Painter wasn’t sure what shocked him more. The fact that she’d been spotted, or the fact that she’d actually used the word “hooliganism” in practical discourse.
Unfortunately, her alarm wasn’t exaggerated. Shouts sounded from the tent, and one scholar popped out around it holding some kind of device—which he pointed toward the trees where Yumi was standing.
“They’re going to find you up there!” she said, then began hyperventilating again. “You can’t hide. I’m dead. I’m over. It’s over. I-I-I—”
“Yumi!” he hissed, a desperate plan forming. The obvious one really, considering the circumstances. He held out his hand to her. With his other hand he grabbed the chain holding the tree in place, then he mouthed one sentence.
We go up.
“Painter, that’s a very bad idea!”
But the scholars were flooding out of the tent, and she didn’t have time to come up with something better. He gestured more urgently, and after the briefest moment she leaped up and grabbed the first branch.
He unhooked the chain, then climbed higher—where he was better obscured by the prodigious canopy—and wrapped his arms around the trunk, his heart pounding as he imagined their dramatic escape.
The tree began to drift sluggishly upward. Less dramatic. More torpid. But the scholars noticed too slowly, and by the time they started pointing toward it, the roots were barely out of reach. Painter buried his head among some branches so the scholars couldn’t make out who he was.
In minutes the tree had gained forty or fifty feet, and the soft wind nudged them vaguely to the south—and the orchard—as Painter had hoped. Landing in there would make it difficult for any pursuers to gauge where to find them.
Yumi hauled herself up, gasping for breath. He looked toward her, worried, but couldn’t move without jeopardizing their buoyancy. Thankfully, the tree didn’t seem to notice the weight of a ghost.
“Yumi?” he whispered.
She twisted around, holding tightly to her branch, and he saw she was crying, gulping in breaths.
And laughing.
He relaxed.
“That is,” she said, “the single most delinquent thing I’ve ever done. I don’t know how to react! I’m shaking like a steamwell the moment before it erupts. Yet for some reason I feel good. Like I want to do it again. I’m broken!”
“No.” He grinned. “You’re human.”
“We’re still going to get caught,” she said. “They’ll watch where we land.”
“Maybe.” He twisted against the trunk, stretching out to add some weight. That made their ascent slow as they continued to drift toward the orchard.
They’d risen just high enough to reach the bottom layer of the sky’s plants—mostly weeds and wildflowers here. The tree peeked up through the layer of foliage like it was breaking the surface of a lake. Flowers sprouting from the center of lily pads danced with bushes that spread limbs wide to catch the thermals. Leaves and florets—similar to the white sprigs that dandelions release on Scadrial, or duluko plants release here—swirled in the air. Butterflies exploded from a bush, fluttering to surround the tree.
The tree’s motion caused eddies in the air around them, carrying the various fecund flotsam in swirls and patterns. Painter breathed out, momentarily forgetting everything else. The flowers, the petals, the butterflies, the sparkling light—it was like paint thrown on a palette by a master of some incomprehensible art form. A sudden improvisational beauty against the brilliant canvas of the deep blue sky.
Up here in the sky, beads of moisture condensed on fat, lush leaves. A certain wet decadence misted on his skin—like sweat but pure, tasting of something bright and clean.
That’s why they rise, he thought. The air is humid up this high, evaporated by the hot stone below. So the plants rise to reach it…
In that moment he envied this world that had light in the sky, as fragmented sunlight caught the dew and made each and every plant seem like it was wearing its wedding jewelry. The scene changed and shifted, colors mixing and parting, all afire with sunlight, resplendent.
Yumi—farther out on her branch, almost joining the sights—seemed entranced. Her hair rippled around her, caught in the wind. She reached out as a butterfly landed nearby. It didn’t see her, so she could lean in close to inspect its shivering wings.
She glanced toward Painter, backlit by wonder, and grinned. A plane of greenery bursting with colors expanded behind her like an infinite inviting highway. Travel with us, it said. Yet there was nowhere Painter wanted to go. Not when he had what he wanted with him right here.
“You’re staring,” she said.
He was a painter. Not a poet. But somehow he found the right words.
“I only stare,” he said, “when I see something too beautiful for my eyes to take in at once.”
She turned back out toward the landscape, apparently assuming that was what he referred to. “It’s like another world,” she whispered. “Always up here, every day. So close.” Then she leaned out and looked upward toward the daystar. Painter’s world. It caught sunlight. Shouldn’t all of that darkness have made it black?
“If I’m to lose everything,” she whispered, “I’m glad I saw this first.”
“You’re not going to lose anything,” he said, recovering enough of his senses to lean out farther from the trunk and send the tree wafting down toward the orchard below.
“They’ll find us,” she said, turning toward him again. “They’ll see where it lands.”
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.