AS HE WAITED for 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,
his own 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 had adapted to 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 very bad idea!”
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.
“That is,” she said, “the single most delinquent thing I’ve ever done.
I don’t know how to react! I’m shaking like a steamwell the moment before it erupts. Yet for some reason I feel good. Like I want to do it
again. I’m broken!”
“No.” He grinned. “You’re human.”
“We’re still going to get caught,” she said. “They’ll watch where we land.”
“Maybe.” He twisted against the trunk, stretching out to add some weight. That made their ascent slow as they continued to drift toward the orchard.
They’d risen just high enough to reach the bottom layer of the sky’s plants—mostly weeds and wildflowers here. The tree peeked up through the layer of foliage like it was breaking the surface of a lake.
Flowers sprouting from the center of lily pads danced with bushes that spread limbs wide to catch the thermals. Leaves and florets— similar to the white sprigs that dandelions release on Scadrial, or duluko plants release here—swirled in the air. Butterflies exploded from a bush, fluttering to surround the tree.
The tree’s motion caused eddies in the air around them, carrying the various fecund flotsam in swirls and patterns. Painter breathed out, momentarily forgetting everything else. The flowers, the petals, the butterflies, the sparkling light—it was like paint thrown on a
palette by a master of some incomprehensible art form. A sudden improvisational beauty against the brilliant canvas of the deep blue sky.
Up here in the sky, beads of moisture condensed on fat, lush leaves. A certain wet decadence misted on his skin—like sweat but pure, tasting of something bright and clean.
That’s why they rise, he thought. The air is humid up this high, evaporated by the hot stone below. So the plants rise to reach it… In that moment he envied this world that had light in the sky, as fragmented sunlight caught the dew and made each and every plant seem like it was wearing its wedding jewelry. The scene changed and shifted, colors mixing and parting, all afire with sunlight, resplendent.
Yumi—farther out on her branch, almost joining the sights— seemed entranced. Her hair rippled around her, caught in the wind.
She reached out as a butterfly landed nearby. It didn’t see her, so she could lean in close to inspect its shivering wings.
She glanced toward Painter, backlit by wonder, and grinned. A plane of greenery bursting with colors expanded behind her like an infinite inviting highway. Travel with us, it said. Yet there was nowhere Painter wanted to go. Not when he had what he wanted with him right here.
“You’re staring,” she said.
He was a painter. Not a poet. But somehow he found the right words.
“I only stare,” he said, “when I see something too beautiful for my eyes to take in at once.”
She turned back out toward the landscape, apparently assuming that was what he referred to. “It’s like another world,” she whispered.
“Always up here, every day. So close.” Then she leaned out and looked upward toward the daystar. Painter’s world. It caught sunlight.
Shouldn’t all of that darkness have made it black?
“If I’m to lose everything,” she whispered, “I’m glad I saw this first.”
“You’re not going to lose anything,” he said, recovering enough of his senses to lean out farther from the trunk and send the tree wafting down toward the orchard below.
“They’ll find us,” she said, turning toward him again. “They’ll see
where it lands.”
He shook his head. “We’ll be fine.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Because this day is too perfect to be ruined now.”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Liyun found him kneeling in the shrine, the very picture of innocence. If his tobok was askew, well, he’d only just started dressing himself—so it made sense he’d get it wrong. If he was breathing a little heavily, sweaty as if from an extended run, then he’d obviously been praying with vigor; communing with the spirits could be strenuous for the devoted.
Finally, if there were twigs in his hair, well, the shrine was in an orchard. Those sorts of things fall from trees, I’m told.
Liyun folded her arms, inspecting him.
“Oh?” Painter said, turning. “Is it time already?”
“Did you see someone suspicious skulking through here?” she said. “There has been…hooliganism afoot in the city.”
Ah, he thought. That’s where she got it. Makes sense.
“I have been too busy with my meditations to notice,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“It is…not your fault, Chosen. It is well that you are trying extra hard to petition the spirits, considering your failings lately.” She gestured.
“Shall we go? The scholars have gotten their machine working at last.”
“Have they?” he said. “How unfortunate.”
He rose and followed Liyun, Yumi trailing along behind him as if trying to hide in his shadow. Her expression kept alternating between ashamed and elated—the result of some strange emotional short circuit where both of her blinkers turned on at once and utterly confused everyone following behind.
“You’re sure,” he whispered to her, letting Liyun get ahead so the woman wouldn’t hear, “you saw hion lines?”
“Absolutely,” Yumi whispered back. “What does it mean?”
“Your people must be close to discovering how to harness hion,” he said. “You’re on the cusp of the industrial revolution. Things are about to change in your world, Yumi.”
“Will it get dark,” she whispered, “like on your world?”
“You mean the shroud? No, that existed before we discovered hion.
Rather, before we learned how to harness it. Those were…difficult days. People wandering through the smoke, living only near bursts of light rising from the ground where plants could grow…”
He shivered, thinking about how it must have been. Traveling through the shroud via train was bad enough. Walking through it?
Living in it? True, nightmares hadn’t been as common back then, but still.
“I have a history book in my school things somewhere,” he said to Yumi. “You can read it when you’re in my body. It will explain what might be coming for your people.”
“What was that, Chosen One?” Liyun said.
“Just a prayer,” Painter said, realizing he’d let his voice stray from a whisper.
Outside the orchard, they picked up Chaeyung and Hwanji—and for once Painter crossed the town without being gawked at. Everyone was gathered at the place of ritual. As he approached, they made way for him, letting him step up near the tent. Here, the scholars had deposited their four-foot-wide machine amid a large number of stones. These were generally smaller than the ones in the place of
ritual, but the mechanical thing was moving with eerily smooth motions, making four separate stacks of rocks at once.
“We can beat that,” Yumi said. “Look at how pedestrian those stacks are! Straight up and down.”
Painter was intimidated anyway—even as the machine accidentally knocked over one stack and had to clear it away with three arms before starting again. Yumi might have been able to beat it, but his stacks were nowhere near as good as these.
Still, bolstered by her determination, he stepped into the place of ritual and set to work. He was surprised to find he welcomed the activity of stacking. A lot had happened in the last day, and this return to something normal comforted him. Which says a lot about the human ability to redefine what the word “normal” means.
He soon worked up a sweat—but his stack fell at the seventh stone. The next one only made it to six. He growled and slammed his fist into the ground, barely noticing its heat.
“Relax,” Yumi said. “Meditate a moment. You can’t stack if your hands are shaking.”
He fought down his annoyance. She was right. He took a few deep breaths, then started over.
Hours passed, but most of the townspeople didn’t leave. They seemed to sense something was happening here as Painter managed a stack of ten, then a stack of nine, then a stack of twelve all in a row. Leaving those three in a line, he started into a fourth one, wiping his hands on his skirt to dry them before placing rocks one after another—more bold this time.
And he felt something. Didn’t he? A Connection to the land itself? It felt silly to try to express it, but something pulled on him. Tugging directly on his emotions; as he worked, he tugged back.
Something peeked out of the ground nearby. It vanished as he glanced toward it, but Yumi gasped, then clasped her hands before her, grinning like a maniac. She waved for him to continue, then apparently remembered her duty as a coach and encouraged him to breathe. To be calm.
That wasn’t so easy, as the crowd was beginning to get louder, people murmuring and chattering. Painter launched into his eighth stack—remarkably without any of the others having fallen. He could
almost visualize this one before he placed the stones. He’d make it the tallest of them all. He had the rocks, and knew how they’d fit together. He could make his tower appear to lean, but really be sturdy because of the weight of this rock here…
He felt that tugging again.
It was actually working.
It was all real.
An ethereal ball of light seeped up from the ground near the fence, roughly halfway between him and the machine. It glowed like a large glob of liquid metal, softly shimmering with the colors of hion.
Painter placed another rock, struggling to remain calm. The spirit lingered, then turned as if looking toward the clanking machine— though the spirit had no eyes. Part of it stretched in that direction, then the rest followed, like elastic snapping together. As the parts melded, it soared along the stone ground like it was swimming. It passed among the startled people who, their attention on the machine, hadn’t noticed it first appearing.
It swam right up to the scholars.
“No!” Yumi cried, standing. “No, they stole it from us!”
Painter turned, letting his current rock slip. The tower toppled, destabilizing one of the others, which collapsed as well. Outside the fence, the townspeople cheered as one of the scholars picked up the glowing spirit, then raised it in his hands. People crowded around, cutting off Painter’s view of what happened next.
“And now!” The man’s voice drifted to where Painter slouched on the ground, barely noticing the heat from below. “See how we can make this spirit transform into a useful object via the pictures we present as simple inputs. Behold! It is done!”
“That took all day!” a voice shouted. Liyun? “Your machine will never replace the yoki-hijo. A competent girl can draw a half dozen spirits in a day! A master can sometimes get dozens!”
“And how many yoki-hijo are there?” the scholar shouted back.
“Sixteen at most! We currently have only fourteen. How long did the people of this town wait between visits of the yoki-hijo? Months?
Years? These machines can be placed in every town and village,
working all day.”
Liyun didn’t reply.
“You will see!” the scholar said. “We’ll remain here calling spirits until every need of every resident is filled.”
Painter—exhausted, his fingers raw even inside his gloves—turned
to Yumi.
“You did well,” she told him.
“Not well enough. Yumi, I don’t think I drew that spirit. I think the machine did.”
“No,” she said, firm. Then she hesitated and spoke a little less certainly. “It was maybe both of you. Spirits always come up right next to me when I’m performing, while that one was between you and the scholars.”
“So the machine works,” Painter said. “It drew the spirit.”
“What you did worked as well, Painter,” she said, kneeling beside him. “It was already obvious the machine works. They wouldn’t have brought it here if it weren’t capable of attracting a spirit. But its stacks are mediocre, barely viable. You can beat it, Painter, do better than it can. Get a spirit for us to talk to, to question.”
He looked around at the many rocks. “More practice?” he said with
a sigh.
She nodded.
In response, he took a drink from the canteen Hwanji brought him, shook the stiffness out of his hands, then got back to it. Though he didn’t draw another spirit that day—and he knew it had been months between the first time Yumi had done it and her second—at least it was a nibble at success.
He hoped that would sustain him for however long it took to find his next taste.
