Page 79 of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

He continued staring at where she’d been. Not at her. She was still invisible.

“There’s a spirit in here,” Sunjun said, scrambling to his feet.

“What?” the lead scholar said.

“I saw a second set of lines,” Sunjun said, pointing to where Yumi had been standing. “A spirit.” He turned to fumble with some equipment, then pulled out a box with a trailing wire that he plugged into the largermachine. Yumi felt a coldness come over her. An actualphysicalcoldness, not just a fear. The machine had stolen warmth from her.

Sunjun turned the box, and the needle on a dial atop it swung toward Yumi. She scuttled away, dodging around the scholars and running for the wall of the tent.

The needle followed her.

“There!” Sunjun said, pointing. “It’s moving. Quick! Dig out the capture device!”

Terrified of whateverthatwas, Yumi closed her eyes and jumped through the wall.

As he waitedfor Yumi to finish in the tent, Painter spent his time testing his theory about the trees. Though these shade trees were modestly large, most of their bulk was in their foliage, not their height. Minimal effort got him up into the branches and among the leaves, where he felt more hidden.

The chain tethering the tree was looped here around the upper trunk, fastened with a sturdy clipping mechanism. That chain was heavy, but it didn’t weigh the tree down—it just held it in place. Something was making the metal lighter, he figured, like it made his body lighter. As before, the closer he stayed to the trunk, the stronger this effect was.

When he’d first climbed into the tree, his weight had caused it to sag and thump against the ground. But if he hugged it tight, his cheek to the bark—the tree was wide enough that his hands barely touched on the other side—it lifted once more. When doing this, it was as if he became part of its essence and added negligible weight to its bulk. If he moved farther out onto one of the branches, his weight returned, hisown flesh noticeable on his bones, his clothing settling back onto his body.

The tree, in turn, slumped downward and hit the ground again. Remarkably, these plants hadadaptedto this place where the ground was so hot. They had barely any roots, merely some curled vestigial ones at the bottom, like gnarled fingers. How did they manage to—

Yumi burst through the wall of the tent. Running.

Painter dropped to a lower branch to look down at her.

“Scholars saw me somehow!” she shouted, frantic. “They’re coming after me! They mustn’t find me! Or find you! Everyone will see me like this and know that we spied on the scholars and that I’ve given up all semblance of sanity in favor of categoric hooliganism and malfeasance!”

Painter wasn’t sure what shocked him more. The fact that she’d been spotted, or the fact that she’d actually used the word “hooliganism” in practical discourse.

Unfortunately, her alarm wasn’t exaggerated. Shouts sounded from the tent, and one scholar popped out around it holding some kind of device—which he pointed toward the trees where Yumi was standing.

“They’re going to find you up there!” she said, then began hyperventilating again. “You can’t hide. I’m dead. I’m over. It’s over. I-I-I—”

“Yumi!” he hissed, a desperate plan forming. The obvious one really, considering the circumstances. He held out his hand to her. With his other hand he grabbed the chain holding the tree in place, then he mouthed one sentence.

We go up.

“Painter, that’s a verybadidea!”

But the scholars were flooding out of the tent, and she didn’t have time to come up with something better. He gestured more urgently, and after the briefest moment she leaped up and grabbed the first branch.

He unhooked the chain, then climbed higher—where he was better obscured by the prodigious canopy—and wrapped his arms around the trunk, his heart pounding as he imagined their dramatic escape.

The tree began to drift sluggishly upward. Less dramatic. More torpid. But the scholars noticed too slowly, and by the time they started pointing toward it, the roots were barely out of reach. Painter buried his head among some branches so the scholars couldn’t make out who he was.

In minutes the tree had gained forty or fifty feet, and the soft wind nudged them vaguely to the south—and the orchard—as Painter had hoped. Landing in there would make it difficult for any pursuers to gauge where to find them.

Yumi hauled herself up, gasping for breath. He looked toward her, worried, but couldn’t move without jeopardizing their buoyancy. Thankfully, the tree didn’t seem to notice the weight of a ghost.

“Yumi?” he whispered.

She twisted around, holding tightly to her branch, and he saw she was crying, gulping in breaths.

And laughing.

He relaxed.

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