“The town,” Liyun said, “is sick.”
“Sick,” Yumi said. “The entire town?”
“Yes,” Liyun said, then put her hand to her head. “I…don’t remember how I discovered it. But something has happened, and…and you need to remain inside today. In prayer and meditation. Yes, that is what you need to do.”
Yumi leaped to her feet. Was this her chance? Protocol broken. Could she ask? Strangely, she found her timidity completely absent. Though she’d worried for weeks about even asking, now it came out easily.
“I,” she said, “would like to visit Torio City for the festival in a hundred days. You will see that it is arranged?”
What was （lowly） wrong with her? To say it that way? So forceful? To make demands of Liyun? Surely the spirits would strike her down this instant for such an act!
“Yes, all right,” Liyun said absently. “As you wish, Chosen. Is that all?”
Yumi gaped. No lecture couched in questions? No glare of anger? Maybe everyone was sick in this town, and Liyun had caught it. She certainly appeared disoriented.
“I will…” Liyun said. “I will get you breakfast myself. Where did Hwanji and Chaeyung go? Yes, breakfast. I…”
She walked to the door, then stopped.
“Liyun?” Yumi asked.
“What is my duty?” the older woman asked.
“To guide the yoki-hijo.”
“Yes, yes,” Liyun said, then moved to step down into her clogs. Again she halted. “But that is not all, is it?” She moved her arm with a stiffness that made Yumi think it was pained. She reached into the pouch at her belt. And took out a folded piece of paper.
Liyun stared at it, then dropped it to the floor of the wagon and fled out the door in a rush.
What extraordinarily odd behavior. Yumi walked over to watch Liyun leave through a town that seemed completely empty. Not a soul to be seen. Even the crops were unattended.
Was the sickness that bad? No wonder Liyun was so worried. Yumi knelt to say a prayer to the spirits, then saw the piece of paper.
Painted paper.
She cocked her head, then spread it out.
Those two hands…
One was hers.
One was…his.
Memories assaulted her with the force of a collapsing tower of stones a hundred feet high.
* * *
Painter counted building numbers in a frenzy, hoping to the depth of his core that he remembered correctly. Hion lines behind him cast his shadow, doubled, against the door as he reached the appropriate house.
He pounded on the door. Then pounded again, after not waiting long enough. He’d raised his fist to pound a third time when the door opened. Judging by the formal painter’s uniform—with a tighter coat than he wore, short in the front, and made of a vibrant blue—he’d come to the right place. Painter had made an educated guess as to where the Dreamwatch would be put up. They rated an entire house, and the Painter Department owned only a few of those.
“Stable nightmare,” Painter said between breaths. “I…ran…all the way…”
“Oh, you saw it, did you?” the man at the door said. Tall, he had such an incredible beard that it made sense he was bald—the hair on the top had been intimidated into hiding. His coat indicated he was a companion—not a Dreamwatch member himself, but one of those chosen by a full member to be on the team. The role that Painter’s friends had hoped to fill.
The companion opened the door with a yawn and waved Painter in. Painter had worried that the Dreamwatch would all be out scouring the city for the stable nightmare, but he appeared to be in luck. They were in, perhaps holding a strategy session or interviewing contacts.
Even with everything that was happening, Painter felt a thrill at being ushered into their headquarters. Even this little brush with their world was awe-inspiring—more so when he stepped into the main lounge of the building and saw not one, but three full Dreamwatch members. Dressed in black, marks of their stations sewn into their jackets. Painter couldn’t help staring.
They were playing table tennis. Two of them at least, a man and a woman. The third one lounged in a seat near the viewer, watching Seasons of Regret. Various companions lounged around the room, doing what Painter imagined was official work. Reading. Keeping score for the ping-pong game. Um…taking naps…
Relaxing, Painter told himself, between bouts of hard work. He had explained to Yumi the value of that.
The woman at the game table glanced up as he entered. “Was that the food, Hikiri? I ordered the barbecued…” She frowned, noting Painter.
“He says he saw the stable nightmare,” Painter’s guide explained. “Ran all this way to tell us.”
“Oh,” she said, and seemed disappointed that he hadn’t brought her food. “Well, that’s good. Take his statement, Hikiri. Put a pin in the map. Do we have the map set up yet?”
“Getting to it,” said the companion who was reading a novel at the side of the room. “I’ve got it in my pack somewhere.”
“Well, write down the address where he saw it,” the Dreamwatch member said, then turned back to her game.
Painter took a deep breath, then stepped forward. “There’s a hundred of them coming, sir,” he said. “The nightmare told me. An invasion of nightmares. Like what happened in Futinoro. From the west. Please, you must defend the city!”
The woman glanced at her two colleagues. The one playing table tennis with her rolled his eyes. The other kept staring at the viewer.
“An army of nightmares,” ping-pong woman said, strolling over to him.
“Please believe me,” he said. “Please.”
She nodded to his jacket. “You’re a painter?”
“Yes. I was the one who found the stable nightmare in the first place.”
“You look like a real go-getter,” she said. “Interested in the Dreamwatch, eh?”
“All my life,” he said. “I tried so hard to get in. I’m…not good enough. That’s why we need you. To defend the city. They’re coming—maybe soon!”
“We’ll take care of it,” she said （highly）。 “Nice work out there. Thank you for the warning. Keep this up, and you might turn into Dreamwatch material yourself.” She gave him a firm pat on the shoulder, then nodded to her bearded companion, who took Painter by the arm and tried to guide him out the door.
Painter lingered though. The Dreamwatch member turned back to her ping-pong game. Maybe…maybe that was how she meditated.
Now, you’ve probably caught on more quickly than Painter did here. You might be thinking at this point of the old adage that says having heroes is not worth it. There are variations on it all around the cosmere. Cynical takes that encourage you never to look up to someone, lest by turning your eyes toward the sky you leave your gut open for a nice stabbing.
I disagree. Hope is a grand thing, and having heroes is essential to human aspiration. That is part of why I tell these stories. That said, you do need to learn to separate the story—and what it has done to you—from the individual who prompted it. Art—and all stories are art, even the ones about real people—is about what it does to you.