Page 71 of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

“No,” Yumi said, stepping down to the ground without clogs—but she didn’t notice, so the heat didn’t bother her. Being a spirit is like that. “No, she’s…she’s…”

“Lying?” Painter said.

“Honored One?” Hwanji said in a panic. “No, I wouldnever. It’s true. Everyone knows about the schism. Except…well, I guess, you…”

“Liyun trained me,” Painter said, “and she never told me?”

“She and the orthodox wardens keep it from their Chosen,” Hwanji explained. “It’s vital to Liyun that she preserve tradition. Her kind try very hard. It is a good thing to remember the past.”

“How many?” Yumi said, her voice hoarse. “How many of the other yoki-hijo are…in this reform movement?”

Painter asked.

“Oh,” Hwanji said, looking away. “Most of them, Honored One. Of the fourteen current yoki-hijo, I think there is just one other orthodox. It…well, you wouldn’t know this, but the reform movement isn’t exactlynew. It’s a couple hundred years old now. Almost everyone else feels that there’s no reason to bequiteso strict with the yoki-hijo.”

There were only fourteen current yoki-hijo? Painter found that tidbit interesting—Torio might be smaller than he’d imagined—but the other fact overshadowed it by far.

A schism in the religion.

A couple hundred years old.

Painter nearly laughed. He would have, if not for the horrified—betrayed—expression on Yumi’s face. How could it be that nobody had evertoldher?

She lives her life in ritual,he thought.Who is there to tell her? Who is there to even (lowly) talk to her?

His heart broke for her as she fell to her knees. “But…” she said. “But the spirits… They don’t listen to these women, do they?”

As he repeated it, Hwanji spoke quickly. “No, no. Not like they listen to you. Don’t worry, Honored One. You’re the strongest yoki-hijo. Everyone knows it. Why, my old yoki-hijo, before she retired, she only averaged around ten spirits summoned per session.”

Yumi wilted. “Ten. I…averaged around twelve…and most yoki-hijo draw no more than five or six, Liyun told me. So…”

So the spirits did not ignore a woman simply because she decided to eat on her own. Painter should have felt vindicated. Instead he felt miserable.

“The others…retire?” Yumi asked. “I was told…this wasn’t possible. That they have to work even when infirm.”

“They insist on being finished at age seventy,” Hwanji said as Painter repeated Yumi’s words. “And, well, I don’t think the years until that retirement are quite as hard on them as they are for you. Since…” She winced. “They take days off. Whenever they feel they need them. Dwookim worked around half the days of the week during most of the time I served her.”

“Days off,” Yumi said, Painter repeating. “To do what?”

“Whatever they want,” Hwanji said, with a shrug. “I’m sorry, Honored One.”

“Thank her, please,” Yumi said, bowing to Hwanji. “Thank her, Painter. For being the only person, apparently, tocareif I knew thetruth.”

“Thank you,” Painter whispered. “Deeply, Hwanji. I will pretend I didn’t learn this from you.”

She nodded and turned away, glancing all around her anxiously, as if frightened Liyun would pop out at any moment.

“It seems,” Yumi whispered, looking up at him with tears in her eyes, “that you were right. Good job.”

“Yumi…” he said, reaching toward her shoulder—then froze. He didn’t want to inflict those feelings upon her. It felt like the wrong time.

“If you please,” Yumi said to him, “would you go in and go to sleep? I have thedistinctandurgentneed to be someone else for a while.”

Two days later,when they awoke again in Yumi’s world, she was feelingsomewhatbetter. She’d spent her day in Painter’s world meditating while he roamed the city, testing out the new freedom granted by Design’s change to their bond.

How quickly and naturally he had returned to freedom. Did he feel constricted now that they were back in her world, where their tether was barely ten feet long? What did it say that she’d stayed in his room thinking the entire day?

She walked to the window, gazing outward while listening to Painter fetch his breakfast from the attendants. She watched the rising crops creeping ever higher in the sky as hotspots on the ground went from warm to scalding. The plants spun like children playing in a rare spring rainfall. She watched them soar, and she envied their liberty. Even cultivated crops were granted more independence than she.

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