“Contradiction,” he said, “is the core of modern life.” He smiled at her. And he loved the way she smiled back.
He gestured, and led her past several of the performers—a strong man lifting impossible weights. A “living statue.” （Bad imitation in my estimation.） A fire-breather. Yumi appeared to legitimately love each of these.
“You have experts,” she whispered while watching a performer swallow a cane four feet long, “in the strangest things.” She tossed far too large of a tip to the man and bowed formally to him.
From there, the games. She was terrible at them. But he found it fascinating how she tried each one in the row, then settled on one—the game where you knock down the boxes—and paid the carnie for ten tries.
“We’re going to run out of money quickly at this rate,” he said, leaning against the counter as she concentrated and threw the ball, missing. “You should have picked the balloon popping game.”
“That one is random,” she said. “You can’t win it except by accident.” She narrowed her eyes, throwing another ball. It bounced off the boxes.
“And that is bad?” he asked.
“I must be presented with a challenge of skill and not fortune, Painter.”
“Well then, try the coin toss,” he said, as she threw again and the ball bounced free. “This one takes strength like Tojin has to win.”
“No it doesn’t,” she said, then threw the ball and got a lucky hit, toppling all of the boxes.
“Ha!” the carnie said, leaning down. “You can take the small prize…but do that four more times, and you get the largest prize!”
“Yes,” Yumi said. “I read the rules.”
Then she proceeded to knock over four more stacks of boxes in a row. The carnie’s jaw dropped.
“Oh, （lowly） incredible,” Painter said, smacking his forehead. “It’s a balancing trick, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “One of the boxes is weighted on the bottom in such a way as to make the entire thing seem less stable than it is. Getting that one is key.” She pointed at the largest of the stuffed animals—a dragon eating a bowl of noodles. （Quite fanciful. The dragons I know prefer steak.）
“Advice,” Yumi said as the carnie handed her the dragon—which was nearly taller than she was. “Don’t put the weighted box in the same corner each time. It makes the pattern easy to exploit.”
The carnie scratched his head, then grinned at her. “You’ve still got two throws left.”
“Give them to the next child who visits,” she said, then walked off, head held high, Painter trailing. “You’re right,” she said to him. “This trophy feels…satisfying. And soft. How do they make it so soft?”
“By tradition,” he said, leading her to a less populated section, “you now must give it a name.”
“Hm…”
“A silly name,” he added.
“Why silly?”
He gestured at the giant pink dragon.
“Right,” she said. Then she blushed. “I…don’t do silliness very well, Painter.”
“No problem. It’s one of my more impressive features. Let’s see…silliest name…” He grinned. “She shall be known as the fearsome Liyun Noodleface.”
Yumi gasped. “Painter! That’s irreverent.”
“Perfect,” he said. “Job done.” Then he turned, picking out one ride in particular. The highest in the carnival—the massive Jotun Line. You don’t have anything quite like it here, though on some worlds they build rides like these as wheels that slowly carry people in a lofty circle above the carnival.
In Kilahito, they’d ended up designing something that was similar, but not circular. Instead the seats went straight up along a tall steel post, then paused at the top for the best view before turning and coming down the other side. It moved slowly, with a near-constant rotation of two-person pods.
Painter gestured to it. “I might have located the best local equivalent of a flying tree.”
She tipped the dragon to the side, having trouble seeing while carrying it. Her eyes widened as she saw the ride. Then, remarkably, she gave the dragon to a little girl who had been standing nearby gaping at it.
“Farewell, Liyun Noodleface,” Yumi said, waving as the little girl hopped off with the giant plush over her head. At Painter’s curious look, Yumi shrugged. “I think I’m a little too new to owning things to have an enormous pink dragon.”
He smiled, then led her to the ride. There was a long line, but as they approached, the ride conductor spotted her—or more specifically, her painter’s bag.
“Painter,” he said, waving her forward. “Thank you for your service.”
Everyone in line politely clapped as he ushered her into the next cab, letting her have the two-person seat to herself—which was convenient, as it left room for Painter to slide in beside her. She put the bag by her feet as their cab swung into position and inched slowly upward along the post as other cabs were unloaded and filled.
“Is that common?” she asked him. “The way they treated me because they thought I was a painter?”
“It happens now and then.”
“I thought you’d said that no one cared.”
“They care about being safe,” he said. “They care that someone is out there doing what I do. At the same time, we make them uncomfortable. We’re a reminder that things lurk at night, feeding on their nightmares.” The cab inched up to the next stop. “We’re not like yoki-hijo. There are only a handful of you, but it’s easy to train a nightmare painter; basically anyone who goes through the schooling can do it. You don’t have to be a master to make something that will trap a nightmare.”
“But you are,” she said softly. “A master.”
“I thought I was.” He paused, then looked at her. “Would it matter to you if I was?”
She gave it some thought. Someone else probably would have responded immediately with assurances he was good enough. He liked that she didn’t do that, though he found himself waiting, breathless. And not just because he didn’t breathe anymore.
“It matters,” she said, “that you’ve stopped painting. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t get accepted by the Dreamwatch.”
“But it does,” he said. “If I’d gotten accepted, my whole life would be different.”
“Would it have changed who you are?”
“I suppose not,” he said. “Maybe my failure is what told me who I really am. The man who would lie to his friends. Maybe it’s better I didn’t have those when I was younger. Fewer people to betray.”
He looked toward her and found her eyes glistening, teary. “I’m so bad at this,” she whispered.
“What?”
“I was supposed to be distracting you. Yet here we are again, having the same conversation.”
“No, Yumi,” he said （highly）。 “It’s fine.”
“It isn’t though. We did everything wrong, Painter. I wasn’t supposed to fixate on winning that prize—I was just supposed to throw and enjoy the company. I see that in the way others are acting down below. I…I don’t know how to be a person, Nikaro. You have to explain to me how to have fun.”