YUMI BURST FROM the wagon in her nightgown and clogs, her eyes wild. She remembered. All of it—from the moment she’d woken up with Painter in her body to the day they’d taken him away. The last thirty days were clear in her mind.
Ironically, that was the only part of her life that made any sense.
What was she? Was any of it real? She could feel warm sunlight on her skin, see the twirling plants high in the sky. The air was wet from the steamwell, the smell of sulfur lingering. What, if any of this, could she trust?
She searched through the empty town. Where was everyone? Why did it feel like the empty set of a drama after the actors had gone home? Finally, she scooped up a rock and went stalking toward the place of ritual, clogs slapping stone.
It was time to try Painter’s idea. Find the machine. Hit it hard. Hope something vital broke. But when she reached the place of ritual, there was no tent. No scholars. No machine. Had that part all been fake too?
No, she thought, turning about. The machine actually did something to Painter. It was here.
Perhaps they’d carted it away. Yet in her dreams she’d heard them talking—saying they might need to use the machine on her. They’d keep it close, wouldn’t they?
She lowered her stone. Then started walking through the walls of buildings.
It worked. Those walls weren’t actually real. She wasn’t actually real. Both were made of…well, whatever nightmares were made of.
The rock she carried, however, seemed to really be a rock—at least, it resisted the first time she walked through a wall. As she tugged harder and pulled it through, the wall briefly distorted into amorphous smoke, then returned to looking like cut stones mortared with geyser mud.
Her search didn’t take long. There were only so many buildings in the town; she strode straight through them, one after another, until she found the machine hidden inside the bailiff’s home. The terrible, many-armed device continued quietly doing its work—a mere two arms stacking rocks, but the entire thing vibrating with a soft energy.
The scholars were here. Four nightmares with only the vaguest human shapes. Like shadows on a very cloudy day, indistinct, melding with the darkness in corners and beneath furniture. As she entered, they turned toward her with shocked postures, which gave her a moment to act.
She dashed forward and swung her rock at the place on the machine where she’d seen them power it on before, that day that seemed so long ago, when she and Painter had flown on a tree to escape. She smashed her rock down over and over, using both hands, breaking the latch on the front, exposing the internal mechanism. She crushed this, screaming, sweating, venting a lifetime’s worth of stress. Like steam suddenly released after nineteen years of building beneath the ground.
The machine let out a whine, almost like it was in pain. Glowing white smoke erupted from the front where she’d pounded it. Then the legs locked up, the vibrations ceased, and the lights glowing from within it extinguished.
Yumi dropped the stone and fell to her knees. It was done.
“What,” the lead scholar asked, “do you think you are doing, child?”
“Fulfilling the wishes of the spirits,” she said. “Ending this machine.
Saving us.”
“You think…that is the machine?” the scholar asked. Though he had no mouth, the shadow of his head moved and distorted as he spoke. “Child. That little thing is not what rules us. It is but a bud compared to the tree.”
Yumi slumped down. A part of her had known, after all. She’d heard them talking before, and could piece it together. There was
another machine. The father machine.
“Where?” she asked.
The lead scholar didn’t reply. He stalked forward, joined by the others. Yet she realized she knew.
“It’s in Torio City, isn’t it?” Yumi asked. “The festival. Did you turn it on during the festival?”
Another of the scholars spoke up, tentatively. “One thousand seven hundred and sixty-three years. Yes…festival day. The day we would create power for our people from the spirits themselves.”
“And yet,” another said, “it instead drew power from us. From our souls. From the lives of our people.”
“And thus,” another said, holding up a smoky hand, “we became these.”
Seventeen hundred years? Yumi reeled, trying to comprehend that.
“But…where did hion come from?” she whispered. “So much of this is confusing. How much of my world was real, and how much fake?
What even are we?”
All four turned to her, as if seeing her anew. Their darkness lengthened, their white eyes glowing. They went from willowy shadows to full nightmares in a smooth transition.
“No!” Yumi said. “Don’t let the machine control you! We can stop it.”
“Why?” the lead scholar asked.
“We created it,” another said.
“It is our purpose.”
“Our energy.”
“Our art.”
As they spoke, their figures blended together, their voices losing individuality. Though she’d been able to tell them apart at first—
hearing in their voices the men she’d spied on in the tent—now they
just became nightmares.
“It is life.”
“All obey. All souls.”
“All of us.”
“Except…” one said, hesitating.
Again all of them fixated on her.
“Except for the yoki-hijo,” one whispered. “All obey the machine.
Except…those who are too powerful. Except those who have been blessed by the spirits. You it cannot control. You, it must keep captive instead.”
Emotion welled up inside Yumi. It meant…it meant she was real. Or had been real, until that day centuries ago when they’d activated the machine. When they’d brought the shroud and hion alike. It meant that she was herself, but somehow centuries old? Still, that daunted
her.
“My memories…” she whispered.
“Scrubbed each day,” the nightmares hissed in unison. “You’ve lived nearly two thousand years in the same town, Yumi. Doing the same things. Thinking the same thoughts. You are both incredibly old and eternally naive.”
“And now that you do not accept our treatment—”
“—more extreme measures must be taken.”
Their eyes widened, white bores directly through them. Their forms darkened further. As they rose and began to move toward her
purposefully.
Yumi ran.
