THERE IS SOMETHING universal about a carnival. You’ll find them almost everywhere. On planets where the most advanced form of power is a hitch that can hold six horses. And on planets that are literally illuminated by free-flowing lines of light in the sky. Because carnivals don’t need electricity, Investiture, or other forms of power.
The people are the energy of a carnival.
Excitement bleeds. It flows like rivers. Ask any carnie, and they’ll agree that there is a frantic current to a carnival. Yes, it’s completely fabricated. So is the electricity that powers a light bulb. Being artificial doesn’t mean it isn’t real—it only means it has a purpose.
It’s this power of excitement that carnivals tap, feed upon, exploit.
And for all that people call carnivals a scam or a con, they’re nothing of the sort. We go to them to be exploited. That’s part of the charm.
While you’re there—among the dizzying overload of lights, chatter, excitement, sticky ground, and thronging people—you feel that there must be more than enough energy to go around.
Human exhilaration is a renewable resource. And you can generate it with cheap stuffed animals and fried foods.
Painter was surprised at how busy the place was. But they’d left patrol early, and the night was young yet. People packed the carnival, heady with the knowledge that within a short time, news would come back with finality. They were not alone in the cosmere. It’s an important revelation for a society, second only to realizing that the rest of us have been visiting for quite some time now but never got around to explaining. That sort of thing tends to cause a lot of unfortunate paperwork. Sometimes also panic.
It’s true that Painter’s planet isn’t among the most cosmopolitan or relevant to the cosmere’s political or economic landscape. I still recommend you visit. Trust a guy who spent a couple years there as a statue. Few can throw a party like a planet confined to an eternal night. (In his language, by the way, they obviously didn’t use the actual word “carnival.” Like with everything else, these are my words to describe their world. You might be interested to know that the word they do use roughly translates, in your language, to “place of a million lights.” Their term for the workers there? “Light keepers.”) Painter strolled alongside Yumi, trying to keep from being walked through by members of the crowd, since he found that unnerving.
Yumi took in the sights, her eyes reflecting the spinning hion of rides and the twinkling rhythms of the large bulbs on the fronts of stalls— like on a runway, trying to guide a person in to land in their particular trap. Was the gaudy mess nauseating to her?
“It’s wonderful,” she whispered. “It’s like someone broke the sun itself into a million pieces and threw it in the air like confetti. This has been here all along?”
“Well, it usually only runs on festival and rest days,” he said.
“We could have come and seen it? Why don’t you come every time
it’s open?”
He shrugged, enjoying her wonder.
“What are all of these?” she asked, pointing to the stalls.
“Games.”
She cocked her head.
“Games?” he said. “You play them?”
“Like an instrument?”
He stopped in place, staring at her. “Your (lowly) life was so ridiculous, Yumi. You’ve never played a game before?”
She shook her head, so he waved for her to walk up to one of the stalls with a line. That way the carnie would be focused on the customers, not a random gawker. Yumi watched with fascination as people tried to knock down boxes by throwing a large ball.
“So…” she said at his explanation, “it’s…a challenge? Like trying to stack a pile higher than you’ve ever done?”
“Yes!” he said, pointing. “Yes, that’s it. Games are fun challenges.”
“These people are having fun?” she asked, as a man at the front of the line cried out after getting all the boxes down but one.
“Well…it’s fun when you win…” Painter said.
Someone in the next stall walked away with a large stuffed creature. Yumi watched that with even more consternation.
“So…” she said, “you knock the boxes down, and you get one of
those beasts.”
“Yes.”
“And they’re extremely valuable?”
“Um…well, no. They’re pretty cheap, actually. We could go to a store and buy a dozen of them for the price of a nice pair of shoes.”
“I am so confused.”
“It’s not about the prize,” he said, gesturing for her to follow him as the carnies started eyeing her. “It’s about winning. The prize is proof.
A memento? To remember the day? It becomes more valuable because of the good feelings it evokes. Beyond that, people just like to have things sometimes.”
“I think…that might make sense,” she said, strolling alongside him, holding to the strap of his painter’s bag over her shoulder. He’d told her to bring it because sometimes if people knew you were a painter, they treated you with deference. Might convince some carnies to look elsewhere for easy prey.
“I like my clothing,” she said. “The first thing I’ve ever owned. I like having it. The dress reminds me of Akane and that day shopping.”
“See?” he said.
For some reason though, she was growing morose. Was she remembering the things Akane had said about him? With a sudden
desperation, he wanted her thinking about anything else. But before he could speak up, she smiled, then spun around, arms extended.
“Your job, Nikaro,” she declared, “is to escort the yoki-hijo on her first—and likely only—trip to a carnival! You must make it an experience!”
“I thought you said,” he told her, ducking around a couple sharing fluff candy, “we weren’t painter or yoki-hijo tonight.”
“Then you escort just the yoki part! The girl at a carnival for her first time! Present it to me, man from another world. Wow my primitive mind with your advanced alien technology and lights!”
“Well, fortunately,” he said, stepping in front of her and gesturing to himself, “you’ve come to the right person. I’ve been visiting carnivals since I was a child, and I can eagerly introduce you to every unique aspect of the phenomenon.”
“Excellent,” she said, strolling forward, Painter walking backward directly in front of her—occasionally passing right through people. If they thought a lone painter talking to herself was odd…well, they thought painters were odd anyway. So who cared?
“Where do we start?” she asked.
“With the food,” he said, dancing to her right and pointing to a stall with fried pop’ems. “It is the most incredible, delectable, amazing food
you will ever eat—”
“Wow!”
“—for the first bite.”
She looked at him, frowning.
“Carnival food,” he said, “has this strange property. Each bite you take tastes increasingly artificial, oily, and overly sweet. Until you get done, and (lowly) wonder why you ate all of that. It’s truly
magnificent.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“Am I?”
Five minutes later—her fingers sticky with the remnants of powdered sugar, an empty bag of pop’ems in her hand—she looked toward him with a nauseated expression. “That was awful,” she said.
“Isn’t it?” He grinned.
“I need another.”
He directed her to get some cheese powder rice puffs, as they tended to last a little longer before the gross part reared its head.
Once she was happily chewing on them, he led her toward the center of the festivities.
“I’m modestly impressed,” she said. “But you’re going to have to do
better than strange foods, Painter.”
“Well, we also have rides.”
She looked at him, then blushed. “I don’t know what those are either. I’m sorry.”
“They’re…” Huh. How to explain. “Have you ever been in a bus—or a wagon I guess—that was out of control?”
“Once. It was terrifying.”
“It’s like that, but fun.”
“I’m not convinced you have any idea what that word means.”
He grinned. “Remember the flight on the tree?”
Her eyes went wide. “You have flying trees here?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “But things sort of like that. Less magical, maybe, but also safe—so you get the exciting part without the dangerous part. But you get to pretend they’re still dangerous, so you can be afraid. In a fun way!”
“Wonderful food that is also gross,” she said. “Experiences that are at once terrifying and not. Are all of your modern wonders self- contradictory?”
“Contradiction,” he said, “is the core of modern life.” He smiled at her. And he loved the way she smiled back.
He gestured, and led her past several of the performers—a strong man lifting impossible weights. A “living statue.” (Bad imitation in my estimation.) A fire-breather. Yumi appeared to legitimately love each of these.
“You have experts,” she whispered while watching a performer swallow a cane four feet long, “in the strangest things.” She tossed far too large of a tip to the man and bowed formally to him.
From there, the games. She was terrible at them. But he found it fascinating how she tried each one in the row, then settled on one— the game where you knock down the boxes—and paid the carnie for ten tries.
“We’re going to run out of money quickly at this rate,” he said, leaning against the counter as she concentrated and threw the ball, missing. “You should have picked the balloon popping game.”
“That one is random,” she said. “You can’t win it except by accident.” She narrowed her eyes, throwing another ball. It bounced
off the boxes.
“And that is bad?” he asked.
“I must be presented with a challenge of skill and not fortune, Painter.”
“Well then, try the coin toss,” he said, as she threw again and the ball bounced free. “This one takes strength like Tojin has to win.”
“No it doesn’t,” she said, then threw the ball and got a lucky hit, toppling all of the boxes.
“Ha!” the carnie said, leaning down. “You can take the small prize… but do that four more times, and you get the largest prize!”
“Yes,” Yumi said. “I read the rules.”
Then she proceeded to knock over four more stacks of boxes in a row. The carnie’s jaw dropped.
“Oh, (lowly) incredible,” Painter said, smacking his forehead. “It’s a balancing trick, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “One of the boxes is weighted on the bottom in such a way as to make the entire thing seem less stable than it is.
Getting that one is key.” She pointed at the largest of the stuffed animals—a dragon eating a bowl of noodles. (Quite fanciful. The dragons I know prefer steak.) “Advice,” Yumi said as the carnie handed her the dragon—which was nearly taller than she was. “Don’t put the weighted box in the same corner each time. It makes the pattern easy to exploit.”
The carnie scratched his head, then grinned at her. “You’ve still got two throws left.”
“Give them to the next child who visits,” she said, then walked off, head held high, Painter trailing. “You’re right,” she said to him. “This trophy feels…satisfying. And soft. How do they make it so soft?”
“By tradition,” he said, leading her to a less populated section, “you
now must give it a name.”
“Hm…”
“A silly name,” he added.
“Why silly?”
He gestured at the giant pink dragon.
“Right,” she said. Then she blushed. “I…don’t do silliness very well, Painter.”
“No problem. It’s one of my more impressive features. Let’s see… silliest name…” He grinned. “She shall be known as the fearsome Liyun Noodleface.”
Yumi gasped. “Painter! That’s irreverent.”
“Perfect,” he said. “Job done.” Then he turned, picking out one ride in particular. The highest in the carnival—the massive Jotun Line. You don’t have anything quite like it here, though on some worlds they build rides like these as wheels that slowly carry people in a lofty circle above the carnival.
In Kilahito, they’d ended up designing something that was similar, but not circular. Instead the seats went straight up along a tall steel post, then paused at the top for the best view before turning and coming down the other side. It moved slowly, with a near-constant rotation of two-person pods.
Painter gestured to it. “I might have located the best local equivalent of a flying tree.”
She tipped the dragon to the side, having trouble seeing while carrying it. Her eyes widened as she saw the ride. Then, remarkably, she gave the dragon to a little girl who had been standing nearby gaping at it.
“Farewell, Liyun Noodleface,” Yumi said, waving as the little girl hopped off with the giant plush over her head. At Painter’s curious look, Yumi shrugged. “I think I’m a little too new to owning things to have an enormous pink dragon.”
He smiled, then led her to the ride. There was a long line, but as they approached, the ride conductor spotted her—or more specifically, her painter’s bag.
“Painter,” he said, waving her forward. “Thank you for your service.”
Everyone in line politely clapped as he ushered her into the next cab, letting her have the two-person seat to herself—which was convenient, as it left room for Painter to slide in beside her. She put the bag by her feet as their cab swung into position and inched slowly upward along the post as other cabs were unloaded and filled.
“Is that common?” she asked him. “The way they treated me
because they thought I was a painter?”
“It happens now and then.”
“I thought you’d said that no one cared.”
“They care about being safe,” he said. “They care that someone is out there doing what I do. At the same time, we make them uncomfortable. We’re a reminder that things lurk at night, feeding on their nightmares.” The cab inched up to the next stop. “We’re not like yoki-hijo. There are only a handful of you, but it’s easy to train a nightmare painter; basically anyone who goes through the schooling can do it. You don’t have to be a master to make something that will trap a nightmare.”
“But you are,” she said softly. “A master.”
“I thought I was.” He paused, then looked at her. “Would it matter to you if I was?”
She gave it some thought. Someone else probably would have responded immediately with assurances he was good enough. He liked that she didn’t do that, though he found himself waiting, breathless. And not just because he didn’t breathe anymore.
“It matters,” she said, “that you’ve stopped painting. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t get accepted by the Dreamwatch.”
“But it does,” he said. “If I’d gotten accepted, my whole life would
be different.”
“Would it have changed who you are?”
“I suppose not,” he said. “Maybe my failure is what told me who I really am. The man who would lie to his friends. Maybe it’s better I didn’t have those when I was younger. Fewer people to betray.”
He looked toward her and found her eyes glistening, teary. “I’m so
bad at this,” she whispered.
“What?”
“I was supposed to be distracting you. Yet here we are again, having the same conversation.”
“No, Yumi,” he said (highly). “It’s fine.”
“It isn’t though. We did everything wrong, Painter. I wasn’t supposed to fixate on winning that prize—I was just supposed to throw and enjoy the company. I see that in the way others are acting
down below. I…I don’t know how to be a person, Nikaro. You have to explain to me how to have fun.”
“I like explaining things,” he said, causing her to look at him again.
“Yumi, I’m a painter. Do you remember why I said I loved it?”
“To share it,” she whispered. “To see the delight of your creations with your friends…”
Painter gestured as they continued upward, high enough that the chaos of the carnival instead became a pattern. Flowing pathways, spinning rides like fanciful geometries. Lights, once garish and overwhelming, became twinkling accents to a wonderful tapestry.
Her eyes widened.
“Not quite as breathtaking as flying,” he said.
“No,” she whispered, “but I love it. I love not feeling afraid. I love being able to linger.” She stared for a time, but then saw one of the other couples in their cab pass, coming back down the other way.
Those two cuddled up close with a jacket around them.
“We can’t do this right, Painter,” she said. “We—”
“Yumi,” he interrupted, feeling an unfamiliar emotion.
Contentment. How long had it been? Years? Even with everything else, even in their strange situation…being in that cab that night, with
light dancing beneath them…was perfect.
She looked at him, cocking her head.
“Are you happy?” he asked softly. “Right now. Worries ignored.
Problems forgotten. Are you happy?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“How long has it been?”
“I don’t think I can remember a time,” she said. “There are…vague memories. Of laughter. A home. A place where the floor was never too hot, and where someone held me. I might have just imagined all of that… You?”
“My birthday,” he said, “first year of upper school. About a month before the test to join the Dreamwatch. The following month was awful, stressful as I tried to prepare every last moment. That day of my party though—with friends and my paintings, a place I thought I
belonged… Masaka made me a hat.”
“Was it black?”
“More like a helmet,” he said, smiling. “With spikes. She said it was a birthday hat.”
They stopped in place as the ride paused for the couple at the top of the pinnacle to have a moment. Painter felt warm, even though it was colder up this high. He felt as if he were wrapped in a blanket.
With the best view in town. And he wasn’t looking at the city.
“Maybe,” Yumi said, with a smile, “it’s all right if we do things the wrong way. As long as it’s the same wrong way.”
She rested her hand on the bar in front of them—right near his—as the ride brought them up into the top position. He wanted so badly to be able to hold her, but had to content himself with moving his hand an inch closer to hers—until he felt the barest sense of electric warmth at their touch.
It thrummed through him, like magma injected into his veins. If he’d looked closely, he would have seen two little lines—like electric sparks—connecting his skin to hers. Magenta and azure.
Together they enjoyed the silent presence of one another, drinking in the moment. It’s said that everything you eat, even the air you breathe, becomes part of you. The axi that make up the matter you take in come to make up you instead. I, however, find that the moments we take into our souls as memories are far more important than what we eat.
We need those moments as surely as the air, and they linger.
Potent. Yes, a person is more than their experiences, stacked up like stones. But our best moments are the foundations we use to reach for the sky.
Eventually, after what felt like a lifetime that passed too quickly, their cab reached the bottom. Yumi slipped out, settling the oversized painter’s bag against her back. Wordlessly, the two of them strolled away from the carnival. Now that they’d been to the sky, the chaos at ground level seemed distorted. Like a painting seen so close-up you could no longer make out the meaning.
They trailed vaguely in the direction of Painter’s apartment. The streets grew quiet—the carnival receding into their past—as they entered sections of the city that acknowledged the late hour. Even the homes felt sleepy, the drawn drapes drooping eyelids. Only the ever-
present hion lines floating above lit the way, painting cobbles and concrete.
Neither of them wanted to break the moment. Until finally Yumi stopped and dug into the painter’s bag. She pulled out the smaller sketchpad and knelt, taking out a small paintbrush and a jar of ink.
“Yumi?” he asked, leaning down.
She held up a finger to still him, then unscrewed the ink jar— twisting it the correct way this time—and dipped her brush. Then she proceeded to paint a picture of what they’d just experienced. A view in the first person, looking out at the landscape below. In front of that, their hands on the bar of the ride’s cab. Except in this, their hands
overlapped.
It wasn’t a very good painting.
Considering the experience of the one responsible, that won’t surprise you. But for a person who’d first picked up a brush twenty- three days earlier, it was quite remarkable—in the same way that the drawing of one eight-year-old might be better than that of another.
Regardless, here’s the thing: art doesn’t need to be good to be valuable. I’ve heard it said that art is the one truly useless creation— intended for no mechanical purpose. Valued only because of the perception of the people who view it.
The thing is, everything is useless, intrinsically. Nothing has value unless we grant it that value. Any object can be worth whatever we decide it to be worth.
And to these two, Yumi’s painting was priceless.
“I realized something earlier,” she said. “When we were talking about owning things. I realized…I don’t own anything. And never
will…”
“The clothing—”
“Will stay behind, Nikaro,” she said softly. “When this is all over.”
Right. He hadn’t considered that. Once…whatever had happened to them was through…once the spirits decided to end the Connection… Well, Yumi would wake up one day in her body. And he in his. On separate planets.
She stood up holding the painting, letting it air-dry. Her eyes large, like pools of ink awaiting a brush. She smiled again, a different smile.
Not joyful. Melancholic.
“This,” she said to him, “is for you. To remember me when I am gone. What did you call it?”
“A memento,” he whispered. “To remember the day.”
“Valuable because of the good feelings it evokes,” she whispered, then carefully folded the dried painting and tucked it into the inside pocket of her jacket. “If we wake up tomorrow and it’s all over, you’ll
have this. So you don’t forget me.”
“I could never. Yumi, maybe we could…”
What? Travel the space between planets? Even if the government allowed a couple of youths to do something like that—which was highly unlikely—she was still a yoki-hijo. One of only fourteen on her whole world.
She couldn’t have a life like he had briefly let himself dream she could.
“I want you to know,” she told him, “that I don’t think you’re a liar.”
“I literally did lie though,” he said. “It’s a fact.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Because…I was too weak to tell the truth?”
“Because,” she said pointedly, “you didn’t want to hurt the people
you loved.”
“I lied to you.”
“Again,” she said, “because you wanted so desperately to be the thing I needed. You wanted to help me, Painter. And yes, maybe you wanted to pretend to be someone great. That’s not the action of a liar, but a dreamer.” She nodded sharply. “I was taught that a liar is someone who takes advantage of others to get gain. That’s not you.
It’s never been you.”
She leaned closer to him, as close as they could get without touching. “I don’t blame you, Nikaro. Maybe stop blaming yourself.
You see, I’ve learned one thing from your world, more than any
other.”
“Which…is?”
“Answers,” she said, “are not simple. They never were.”
He smiled back, then closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. It was strange how much of a difference those words meant. That someone
didn’t judge him. That she knew exactly what he’d done, in all its horrors, and…didn’t care? Didn’t blame?
Perhaps he should have been strong enough to come to a similar conclusion on his own. Perhaps he should have been a lot of things he wasn’t. But in this case, having someone say it—someone who mattered… It was like a painting he could share. He opened his eyes… To find Yumi stumbling backward, eyes wide, lips frozen in a mask of terror. He spun to see something lurking from the alley behind them: a nightmare of jagged blackness, fully eleven feet tall, with claws that sliced the wall in large gouges. Eyes like pits of white, and
a mouth with actual teeth.
The nightmare. It was fully stable now.
It had, inexplicably, come looking for them.
