6.8

258 20 0
                                    

The island-ship came closer. It was close enough now that it was completely blocking the sun, which reduced the glare around it and made it easier for Sema to see.

It was a small island, only a hundred paces across, although that was still much larger than the woodcutting ship. The island-ship had masts and sails, and seemed to have houses or some other kind of buildings on it, too. The sails were attached to trees, Sema saw. That was clever, since the trees were already well-fixed into the ground, and wouldn’t need much work to create masts. The island-ship people had simply found an island with tall trees, and cut away enough branches to attach sails.

It was clever, Sema thought. It was a wonderfully clever way to make a ship. It was almost the same kind of idea as her wardrobe-boat, except that instead of making a boat from nothing, this was finding something and turning it into a ship. She wished again that she could meet the person who had done this, and speak to them, and share ideas, even though she knew it wasn’t likely.

It wasn’t likely, so instead, she looked carefully at the island-ship. She was scared, and in danger, but she was also curious as to how they had managed this, and how the island-ship worked. She was curious almost to the point of forgetting to be afraid. She wanted to work out as much of the island-ship as she could, while she had the chance.

So she looked.

Hanging beneath the island-ship was what seemed to be a wooden frame covered in tightly stretched cloth, and as Sema watched, the frame moved. It moved, then moved again, slightly, and Sema realized what it was. A tiller.

The woodcutters’ ship had a tiller, which caught the air and let the ship steer more easily. Sema’s wardrobe boat didn’t have one, because she hadn’t known to make it, but after sailing it for a week she understood why a tiller was useful. In her boat, she could only steer by moving the sail from side to side, so the wind caught it and blew the whole boat in different directions. A tiller let a ship steer without adjusting its sails, and so change direction at full speed. In a way, a tiller was an entirely separate sail that was used only to steer, and which spent most of its time turned into the wind so it didn’t catch the air at all. The woodcutters’ ship had a tiller, and the island-ship did too, and the island-ship’s tiller was much, much bigger than the one hanging from the back of the woodcutters’ ship, which must make it far more effective. The people on the island-ship had made a hole right through their island, Sema thought, and climbed down to build their tiller-sail beneath it, and presumably, since there was no-one down there now, they were using ropes or pullies to be able to steer from above.

That was clever too, Sema thought. It was astonishing, really. It must make their island much more manoeuvrable than even the woodcutters ship.

Sema kept looking. One thing about the island-ship puzzled her. The sides of the island were an odd shape. The island sloped outwards quite noticeably, so it was much wider at the bottom than the top. Most islands had a more vertical shape because as rainwater ran off them, it tended to wash away the dirt sides. Usually only islands made of rock, or covered over with ancient made-stone, had a different shape, and that this island did particularly, that it had oddly-shaped sides, that seemed curious to Sema.

It seemed almost suspicious, Sema thought.

She wasn’t quite sure why.

Islands in the SkyWhere stories live. Discover now