Islands in the Sky

1.11

Sema thought about what to do next. She needed a mast. She needed a sail, too.

She went and found both. She used a long pipe from the side of one of the ancient’s houses, one of the hollow tubes they had to channel rainwater to the ground. The pipe made a mast, nailed and tied and glued into place, and blankets fastened together, looped around the pipe and connected by lengths of string to two wardrobe door-handles, which kept it spread open, those made a sail. It was enough of a sail that it caught the wind, even just sitting there on the shore, enough to pull the boat tight against the rope tethering it to the island.

Sema added a second anchor rope to another tree, just in case.

As she did, she thought a little more about rain. She thought about rainwater, and about taking something to drink.

She went and gathered as much water as she could, in plastic jugs and bottles, and began stacking them on the boat. She spent an hour on that, and then another, finding every container she could. She covered the boat’s deck with contains of water, and in the end, decided she had enough.

She looked at the boat. It still hadn’t settled any lower against the stick pushed into the bank, she noticed with some relief, even with all the weight that was on it now. She stood there, thinking, considering the sides of the boat. It had no lip, no rim, just the edge of the wardrobes, and then the sky. Half her water was likely slide off, if the boat ever tipped, she thought. In fact, she was likely to slide off herself, if she wasn’t paying attention. She went and got more wood, and nails, and made a barrier all the way around the sides. It wasn’t high, only up to her knees, and it wasn’t as strong as it could be. It might not be enough to stop her falling, but it would stop things sliding off. It would have to do.

She had water, so next she began to think about food. She still had last-years apples, and little odds and ends of barley and grain the pirates had missed. She gathered as much as she could, and put it all into the drawers in the bottoms of the wardrobes. She probably didn’t have enough, she thought, only food for several weeks, which wasn’t very long, but she was taking all she had, and she hadn’t been eating very much, anyway, even with the work she was doing, so what she had would have to do. She didn’t have any more.

She thought again, and then made a small tent, over the centre wardrobe, out of one of the big squares of the ancients’ thin plastic. She tied it to the mast, and nailed it to the deck, crinkly and cloth-like. It would do well enough to make a shelter and keep the rain off her as she slept.

With that, she thought she was almost ready. It had taken her a while to make the boat, but she was finally ready. She found a knife, and then another. Two, just to be safe, and in case she met more pirates. She took what rope she could, and a few more sheets of plastic cloth as well. She took spare clothes, and also warmer clothes for winter, tucked into a drawer. She didn’t know if she would still be sailing by winter, but she might well be if she was lucky, so she would need warmer clothes.

She thought about winter. She had nothing to make fire with, because the village’s supply of the ancients’ fire-making twigs had run out long ago. She had nothing to make fire with, and no way to carry an ember on a wooden boat, so she would have to do without fire. The simplicity of that was quite a relief, after all the thinking she had done about making the boat.

She was ready, she decided. She was about to go. She thought about what she was about to do. It was frightening, but at the same time it wasn’t. Leaving was the sensible decision. She could stay, knowing she would starve, or she could go, and take the risk that perhaps she might starve on her boat. But she had a boat, now, and that made a difference. It gave her some hope. It meant that deciding whether to go or not wasn’t really a choice, after all. It wasn’t a choice because going was so obvious that she didn’t actually need to think about it any more.

She went. She sailed away. Just like that.

She untied the anchor ropes, and the boat began to float away from the island. She fiddled with the sail, until it seemed to catch more wind, and began to drift away faster.

It was dusk, but she didn’t sleep another night on the island and wait for dawn, because she would rather be on her way right now, and gone. She didn’t go and walk about the village and say goodbye to her memories, because they were her memories, and would always be with her. She simply set out, with no actual idea where to go other than sideways to the wind, as the pirates had, in the hope of crossing the path of another island and finding somewhere new to live. She went the opposite way to the pirates, though, which happened to be towards the south. Away from them, and away from the colder weather.

She went. She sailed off, and watched the island disappear behind her, was almost glad it was gone. Everything that had happened might hurt a little less if she wasn’t surrounded by memories.