Islands in the Sky

3.17

Last bit -

“It is very much worth bothering about,” Quen Tosal said. “You are entirely right. And I am impressed you can see it. Many others might not.”

“Oh,” Sema said, feeling slightly awkward. “It just seemed… I just realized then. But it seemed obvious.”

 

Quen Tosal nodded. “To you, perhaps. And to me. But not to others, necessarily.”

“Oh,” Sema said, uncertainly. It was a compliment, she thought, and probably one of consequence, but she was a little embarrassed to receive it, and had no idea how she ought to react.

Quen Tosal looked at her, and waited, and Sema just stood there, trying not to flush. After a moment Quen Tosal seemed to realize she wasn’t going to respond, and to decide he ought to go on.

“I can see one grave problem,” he said. “Unfortunately. One small difficulty you may not have considered. Won’t you need people to cut all this wood? People will saws and axes? And once they have cut it, and have worked for you, how will you carry enough wood with only one small boat to earn enough money to pay them all for their work?”

“Oh,” Sema said, crestfallen. He was right, she realized. It was a terrible problem. She stood there, disappointed. This had all seemed like such a good idea.

“Just with such a small boat,” Quen Tosal said. “And with so many people to pay…”

“Yes,” Sema said. “I understand.”

She stood there, upset. She almost gave up right then. She almost said she was sorry, terribly sorry that she had wasted his time, and asked his leave to go. She almost did, but since she was already here, she decided she might as well think for a moment first.

So she did. She thought. And Quen Tosal seemed happy to let her. He stayed quiet, and waited, and Sema stood there, considering, trying to find a solution.

She understood what Quen Tosal meant about the work involved in cutting wood, because she had seen trees felled and sawed before, at home. She knew it was a lot of effort even to make a few planks. She thought about that cutting, and sawing, and how much she could manage to do herself. She thought about how tiring it would be, and wondered how much she could actually expect to manage on her own.

Not much, she thought. Not much at all.

She almost gave up, miserable, but then, just as she was about to, she suddenly realized Quen Tosal was wrong.

She didn’t need planks. She didn’t need logs, or large hunks of wood. She needed sticks. She needed smaller pieces of wood, perhaps broken up with an axe, and nothing more than that. She didn’t even need an axe, not at first. She could simply stand on sticks to snap them if she had to, they way she had done all her life.

Quen Tosal was dreaming too big, bigger than Sema had ever planned this to be, and he was leading her astray with his grander dreams.

The situation wasn’t hopeless at all.

Sema didn’t want to cut wood, or fell wood, and compete with Quen Tosal’s wood traders. She wished to simply pick up wood, to gather what had fallen on its own, to carry what she could manage, and leave everything else behind. Her idea was not to cut wood, not really. Her idea was simply to find wood, any old wood there was, and to bring it to the city. Because wood had no value anywhere but in Anew-Hame.

She had left herself become distracted from that.

She began to get excited again. She began to see that this could truly work.

“No,” Sema said. “No, that’s wrong. I don’t need other people. Not now. Not at first.”

Quen Tosal looked at her, and waited. He waited the way he had when she had first walked in, waiting for her to explain. Sema understood, and kept talking.

“Not if I go to the same places as your people do,” Sema said. “But I pick up the leftovers, the small fallen sticks, and I sell those apart from you.”

Quen Tosal looked at her thinking.

“Small sticks,” Sema said. “In smaller loads, in my little boat. I need pay no-one else but me and you.”

Quen Tosal began to nod slowly.

“Or,” Sema said, excited, because now she was thinking about this carefully, she could actually see an easier way for her to collect her wood. “In fact, I will pay a fee to you for your ship to take my boat with it. To tie mine to yours. So I do not get lost, and so I sail with yours. That is a better way.”

Quen Tosal smiled. “So my boat does the work of sailing.”

“No,” Sema said. “The wind does the work.”

Then she stopped, and realized perhaps she should not argue, even when Quen Tosal was wrong. He seemed not to mind. He was simply looking at Sema, waiting again.

“Go on,” he said, after a moment.

“And I would pay a fee to you, of course,” Sema said quickly.

Now she was beginning to understand the way of Anew-Hame, of everyone paying fees to everyone else, all the time, for everything, it made such matters easier to discuss. She understood what she was supposed to say. She would pay a fee, like everyone paid a fee, for anything she needed done.

“Of course you will,” Quen Tosal said dryly, so dryly Sema almost wondered if he was teasing. “You seem willing to pay fees for everything.”

“I will,” Sema said, uncertainly. “Because this way, with the boats tied together, it is a good way for both of us. For me, but for you too. You gain as well. Since you will be paid twice over.”

“I suppose I will,” Quen Tosal said.