Page 59 of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

Unfortunately, her bottom rock vanished at that moment, and the entire stack collapsed into swirling black smoke. She sat back on her heels and released a long, trailing sigh—exhaled like a eulogy. You know the sort. They’re fashioned from the corpses of dreams.

Painter stared at Yumi, pained for her. That emotion, the one he saw in her face—heknewthat emotion. He’d never thought he would meet another who understood it the same way he did.

Her passion,he realized,is the same passionIused to feel.Realizing that recontextualized everything, and he started to wonder if there were other things she knew that he once had. That worry she displayed…was that the same worry he had always felt about getting things wrong—about not being the person everyone thought he was?

Loneliness, even in a group. Shame and its stalwart companion: those whispers that say you aren’t worthy of attention or love.

He understood. Without needing to touch her, he understood.

She glanced at him and he fumbled, collapsing the stones he’d been stacking.

“Put the heaviest on the bottom,” she suggested. “That’s notalwaysthe biggest, depending.”

He nodded, hoping she hadn’t seen him staring. As he tried again,he wondered how the last week had been for her. Forced to give him instructions rather than doing what she loved—she could have been constructing stone towers all the while. It felt more tragic ifbothof them had been having such a bad time.

He tried to see the stones as she did for his next few constructions, but that was less effective and he felt himself backsliding. He didn’t have her effortless ability to evaluate, to see the placement for a rock, to visualize a larger whole. So he returned to piling flat ones.

She shook her head. “You’ll need to learn to judge a center of balance for the entire tower, not just individual stones. You keep perpetuating imbalances instead of correcting for them with new stones.”

“I…” He hesitated as he saw townspeople gathering outside. He looked to Yumi, who frowned. Liyun was supposed to keep the people away so he could practice in peace. What was…

They weren’t gathering for him. Something was happening. He could sense noise. A disturbance.

“It probably doesn’t involve us,” Yumi said. She said it in a half-hearted way though.

Painter heaved himself to his feet, stiff from having worked so long in basically the same posture. He crossed the place of ritual to the fence, outside of which Chaeyung and Hwanji were also distracted by the crowding people. It seemed that a wagon had arrived? Yes, another floating wagon, larger than Yumi’s, pulled by the flying devices made from spirits.

Painter absently pushed out of the place of ritual, noticing that Liyun had vanished somewhere. His two attendants yelped and hurried to catch up, trying to obscure him with their fans as he walked toward the crowd. Although he was clothed, he wasn’t technically on display now, and their duty was to hide him.

“We should stay at the place of ritual,” Yumi said, yanked after him. “Painter. We aren’t to leave!”

But he’d seen crowds like this before. At the scene of a disturbance. A nightmare appearance. He pushed the fans away, and when they returned he pushed them more forcefully—and the attendants fell back. The crowd made way for him, speaking in hushed tones as he approached the source of their consternation.

It wasn’t a scene of violence or fear, thankfully. The wagon had deposited a group of men with long mustaches, beards on their chins, and white clothing. Their most striking feature was their strange hats. Black, with tall backs and shorter fronts, like…well, kind of like little chairs. Only there were wings at the sides too.

“Scholars,” Yumi said, stepping up beside him. She put a hand to her lips. “From Torio City. Theuniversity. I’ve…always wanted to see them.”

“…heard of the unfortunate nature of your plight,” the lead scholar was saying, “even all the way in Torio City. So we have come to bless you.”

He addressed the town’s pudgy mayor, though the words were obviously for the entire crowd. The mayor, in turn, bowed to the scholars, then bowed again as if worried the first one might not stick. “Honored scholars,” he said in the highest and most flowery of forms, “you are welcome to our humble town.”

Painter frowned. Those were the kind of linguistic forms they used in the historical dramas to address aking. It left little ambiguity about how scholars were regarded.

Behind the four scholars, a group of younger men in smaller hats—simple black caps—opened the doors on the rear of the wagon, then heaved something out. Roughly the size of a clothing dresser, it was ametal construction with a great number of long rods. Spiderlike, if said spider had grown a few dozen extra legs.

“This town,” the tallest of the scholars said, “has suffered an embarrassing flaw in our system. The most (highly) appreciated yoki-hijo”—he bowed to Painter—“is of course a revered member of our tradition. However, human beings are limited in their capacity, and it ishighlyinefficient that we must depend on them for the needs of our society. At the Institute of Mechanical Solutions, with the blessing of Her Majesty, we have developed something to aid in this situation.”

He gestured with one hand to the machine, and everything clicked for Painter. Even before the assistant scholars poured rocks on the ground around it, he knew.

“What are theytalkingabout?” Yumi asked.

She’d see soon enough. The tallest scholar held his pose for an uncomfortably long time as his assistants fiddled with the contraption. Finally he glanced toward the group, and one of them rushed up to speak in his ear.

Harsh whispers followed, along with animated gestures. Then the head scholar turned back to the crowd. “The demonstration,” he said, “will naturally come after we’ve had proper time to set up and relax from our arduous journey.”

“But demonstration of what, honored scholars?” the mayor said, bowing again.

The lead scholar smiled. “Our machine,” he said, “for stacking stones.”

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