Islands in the Sky

4.13

Fishing was what fishing had always been, Cassa supposed, just now it took place in the sky.

People went out in boats, with nets, and cast their nets out into the sky. They used very fine nets made of the ancients’ thin plastic thread, which was hard for the birds to see, and they used small rocks as floats, with the nets strung on ropes between them, so the nets hung downwards in the sky, a solid barrier to flying birds. The nets were spread out, hanging in long rows, sometimes in the path of migrating flocks of birds, and other times placed around grain left as bait on a small islet, which lured birds into the netting.

It was simple and clever, Cassa thought. It was elegant how simple the actual catching of birds was. It was complicated too, in that great calculation and thought went into deciding where in the sky to place the nets, and what migrations could be expected at different times of year, and what grains would lure which birds, and which species made for better eating. It was terribly complicated, but in some way it was simple too.

There were nets, and birds, and the fisherpeople knew what to do.

Cassa left the fishing fleet alone, and concentrated on other parts of her business. There were many other parts of the business, which were almost more interesting than the fishing.

Oddly, it had turned out that Cassa also controlled the family’s trade in fish-meat as well as bird-meat, because fish-meat had always been treated as a part of the larger fishing business. Actual fish were rare, of course, because only those which had been in enclosed waterways when the world was broken and lifted into the sky had survived the rising. In most waterways, and in all the parts of the world which were sea floors and lake-beds, the water had run off the sides as the island rose into the sky, and taken all the fish with it. Sometimes, small ponds had remained in sea-floor hollows, and so some few fish had survived in those, but mostly, fish were gone, and birds had inherited the world.

Birds were the most commonly eaten meat now, or more usually, beans or peas or eggs were eaten everyday instead of meat. Fish was a great luxury, which had to be grown in specially-built ponds. The Middletower family grew fish, to sell at considerable expense, and to eat themselves as well, as a way to show off. Cassa had eaten fish, but didn’t especially like it. The bones were fiddly and small, and the taste wasn’t especially pleasant. It really was more eaten to show a person’s wealth than eaten to actually enjoy, Cassa had always thought. So now, strangely, she ran the family’s fish-meat business.

Sometimes life was odd.

Cassa ran the business in bird-meat, and fish-meat, and she also controlled a warehouse full of dried, smoked meat, brought over from the drying island when it was ready. This was a large, complicated part of the business, controlled by several overseers with a group of people to help. Mostly, the overseers were concerned with maintaining a stockpile of meat, while also selling enough to make a profit, and also turning over their supply before it went bad.

There was a stockpile of dried bird-meat because everything in Anew-Hame revolved around stockpiles. People make stockpiles almost by instinct because in the early days of the city they had desperately needed them. They still made stockpiles now, and it was sensible that they did, because Anew-Hame was too large and populous to feed itself from its own agricultural islands, and none knew what dangers lurked over the horizon. At any time a drought or famine could begin, and then those stockpiles would be vital. People made stockpiles for their own safety, so they had food to eat themselves, or fuel, or whatever it was they stored. They also made stockpiles to be ready to trade, stockpiling more than they actually needed for their own use, in the hope that if there was a shortage in the future they could trade their excess and grow enormously wealthy.

That was just how people in Anew-Hame thought.

Cassa’s business had a stockpile of dried meat because that was the usual way of doing business, to store as much as would store, and sell only what was needed, and keep the family’s wealth in goods as much as coins.