The true hero is the one in your mind, the representation of an ideal that makes you a better person. The individual who inspired it, well, they’re like the book on the table or the art on the wall. A vessel. A syringe full of transformational aspiration.
Don’t force people to live up to your dreams of who they might be. And if you’re ever in the situation in which Painter found himself, where your ideals are crumbling, don’t do what he did. Don’t make it slow. Walk away and patch the wound instead of giving the knife time to twist inside.
“Come on,” Hikiri the companion said, pulling him again by the arm. “Let me get your statement.”
“Did she mean what she said?” Painter asked. “About me being Dreamwatch material? Could I still join them?”
Hikiri rubbed his temples. （An action he did so often it’s a wonder he didn’t have calluses there. Such was the life dealing with the Dreamwatch.）
“Do you like being a painter?” Hikiri said softly.
“I guess,” Painter said.
“It’s a good job,” Hikiri said. “Stable. Respected. Not too dangerous. You should enjoy it.”
Painter could read the tone of the man’s voice and understood. You have no chance here, kid. Of course he didn’t; he’d known that. He took a deep breath to plead anyway, but something else came out.
“I have friends,” he said. “Great painters, loyal. When I was in school, we all thought I’d get into the Dreamwatch. They were going to be my companions, but I let them down. I wasn’t good enough. It’s always felt unfair to me that they got punished because I couldn’t paint well enough. Do you think…there is a way they could be companions still? Are your Dreamwatch soldiers here recruiting?”
Hikiri shook his head, seeming bemused. “You thought you’d get into the Dreamwatch, did you? Were a skilled painter, I assume? Best of your class?”
“So I thought,” Painter said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Hikiri pointed at the woman at the game table. “Do you know who she is?”
Painter shook his head.
“Tesuaka Tatomi,” he whispered. “Daughter of the senator?” He pointed at the next. “Son of the main investor of the new wing of the college.” The third one, by the viewer. “Old money. He’s fourth-generation Dreamwatch.”
Fourth-generation? That must be a very skilled family. Or…
Yes, in this regard, Painter was nearly as permeable as a bank vault. But three key cards and one pressure lock later, his eyes widened.
“The Dreamwatch,” he whispered, “is about who you know?”
“Of course it is,” Hikiri said, finally steering Painter away. “It’s the most prestigious position in the painters. It’s more appointment than it is job.” He looked regretful as he said it. Those were the eyes of a man who had seen more than one young person hurl themselves at a target that, unbeknownst to them, was behind bulletproof glass.
“Then who fights the stable nightmares?” Painter asked.
“They do,” Hikiri said. “Just with plenty of help from companions who do a lot of training.” He smiled comfortingly to Painter. “You and your friends have good jobs. Enjoy that. We’ll get around to hunting your stable nightmare soon.”
“But the army of nightmares,” Painter said. “They are coming, Hikiri. I…”
Hikiri didn’t believe him. Of course he didn’t. Why would he believe something so outlandish? Painter tried to think of some proof, but they’d reached the doorway, and Hikiri firmly pushed him out of it. He nodded to Painter, then shut the door.
I never could have joined them, Painter thought, numb. No matter how skilled my painting, no matter how hard I worked, I would never have been accepted. I’m a nobody from a small town.
The others and I…we never even had a chance.
There was a point in Painter’s life when this discovery would have been the biggest he’d ever made. But today, it was a pale second to the more daunting realization. That he was completely alone and would have to prevent the destruction of the city by himself.
Yumi burst from the wagon in her nightgown and clogs, her eyes wild. She remembered. All of it—from the moment she’d woken up with Painter in her body to the day they’d taken him away. The last thirty days were clear in her mind.
Ironically, that was the only part of her life that made any sense. What was she? Was any of it real? She could feel warm sunlight on her skin, see the twirling plants high in the sky. The air was wet from the steamwell, the smell of sulfur lingering. What, if any of this, could she trust?
She searched through the empty town. Where was everyone? Why did it feel like the empty set of a drama after the actors had gone home? Finally, she scooped up a rock and went stalking toward the place of ritual, clogs slapping stone.
It was time to try Painter’s idea. Find the machine. Hit it hard. Hope something vital broke. But when she reached the place of ritual, there was no tent. No scholars. No machine. Had that part all been fake too?
No, she thought, turning about. The machine actually did something to Painter. It was here.
Perhaps they’d carted it away. Yet in her dreams she’d heard them talking—saying they might need to use the machine on her. They’d keep it close, wouldn’t they?
She lowered her stone. Then started walking through the walls of buildings.
It worked. Those walls weren’t actually real. She wasn’t actually real. Both were made of…well, whatever nightmares were made of. The rock she carried, however, seemed to really be a rock—at least, it resisted the first time she walked through a wall. As she tugged harder and pulled it through, the wall briefly distorted into amorphous smoke, then returned to looking like cut stones mortared with geyser mud.
Her search didn’t take long. There were only so many buildings in the town; she strode straight through them, one after another, until she found the machine hidden inside the bailiff’s home. The terrible, many-armed device continued quietly doing its work—a mere two arms stacking rocks, but the entire thing vibrating with a soft energy.
The scholars were here. Four nightmares with only the vaguest human shapes. Like shadows on a very cloudy day, indistinct, melding with the darkness in corners and beneath furniture. As she entered, they turned toward her with shocked postures, which gave her a moment to act.
She dashed forward and swung her rock at the place on the machine where she’d seen them power it on before, that day that seemed so long ago, when she and Painter had flown on a tree to escape. She smashed her rock down over and over, using both hands, breaking the latch on the front, exposing the internal mechanism. She crushed this, screaming, sweating, venting a lifetime’s worth of stress. Like steam suddenly released after nineteen years of building beneath the ground.
The machine let out a whine, almost like it was in pain. Glowing white smoke erupted from the front where she’d pounded it. Then the legs locked up, the vibrations ceased, and the lights glowing from within it extinguished.
Yumi dropped the stone and fell to her knees. It was done.
“What,” the lead scholar asked, “do you think you are doing, child?”