Chapter 225: Day 224

Day 224,

If yesterday’s island was the largest we’ve come across, this is certainly the smallest.  Less an island and more like a pillar of stone about as wide as the house sticking up a few feet above the water.  Judging by the way this thing is encrusted with barnacles and algae, I don’t think it would even be that if we hadn’t happened to pass by it at low tide.

Not the most pleasant or exciting of rest stops, but we hadn’t seen anything else yet today.

What was more exciting was seeing a floating island shortly after we set out.  Not the one that we’re familiar with either.  This one was slightly smaller, more irregularly shaped, and - for lack of a better word - tilted.  Its course was stable and steady but from a distance we could tell that its top surface was at an angle.  Said course was taking it right back to where we left, and as best I could tell it passed by nearly level with the top of yesterday’s mountain.  I can’t help but feel a tinge of disappointment.  Had we left a couple hours later we might have gotten to see it up close.

Perhaps when we get back home I can pull Priscilla’s notes out of where I stashed them and figure out this one’s flight path.  I wonder if it’s the one she did her ill-fated(?) experiment on.  If so, that really would be interesting to investigate up close.

Backing up the train of thought a bit, a question occurred to me just now as I was writing:  If this “sea” is actually just contained in a giant bowl like Pat’s story about the edge of the world indicated, then how are there tides?  Tides work based on the gravitational pulls of the sun and moon pulling on the ocean as one giant interconnected planet-spanning fluid body to make it bulge in places and go thin in others.  Without that global connection bodies of water like lakes (which Pat would have me believe this “sea” really is) don’t have tides.

So either:

1. Pat’s wrong about the enclosed nature of this place and if you look somewhere other than the cardinal points he and his old outsider companion checked the ocean goes on.  Plausible.
2. Pat was right on the surface, both figuratively and metaphorically, but this sea is somehow connected to other bodies of water via underground channels.  Rather outlandish.
3. Pat intentionally lied to me.  Disturbingly plausible, but if that’s the case then why?
4. There’s an inconceivably vast mechanism somewhere artificially creating the tides by pumping truly absurd amounts of sea water in and out of our little fishbowl.  Absolutely ridiculous.  Aside from the impossible scale of such a thing, what would even be the point?  Then again, Cloud Tower exists.

And here I was thinking I’d go a day without another exis-

 

Maiko found a barnacle somewhat larger than the others and decided to try scraping it off to see if it was edible under the shell.  The banging from that was what got me up from my writing a few minutes ago.  Long story short, she got it off, it’s gooey enough on the inside that even she decided to hold off until it can be cooked to eat it, and once it was removed we realized that this pillar we’re standing on is made of metal.

Fascinating and question-raising to me, but Lin and Cass started getting uneasy and advocating to leave.  Tide was coming in anyway so we did.

I’m taking the risk of writing while on the in-motion boat at the moment because, seriously, WHAT?  I’ve had suspicions for a while now that this whole place is deliberately and artificially constructed, and that was just an argument in favor of that hypothesis.

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I’d go on more, but Lin’s getting onto me about the writing.

 

We made it.  It’s night now.  We’ve all bathed in the healing spring all in high spirits despite the afternoon’s disturbing anomaly.  On that last note, Lin and I wound up apologizing to one another for a while.  For reasons she’s not even sure of, finding out that pillar we were on was metal really upset her and put her on edge and seeing me so enthusiastic about it set her off.  Whatever that was, we’ve made up now, though it does bring to mind the reluctance of most villagers to discuss Cloud Tower.

But the spring!  I do feel better, but how much of that is magical healing properties and how much is just the relief of having a relaxing bath after five days in a rowboat remains to be seen.  At any rate we plan to stay here for a few days at least to find out.  As for exactly how long, we’ll be keeping an eye on the moon.  Maiko estimates two to three days to reach Iole’s island and we want to get to her home for shelter before the next mist night.

As for the spring itself, it’s actually two pools, one slightly higher than the other.  The higher one is the warmer of the two, nearly hot, and has a stream of bubbles constantly coming up in the center of it.  It spills out in a small waterfall no taller than I am into the lower pool, bathwater-warm, where, best as we can tell, it drains away underground.  A picturesque sight to be sure, and a welcome one to initially behold.  I look forward to seeing it in the daylight.

It was evening by the time we made landfall, and while Maiko recognized enough to be sure we were in the right place and didn’t remember anything dangerous here, she still insisted on doing a thorough scouting before we did a full unload of the boats.  By the time she was satisfied and returned with Lin to help us with the boats and lead us to the spring the sun was going down and it was near dark when I first heard that sound of softly running water.

That said, emerging from the jungle to see the twin pools illuminated by the multicolored glow of our respective lantern crystals made for a wondrous first impression.  The glint off the surface of the water contrasted with the shadowed edges of the upper pool was entrancing, mystical even.

We’d been planning on properly setting up camp a short ways away before getting in, but upon finally seeing the first major destination of our journey we were eager enough that we did little more than find a clear spot to drop things in roughly the positions we’d be wanting them later.  And then-

I’m being encouraged to put my journal down and engage in conversation again.  And I should.  I really couldn’t have made it here without them, nor would I have wanted to.  Would have been nice if Vernon could have made it though.  Maybe another time.

Well, this is as good a stopping spot as any for the night.  The lot of us relaxing in the spring together can be easily enough imagined.

 

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