Chapter Forty Seven – Book of Days

"Oh, Paetsu, I completely forgot."

She slipped out of bed and disappeared down beside it, rummaging underneath. He sat up and looked over the side at her. Only her white back was visible, and her bare bottom, sticking up. He wondered what she was doing.

"Here, hm, it's heavier than I remembered."

She dragged something out from under the bed. She knelt up. He wasn't watching what she was doing, he was just watching her. Lifting it with difficulty she heaved the box up onto the bed. It was a large casket, as big as her wicker laundry basket. She plopped it down and from the bedside cupboard took out a key.

"Here. I suppose you should have it. It can be your second Suethehlin gift if you want."

She knelt on the bed and he pushed the covers off himself and knelt up with her. The ornate box had a keyhole, he opened it.

The book. The one she and her friends had taken from the library under the cliff when she was a child. He reached into the box and lifted it out. It was huge. The same dimensions as the four or five he had brought out of the forest but much fatter, several inches thick. Six inches thick. It weighed several pounds. Sheeta slid the box out of the way and Pazu put the book on the bed.

"It's enormous! Why did you bring such a big one?"
"Oh, you know. Kids. We thought the biggest one we could find would be the best one. And it has pictures in."
"How did you get it home?"
"We just took turns. It was hard work I can tell you."
"I can imagine."
"We built a sort of sledge out of tree branches and dragged it."
"That was very resourceful of you."
"Remember the oldest of us was fourteen, a man. He made the raft thing."

He opened the strange glass-that-was-not-glass cover and flipped the peculiar thin soft flexible pages. There was a title page and then lots of columns of small script in a list. He turned the pages. He saw a picture that puzzled him. It was a man but he had no face, his head was big and round like a bowl and he had no eyes, nose or mouth. He wore a tight fitting set of overalls and out of his chest three cables hung. They were connected to the front of his overalls by universal joints. He'd seen similar flexible couplings on the Ravine's railway engines, vacuum brake pipes or steam heating pipes. These were similar. Why would a workman in overalls need steam pipes attached to his clothing? And what was it with the man's face?

More pages, then he came across a picture of a flying machine, but it was nothing like his father's, or any of the warships he'd seen last autumn, or Dola's flaptors, or even Goliath. It was small and three men were sat in it. It was slim and long and shaped like a pencil. It had no gasbags so must be a heavier than air craft yet it had no propeller either. The men seemed to sit in a cockpit but somehow inside the thing, like they had a window over the heads, a hatchway.

With growing interest he flipped more. Then he came across something truly startling. It was a flying island, he could tell it was because clouds were depicted around it, above and below. But it wasn't like Laputa because there was a whole city on it with houses, domes of meeting halls, chimneys of workshops. And most amazing of all there were fields and woods and hills and farms and even a lake. It was like a complete floating country. He was stunned. What size crystal would be needed to make this fly?

"I need to get dressed. I want to try and check some of this against the dictionary."
"I'll make breakfast."

Sheeta got off the bed and put a long shirt on.

--I--
---o-o-oOo-o-o---
I I

He put his pencil aside and rubbed his aching wrist, took a sip of cold tea. It was late afternoon. He'd been sat before the fire in the parlour all day. He rubbed his eyes and his aching shoulder. He was stuck. He'd made the discovery that he couldn't count in the Oistrakh-Auera numbering system. He'd come across a section of the cuneiform script that seemed to be talking about the flying islands but there were some markings that he thought were numbers, yet he didn't know the common alphabet conversion of Gondoan numbers. Sheeta had taught him a lot but for some reason they had both forgotten to teach him how to count. He got up and went into the kitchen and through it to the back door. He looked out at the garden. Sheeta was pulling up winter vegetables.

"Are you busy? Have you got a few minutes?"
"Nearly done. I'll just put these in to soak and be right with you."

She wiped her hands and sat next to him at his folding drawing table.

"Here, the title: 'Book of Days'. And another word underneath. It's a history probably. These little lists of figures at the beginning are dates I think, numbers, years. But I can't work those out yet."
"Whose history is it?"
"Haven't got that far. But it seems to be about just one island. This one."

He showed her the picture he'd found that morning. At the bottom of the painting (or was it a photograph? He couldn't decide) was a series of markings that he had managed to translate but the word made no sense. In Gondoan it read 'Ahmtuillian' and he'd found out that this was an ore, a type of mineral from which metals could be extracted. Against the name was a set of words that he felt sure were numbers but he couldn't translate these.

"That's on the title page," she piped up, eagerly.
"It is?"
"Yes, those two cuneiform characters are the same as the ones on the front."

They checked. They were. The title of the book was "Ahmtuillian's Book of Days".

"How do you count in Oistrakh-Auera?"
"We only have the numbers one to ten and repeat them as needed. So we'd say eighteen as 'ten and eight', thirty as 'three tens'. Fifty eight would be 'five tens and eight', see?"
"Yes. And a hundred?"
"Oh, sorry, yes. It gets messy after a hundred, so our word for hundred is hrullendt. It literally means 'all the tens'. After that it just becomes dhu or great or many."
"A thousand?"
"Yes. I suppose so."
"Count me through it."
"Toelle, palo, temse, furten, hiven, shriden (she pronounced the letter 'i' in these two as an 'ee'), sheptre, aout (she pronounced it 'oot'), nhelth, hrulle (this word came out as 'her-ruler')."
"That's one to ten?"
"Hm."
"So…"

He flicked the pages of the dictionary. It took a while. He scribbled notes. Chewed his pencil, compared the cuneiform symbols to Oistrakh-Auera words. It got dark and Sheeta got up and lit an oil lamp, put wood on the fire. Pazu finished.

"hrulle ue hiven – ten and five – shriden hrulle – six tens – sheptre – seven. That's, hm, fifteen sixty seven. Just a bit over three hundred years ago."

He scratched his head.

"Well that can't be right. The flying islands came down over seven hundred years ago."

Sheeta gave him an odd look.

"We don't use the same years as you, you know. Not the same calendar."
"You don't?"
"No. Didn't I say so before?"
"I don't think so. But then we've not talked about dates and years have we?"
"For you it's 1878 isn't it?"(1)
"Yes, well, 1879 now, as of three days ago."
"To me it's the year five thousand eight hundred and seven."

Pazu stared at her, his jaw dropped open.

"You're playing about?"
"No, honest. If you don't believe me, go and ask Councillor Kamaesa."
"Five thousand eight hundred and seven?"
"Yes, we count from the discovery of the levitation properties of the crystal. Before that we can recount another several thousand years, I don't recall the details. Kamaesa might."
"Well that means…"

Pazu did a quick sum on a scrap of paper. He put the pencil down and rested his head in his hands. His head suddenly felt very funny, light and fluffy like he would soon get a headache.

"This picture shows the flying island Ahmtuillian as it was four thousand two hundred and forty years ago."
"Yes. Does this surprise you?"
"Yes! Of course! I was always thinking in terms of seven hundred years ago when the flying islands came down. I never thought how long they were up there…"
"Oh, yes, ages."
"So this book…wow, Sheeta - it's ancient."

Suddenly Pazu realized what he'd found. A society dating back thousands of years earlier than he'd ever considered. And they had heavier than air flight that used some sort of gas or air propulsion because there were no propellers, and some kind of air or heating hoses in their work suits. Perhaps if it was very cold somewhere their suits were steam heated? And that meant steam engines thousands of years ago. In the library under the forest was all manner of fantastic information. He had to get back there and recover it, translate it. His head began to spin.

"What is this bit about?" Sheeta asked.

They looked. For a while it made no sense, then Pazu realized the text was describing the number of islands, of which Ahmtuillian was one.

"What is a thousand?"
"We don't have that word – just dhu. Many."
"Well this is sixty again - shriden hrulle. That kind of makes sense. You said there were about fifty flying islands. But then we have 'dhu' for many. Many sixties."

He frowned.

"It's sixty thousand," Sheeta had a strange tone in her voice, almost like fear.
"No," said Pazu, "it must mean 'great' in this context. Sixty great islands. The four capital cities, the castles, being small."
"No."
"How come?"
"The way it's written. The dhu comes before the sixty. With Maerth-dhu and taeg-dhu and taemo-dhu the 'great' comes after the noun or statement, making it "wolf great", or "idiot great" or "thanks very much". Here the 'great' is in front of the number, so a great sixty, or a thousand sixties."

He looked at her. Her face was pale and he knew his must be too. She put a hand up over her mouth.

"Oh my god. Paetsu. There were sixty thousand islands."
"This can't be right. It's talking about this island, Ahmtuillian."
"Ahmtuillian is a workshop island," she said, "a working city. Of the Hand."
"Only one of the four kingdoms."
"So if there were four equal sized kingdoms…"
"Two hundred and forty thousand islands…"

He stood up. Her hand still covered her mouth in surprise and wonder. In shock. He put his hands on her upper arms.

"Sheeta I have to spend longer translating this but it looks like there were once a quarter of a million islands."
"Where are they all now then? They all came to earth. Are they under the sea?"
"I don't know. If Ahmtuillian is a normal sized island then they would make a huge landmass if they all lay side by side."

Something odd was occurring inside Pazu but he refused to entertain the thought, it was just too crazy.

"Wait here."

She ran out of the room and went upstairs. In a moment she was back, carrying a book.

"One of my poetry books. I know it's here somewhere. Yes, here. This is an ancient poem, very well known. Listen:

I cannot stand upon the sea
For that is all there is near me.
A world of water how can that be?
There needs be land, make them see.

The islands are swimming in the air,
Make them change, make them care.
Their load too great, none can bear,
Make of them a land, wide and fair.

Men are distant, each a hawk.
They fly to meet, they fly to talk.
Join up the lands, let no man baulk,
Across their borders let them walk.

We talk of war, we push, we shove,
But peace we crave, fly forth the dove.
If ever flying in skies above,
How can the nations ever love?"

Pazu turned to her.

"Bring that book. Come with me."

He went in the kitchen and through the door into the grain tower. He took for them animal pelt coats and dressed her and himself. He led her up the internal ladder past the drying bins and up through the trapdoor. They climbed out onto the roof of the tower. The sky was glowering and dull, it looked like snow again. To their right the black deep lake and across it the mountains just visible in the darkness, their white flanks shining. In front of them the river lay in its valley, the silent snowy woodland glistening in the faint moonlight that came through the overcast. To their left, although they couldn't see it in the dark, the hill where three villages had stood three days ago and seen the sun come up. Behind them, the firelight, the lamps and the sounds of their village.

"Read again," he said.
"I cannot stand upon the sea
For that is all there is near me.
A world of water how can that be?
There needs be land, make them see."

He looked out over the land, as far as he could see. He knew then that this had once sailed in the air. All of it. Even the lake and the mountains.

"Sheeta, the whole world is made up of fallen islands. Before the flying nations came to earth the world was just ocean. The islands came down, no, they were flown down, manoeuvered down and joined together and became the continents."
"My head is going to burst. Surely then, that means…"
"Yes. Everyone alive today is descended from the flying nations."
"And all the countries, including Numenaor, and the Ravine are islands."
"Where are the crystals? They must be huge to lift such large landmasses."
"Deep underground I suppose."

Pazu stood at the crenellations of the tower and watched the night. Sheeta came next to him, slipped her arm though his and they leaned together, their minds in turmoil. For Pazu something suddenly jumped out at him, something important.

"Gondoa is irrelevant then. The Sky and Soil thing is nothing. Flying people all over the world have embraced industry and science and flight again already, the only place that hasn't is… here. In Gondoa."
"Where I live."
"I think that might be relevant."
"I wear the only existing royal crystal. I am the last living queen."
"It's you, Sheeta, it's you. Something that royalty is doing."
"Not me Paetsu, the stone. The stone is alive. It doesn't want science and flight, it wants a sleepy rural farming nation."
"Why? I don't get this at all."
"Unless we're wrong."

It began to snow, slow, fat, fluttering flakes. Sheeta laughed and stuck out her tongue and tried to catch them. Her arm remained tucked in his, and Pazu, as a flake came close and her tongue reached for it, pulled her so she missed it. He did this a few times until in mock anger she slapped his arm away. They stood and watched the snow. At her throat the stone fluttered also, glowing blue like the moon.

They wondered what they had discovered, but even without grasping any detail, they knew it was important.

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14 April 2007

(1) In the movie, if you look carefully, there is a date on the photograph that Pazu's father took of Laputa. That date is July 1868. Pazu being sixteen, I have set this story ten years after that.

For author notes about Chapter Forty Seven, please see my forum (click on my pen name)