Page 135 of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

Someone who was concentrating with incredible focus.

Yumi stacked.

Dozens of stones. Hundreds of them. She moved without thought, yet withIntent, 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 wascreation. 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 hasbeen, 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,shedecided: 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 peoplestarted 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?

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