Page 58 of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

“I should make you do another week of this,” she said, folding her arms. “Ihad to do it for months.”

“Go ahead,” he said with a yawn. “Torment me out of spite. Waste our time when the spirits are waiting, perhaps in pain, for you to finish training me.”

“Couldn’t the spirits,” she said (lowly), “possiblyhave sent me a man who wasn’t so smug? There wasno oneelse available?”

“Maybe,” he replied (highly), “you’re just such awonderfulteacher that they wanted to give you a challenge.”

She glanced away, as if that barb had for some reason actually stung. He hesitated, frowning. “Yumi?”

She held herself a little tighter, still looking away. “The next phase of your training,” she said, “is low stacks, focused on stability. The base of your stack needs to be the sturdiest part. Take fewer chances with the base; use it to give yourself as solid a foundation as possible, allowing for more daring choices later. Here, let’s begin.”

She knelt and grabbed the soul of one of the stones, then demonstrated stacking it on another, with their flat portions touching. Painter smiled, thrilled at being able to start at last.

Excitementforstacking rocks. Who would have thought? He squatted down carefully—even with kneepads on, he’d burned himself multiple times—and picked up a stone. He tried making a stack. The stones were unstable, so he tried again, this time aligning the centers of gravity.

He eventually got it. At her prompting, he added another stone. And it stayed on.

“Oh no,” he said under his breath.

“What?” she asked.

“This is definitely easier now,” he said, grabbing another rock and balancing it too. Then another. “A week ago, I could barely get three rocks on top of one another.” He removed his hand, letting the fifth stone balance. It was precarious, but didn’t topple. He looked towardYumi and heaved out a long, annoyed sigh. “I can’t believe that your training actually worked.”

“It did,” she said, her eyes widening. “Itdid.” She smiled, eager. It was an intoxicating smile, for how genuine it was. Smiles, like radiation, are made more potent by proximity.

He added a sixth rock, and the whole thing collapsed. But she eagerly pointed for him to try another stack, so he did, and managed to get five again.

“It worked,” she said, her voice soft. “I…actually…I actually trained you.”

“I could have used a less tyrannical approach. But I guess I have to admit that youkind ofknow what you’re talking about.”

Staring at his stack, she looked like she might burst into tears. He managed to get a sixth, very small rock balanced on top before the whole thing fell down again.

“Six,” he said, folding his arms. “Not bad, eh? So when do the spirits show up?”

“You’ll need thirty stones or more per stack to draw them consistently,” she said. “And one stack by itself is never enough. To be certain, you’ll need twenty or so different stacks, in a pattern, arranged artistically.”

“Twenty or more stacks,” he said flatly, “ofthirty or morestones.”

“You can go less high with challenging stacks that look interesting,” she said. “It’s a relatively easy task to get forty stones straight up—but that should be done sparingly, as it’s the interesting balances and odd-shaped stones that truly please the spirits.”

He gazed at his little stack of fallen stones. He…didn’t feel so excited anymore.

“Don’t get discouraged,” Yumi said softly. “That’s what you need toconsistentlydraw them. My first spirit came to me after only twoweeks of training—but the next took another four months. It was years before I could do it every time, but we don’t need you to hit that level of skill. I keep feeling that even a single spirit could give us guidance.”

He heaved out a sigh, then nodded and gave her a smile. Unfortunately, she fell back into strict proctor mode, launching him into his next phase of training: forming solid bases for stacks. It wasn’tquiteas mind-numbing as the previous week’s work. Neither was it exhilarating. It reminded him of his anatomy classes, where he’d drawn the same muscles over and over again.

Yet a little success brews eagerness, and the hours passed quickly. Particularly because Yumi seemed to catch the taste of success herself, and was somewhat less demanding. Instead of looming over him and snapping out instructions, she spent more time showing him examples. Sadly, she couldn’t manage to build anything higher than a handful of stones before what she’d stacked started disintegrating to smoke. Her incorporeal creations had a lifespan of a couple minutes.

They stopped periodically for drinks of water, and remarkably Painter found as the day wore on that he was almostenjoyinghimself. He still didn’t understand what was artistic about piling up rocks, and the spirits were an erratic bunch if they responded to it. But…it was moderately fun.

Besides, Yumi’s enthusiasm was infectious. Halfway through the day he paused to watch her make a little stack of ten stones, her lips pursed, her eyes focused, but her posture relaxed—as opposed to rigid with worry in anticipation of a collapse like he was as he stacked. She moved with a flowing suppleness—scooping the stones up instead of seizing them. Encountering them instead of seeking them.

She placed many of her stones on their short edges and let pieces hang out to the sides to stack other stones on, forming little towers.Instead of making the obvious choice with each stone, she somehow accounted for its individual irregularities and fit them all together into an unexpected puzzle. Each new stone was like a key change in a symphony: Abrupt, yet immediatelyright. So delightful you were left surprised you had enjoyed the song before that.

She was right,he thought (highly).Itisan art. In her hands, at least.

She was part of the art—her motions a performance to be relished, then remembered. It was…beautiful. If he’d been a spirit, he would absolutely have been drawn to this.

---