Page 137 of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

He just kept on painting anyway.

A painting is, of course, a story too. Not a still fragment of one as you might think, but anentirestory. Every painting moves, full of life, if you know how to look at it.

Here he painted a picture of a beautiful woman sitting on the branch of a tree. Soaring high in the sky, flowers bursting behind her like fireworks.

“I know you,” he whispered.

The curve of her hair as it curled around the sides of her head to spill down her back. The line of her chin, the defiant confidence in her eyes. The smile.Thatsmile.

“Iknowyou.”

Painter didn’t have two thousand years of experience. But in some ways, what he did have was better. Because art requires intent. Art requires passion. And among all the painters in the city, you would never find a person with more of either.

As the city trembled and people panicked all around him, Painter worked calmly. The shroud vanished in large chunks, leaving behindwisps of darkness. He seemed to paint from this smoke itself, using the ink of the soul.

Her dress, the shade of the sky that day, captured in inkwash greyscale. The blazing sun, a section with no paint at all, contrasted by the streaks around it.

Painter finally had a reason for his masterwork.

For him, audience had always been so very important—and today he had a singular audience. One person. The most important one.

Something touched him on the arm. Unseen, yet warm, sending a thrill of heat through him as he painted the flowers. Smoke from the dying shroud clung to him, one of the few patches remaining. No one noticed it. They were too busy dealing with what they assumed was the end of the world.

Another touch. On the other shoulder.

A final flourish, the dots that were her pupils. Then he turned to find smoke behind him, spinning like a vortex. White on the inside, an infinite hole, the eye of a nightmare. Within it a dark shape reaching toward him.

Painter dropped his brush and reached in.

And took her hand.

I…Her voice.It’s not right…

“Yumi,” he said, tears in his eyes, holding on tight. “We decide what is right. Nightmares can be real. Why not dreams? You have power granted by the spirits. Your whole life—yourdozensof lives—you’ve used it to serve. Use it for yourself this once.”

But…

“Our world, Yumi. Our rules.”

I don’t…

“Ourworld. Ourrules.”

Our…world.

“You deserve to live.”

Our rules.

“You deserve to be happy.”

I…deserve to choose. I deservelove.

Her other hand emerged from the smoke and seized his. They held to each other as the city trembled, the smoke died, and the world changed. They clung to one another as light from above rained down and shone on her face.

The last wisps of darkness vanished.

And at the end of it all, when someone finally thought to check on him, they found Painter huddled against the wall beneath a masterpiece of incredible caliber, holding a young woman tight in his arms.

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