Page 134 of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

It was not a thought but an impression. Knowledge of what the machine would do to protect itself. The scholars weren’tcompletelyright about it having no will. Any object as Invested as it was would take on at least some trappings of self-awareness.

Painter would die. If he survived this first wave of nightmares, others would come. Thousands upon thousands, until Kilahito was rubble.

Yumi turned back to the awful machine, tears in her eyes. It, in turn, continued its eternal stacking. To it, one pile was the same as another. Things to build, knock over, then build again. The walls inside, the floor, much of the stone beneath had been chopped up to continue feeding its efforts. Beneath lay the sand its earlier stones had become over the centuries.

It didn’t care what it made. All it did was keep going, maintaining its hold on the spirits for power.

Itdidn’t care.

Yumi stalked away from the hall of the machine and down the steps, dress flowing and rippling in the wind. At the grand courtyard in front—once magnificent, now rubble—she knelt.

And started stacking.

Painter didn’t tryto force Liyun’s nightmare into the shape of a bird, or cat, or even bamboo. He didn’t look at the shifting darkness to find some vague impression. He didn’t need that crutch. He knew what she was.

Heknewher. Stern and unyielding, yet deep down just wanting to help. Those frown lines, those twin blades of hair, that bell-shaped dress…

He didn’t look at her as he painted, but he felt the effects of what he was doing as the others nearby muttered. You weren’t supposed to paint nightmares as people. A person could still kill you. The goal was to pick something innocent, harmless.

Liyun was anything but harmless. Yet heknewthis nightmare at itscore. That changed everything. As he finished his canvas with a flourish, he looked up to find her kneeling outside the ring of painters. Hands stained by the ink on the ground, gasping for breath.

And as Painter grabbed another canvas from their dwindling stack, Liyun didnotrevert back to a terrible monster like the others had. The nightmares werepeople.

He needed to treat them as such.

Stacking.

You might not call it an art.

You might find it the strangest idea. This is what Yumi’s people revere? This is what they consider the highest aesthetic achievement of their culture?This?

Yet all art is meaningless without those to admire it.Youdon’t get to decide what constitutes art. Butwetogetherdo.

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 knowthe 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, becominghimselfagain. 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 couldfeelit, 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.

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