“Warden-nimi,” Yumi said （highly）， gathering her courage. “The Festival of Reveals. It is near.”
“A hundred days, yes.”
“And it is a thirteenth year,” Yumi said. “The hijo will be unusually active. We will not…petition them that day, I assume?”
“I suppose we won’t, Chosen,” Liyun said, checking the little calendar—in the form of a small book—that she kept in her pouch. She flipped a few pages.
“We’ll be…near Torio City? We’ve been traveling in the region.”
“And?”
“And…I…” Yumi bit her lip.
“Ah…” Liyun said. “You would like to spend the festival day in prayer of thanks to the spirits for granting you such an elevated station.”
Just say it, a part of her whispered. Just say no. That’s not what you want. Tell her.
Liyun snapped her book closed, watching Yumi. “Surely,” she said, “that is what you want. You wouldn’t actively desire to do something that would embarrass your station. To imply you regret your place. Would you, Chosen?”
“Never,” Yumi whispered.
“You were honored, of all the children born that year,” Liyun said, “to be given this calling, these powers. One of only fourteen currently living.”
“I know.”
“You are special.”
She would have preferred to be less special—but she felt guilty the moment she thought it.
“I understand,” Yumi said, steeling herself. “Let us not wait for the steamwell. Please, lead me to the place of ritual. I am eager to begin my duties and call the spirits.”
It’s terrifying how nightmares transform.
I’m talking about ordinary nightmares now, not the kind that get painted. Terror dreams—they change. They evolve. It’s bad enough to encounter something frightening in the waking world, but at least those mortal horrors have shape, substance. That which has shape can be understood. That which has mass can be destroyed.
Nightmares are a fluid terror. Once you get the briefest handle on one, it will change. Filling nooks in the soul like spilled water filling cracks in the floor. Nightmares are a seeping chill, created by the mind to punish itself. In this, a nightmare is the very definition of masochism. Most of us are modest enough to keep that sort of thing tucked away, hidden.
On Painter’s world, those dark bits were strikingly prone to coming alive.
He stood at the edge of the city—bathed from behind in radioactive teal and electric magenta—and stared out at the churning darkness. It had substance; it shifted and flowed similar to molten tar.
The shroud. The blackness beyond.
Nightmares unformed.
Trains traveled the hion lines to places like the small town where his family still lived, a couple of hours away. He knew other places existed. Yet it was difficult not to feel isolated while looking into that endless blackness.
It stayed away from the hion lines. Mostly.
He turned and walked the street outside the city for a short time. To his right, those outer buildings rose as a shield wall, with narrow alleyways between. As I said before, it wasn’t a true fortification. Walls didn’t stop nightmares; a wall would merely prevent people from stepping out onto the perimeter.
In Painter’s experience, no one came out here but his kind. The ordinary people stayed indoors; even one street farther inward felt infinitely safer. The people lived as he once had, trying hard not to think about what was out there. Seething. Churning. Watching.
These days, it was his job to confront it.
He didn’t spot anything at first—no signs of particularly brave nightmares encroaching upon the city. Those could be subtle, however. So Painter continued. His assigned beat was a small wedge that began several blocks inward of the perimeter, but the outside portion was the widest—and the most likely place for signs of nightmares to appear.
As he did his rounds, he continued to imagine that he was some lone warrior. Instead of, essentially, an exterminator who had gone to art school.
To his right he passed the capstone paintings. He wasn’t certain where the local painters had come up with the idea, but these days—during dull moments on patrol—they tended to do practice work on the outer buildings of the city. The walls facing the shroud didn’t have windows. So they made for large inviting canvases.
Not strictly part of the job, each was a certain personal statement. He passed Akane’s painting, depicting an expansive flower. Black paint on the whitewashed wall. His own spot was two buildings over. Just a blank white wall, though if you looked closely you could see the failed project beneath peeking through. He decided to whitewash it again. But not tonight, because he caught signs of a nightmare at last.
He stepped closer to the shroud, but didn’t touch it of course. Yes…the black surface here was disturbed. Like paint that had been touched when near to drying, it was…upset, rippling. It was difficult to make out, as the shroud didn’t reflect light, unlike the ink or tar it otherwise appeared to be. But Painter had trained well.
Something had emerged from the shroud here and started into the city. He retrieved his brush, a tool as long as a sword, from his large painter’s bag. He felt better with it in hand. He shifted his bag to his back, feeling the weight of the canvases and ink jar inside. Then he struck inward—passing the whitewashed wall that obscured his latest failure.
He’d tried four times. This last one had gotten further than most of his attempts. A painting of the star, which he’d started after hearing the news of an upcoming voyage intended to travel the darkness of the sky. A trip to the star itself, for which scientists planned to use a special vessel and a pair of hion lines launched an incredible distance.
In this, Painter had learned something interesting. Contrary to what everyone had once assumed, the star wasn’t merely a spot of light in the sky. Telescopes revealed it was a planet. Occupied, according to their best guess, by other people. A place whose light somehow cut through the shroud.
The news of the impending trip had briefly inspired him. But he’d lost that spark, and the painting had languished. How long had it been since he’d covered it over? At least a month.
On the corner of the wall near the painting, he picked out steaming blackness. The nightmare had passed this way and brushed the stone, leaving residue that evaporated slowly, shedding black tendrils into the night. He’d expected it to take this path; they almost always took the most direct way into the city. It was good to confirm it nonetheless.
Painter crept inward, reentering the realm of the twin hion lights. Laughter echoed from somewhere to his right, but the nightmare probably hadn’t gone that direction. The pleasure district was where people went to do anything other than sleep.
There, he thought, picking out black wisps on a planter up ahead. The shrub grew toward the hion lines and their nourishing light. So as Painter moved down the empty roadway, he walked between plants that looked as if they were reaching arms up in silent salute.
The next sign came near an alley. An actual footprint, black, steaming dark vapors. The nightmare had begun evolving, picking up on human thoughts, changing from formless blackness to something with a shape. Only a vague one at first, but instead of being a slinking, flowing black thing, it probably had feet now. Even in that form they rarely left footprints, so he was fortunate to have found one.