He didn’t even know what her towns were. Masaka had said those walls were impenetrable, but Painter had apparently been living half his time inside one. He was so far beyond his depth that he couldn’t see the surface.
The scholar had been right. Painter didn’t have any idea what was going on anymore.
Except that he had lost Yumi.
No. I won’t let it be forever. He stood up as an idea struck him. A very terrible idea. He followed it anyway and left the apartment, the sack of rocks over his shoulder and something special tucked into his pocket.
Nightmares often returned to the place where they’d last fed. Looking for another easy meal, perhaps. Or just working by instinct and following the same emotions that had led them to prey the time before. Painter gambled on this, and returned to the broken playground near the carnival.
Here he settled down to wait. Determined. And frightened, though more of what he might lose than of nightmares. So he was relieved when he saw something darkening the alley nearby.
He’d been right. He stood up, feeling exhausted as the nightmare flowed from the alley, slicing the ground with thick claws. It approached him, careful, perhaps remembering their last encounter.
“We first met before the swap happened,” he said to the thing. “Was that a coincidence, or were you looking for me even then?”
It reared up, blackness so deep it could only be imagined. Eyes of scraped-out hollow white. It reached for him.
“Liyun,” he whispered. Remembering the lupine form she’d taken during the confrontation with the scholars.
The thing froze, then crouched close to the ground.
“Have they taken your memory, Liyun?” he asked. “But why?”
The answer struck him immediately—remembered words of the scholars leading him to a single conclusion.
They were afraid of Yumi.
“Is that what is happening?” Painter said. “Are the towns some kind of…charade for her benefit? To keep her confused, or disoriented, or simply placid?”
The nightmare began to slink forward again. So Painter knelt and began to stack. As earlier, his stacks were impressive for him—though not nearly on Yumi’s level. But he felt proud as he placed the stones. And as he’d hoped, the nightmare that was Liyun stopped once more. Drill-hole eyes fixated on the stacks.
“I know,” he said, “I don’t have whatever power or endowment was given to Yumi. Yet I saw you recognize me before—even after someone had robbed you of your shape and your mind. A piece of you is still Liyun. Perhaps the deepest, most important piece. That’s what the scholar said. That you were allowed to be yourself again for a time. When with Yumi.”
The thing stepped forward, its eyes fixed on the stack.
“Remember, Liyun,” Painter whispered. “Remember.”
The beast—hulking, like a boulder of black smoke—reached out a claw toward the stack. But stopped before touching it.
“I remember,” it whispered in Liyun’s voice.
“Is she all right?” Painter asked, pained.
“She forgets,” the thing said. “As we all forget…”
“That,” Painter said, “is why I brought this.”
He took something from his pocket. A piece of paper, painted with a beginner’s skill. It depicted two hands, overlapping each other, above a sea of lights. Yumi’s memory, for him, of her.
He bowed before the beast that was Liyun. “Can you give this to her?”
“I will forget. I…”
“Liyun,” he said, intent. “Do you remember your duty?”
Those white holes fixated on him.
“Serve the yoki-hijo,” Painter whispered. “Protect her. Give her this.”
“I want to be a person again,” Liyun whispered. “So badly. It has been so long…”
“How…long?” Painter asked.
“Since before your people made cities,” the thing whispered. “Since the days when this land had a sun. Centuries.”
The weight of that hit Painter. Centuries.
Yes, it meant Yumi had been right. Kind of. They hadn’t been time traveling. But these people had somehow been trapped, unchanging, for seventeen hundred years.
“Yumi…” he whispered. “She’d lost memories. But only one day.”
“One day,” the monster whispered. “Over, and over, and over, and over. That same day, erased each night, so she can live it again the next. For centuries. Millennia…”
It reached out, delicate, and pinched the sheet between two claws. “I have failed to kill you,” it whispered. “But the machine will not make this mistake again. It will send one who does not know you, who cannot be influenced. With that one will come an army.”
“What…kind of army?”
“There was a city once,” Liyun whispered. “I remember wisps of it, as I travel here to feed, to try to remember. Whenever the machine lets go of us, we come to your land, to seek ourselves. Futinoro. You know that name?”
“A city,” Painter whispered, “that was destroyed entirely by stable nightmares.”
“It happened because the spirits managed to contact the people there,” the monster said. “The machine ordered the city wiped out as a result, to prevent anyone from knowing the truth. It sent dozens of my kind to achieve it. I was there. In a dream, I was there.”
Painter sat back and released a long breath, his eyes wide. They’d assumed that failure had come from the painters not doing their jobs. But if it instead had been a direct assault…
That changed everything. He snapped his attention back to the beast. “They’re coming here?”
“From the west,” Liyun said. “A hundred nightmares. Strong as I am. Fed by the machine to make them dangerous and stable. Flee. Flee and pray to the spirits.”
Her eyes lingered again on the stack, and then she withdrew, taking his picture with her.
Yumi dreamed.
And had nightmares.
Yes. The irony is so thick, you could spread it on your toast. Don’t focus on that. Focus on what she heard. Because unlike most nightmares, this one was only sounds.
Voice one: “She’s breaking through the patch.”
Voice two: “Strengthen it.”
Voice three: “We should cut these memories out with the machine. All of them, stretching back the entire month.”
Voice two: “We don’t have the strength for that. And if we did, she’d notice. It would upset the balance.”
Voice one: “And if she breaks through?”
Voice two: “We deal with her, then try again.”
And…after that…nothing…
Yumi awoke feeling exhausted, which was not a good sign. But the daystar was out, bright in the sky. And she’d always considered its appearance to be a good sign. An omen that the primal hijo would be open and welcoming today.
There’s an old joke that mentions lost items always being in the last place you look for them. It doesn’t say anything about memories though. Those, once lost, are the sorts of things you don’t even know to look for.
Yumi stretched, then settled herself on the warm floor to wait for her attendants.
Who never came.
Eventually Liyun opened the door, looking frazzled, her hair messy and her bow untied. Yumi was shocked. Liyun breaking protocol? They’d done the exact same thing for what seemed like forever. Now Liyun came to her door before Yumi even had breakfast?