The Floating Island
Char and Ven exchanged a glance, relieved the argument was over. All around them the wind roared, whipping their clothes, making them flap like sails on the sea. The boys put their hands over their brows to keep the sand out of their eyes, which were stinging from the bite of the wind.
Finally they came in sight of greenery. Ven recognized the scent of the forest, but it was sharper, richer than he was used to. Once every few years his father made a trip away from the city streets of Vaarn to the country where the timber for their ships was harvested. Ven had gotten to go with him once, and was in awe of the sight of the forests, the sounds and smells and the feeling of peace that he had never felt in Vaarn.
Here, that feeling was even deeper, not just peace but silence, to the point of being a little bit frightening.
He put his head down and followed Oliver into the forest.
Suddenly the wind died down to a whisper. Ven looked up. All around him was the most remarkable collection of plant life he could imagine. Lush tropical plants with wide leaves and brilliant flowers were everywhere among the tall, thin trees with shaggy bark and green fronds reaching into the mist above. Mixed in with those strange trees and plants were evergreens and trees with leaves, some in the earliest budding of spring, others partially turned to the shades of autumn. Birds of all colors of plumage twittered in the branches of the trees.
“In no other place in the world would these sorts of trees and plants grow together,” Oliver said, leading them along a thin trail through the forest. “Everything you see here came from a seed that is carried by the wind, or that floated to shore from places the island has drifted near to.”
“Are there any animals?” Ven asked, looking around him in wonder at the glorious blossoms of deep purple and red that were the size of his head.
“Specifically, any animals that eat people?” Char added nervously.
Oliver shook his head. “Only birds. Seals and other sea mammals rest here occasionally, but the island’s travels are too random to allow it to serve as any kind of a home for them.”
The birdsong was growing louder. Ven held his breath and listened; the music of the birds blended perfectly with the song the wind was singing.
The group walked through the odd forest toward the center of the island where the mountain stood in silence, no sound at all but that of the wind. Shafts of dusty sunlight broke through the trees as they began to climb the outer edges of the mountain. Finally Char stopped in his path and pointed ahead of him.
“Look!” he shouted. He voice was dulled by the noise of the wind.
In the upper branches of a pine tree a hat was hanging.
Oliver smiled. “Ah, yes, we must be on the windward side of the island, where the breeze comes in from the land. You’ll see a lot of hats in the trees through here, along with scarves, crumpled letters, and all sorts of other litter. The wind is a bit of a pickpocket. Every sailor I know has lost at least one cap to it.”
They walked beneath the branches, marveling at the multitude of caps, top hats, and ladies’ headdresses stuck in the trees. Char stopped and pointed again.
“A kite!” he shouted. Ven followed his finger and saw it as well, a red and blue box kite with its tail tangled around the branch of a shaggy-barked hickory tree. It was battering itself against the trunk, twisting and tugging in the wind. Char turned to Oliver, desperation in his eyes.
“Can’t we save it, sir?” he pleaded. “It will be smashed to bits if we leave it up there.”
“You remember what the captain said about not takin’ stuff from here,” Scroggins said sternly.
Oliver watched Char intently. “Yes, that’s true, but I was talking about the things that belong here. The kite is only here by accident—if anything, it’s trespassing.” He exhaled. “You want to save the kite, Char?” The cook’s mate nodded eagerly. “Then I suppose it’s all right. Scroggins, get it down.”
The sailor’s eyebrows went up to his hairline, but he said nothing. He turned and scaled the tree as quickly as he might summit a mast, then crawled out onto the branch and carefully unwound the kite from its tangles.
“It’s wrapped good and tight,” he called from the treetop. “I don’t think I can break the cord.”
Ven saw the excitement on Char’s face turn to dismay. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his jack-rule, staring at it for a moment. Then he walked to the foot of the tree and called up to Scroggins.
“Here,” he said. “You can use this—it has a knife in it. But please be careful; it was my great-grandfather’s.”
Scroggins nodded and leaned down from the branch, reaching out a hand. Ven tossed him the jack-rule, watching nervously as the sailor extended the blade, then sawed through the string. He lowered the kite down to Char and climbed down again.
“You probably should keep it, Char,” the captain said as the cook’s mate turned the kite over in his hands, his eyes shining with glee. “A gift from the wind. Now, let’s get on.” He started up the side of the mountain once more.
Scroggins handed the jack-rule back to Ven, and they turned to follow the captain.
7
The Hollow Mountain
THE REST OF THE CLIMB TO THE MOUNTAIN’S SUMMIT WAS MADE IN silence. The mist was thinning as they neared the top, and Ven could see that the peak narrowed as it got taller. The winding hillside seemed to twist in ever-smaller circles as it got higher. Oliver was leading them up a spiraling path that headed toward a dark cave at the mountain’s summit.
The birdsong grew quieter the closer they got to the top, while the wind grew stronger. The more tropical plants of the forest began to disappear, leaving only the tougher trees, evergreens and low, brushy bushes that bent in the whipping breeze. Scroggins finally had to tie Ven and Char to himself with a length of rope to keep them from blowing off the mountainside.
Struggling to remain standing, they hurried inside the cave.
As soon as he got inside, Ven understood why Oliver had shown him the conch shell. The whole island was shaped like one. The inner walls of the mountain curled downward, widening, the same way the shell did, smooth and translucent, winding down into darkness. Trees and plants grew inside, but fewer and farther between. A twisting path led down into the belly of the mountain.
“Listen,” Oliver said, untying the rope that bound the boys to Scroggins.
* * *
At first I didn’t hear anything but the endless roar of the wind. Then, upon listening more closely, I heard voices all around me. They spoke in many languages I did not understand, as well as the common tongue that I did. There were voices of men, of women, of children, some whispering, some shouting, all muted and fuzzy in the sound of the breeze whirling down through the cave inside the twisted mountain. It was a symphony of noise—prayers, wishes, arguments, promises, and threats, all sorts of words that people had spoken into the wind, all caught here now in this cave that curled like a conch shell. All remembered by the wind alone.
* * *
The captain turned to the soldier. “Now’s your chance,” he said. “As we go down inside the mountain, speak your name in each place that you take a breath. The wind will catch it and take it all over the world—that is what you desire, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said the soldier.
“Then go to it,” Oliver said. He gestured to the others. “Come along.”
Slowly they descended into the dark tunnel in circles that grew bigger and bigger. The soldier cleared his throat and followed them.
“Marius,” he said. “Marius, Marius, Marius.” He chuckled uncomfortably. “Marius is the greatest warrior who ever lived! Marius. Marius. Marius.”
“What a bloated head,” Char whispered to Ven, who nodded.
Oliver continued down the twisting tunnel, until he came to a place where the light was dimmer and trees had stopped growing, leaving only low bushes and flowers that bloomed in shade. He stopped, then gestured for the others to stop too, and for Marius to be quiet.
/> He listened carefully, the voices on the wind chattering all around him. Finally he smiled.
“It’s a boy, Scroggins!” he said cheerfully. “Stand here.”
The sailor excitedly took his place and listened, his face glowing happily. Ven and Char looked at each other in confusion.
Oliver leaned over and spoke softly. “Think of this hollow mountain as a flute. Each place in the world is like a hole in the flute, so somewhere along this wind tunnel there is a tie between that place and here. This is the place where the wind blowing from Serendair can be heard. Scroggins is hearing the news of his newborn son. And he might like a little privacy, as I believe he is going to send a mushy message back to his wife. None of us want to have to witness that, now, do we?” He nodded farther down the tunnel, and the boys followed him until he stopped again.
“This is where the wind from Vaarn blows, Ven,” he said quietly. “I don’t know if your father is one to stand out in the wind and listen to what it says. You can try and send a message. The odds are against it getting there, like throwing a note in a bottle into the sea. But it can’t hurt, now, can it?”
“No,” Ven said excitedly. “It can’t hurt.”
“Good. Keep it short, about as long as a gust of wind takes.” He nodded farther down the passageway. “Let’s move out of the way, Char.”
Ven closed his eyes, listening to the voices on the wind. He cleared his throat nervously and spoke.
“To Pepin Polypheme—Father, this is Ven. I’m alive.” He coughed. “Er—sorry about the ship.”
The soldier had begun chanting his name again, and Scroggins appeared.
“All right if I head up now, sir?” he called to Oliver.
“Aye,” the captain replied. “Take Mighty Marius back with you and get the boat ready. We’ll be up in a minute.” He turned and tromped quickly down the tunnel into the dark.
Char tugged at Ven’s sleeve. “You wanna go back up? Or down with the captain?”
“Is there any question?” Ven said. “Down! C’mon!”
They hurried after the captain, into deeper places where only ferns and moss grew now.
At the very bottom of the cave was a small pond filled with moving silver water, surrounded only by glowing moss. Ven thought back to the conch shell and realized that this was where the crown of the shell would be. Oliver was crouched over it, looking down into the water.
“This spring is fed by ice deep below,” he said softly. “Ice left over from the earliest days of the world.” He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a small flask, carved from what looked like crystal. He pulled out the stopper and poured a thin stream of blue water into the moss, then dipped the flask into the silver spring. He drew it back quickly, stoppered it again, then put the flask back in his pocket, rubbing his hands together to warm them up.
“All right, gentlemen,” he said briskly, “let’s get back to the ship.”
“Captain,” Ven said as he and Char followed Oliver up the pathway into the light again, “I thought you said we weren’t to take anything from the island.”
“This is a trade I’ve been making with the place for a long while, lad,” the captain replied, not looking back as they headed down through the odd forest toward the shore. “This place needs the water I bring it. It comes from a well that the wind cannot reach, a well from before history. A form of water that is as rare as the water of this spring. That water helps keep the island alive, in some respects. In return, I take a small amount of water from the silver spring, for my own purposes.”
“What do you do with it?” Ven asked.
The captain stopped for a moment and looked back at him, then smiled.
“Enough questions for today, Ven.”
Ven was bursting with questions, but it was clear that the captain wasn’t going to answer. Instead, they walked silently, listening to the millions of voices on the wind until they reached the entrance of the tunnel at the top of the hollow mountain.
Once they stepped out into the light again, Oliver raised a hand to his eyes and looked down to the beach.
“Now, I see that Scroggins is ready to cast off. Once we’re under way, there is some lunch to be had in the sea chest he brought with him. So I hope your rowing arms are good and ready.”
Ven was trying to catch sight of the longboat, when something white hanging from a low branch of a tree caught his eye.
It was an albatross feather.
His albatross feather, with the familiar blue-green markings and a stain at the base where his hat had discolored it.
“Impossible,” he murmured, staring at it. “I lost that in the sea weeks ago.”
“By now you should realize that nothing is impossible, Ven,” Oliver said. “Though some things are unlikely. But it looks like all of us are going back with a gift from the wind.” He plucked it from the branch and helped Ven stick it back into the new cap the sailors had given him.
When they had rowed halfway back to the ship, Ven turned around to catch one last glimpse of the Floating Island, the home of the sea wind.
It was gone.
Ven did not see the captain for the rest of the day once they were pulled aboard. A crowd of passengers and some of the crew were waiting there to greet them. Or, more correctly, they were waiting to greet Marius, whom everyone suddenly remembered hearing of as the greatest soldier in the world. Ven and Char watched in amazement as one by one the men shook the soldier’s hand, awe on their faces—all except one.
Mr. Whiting, the man whose seat Ven had taken in the longboat, was staring not at Marius, but at Ven, the afternoon sun glinting off his diamond tie-tack and crisp white shirt. Ven felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.
“Unbelievable,” he muttered, trying to ignore the man’s stare, watching the passengers swirl around the newly made hero. “All he had to do was say he was famous, and now it’s so.”
“Yeah, next time we find that bloody island, I’m gonna whisper in that cave that it’s lucky to give me money,” Char said in disgust. “I suspect I will have a king’s fortune right quickly.”
They returned to their chores until sunset. The boys sat together on deck in a friendly silence, watching the stars appear one by one in the deep blue of the sky. A very bright one hung low over the horizon, rising as the evening passed.
“That’s Seren,” a deep voice said behind them. They looked up to see Oliver standing there.
“Seren?” Ven asked.
“Aye; the star the island of Serendair was named for. When it comes into view it means that it is only a short matter of time before we are home.”
Ven nodded and watched the blue-white star, the brightest he had ever seen, twinkle at the edge of the sea. A star that wasn’t even visible from his old home, so very far away.
* * *
If only I had any idea where home was now for me.
* * *
8
The Island of Serendair
* * *
Most Nain get very nervous on the water. When forced to take to the sea, they cannot wait to get back on dry land again. I once saw Dalton kiss the ground after he returned from an Inspection. I never understood this until I caught my first sight of Serendair.
Then I got nervous.
In the time since my rescue, I had come to feel at home on the sea. Climbing the mast had shaken the sea-shakes out of me, and now I felt like I could happily spend my life on a ship’s deck, sailing the wide world. So when the peaks of the northern islands came into sight, purple in the morning sun, instead of enjoying their beauty, all I wanted to do was be sick over the side.
Because we were coming to land. And once on land, I would have to face going home.
And face my father.
* * *
BALATRON! HO, TO PORT!” CAME THE SHOUT FROM THE CROW’S nest.
Ven looked quickly off the left side of the ship. It was still just before daybreak, and the sky was still gray. He couldn’t see anything in the morni
ng haze, so he took out his jack-rule and extended the glass. He peered through the side that magnified objects far away.
In the distance he could see a mountain peak, the palest of purple, frosted with snow.
“That’s Balatron, the largest of the three northern islands off Serendair,” Bill, the first mate, said as he passed Ven on the deck. “There are two others, Briala and Querrel, a little to the south and east of it. We should be landing in Kingston day after tomorrow.”
Ven nodded, struggling to not throw up.
He scurried around the deck, finishing his tasks, until Oliver finally came to the rail. Ven paused in his mopping.
“Captain,” he said, “are we sailing north now?” The captain nodded. “I thought Serendair was to the south.”
“It is, lad,” Oliver said, “but we have to sail north a bit to avoid the grave of the Sleeping Child.”
Ven’s eyes popped open wide. “Grave? Sleeping Child?”
Oliver pointed into the distance. “Do you see how there is steam over the sea yonder? That’s the grave. Long ago, a burning star fell from the sky. The Lirin, the race of people who live in the forests and fields, called her Melita. When she fell, she hit the sea with such force that the resulting tidal wave swamped the island, taking almost half of it to the bottom with her. For a long time, Serendair was known as Halfland. The purple islands you saw this morning were mountains before the Sleeping Child fell.”
“Why is it called the Sleeping Child?” Ven asked, curiosity starting to twitch inside him.
“Because it lies there, deep beneath the waves, quiet, but burning still,” Oliver said. “Sometimes the sea above it is still as glass, so that you would never know it’s there. And sometimes it boils with angry heat. But it has been there a thousand years now, and still it shows no sign of awakening.” The captain glanced back at the sea again. “Of course, if it ever does, now—” He shuddered. “Well, that’s why we sail around it. Out of respect.”