Islands in the Sky

5.2

On that first trip it had taken the woodcutters three days to fill their ship. They had ancient tools to help them, loud buzzing mechanical saws which seemed to run on cooking oil, and lanterns so they could work at night. They worked a lot, worked very long hours, Sema assumed so they could return home more quickly. They took three days to fill their ship, and Sema only took two to fill her boat, but Sema’s work had gone much more quickly than she expected it would next time, because there were a lot of sticks lying about, and a lot near her boat too, since no-one had ever collected the discarded sticks on this island before.

Sema filled her boat, and then spent the third day making a pile of broken sticks on shore of the island, ready to load on the next trip. As she did, she considered ways to move more sticks. She thought about cargo nets to hold the sticks. She thought, briefly, about making another boat, or some kind of raft of sticks woven into a frame large enough to hold sufficient rocks to float itself in the sky. She wondered if that was possible, and almost wondered about going and exploring the island, to see if there were any ancient houses here that she could find boat-building materials inside. She thought about it as she worked, but wasn’t quite brave enough to go off on her own and actually do it. The woodcutting island was fairly large, probably an hour’s walk across, and was entirely covered in trees except for the parts that the woodcutters had cleared.

Sema was a little too scared to go off on her own, when she had only just found a group of people she could work alongside, so instead, she had made a pile of wood ready to collect next time, and decided that was enough.

At the end of the third day, the woodcutters said they were done, and made ready to leave. They tied Sema’s boat to their ship once again, and set off back towards Anew-Hame. The voyage took another three days, and Sema was cramped and a little bored on her boat. She sat still, and watched the sky go past, and thought as it did. She sat still mostly because any time she moved, she knocked sticks off her boat into the sky, which seemed a waste.

The woodcutters hadn’t offered to take her on the ship, but Sema didn’t mind that they hadn’t. They didn’t know her especially, and she was imposing on them enough as it was, and they probably just hadn’t thought to offer. She stayed on her cramped boat, and watched the sky go past, and thought, and mourned her family. It was actually good to have that time just to sit and think and remember. She was beginning to feel slightly less awful about all that had happened, and slightly less overwhelmingly sad now, too. It was as if, once she was feeling safer and had something new to do, her misery had become a little more distant and a little less sharply, painfully fresh. She could remember people, and smile at her memories, and even feel a little happy thinking of them. That was a change from how she had felt before, so it was good just to sit and think.

They sailed for another three days, and caught up with Anew-Hame as it drifted through the sky. They sailed around the forward edge of the city, the edge in the direction the city was moving, and then along one side towards the wharfs they had set out from. As they sailed past the wharf of Sema’s dock manager, the ship drew close enough to it that one of the woodcutters was able to throw a rope ashore. He threw the rope, then tossed the other end to Sema, and shouted to someone on the wharf to fasten the rope so Sema could pull herself ashore. The man on the wharf did. Sema stood up, and called thank you to the woodcutter, and waved as well. She was grateful for the kindness. She had been worried how she would move her boat from their dock to hers when her sail had wood piled up against it and was probably unworkable until the boat was unloaded. She shouted thank you, and she would see them next time, in a day or two, when she had unloaded, and that she would bring their rope back to them then.

They waved, and untied her boat from their ship, and she pulled herself in to the wharf. When she arrived she gave the man who had tied her rope an armload of firewood, because she was beginning to understand how Anew-Hame worked.