She struggled to say something. But all she could think of was waking up one day alone, not knowing where he was.
It’s going to end poorly, isn’t it? she thought with mounting dread. There’s no way for it to work out. It can’t work out, not for the yoki-hijo.
Her life, as Liyun had always promised, was not one of joy. Her life was not her own.
Her life was service.
The two eventually climbed out of the spring to begin dressing. “How long do you think it will take,” she asked him, “before my people invent bras? It’s difficult to return to this time, wrap a band underneath my chest, and pretend that’s good enough.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “You’ll need elastic for bras first, right?”
“How should I know?” Maybe she could invent them. Sketch it out, tell everyone that the spirits had shown the garment to her in a vision—which, in comparison to some of the ways she’d been forced to distort the facts recently, would be remarkably close to the truth.
They finished and then followed the attendants out to the shrine. There they found a small line of people—as per Painter’s morning request. By this point, Liyun had given up on trying to bully him into doing things the proper way.
The townspeople shuffled, confused, as Painter called the first of them forward. Then, looking to Yumi for support and getting a nod in return, he started painting. He kept the art simple, like he’d done other days in the shrine, but he now had models to use—and so even these simple paintings were more skillful, more realistic. More a test of his talents, even if these weren’t the powerful, dynamic paintings she hoped he’d someday return to.
She was satisfied as he became absorbed by the work. This was a form of meditation for him. She could say the prayers for both of them, and she did so, kneeling and whispering quietly. Like a chorus to accompany the soft sounds of brush on canvas. Music of the most personal variety.
Whatever else happened, this was an accomplishment. A brush in his hand, creating something other than bamboo.
She finished her basic prayers and moved on to meditation. Clearing her mind. Yet when she soothed away everything else, she was left with a sense of dread. None of her usual tricks—counting her breaths, repeating a phrase over and over, humming to herself—banished it. Each time she sank toward the deep waters of nothingness, she found that same sensation of doom. Impenetrable. As if it were the natural state. The color and texture of the canvas, once the paint had been washed away.
Something was still profoundly wrong. Solving the trouble with the nightmare was not nearly enough. And their time was running out. She wasn’t certain how, but as she beat her mind against the dread, she knew it to be the case.
“Painter,” she said, opening her eyes.
“Hmm?” he asked as a townswoman bowed to him and moved on, carrying a bemused expression and his painting of her.
“What’s beyond the shroud?” Yumi asked.
“I don’t think anything’s beyond it,” he said as the next townsperson stepped up. “It covers everything.”
“Are you sure?”
“I…I guess I’m not. And Design wasn’t that certain either. We learned geography in school, but it talked only about Nagadan. There are some other nations out beyond ours, smaller. Around a dozen of them, and they’re always squabbling. I didn’t learn much about them. Beyond those…well, we never actually covered that in classes.”
“What if there’s an end to the shroud?” she said, scooting closer to him, excited. “What if Design is wrong and this is what’s beyond? You have bamboo in your land, Painter. And rice. Where does rice come from?”
“Plants with four leaves,” he said. “I’ve seen them in fields.”
“Same as ours.”
“But not flying.”
“So the vegetation of our lands is similar,” she said. “You could merely have a…a strain of it that was made by the spirits to live without the heat of the ground.”
“It’s possible, I suppose,” he said. “Maybe we could get some maps in my world? See if maybe those have holes or blank spaces that could hold your land? How big is Torio?”
She didn’t know, although the fact that she traveled it in a loop—visiting villages all along the way—made him think it was smaller than his nation. However, it all seemed farfetched. Two societies like theirs living side by side for centuries, never discovering one another? But…maybe there was one of those oceans he mentioned in the way? Or some other natural feature?
The possibility comforted her. She closed her eyes and focused on the sound of brush on paper, the occasional tapping as he dipped in the ink jar… She sank down and pushed through the sense of dread at last, entering a state of utter stillness. A nothingness where all time, self, and nature were one.
Then, as if placed there deliberately from outside, an idea struck her.
She cracked her eyes, hurled out of her meditative state to find the line of townspeople gone and Painter cleaning up his tools. The entire hour had passed just like that, which wasn’t uncommon when she meditated.
That thought, that idea, was remarkable.
“I know what to do,” she whispered, then looked at Painter. “I know something we can try!”
“Okay…” he said, frowning.
“We can’t wait for you to get good enough at stacking. I’m sorry, Painter, but it’s true. Your progress is remarkable, but we have to move faster.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ll show you.” She reached her hand toward his—then, remembering she couldn’t touch him, simply waved instead. She hopped down off the altar onto the spirit of her clogs, then waited impatiently as he tied his on. They soon emerged from the orchard, passing Chaeyung and Hwanji, who jumped to follow. Yumi felt only the smallest stab of guilt at not remaining in the shrine until she was fetched, as was proper.
They passed through the now-familiar town. It was the first time since her childhood training that she’d stayed in one place long enough to learn where everything was. One might have assumed this would make the place feel kind of like home. Yet as Yumi thought about it, the word “home” conjured images of a cluttered little room with a futon, lit by the hion lights outside. It was alien, and yet it was the place where she’d learned what she actually liked. Dramas on the viewer. Clothing that was her own. Noodle soup, light on the salt, chicken broth with a single egg and a pinch of pepper.
Here she was the yoki-hijo. There she was Yumi.
And because of who she was, she felt guilty at that realization. It was exactly what she’d feared would happen. She had grown accustomed to the delights of his world. She did not regret—could not regret—letting herself indulge. But she would pay for that indulgence once this was all done and she lost not only Painter, but her home, her friends, and even her newly discovered sense of self.
You cannot let yourself be happy, a part of her warned. Because happiness is far, far too dangerous.
Perhaps that was why she felt such an urgency to finish this before the break became too painful to endure.
As they rounded the steamwell, the air wet and misty from a recent eruption, Yumi was distracted by a farmer fiddling with his flyer—which, like a giant insect with wings outstretched to the sides, buzzed and hovered in front of him, then dropped. The farmer grabbed it before it hit the ground. Then he finally got it moving, soaring up toward the crops above.