Islands in the Sky

Chapter 3.1

After four days sailing on her wardrobe-boat, Sema met a fishing fleet. The fleet was fishing for birds, casting their nets out into the sky, with small rocks as floats so the nets hung down through the air. Sema spoke to them, shouting from a distance away, wary of going too close in case they were also pirates. They seemed glad she didn’t approach and disrupt their nets, and shouted directions back, pointing the way to their city.

They had smiled at first at the appearance of her boat, she noticed, made of wardrobes as it was, but they had not seemed to find it so very odd that they didn’t tell her which way to go. Her boat worked as a boat, and she was on it, and was going where she might be, and none of that they questioned. They simply told her where their city was, a place called Anew-Hame, and told her she would find it easily when she was closer, the way they did, by following the smoke trail in the sky.

They also told her that by ancient law all who sought shelter there were welcome, and Sema was glad, very glad. She had somewhere to aim for, at least as her first stop, and so she had gone that way.

They had been right about the smoke. There was so much she had seen it from three days away. There was a smear of smoke filling the sky by day, and a glow of light by night, although she had no known what the glow was until she was very close.

The city was vast. It was more an island. It was a thousand islands, cabled and tied together. Huge steel cables ran from bollards and rings, driven into rock, holding it all together. Bridges linked the islands, and smoke and rubbish stained the sky for ten or fifteen miles below and downwind of the island.

Sema sailed towards it all, sailed up to the city, and as she drew closer, she saw cliffs, and islands, and then very obvious docks, made from stone, extending out into the sky. Stone, she realized, so it would hold its own weight up, and the blocks only needed to be fastened together well enough to stop them floating away. The ends of some docks were marked with bright flags, she assumed to catch the notice of approaching sailors. She went towards those, and was glad to realize she had not sunk or climbed in the sky as she sailed, and the docks she was approaching were at the same height as her.

She steered the boat towards one, and people saw her coming, and a few turned to look. They looked, then looked away, and seemed not especially to care. She wasn’t drawing as much attention as she had feared she might, and she glad. She didn’t want to be noticed, particularly, not until she knew more about where she was.

She came alongside a dock, and a man standing on it dropped a rope down to her. She understood what to do, from using ropes to hold the boat at home, and tied his rope to her boat’s mast so she didn’t drift away.

He watched. He looked at her. He looked at her boat, and then back to her. He seemed not to think her boat was so very odd as to be worth actually talking about. She wasn’t unusual, she thought, relieved. A wardrobe boat wasn’t odd.

She climbed out, and a few more people looked at her. Then seemed to lose interest, and look away.

There were people coming and going all around her, she realized. A large ship was setting off from a dock three down from where she stood, and two smaller boats, the size of the fishing boats she had met, were coming into port as she looked around. There were people everywhere, and bales of goods as well. Trade goods, and dried foods, and boxes and cartons and bundles wrapped in the ancient’s plastic.

She was barely being noticed, she decided, and she was very glad.

The only one who care about her arrival in the slightest was the man holding the other end of the rope which was now tied to her mast.