Chapter 2

The Painter emerged in the middle of green meadows beneath a blue sky.

Once again, he found himself in a world that somehow felt familiar to him. A world of people. A world where things happened, where events unfolded.

He felt the breeze against his skin and the warm rays of the sun. He heard birds singing and insects buzzing.

A smile appeared on the Painter's face.

He looked around, chose a direction, and started walking.

He walked all day and all night without feeling tired, hungry, or thirsty. One day followed another. From time to time, the Painter stopped to examine a plant, a bird, or an animal.

Then, around the fifth day of his journey, he encountered a pack of wolves.

The chase began.

At first, the wolves merely followed him, but before long, sensing no danger from their prey, they began to hunt.

It ended quickly.

The leader of the pack sank its teeth into the Painter's leg, slowing him down. The other wolves followed its example, attacking the helpless man. They dragged him to the ground and mauled him to death.

Reality faded away.

The Painter lost consciousness.

When he opened his eyes again, he was still overwhelmed by the shock and panic of the chase.

But the wolves were gone.

And he was back in the green meadows.

He examined his body, searching the places where the wolves had bitten him. There was no blood. No wounds.

He was completely unharmed.

The Painter looked around, making sure he was safe, and realized that somehow he had returned to the very place where he had first appeared in this world.

“What the hell?” he said, trying to understand what had happened.

There were no answers.

Only the knowledge of what had happened.

The wolves had attacked him.

They had killed him.

And yet, instead of being dead, the Painter was alive and unharmed.

Something was clearly wrong with this reality.

But there were still no answers.

He examined his body once more. There were no bite marks, but his clothes were torn in several places.

So the wolf attack hadn't been a dream.

He pulled the brush from his pocket.

It was still black and white, except for the wooden tip, which had regained a little of its natural color.

The Painter swept the brush through the air.

A black line appeared.

Apparently, he could paint again.

He extended the black line, shaping it into a rifle, but the firearm refused to materialize. Meanwhile, the brush began losing what little color had returned to its tip.

The Painter was beginning to suspect that the brush held some kind of charge, represented by its color. When the brush turned black and white, it meant the charge had been depleted.

But what restored that charge?

He had no idea.

The Painter erased the rifle suspended in the air and drew a simpler weapon instead: a hunting knife.

It instantly materialized and dropped into the grass.

The Painter picked it up, examined it, and felt its weight in his hand.

The brush, meanwhile, had once again lost every trace of color.

Its charge was depleted.

The Painter put it back in his pocket.

“All right,” he said. “Let's see.”

He ran into the birch grove and continued beyond it, trying to follow the same route he had taken before. Just as before, he felt no fatigue and could seemingly run forever.

He ran day and night, searching for the pack of wolves, hoping to repeat the painful experience.

To him, it was all an experiment. A test of reality.

Was he immortal?

That was the first thing he wanted to find out.

Before long, however, he realized that he had lost his way. Hardly surprising. There were no roads or signs in this part of the world, and his sense of direction was poor. But he kept running, reasoning that if he couldn't find the same pack of wolves, sooner or later he would encounter another.

On the fifth day of this second journey into the outside world, the Painter came across a mother bear with two cubs.

The bear didn't notice him right away. The Painter spotted her first, from a distance.

All he had to do was approach her, provoke her, and let her kill him.

But he couldn't bring himself to take that step.

The horrific memories of the wolves were still vivid in his mind. For a moment, the recollection made him feel sick and dizzy.

He looked at the mother bear in the distance once more.

He swallowed.

His hands were trembling with fear.

He desperately didn't want to do this.

Every instinct in his body screamed at him to run from the animal, run from the danger, run from the savage death that awaited him.

And he listened.

Quietly, careful not to attract the bear's attention, he began backing away.

After walking several yards, the Painter stopped and lowered his head.

“I'm stronger than this,” he told himself. “I can do it. It'll only last a minute.”

He turned around and charged at the bear.

The fight didn't last long.

The bear killed the Painter.

He opened his eyes.

Once again, he was standing in the same green meadows.

The brush and the knife were still with him, while his clothes had become even more tattered.

He pulled out the brush and saw that a little color had once again returned to its wooden tip.

The Painter tried drawing a firearm again—this time, a simple handgun.

But it, too, refused to materialize.

So he erased the handgun and painted a bow and arrows instead.

The bow materialized.

So did the arrows.

The Painter picked up his new ranged weapon and headed into the birch grove.

There, he began practicing with the bow.

It turned out to be anything but easy.

The bow and arrows refused to cooperate with the Painter. They fought him at every turn, slipping from his hands and sending arrows flying with far less force than the inexperienced archer wanted.

After just one day of practice, the fingers he used to draw the bowstring had been rubbed raw and bloody. He had to use the magic brush to paint himself some bandages and wrap his injured fingers.

Even so, the Painter considered himself privileged. He didn't get tired. He didn't feel hunger or thirst. He was, for all practical purposes, immortal—and he had an unlimited amount of time.

He understood that learning archery would be much easier for him than for an ordinary person.

At sunset on the first day of practice, an exhilarating sense of triumph swept over him when, for the first time, one of his arrows struck a tree.

“Yes!” He pumped his fist in the air.

The Painter immediately caught himself wishing he had someone to share his success with. Someone he could tell about it. A friend. A companion.

But the thought only reminded him, once again, that he was completely alone.

By the end of the first week, he could reliably hit a tree from about fifteen feet away. For some reason, however, many of his arrows bounced off the trunk, and those that stuck barely penetrated the wood.

By the end of the second week, he could hit the tree from thirty feet away, and his arrows no longer bounced off the target.

By the end of the third week, he was doing well from a hundred feet, and his arrows buried themselves so deeply in the wood that pulling them back out became difficult.

Meanwhile, the magic brush was gradually recharging, its original colors slowly returning.

The novice archer was also so lazy about walking over to retrieve his arrows that he found it easier to use the brush to paint himself a fresh quiver than to collect all the arrows he had already fired.

As a result, his targets began to resemble porcupines, bristling with all the arrows he had left embedded in them.

He assured himself that this wasn't a wasteful use of the brush's charge. Through experimentation, he had determined that the brush recharged faster than he could deplete it by creating arrows.

He had done the math.

At night, the Painter slept.

During the day, he practiced archery.

Days passed, becoming weeks. The Painter made no attempt to keep track of how much time had gone by.

He devoted himself entirely to mastering the bow.

Then, one day, while practicing his archery, the Painter noticed movement deep within the birch grove.

He froze and peered into the distance.

People.

A group of about ten people.

“Hey!” he shouted.

The group immediately stopped.

Partly overjoyed and partly apprehensive, the Painter ran toward the strangers. They quickly regrouped, reacting with alarm to his sudden appearance.

When he got close enough to see them clearly, he discovered that they were dressed in animal hides and armed with primitive spears tipped with stone.

The Painter stopped and stared at them in surprise.

They stared back with equal astonishment.

But there was fear in their behavior as well. They didn't know what to expect from the stranger. The men stood in front with their spears while the women and children moved behind them.

They were ready to fight.

Only now did the Painter realize it.

“Easy,” he said.

He placed his bow and arrows on the ground and held up his empty hands for the group to see.

“I'm not a threat,” he said. “I just want to talk.”

One of the men carrying a spear responded, but the Painter couldn't understand a single word. The man was speaking a completely unfamiliar language.

“Looks like we don't speak the same language,” the Painter said, puzzled.

He looked over the group once more.

Women. Children. Men with spears.

All dressed in animal hides.

These were primitive people.

That made the Painter wonder about the time period. What era did this world belong to?

Had he traveled into the past?

To prehistoric times?

One of the women cautiously stepped forward until she stood beside the men. She reached into a bag, pulled something out, and tossed it toward the Painter.

He took a few steps forward and looked at the object lying on the ground.

It was some kind of small fish.

He picked it up and felt it with his fingers.

Dried fish.

The Painter looked at the woman. When their eyes met, she made a gesture of eating.

Apparently, she was inviting the stranger to accept this friendly offering.

Not wanting to offend the group, the Painter took a bite of the dried fish.

It wasn't particularly good.

But he smiled and nodded enthusiastically, showing them that he accepted their gesture of goodwill.

The armed men relaxed and lowered their spears.

A conversation began.

One by one, the woman told him the names of her fellow tribespeople, pointing to each of them in turn. Finally, she placed a hand on her chest and gave him her own name.

Anka.

The Painter smiled at her, and she smiled back.

Then Anka pointed at the Painter and asked him something.

He understood what she wanted to know.

His name.

But he didn't know how to answer. He couldn't remember his name. He couldn't remember anything about his past.

“I don't know,” he said with a shrug.

“Idunno,” Anka repeated. “Idunno.”

She turned to the others and said something to them.

Soon they were all repeating the word.

“Idunno.”

“No, no,” the Painter said, trying to correct them. “My name isn't ‘Idunno.’ I just don't know what my name is.”

But the tribespeople didn't understand. They continued calling him Idunno.

Then the Painter remembered his bow and arrows.

He pointed to himself.

“Archer. My name is Archer.”

Anka tried to reproduce the unfamiliar sound.

“Ar-cher,” she said slowly, one syllable at a time.

“Yes. Archer,” he said. “I'm Archer.”

He picked up an arrow, nocked it, and fired into the distance.

His archery skills still weren't good enough for anything resembling expert marksmanship, but at least his arrows went in the direction he intended.

Anka and her tribe were impressed.

They began moving closer to him, now talking freely among themselves as they discussed the stranger. They touched his clothes. They examined his bow and arrows. It was as though they couldn't quite believe that such a person was standing before them in the flesh.

But they were about to witness something even more extraordinary.

The Painter pulled the brush from his pocket and, after making sure it still had some charge left, painted a loaf of bread in the air.

The bread materialized and fell to the ground.

The strangers recoiled and fell silent, stunned by what they had just witnessed.

Archer picked up the loaf, took a bite, chewed, and swallowed, showing them that it was safe to eat. Then he broke the loaf in half and offered both pieces to the group.

Anka was the first to accept a piece of bread from Archer. She took a bite and began chewing. Before she had even finished, she started excitedly saying something to the others.

That was enough to convince them.

They took the other half from Archer, broke it into smaller pieces, felt it with their hands, and finally began eating.

The expressions of wonder and satisfaction on the tribespeople's faces stayed with the Painter.

His brush could be used to do good for people.

Some of them immediately began asking him to perform the miracle again, pointing eagerly at the brush. Others had fallen quiet, unable to comprehend what they had just seen.

But before long, the situation took an unpleasant turn.

The chief of the group wanted to try the Painter's magic for himself. He approached Archer, placed his hand on the brush, and said something in his own language.

Archer had absolutely no intention of giving it up.

He tightened his grip.

The chief struck Archer in the head.

Caught completely off guard, Archer stumbled backward, dropped the brush, and fell to the ground.

The chief picked it up.

He swept the brush through the air, trying to imitate the Painter's movements as precisely as he could, but the brush refused to obey him. The chief grew angry.

Archer got back to his feet and grabbed his bow and arrows. Acting on instinct, he was already preparing to draw the bowstring and fire at the man who had attacked him when Anka intervened.

She stepped between Archer and the chief, placed a hand gently on Archer's shoulder, and said something in a soothing voice. Then she pushed his bow aside with her hand, as if asking him not to resort to violence.

Anka walked over to the chief and kicked him in the knee.

Then she began arguing with him in their language, incomprehensible to Archer. But no translation was necessary to understand that she was giving their leader a piece of her mind.

The chief, however, stood his ground.

Calmly, he explained something to her. He pointed to the children traveling with them, then asked the other members of the tribe something. Several of them came forward and joined the argument.

Apparently, they supported the chief's decision to take possession of a brush that could create food out of thin air.

His opinion carried weight.

The others listened to him.

Although the Painter couldn't understand a word the tribe was saying, he could understand their position.

In a way, he even began to sympathize with the chief.

The man was simply trying to take care of his people.

It was becoming clear that, for them, food was a matter of survival.

After several minutes of arguing with Anka, the chief thrust the brush into her hands and loudly said something to Archer.

Anka returned the brush to him.

Despite the conflict, the group spent the entire day with Archer.

They quickly grew accustomed to the language barrier, and once they accepted that the strange man posed no danger to them, they became remarkably relaxed and friendly. They talked animatedly among themselves, laughed, gestured, and tried to speak to the Painter.

Meanwhile, Anka began studying Archer's language.

She pointed to different objects and asked what they were called.

The Painter understood what she was trying to do and gave her the name of each one.

“Stomach,” Archer said when Anka smiled and pointed to her belly.

“Sto-mach,” she repeated carefully.

Archer laughed.

So did she.

The day ended with the group gathering firewood in the forest and building a campfire. Archer could have used the brush to create a box of matches and help the primitive people start the fire, but he wanted to see how they did it the ancient way.

It was worth watching.

He came away with newfound respect for these simple people and their remarkable survival skills.

Before the sun disappeared below the horizon, one of the girls from the tribe gathered wildflowers and wove several flower crowns for herself and the other children.

She made one for Archer as well.

The girl brought it to him as a gift. Archer thanked her and placed the crown on his head.

Only then did the fragrance of the flowers remind him of something.

The woman's perfume.

The woman he had failed to bring to life.

The Painter suddenly grew self-conscious, as though he didn't want the strangers around him to know what he was thinking. He didn't want them to know about his failed attempt to create a human being.

Only two words escaped his lips in an involuntary whisper.

“Forgive me.”