Day 51,
Morning thought: One of these days I ought to go check out the ruined cathedral again. See if there’s any more to it than that main hall and catacomb. Side rooms, remnants of attached buildings and courtyards, that sort of thing. Anything else that might shed more light on what was actually practiced there.
I went looking for Pat shortly after getting into the Village this morning. I found him taking a walk down on the beach. Greeting him, I half-jokingly asked if he was looking for more washed-up outsiders. He chuckled and said that, no, the conditions weren’t right for that. And besides I ought to count myself lucky that I arrived where I did. I could have woken up on the other end of the island with nothing around but jungle. When I asked what the right conditions were, he merely shook his head and told me that when you’ve been around as long as he has you get a feel for it.
Sensing I wasn’t going to get a real answer to that turn of phrase today, I changed the subject and asked if he minded my joining him on his stroll. For living on an island I’ve spent remarkably little time at the beach.
He welcomed the companionship, as always, and we walked for a time, stopping occasionally to look at a sun-basking lizard, or a bird, or a tidepool, or a fisher out on their boat. All the while Pat reminisced about past walks he’d taken like this and the people he’d taken them with. A grandchild who’d wanted to make one of those lizards a pet. His then-future wife collecting seashells with him. A young man trying to take his mind off a romance that hadn’t worked out. A friend climbing on a rock and dramatically proclaiming his intent to sail out and explore.
But eventually he stopped and said that I hadn’t come out here just to listen to an old man ramble on about his past. Settling on a rock and leaning forward on his cane he told me to go on and ask whatever it was I wanted to ask him.
Somewhat chagrined at my motivation for spending time with the old man being pointed out like that, I asked if shades could appear on floating islands.
He said that wasn’t the question he was expecting, and went on to say that the shades appear where there’s mist, earth, and people. Whether it’s where people are now or where people were once. There’s probably not been a shade on a floating island in years, but if I was planning on staying up on one for a little while one or two might show up. And incidentally, being out on a boat is safe from them too.
However, if it was the island that most often passes over the Village and docks at Siren Overlook (yes, he knows about that even if most folks these days have forgotten) that I’m looking to visit then there is a house up there. Whether it’s in proper condition to keep the mists out is another matter, but sometimes just viewing a place as being a home is enough to keep the shades out.
And that house was a home at one time. To an outsider named Priscilla (it was probably Priscilla anyway, the names run together with the years) and her husband (whose name Pat really did forget). She’d been fascinated with the floating islands and spent much of her life charting their paths, tracking down places she might be able to board them (sometimes not so much a docking site as a place where she could get close enough to jump and/or climb on while it was still in motion), and often leaving behind campsites and shelters for future visits. Oftentimes she’d use them as transport to, from, and between the more traditional water-bound islands.
Eventually Priscilla chose the island that passes closest to the Village to make a permanent home. It started out as a modest cabin just for her, and then her husband as well, but over the years she and her circle of friends expanded it to a veritable mansion where they’d all stay together for months at a time, one or two of the semi-permanent guests coming or going whenever it docked at Siren Overlook. As time went on though, the guests left more often than they arrived, until it was just the two of them alone up there. No kids, although not for lack of trying. Every time the two of them did come down during those social years they’d make a visit to the Blossom Field, but to no avail.
Still, even in their later years when they’d stopped coming down altogether they could often be seen standing at the edge waving at the villagers below as they passed by, sometimes even tossing down a folded paper glider with a message or poem or drawing. The floating island wasn’t so overgrown in those days.
And then one day someone realized that no one had seen the couple in a long time. No shouted down greetings or flying messages. Eventually, someone talked the Village doctor at the time to come with them to check on Priscilla and her husband, but when they arrived, the two were nowhere to be found. There was plenty of speculation of course – maybe they’d fallen off, or gotten sick, or stranded on another island – but nothing was ever confirmed. Not even when a series of search parties were dropped off on each of the outlying islands the floating island passed over. The most popular theory was that some ill fate had befallen one half of the couple and the other stayed by their side to let the shades take them both together.
With no descendants to claim it, the house was left empty and abandoned, save for a few close friends that went back to reclaim various mementos, and with time, was mostly forgotten. Pat ended the story saying that he doubts anyone other than himself and Theo still even remembers Priscilla.
After that somber note, and a moment of silence Pat perked back up and asked for a hand standing back up, sore and stiff from sitting on the rock so long telling the story. We both have things to do with our day, he said, even if it doesn’t look like it to other people.
After walking the elder back to his house and returning to the archive I made some rough calculations. I’m no expert at predicting moon phases, and mist nights might be off one or two days from them anyway, but near as I can tell the next couple of mist nights are probably going to be right around the next two island docking days. And then the third mist night from now will probably be a couple days after the third docking day from now, so we’d almost certainly get a mist night while up there if we go then.
If this upcoming mist night hits before the next island docking (and judging by the moon lately, I suspect it will) then that might be the ideal time for the trip. We might get a mist night on our last day or so, but by that time we might have been there long enough for Priscilla’s house to be safe. Then again, since the second island docking will be first thing in the morning, if the mist night is the night before docking, the shades might not be fully gone in the window where we have to disembark. Or if the mist night ends up being on docking day, the morning mists might make getting off hazardous just from a visibility standpoint, although they’re not as bad.
But if we go with that second cycle the reverse becomes a risk; a mist night directly before means we might miss our window to board, and a mist night on boarding day could mean shades on our first night and no guarantee of shelter. Which would be bad. On the other hand, we could get lucky with the timing on that second window and have the preceding mist night early enough to not be an issue, and the following mist night not happen until after we get back. And then there’s the question of if we could even commit to a plan (which entails getting Cass’s parents on board with her being out on a floating island with the possibility of shades for almost two weeks) and get supplies together in the next five days.
… And I’m basing my travel plans around the odds of spirits of the dead (or something) rising up and dragging me off to the underworld. How did I get to this point? Actually, looking at this math, there was probably a mist night shortly before I washed up. Is that one of the “conditions” Pat mentioned? Am I a shade? Was I brought here by shades? Was I dead at one point?
Okay, this is starting to freak me out too much to think about. Going to read a bit from a book I took from the archive to get my mind off the existential dread.
Was lying in bed and it occurred to me that the spot Pat stopped and told me to ask my question was where I initially woke up. Not where he found me, because I’d stumbled a little ways down the beach by then, but where I first opened my eyes. Then again, maybe I hadn’t gotten as far from that spot as I thought I had when the old man first spotted me. I was pretty out of it at the time. But either way, the coincidence is uncanny enough to make me question if it even was coincidental. Was it some hint about whatever question he’d expected me to ask? I’d gotten wrapped up enough in the story about Priscilla that I forgot to ask what he’d been expecting me to say.
This is going to keep me awake all night, isn’t it?
