Yumi sat and ate, not being so crass as to try to feed herself. This was a ritual, and she was an expert in those. Though she couldn’t help feeling distracted. Today marked one hundred days until the big festival in Torio City, the seat of the queen. And this was also nineteen days past her nineteenth birthday.
A day for decisions. A day for action.
A day to, maybe, ask for what she wanted?
First she had duties. Once her attendants had finished feeding her, she rose and went to the door of her private wagon. As they opened the door for her, she took a deep breath, then stepped down into her shoes.
Immediately her two attendants leaped to hold up enormous fans to obscure her from view. Naturally, people in the village had gathered to see her. The Chosen. The yoki-hijo. The girl of commanding primal spirits. （Yes, it still works better in their language.）
This land—Torio—had a dominant red-orange sun the color of baked clay. Bigger and closer than your sun, it had distinct spots of varied color on it—like a boiling stew, churning and undulating in the sky.
This bloody sun painted the landscape…well, just ordinary colors. The way the brain works, once you’d been there a few hours, you wouldn’t have noticed that the light was redder than yours. But when you first arrived, it would look striking. Like clay fresh from a potter’s kiln and bearing a distinct molten heat.
Hidden behind her fans, Yumi walked on clogged feet through the village to the local cold spring. Here she put her hands to the sides and let her attendants undress her for…
For…
She cocked her head. Something was…odd about this experience. Something was wrong. Wasn’t it?
Something was missing.
She opened her mouth to ask, then bit her tongue. Speaking to Hwanji and Chaeyung now would shame them. Yet as the bathing progressed, she felt oddly out of sorts. She found herself glancing at the side of the cool spring, expecting…
Someone is supposed to be there, she thought, incongruously. That would be terrible. Shaming. Why would she want someone to watch her bathe?
Instead she closed her eyes and let her attendants continue their work.
* * *
Painter scattered his stack of rocks in frustration. As with his previous attempts, the shroud remained immobile. A wall of mottled black, indifferent to his inferior stacking.
Painter tried to meditate, as Yumi had always taught. He found any semblance of calm impossible, as closing his eyes only made him think of her huddling in terror, looking at him, pleading as the horror consumed her.
He still couldn’t make sense of any of it. Was it some kind of trick played by the scholars? That couldn’t have been Yumi…Yumi couldn’t be a nightmare…
If she was, what did that mean? Had he fallen for someone created by his own…his own perceptions? Like a painter loving his own painting?
No. No, she’d been real. She was real.
And he was going to help her.
Somehow.
Painter forced his eyes open and grabbed his sack of rocks, collected in haste on his way to the shroud. He calmed his frantic breathing and started stacking, and each stone placed reminded him of her. Yumi would have been proud of the twelve-stone height he obtained, and the way he chose rocks of irregular size, looking to make not only a pile, but a tower.
The shroud didn’t move. Though it had bowed for her, it didn’t notice him. Painter was forced to admit the truth. Yumi had been special. Being yoki-hijo wasn’t merely about stacking rocks, but about the power the spirits had given her. He could do nothing to disrupt the shroud without being Connected to her, just as he could never have attracted spirits without being Connected to her.
He sank back onto his heels, slumping his shoulders.
“Please,” he whispered. “Just let me see her. Let me help her…”
“Nikaro?” a voice asked.
He turned with a start to see Akane walking past. She’d stopped, staring at him. “Nikaro,” she said （lowly）， striding toward him. “Where have you been? It feels like…” She frowned, seeing his face. “Have you been crying?”
He stumbled to his feet, knocking over the stack of rocks.
“Nikaro?” Akane demanded. “What have you done? Where is Yumi?”
Unable to face those condemnations, he grabbed his sack of rocks, then turned and fled, running through the night.
* * *
A short time later, Yumi’s attendants led her to the shrine among some floating trees, knocking together. Here, once more, Yumi hesitated. This was…familiar. Why was it familiar? She’d never been to this town before. She moved to a new one each night.
Her attendants halted, looking worried but not speaking, lest they shame her. So she continued forward. But again she was shocked, to see someone standing at the shrine.
“Liyun?” Yumi asked, stopping. The woman didn’t usually first approach until after Yumi had done her prayers and meditations. “Is something wrong?”
“I just wanted to let you know, Chosen,” Liyun said, bowing, “that we passed Ihosen and came here instead.”
“Ihosen?”
“The town we were going to visit? This is the next in line.” Liyun put her hand to her head. “I…can’t remember why we changed. I thought I should mention it.”
“It is, of course, wisdom in you,” Yumi said, bowing—though she mostly just felt confused. Why did Liyun think to inform her? The woman never mentioned other towns they visited.
“I wanted to tell you,” Liyun said, “that I might not be here later tonight to guide you. Go, do your service, and then have the attendants escort you to the wagon.”
“Liyun?” Yumi asked. “Protocol…”
“I know, Chosen,” Liyun said, bowing reverently. “Unfortunately, I’ve been called to do something else. I don’t fully remember what, but it is important. Someone must be…dealt with. So do your duty, and I will see you tomorrow.”
Yumi bowed. Then she rose and watched Liyun hurry away. What an odd interaction. Why—
Liyun paused, then glanced back. She looked like she wanted to say something, then cocked her head as if she’d forgotten it.
She was gone moments later.
Yumi realized she hadn’t been able to ask for the thing she wanted most. To visit Torio City for the festival. That would be…
Hollow? Why would she suddenly feel that to be hollow? She’d been planning to ask for that trip for weeks. Yet now she couldn’t muster the effort to care.
She decided that perhaps she was abandoning her selfish streak. At long last, she might be becoming the yoki-hijo that Liyun had always wanted her to be.
She knelt to begin her prayers. Content that, with effort, she might finally be able to serve with her whole heart.
Painter sat on his floor, huddled in his blankets, staring at a stack of plates, cups, and utensils that Yumi had made a day before.
He pulled the blankets close because warmth felt right to him in a way it never had before. Because the last time someone had held these blankets, it had been her. Sitting with him. Watching the viewer and caring way too much about the lives of fictional people.
Maybe, he thought, I can get a hion expander and go striking out in the shroud. He could hunt for those walls that circled her towns. And…and do what? Be surrounded and killed by nightmares?