Islands in the Sky

Book 2, Chapter 6.1

um, so this is still Sema, but the chapter changes as a marker so i can find this bit later if I need to…  because when these turn into actual books, this is probably where book one ends and book two starts, basically… um I think.... which is why the chapter change and slight repetition, anyways.

so, um, here…!

Sema stood on the ship’s deck, and looked at the burned island. The smoke was drifting, hanging in the air, smudging thickly across the sky. The fire on the island seemed to have mostly burned itself out, Sema thought. It was barely smouldering now, even though it was still making a lot of smoke. So much smoke it was difficult to see anything clearly, even quite a distance offshore. There was a thickness in the air near the island, a dim murkiness like that of dusk as the haze of smoke blocked out the sunlight.

Sema stood there and looked, with the ship’s crew, with the woodcutters, not understanding why someone would do this.

Near her, on the deck, a little distance away, the ship’s captain was giving quiet instructions to the sailors, telling them to take the ship closer, to see what they could see. Saying that they would circle the island, and then return home, that there was no point in staying when the trees they had come here to cut, and had planned to cut, were so obviously destroyed.

“Wait,” Sema said, but no-one heard her. The crew were already moving to their places, so shift the sails and turn the tiller which hung beneath the boat and caught the air to steer.

“Wait,” Sema said again, but still no-one heard.

Sema looked around. She looked at the island. It hung in the sky, tranquil and burned, and difficult to see properly, blurry with heat haze and smoke.

It hung there, and was still. Nothing moved on it at all. Sema didn’t know why anything would move, but she also didn’t know why it wouldn’t, either. She didn’t know why everyone on the ship with her was assuming that whoever or whatever had burned the island had already left and gone away.

The ship’s crew were too confident, Sema thought. They were from a powerful city, and used to the sky being theirs. They were overconfident, or arrogant, or recklessly brave. One or the other or all of those.

The crew were reckless and brave, but Sema wasn’t. Sema was cautious, and desperately afraid of pirates like those who had killed her family.

Sema wasn’t sure what to do. She wasn’t sure what to say.

She had a terrible feeling that going closer to the island was a very bad idea, that they ought to flee, flee now, just sail away while they could.

She had a feeling, but she didn’t know why, or how to explain that to anyone else.

She walked up to the front of the ship, past the crew and the woodcutters, and peered through the smoke as best she could, trying to see the island clearly. Still nothing moved. She turned, and looked back, at the captain, and at the overseer of the team of woodcutters, standing at the captain’s side.

“Should we not…” Sema said, but no-one heard her.

No-one cared what she thought.

Sema almost gave up. She almost went back to her small wardrobe-boat, and climbed back inside it, and untied it from the ship, and sailed away. She almost did that, but couldn’t quite bring herself too. Not when it meant abandoning these people who had been kind to her, who had helped her and let her work alongside them. She couldn’t just leave, not when it was only because she was impossibly scared of something she didn’t quite understand, and couldn’t explain, and was almost too unsure of herself to even try. Not when she only needed to speak at all because the sailors were too proud to be afraid.

Not when she could warn them instead.