One?” Liyun said.
“Repeat this,” Yumi said. “I cannot explain what has happened to me. It is as if another soul has taken residence inside of me, and it has lost all ability to stack.”
“Your collapse,” Liyun said softly after he repeated the words, “a few days ago. It has…left you affected.”
“That may be true,” Yumi said, with Painter repeating. “I fear I must take time, Warden-nimi, to practice. Perhaps even relearn the things I have lost.”
Liyun knelt in silence. Painter felt his back ache from the unnatural posture, but when he tried to straighten, Yumi hissed at him.
At last, after a painful pause, Liyun spoke. “I will go to the leaders of the town we are now inhabiting. I will beg that they let us use their place of ritual for practice until you recover. They will be…shamed further by this, as they already believe their unworthiness before the spirits is the cause of your strange malady.”
“I understand,” Yumi said through Painter. “I am deeply sorry.”
“That is well,” Liyun said. “Perhaps your shame will lead to the spirits forgiving you.” She stood up. “I will prepare the place of ritual, as you will want to start immediately.”
Painter finally stood, and wasn’t chastised this time. The attendants continued dressing him, their heads down, seeming humiliated by proxy. He didn’t know much about them, having barely spoken to them despite all they’d done for him. The younger of the two was probably several years his senior, with an extremely pale complexion and a round face. The other was older, maybe in her thirties, with a longer face.
“You should not have gotten out of the bath until the attendants were ready for you,” Yumi said, continuing to dress. “Next time, do not be so thoughtless.”
He turned toward her to object, then blushed and turned away again.
“Do not speak,” she continued. “The attendants will think it odd.”
He forced down his words, and found they tasted unpleasant. When the attendants finished with him, they stepped beyond the stones to continue their preparations.
“Liyun does whatever you say,” he hissed at Yumi, “doesn’t she? So why don’t you tell her to let you eat for yourself and dress yourself? Everything would be so much easier.”
“Why do you think what is easier has any relevance for us?” Yumi asked, having finally put on her top. “Come, it’s time for your first lesson.”
* * *
The first problem was that Painter couldn’t kneel on the stone like she said he should be able to. Even with the kneepads, it was just so hot. The air got underneath his skirt and made him swelter from within.
“Instead of kneeling, then,” Yumi said, walking around him in a circle, “you will squat, allowing you to move more frequently and perhaps ventilate a little more.”
“The rocks are uncomfortably warm to the touch,” he said, gesturing. “I need gloves or something.”
“You will adapt,” she said.
“You want to wait for that and get nothing done today?” he said. “Other than me picking up rocks and dropping them?”
She regarded him with something akin to contempt, then told him to request gloves of Liyun, who fetched some from the town—it was nearby, mere steps away really. This place of ritual was an exposed section of too-hot stone with a little fence built around it and rocks strewn about inside that looked like the remnants from a quarry.
Liyun, fortunately, had managed to clear away most of the gawking townspeople. For his audience today he had only his attendants and a few of the town’s higher-ups, who watched and whispered with confused expressions. The men wore beards like they did in old paintings on his world, but with clothing that was unfamiliar and too colorful for the bland or black-and-white image of the past he’d formed from old photographs.
The town itself was a huddle of barely under a hundred homes, with that strange water-collecting thing in the center. An orchard of hundreds of trees drifted and bumped against one another off to Painter’s left.
“Why can’t we go in there to practice?” he whispered, wiping his brow at the heat. “I’d like to be in the shade. It wouldn’t be quite as sweltering that way.”
“Most of the heat comes from the ground,” Yumi said, frowning. “It’s not that much cooler in the trees. Besides, this is the place of ritual. You’d have the people of the town move all the rocks just for your convenience? That would be a shameful act.”
Of course it would be.
His gloves arrived, and he pulled them on—feeling annoyed at being forced to put on more clothing. He swore it was hotter this day than it had been on the others, and the light of that sun overhead did not help.
“All right,” Yumi said. “Step one is to learn to evaluate rocks. To stack properly, you must balance—and to do that, you need to be able to judge each rock. Pick up one and heft it.”
He did so. It felt like a rock.
“Note how,” she said, walking around him again, “it is bulbous on one end, narrower on the other. Its center of gravity, then, will be toward the bulbous side. Using that, you can create spectacular illusions of stacking where it looks like one side is hanging out impossibly in the air, while the other side is heavy enough to balance it out. Precision work using other stones can enhance this.”
“Center of gravity,” he said, “and precise work. I thought you called this stacking of yours an art.”
“Art is all about precision.”
“No it’s not,” he said, passing the rock from hand to hand. “Art is about feelings and emotion. It’s about letting them escape, so they can be shared. It’s about capturing a truth about yourself. Like you’re ripping a hole in your chest and exposing your soul.”
“Pretty words,” she said, “but meaningless. Poetry is a luxury. And we—”
“—have no claim upon luxuries.”
“Exactly,” she said.
“This is stupid,” he said, dropping the rock. “This entire world is stupid, Yumi. You don’t need a hero. You need an accountant.”
She glared at him. Silent. Intense. Until finally he picked the rock back up. “Fine,” he said. “How do I stack it?”
“You don’t, not yet,” she said. “Drop it and pick up another one. Today we will focus only on weighing rocks.”
“Seriously?” he said. “I’m going to spend all day just picking them up.”
“Yes,” she said. “We’ll likely do that tomorrow as well. Might spend as much as a week getting a feel for the stones. In my training, we spent multiple months.”