They’d taken Yumi’s memories from her. Fortunately, as I’ve said, some things run deeper than memory. In many ways, despite the centuries, she was still a girl of nineteen. Her lived experience and her maturity aligned on that count.
But her skill…well, that had been growing. Day after day. Year after year. Ability distilled, like water drops forming stalactites through the course of primordial eons, she’d built something inside herself.
She wasn’t just good at stacking.
She wasn’t merely a master.
Yumi was literally the best who had ever lived. With twenty or more lifetimes’ worth of practice.
When she let loose, everything changed. For in her was a power far beyond that of hion.
* * *
Painter didn’t know the other Torish people as well as he did Liyun, but he had painted some of them recently, during meditations. He started there, with broad sweeping lines, crafting the shape of the town mayor.
Out among the sea of nightmares, one changed. Transforming, becoming himself again. With a shout, Painter got several others to paint the nightmares between him and that one, shrinking them so he could see it better. As the details manifested, he was able to get more accurate.
The nightmare wanted to be a person again. Painter could feel it, and as he outlined the general shape, the mayor fed him other details. Until Painter left the balding man huddling on the ground, terrified and cold, but also harmless.
It was a slow process. But the others took heart as they saw what was happening—that somehow Painter had found a way to make progress, instead of just treading water. They surged with strength, Tojin and Akane calling encouragement, holding back the tide—freezing each nightmare in turn as it tried to break through. Giving Painter room.
One at a time. Person after person. He shrank them down to themselves. Until, exhausted—his fingers cramped, his arms aching—he gave a final flourish to finish Hwanji’s hair, and dropped her to the ground. He blinked to realize that the street outside the city had fallen still, save for the moans of the wounded painters and the exhausted sighs of the others.
It was over. Somehow, they’d done it. They’d finished their painting—and in so doing were left with a hundred very confused, very cold Torish townspeople.
Painter let his brush tumble from his fingers and clatter to the stone. He looked west, toward the shroud. Through it. Toward someone he felt beyond.
Someone who was concentrating with incredible focus.
Yumi stacked.
Dozens of stones. Hundreds of them. She moved without thought, yet with Intent, building towering formations around herself from the bones of a broken city.
Sculptures of fifty or more stones. Sixty. Heights so incredible she had to climb up on top of nearby chunks of rubble to finish. She created a spiraling design from the towers, stacks of stones like seeds blown from a spinning flower, flowing from the center of the fallen courtyard.
Each piece fit with the others, and each stack built upon the others. Stone flowed as if it were water. Piles of seemingly impossible balances. Shapes to intrigue the mind. To make you gasp.
Time lost meaning to her. This was her meditation. This was her purpose. This was creation. Hundreds of stacks, born from a sublime flow. Sculptures working together on the grandest scale, yet still fascinating in the smallest detail.
This was art. Something the machine, however capable in the technical details, could never understand. Because art is, and always has been, about what it does to us. To the one shaping it and the one experiencing it.
For Yumi, on that transcendent day, she was both. Artist and audience. Alone.
Until the spirits joined her.
Ripped from the technical marvel that was the machine, they flowed out through the stones and emerged. One at a time, surrounding Yumi’s creation. Eventually she felt a trembling as the machine panicked and picked up speed. A stack toppled, and she used its stones to create something even better.
A dozen spirits joined her. Two dozen. A hundred. Then hundreds. Each stolen from an increasingly reckless machine. One by one, those that had been transfixed by its precise motions instead turned toward her with awe, rejoicing in her organic creativity. Each was freed from their subjugation by something more beautiful. More meaningful.
At some point, picking up momentum, Yumi realized what she was doing. What this would mean. The machine had created the shroud, and was keeping it in place. Maintaining it, and hoarding all those souls in its clutches, ready to be deployed if needed.
No machine meant no more shroud.
No more souls held captive.
No more…Yumi.
This was true, unfortunately. Though the yoki-hijo had forcibly returned to life from the shroud, they’d only been able to do so because the shroud itself was being maintained by the machine.
Regardless, she did not stop. This time it wasn’t about omens, or what she’d been “born” to do. This time, she decided: Service to her people. Service to the spirits. And last of all, service to someone she loved. No nightmares meant that Kilahito—and all it contained—would be safe.
So as she placed the final stone and the last spirit was pried from the grip of the dying machine, she looked up. Eastward. Toward someone she could feel out there.
Someone frightened. For her.
Behind Yumi, the machine at last fell still. Slumping, disintegrating as the pieces of it that hadn’t been real—most of them, by now—evaporated away. Self-perpetuating, it had needed fuel to keep going. Fuel she had stolen away.
Thank you! the spirits said. Thank you!
Yumi sat back on her heels, closed her eyes.
It was finished.
* * *
The Torish people started to evaporate.
By now, others had come to investigate the strange disturbance. Police, EMTs, even reporters. They’d given medical attention to the wounded painters. They’d listened, incredulous, to the accounts of those who had fought in the battle. Nurses had given blankets to the strange people who spoke a language that—without the bond that Yumi and Painter shared—was unintelligible to modern ears.
But then those former nightmares began to fade away, disintegrating into smoke. At first, Painter worried that they were becoming monsters again. He leaped to his feet, casting off his blanket and dropping his tea. But the people just continued to fade.
Each one smiled as it happened. He met Liyun’s eyes and she grinned, then turned her eyes upward.
The shroud was undulating again. Different this time. Hissing…
Unraveling.
Yumi? he thought. Yumi! What is going on?
I’ve done it… she thought back.
How? he thought, amazed. You broke the machine?
Yes, she replied.
I’m coming to you, he thought, running up to the shroud as it—amazingly—began to crumble away. Where are you?
In return, he sensed only regret.
Nikaro, she said. Do you remember…what you said about sad stories…
“No,” he whispered, falling to his knees. “No…”
* * *
Yumi felt herself going as it all unraveled.
I’m sorry, she thought to him. But sometimes…sometimes it has to be sad.
Her arms became smoke, her beautiful dress melding with the pieces of her as they streamed off. For a brief moment, she felt the thanks of the other yoki-hijo, finally relieved from their service, allowed to vanish. And the others beyond them, the thousands upon thousands of people who had made up the shroud. Their souls were now free.