Islands in the Sky

1.8

Sema thought about rocks, and then she thought about dust. She thought about dust because the day happened to be a gusty, squally day. Dust was being blown around in flurries, rising into the air in gritty little whirlwinds, and then falling back to the ground when the wind died down.

Sema watched the dust for a while. She watched as it was caught by the wind, and blown around, blown upwards into the air. She watched it become still, when the wind stopped blowing, and hang for a moment, and then settle back to the ground.

It settled to the ground if it was above the island, she noticed. It behaved like dust always had, although she’d never thought about it very much before. Above the island, dust behaved like dust. She wondered what happened it if was out, over the edge of the island, in the sky.

She took a handful of fine dirt, and squeezed it until it was finer. Then she held her arm out over the edge of the island, and let the dirt trickle through her fingers. The wind was blowing towards her, into her face, from the sky towards the island. As the dirt fell, some blew away across the island, but some dropped straight down, especially when the wind wasn’t gusting.

That dirt, the dirt which fell, then floated in the sky, next to the shore, hanging in the air on its own.

So dust and dirt floated too, Sema thought, unless it was above an island. That seemed to confirm her idea about shadows and something pushing upwards from below. She had expected the dirt would float. She was almost sure she’d seen this happen before. She was glad she’d checked, though, because now she knew for certain. Dust behaved like dust over the island, but it behaved like rocks out in the sky. The difference wasn’t between dust and rocks, it was that dust was fine, and could be caught, and lifted, and blown around. Blown, as the island was, ahead of the wind, but blown upwards as well in a way that the island didn’t seem to be blown.

Sema thought some more. She thought about dust, and where it came from, and where it went, too. She knew it blew off the island, because that happened sometimes in hot dry summers. If farmers weren’t careful, the dry soil on their fields could blow away. Sema thought about that. She thought about where that dirt and dust went. Whether it then floated around forever, and whether that meant there was more dust in the sky now than there had used to be. She supposed there must be, with more being blown off islands all the time. At least, there ought to be, but she didn’t think it was actually happening. The air had never been especially dusty. Not unless it was summer, and a hot wind was blowing. And older people had never mentioned that the air was dustier than it used to be, either. Sema thought about that, curious. If dust had been blowing off islands for hundreds of years, it should surely be filling the sky by now. She should be coughing and gasping. She should have been coughing all her life.

But she wasn’t, and hadn’t been, so something was wrong with her reasoning. She wasn’t sure why the air wasn’t much dustier than it actually was.

She thought carefully.

Perhaps the dust lost its power to float gradually, over time, and fell down to the surface. Perhaps it did, she thought, surprised. She’d never thought about this before, but perhaps it did.

It would explain where all the dust went.

She sat there, and thought. This was something to consider before she made herself a boat. Perhaps dust did fall in the end, and if her boat was held up by dust, it would eventually fall out the sky too. Perhaps that would happen, but equally likely she was wrong and dust just blew around forever.

Probably it just blew around, she thought, like dust always blew around, unnoticed, disregarded, until it was eventually caught on other islands.

That was probably what was happening, but she wanted to find out for sure.

She sat at the edge of the island, and dropped dust again. She held her hand out, and trickled dust, and watched it carefully as she did. The dust fell the same way as rocks did, she decided, just on a smaller scale, but only when there was no wind. When there was wind, it was blown away instead, because it was so light. It was being pushed upwards by the same thing that held the island up, but only the tiniest, gentlest push. Such a soft push that a gentle breeze was enough to catch it, and blow it sideways instead. And once dust was blowing sideways, it was in the island’s upwards shadow, and so then it fell onto the island when the wind died down and stopped supporting it.

Sema tried another handful of dust, and watched, and decided that explanation was right.

And that explained dust, she thought, quite proud of herself. Dust would float on its own through the sky, until it was blown across an island, and then it would lose it’s ability to float, and settle onto land. It explained where more dirt came from, she thought, and why the soil hadn’t all blown away long ago, and spread around the world in a haze, or fallen down to the molten surface far below.

She was pleased she’d worked that out. It wasn’t important, it didn’t actually matter right now, but she was curious, and it was interesting, even so.

She still wondered if dust ever did stop floating, though. And now she had begun thinking about it, she wondered if rocks did too. She wanted to know, before she climbed into a boat held up only by rocks. And actually, it was something she ought to have considered long ago, since she lived on an island hanging the sky.

Wondering if things ever fell down was actually a very unsettling thought.

She sat on the edge of the island, and watched the dust she’d just dropped. It floated, catching the light sometimes. It hung where it was, and blew around in eddies, but it didn’t actually seem to sink any lower of it’s own accord.

Sema was quite relieved.

She thought a little more. If she couldn’t see dust sinking, then that ought to mean that if dust did stop floating, it happened slowly, more slowly than a boat’s journey would last, and so more slowly than she cared about right now. And if rocks stopped floating, she thought, she had never heard of it happening. No-one she knew had heard of it, or told stories about it, so that probably didn’t happen. And if rocks floated forever, she decided, then dust probably floated forever too. Because things that were the same ought to act in the same way. That was a sensible way for the world to work. So if dirt would float, and keep floating unless the wind caught it, then it ought to keep floating forever, as an island did. She decided that was so, but all the same, when she made her boat, she would only put rocks inside it, not dirt. There was no point being stubborn just to make a point to herself. Rocks was safer, she thought, just in case very fine dust did lose its ability to stay up in sky.

She decided she was ready, that she understood enough to make a boat, now. It was odd, she thought. She was grief-stricken and upset and almost too hungry to think, but she’d learned more about how the world worked in an hour of watching it than she had in her whole life until now. People weren’t curious, she supposed. They just accepted things as they were, and ignored the why, until something happened to unsettle them and make them think. Like something had happened to her.

She would make a boat, she decided. She would put rocks inside a frame, or a box. Something enclosed, and which she could sit upon. She needed to make a boat, and now, after a morning of thinking, she actually knew how she could. She stood up, and walked back to the village, and began searching through the ruins for something to make it with.

It wasn’t until much later, after nightfall, after she was trying to fall asleep, that it occurred to Sema that measuring the fall of the dust against the side of the island would only work if the island wasn’t also sinking lower in the sky.

But it wasn’t. She knew it wasn’t. The world had been as it was for generations, and all the island were still where they had always been.

She turned over and tried to sleep.