Islands in the Sky

1.4

Sema ran.

The forest was still, and the darkness in among the trees was deep. Narrow branches, invisible in the gloom, whipped at her and scratched her face.

Sema ran, but she knew she was going to be too late. By the time she could reach the village, at the far end of the island, the strangers in the boat would have had time to sail down the island, and around the southern point, and catch the village unawares.

This was all her fault, for waiting and watching. She should have started to run as soon as she saw the boat.

She ran, knowing it was hopeless.

A thousand paces from the village she was almost out of breath. Her legs ached and her chest hurt and she was gasping for air.

Then, suddenly, she smelled smoke, and began to run faster.

Something was terribly wrong.

She kept running, but cautiously now, trying to see what was ahead. She had planned to run into the village, shouting a warning, calling out that something was wrong, but she changed her mind. The smoke meant people already knew something was wrong.

She kept going toward the village because it was all she could think of to do. She went forward carefully, stumbling now and then. Around her, the forest had become unnaturally still.

She reached the edge of the forest, and ran three steps out onto the raw sod furrows of ploughed earth in the fields which surrounded the houses. She burst out, and then stopped. From here she ought to be able to see across the fields to the village, but she couldn’t. All she could see was a dark haze of smoke, thick in the last twilight, hanging in the air.

Something was on fire, and badly so. The dried standing grass in the pastures, perhaps, or the last of the winter hay. Perhaps the roof of one of the newer houses. Those were thatch, not the ancient’s stones and metals, and would burn if they caught.

Perhaps all of those.

Sema hesitated, then began to walk forward, unsure what else to do. She made her way across the ploughed fields, avoiding the path, slipping and stumbling over clods. The wheat plants were only two hands high this early in the summer, and didn’t block her way. She tried not to stand on them anyway, almost without thinking about it.

She walked forward, listening. She heard flames, and she heard low voices, but the voices were not nearly as loud as she had expected. She expected shouting. People calling out about the fire, organizing water to put it out, and warning one another. She expected screams, and panic too, but there was nothing.

Just low voices she didn’t recognise, and a terrible strange silence, and once she was very close, the roar of flames.

She walked around the edge of the nearest house, Jenk Limpleg’s. It was one of the ancient’s buildings, with their square-stone walls, but the roof had been rethatched with grass sometime in the past. Now the roof was on fire. She looked up as she neared it and saw flames flickering in the thick smoke.

The smoke was thick enough here that she wanted to cough quite badly. She made herself not. She had learned to stop herself coughing and sneezing playing hiding games as a child. The village was small enough and crowded enough she had needed that trick, or she would never have been able to hide successfully. She had been glad of it then, and she was very glad of it now.

She made herself not cough, and walked along the space between Jenk’s house and the one next to it, Missi and Tothan’s, past the woodpiles and animal pens. The animals were gone. The people were gone.

She stopped, suddenly nervous, reluctant to step out into the open common space in the middle of the village. She stood there, uncertain, wondering what to do. If she walked any further, she would no longer be hidden. Out there, every doorway in the village would be facing towards her, and anyone left alive would be able to see her clearly.

It seemed like she ought to want that. She should want people to see her. Suddenly she wasn’t sure she did, though.

Suddenly that seemed something to fear.

She stood there, watching, making herself not cough, hearing the roar of flames. She stood there, hidden by the smoke, knowing she was too late.

She stood as long as she could stand to, terribly afraid, listening to the silence in what had been her village, and then she turned around and walked away, back into the forest.