Islands in the Sky

3.7

Sema walked to the end of the docks area, to the edge of the island which the docks were on. There, the road she was following became a bridge, made of tied-together floating stones in the same manner that many of the docks were. The bridge crossed a short span of sky to the next island, and then the road continued, passing between buildings, and up a slight rise, before bending and disappearing into the distance.

Sema stopped where she was. She didn’t want to go too far and get lost. From here, at the edge of the island, she could see around a little better. She seemed to be slightly higher, on what had once been a hill, and the empty space between the islands made a break in the perpetual buildings, providing her with a view.

She stood there and looked around, curious.

The city was built as if it was crowded, she thought. There were walls and roofs and windows everywhere, and every last little bit of space was used. There were still people everywhere too, more people than Sema had ever seen before, and there were dozens of islands in sight right now, as well. Many of the islands were touching, so that the city seemed to flow out over them all without the slightest interruption, the city’s roofs seeming to undulate out before Sema into the farthest distance with neither gaps or spaces, except for the narrowest of crevices formed by roads.

In the distance, on the next island over but one, there was a hill, and at the top of the hill was a vast, soaring tower. It was high, so high it made Sema a little dizzy to look up at it. It was old, too, she thought. It seemed to be built of ancient made-stone. Counting the rows of windows, she decided it must be forty or fifty stories high. There were people on the top of it, she saw, tiny specks moving around against the sky. She looked further, and once she did, she realized she could see other similar towers in the distance, though the city’s haze of wood-smoke, and beyond all the buildings and hills between her and there.

She gazed at the towers in wonder. She had never seen anything like them before.

She stood there for a moment, looking at the towers, concentrating on the nearest one, which she could see better. She gazed for a while, but then lowered her eyes. Staring upwards like that was making her feel uncomfortable, almost a little dizzy. She wasn’t used to looking upwards so fixedly. In fact, she wasn’t used to looking upwards at all. The world she was accustomed to was actually mostly flat, even though islands had gaps between them. Everything that mattered to her had always happened beside her, at about the same height in the sky. There wasn’t much need to look up or down so sharply, not further than the ground or a tree, and that was probably why she hadn’t noticed the towers until now. She just hadn’t looked, even though she probably could have seen them from the docks, had she done so. She had the habit of not staring upwards, and until now that had been a good habit to have.

She glanced up once more, than made herself stop. Staring upwards so much was making her feel queasy.

She looked around instead, looked closer to herself, at ground level. That felt a little more comfortable. She looked at the other islands, curious how the city had been made.

The islands were packed close together. As close as they had been able to be pulled, she assumed. Their odd shapes meant they did not always fit tidily, and sometimes there were gaps, like the one she was standing at now. Beside her, there were large bollards. The ones next to her were cut from ancient made-stone, while others she could see, on the other island across the gap of sky, seemed to be painted metal. Huge metal cables ran between the bollards, fastening the islands together.

Sema looked, thinking of what she knew now, of how islands floated and of their weightlessness, and how surprisingly large things could be moved about by just the wind, the way the rocks in her boat were. Probably people had pulled the islands together by the cables, she thought, rather than simply letting them float as they wished. Probably they had been pulled, and when she thought about that, and looked into the space between islands carefully, she could see that the cables were tight, under tension, and that there was a place a little further down from where she was standing in which the two islands seemed to have come together forcefully enough to crush their rock and soil into one another.

That place had been built over, so it wasn’t even clear that two separate islands had joined any more, rather than there being a natural, oddly shaped gully. They were two separate islands, though, Sema was certain, because the soils on the two island’s sides were different shades of dirt.

Sema looked, and thought about that. It was useful to know how the city was made, she decided.