Islands in the Sky

1.5

Sema’s village was on fire. Many people were dead. Most of the people were dead, Sema thought, watching from the forest, and those that hadn’t been killed right away, they were by morning when she could see properly.

Sema watched, and began to realize how lucky she had been. The strangers were stealing and murdering and worse. They must be pirates, Sema decided. She had been right about that. She still didn’t understand, though. She didn’t understand why people would do this. Why they would be so cruel. She watched, from the edge of the forest, helpless to do anything.

She stayed still and quiet, and waited for the pirates to go.

It was all she was able to do.

The pirates stayed for two days. They brought a rope across from their island, in their boat. They pulled the two islands together, and transferred the village’s possession over to their own, using their boat and some planks to make a bridge. They took all the livestock, some grain and apples from the village’s orchard, some plastics and clothing and some spare pieces of metal.

They had tried to burn the houses, but many had not burned well. Enough to damage them, but not to be consumed completely, because the wood the ancients used for their buildings wasn’t like ordinary wood, and didn’t burn especially well. The pirates had burned what they could, though, the wood-piles and apple orchard and the almost-ripe barley standing in the fields, which seemed stupid and a waste. They had gone through the houses, searching, breaking things, turning things over, and ruining what was left.

They killed everyone, and stole what they could, and did their best to destroy the rest. They did all that, and then they untied their island and floated away.

And all that time Sema stayed hidden.

All that time and longer.

The pirate island floated beside hers for a week, while the smell of soot and ash filled the air. Soot and ash and the smell of rotting from the dead. It rained once, which seemed to make the smell worse. Animals ate Sema’s family, and the bodies of people she knew. Crows, which always appeared from the empty sky when any livestock were slaughtered, and a fox, too, which Sema had never known was on the island. Sema watched, and mourned, but didn’t let herself think about it too much, or care.

She couldn’t do anything. She had to stay hidden, in case anyone from the pirate island looked across and saw her, and then came back to get her.

She waited, while slowly the pirate’s island drifted away.

She realized, after a while, watching, that there were sails rigged among the pirate island’s trees. Their whole island was a boat, sailing sideways to the wind, crossing the paths of other islands, like Sema’s, letting them find new prey.

She watched, and waited, as they moved further away. She crept out to drink in the darkness of night, from a tap on a rainwater tank on the far side of the houses from the pirates that was undamaged, although it tasted of ash. She ate very little all week, only some of last years apples, shrivelled and dry. She wasn’t especially hungry, so that didn’t matter very much.

Mostly she hid, and stayed quiet, and alone, and wept when she had to.

Everything she’d ever known was dead, and it was her fault it had happened, and for a while she considered jumping from the island and having done with it all.

She was guilty, and lonely, and being entirely practical, she was going to starve in winter anyway, or die of the cold without proper shelter. The island was drifting north, and had been for several years. It would get much colder as the seasons changed. Cold enough there might be snow, despite the heat from the surface beneath. It would be cold, and the summers crops were burned, and the pigs and chickens were gone, and the only food left was a few apples.

Sema would starve once winter came, unless she could get to another island.

She barely knew what to do.