Chapter 203: Home
The sea was flat in a way land could never be — an absolute flatness, as if the surface had been pressed there by a hand and told to stay.
Without Maggie, there was no one to ask how far the island was. The sailors had their charts and their compasses and their periodic conversations with the crow’s nest, and Ashes had the sound of hull against water and the knowledge that the answer was soon.
The teak board behind her gave its soft complaint — weight, footstep, the particular frequency of someone who had spent enough years at sea to walk without announcing themselves. Almost.
“I didn’t expect you to live in a place like Sleeping Island,” Captain Jack said, settling at the railing beside her. His blindfold was a sun-faded black, the leather gone soft from years of salt air. “Beautiful from a distance, but when the tide comes in, most of it goes under. A basin, not an island. No sensible settlement.”
“Crescent Moon Bay doesn’t want us,” Ashes said.
“Crescent Moon Bay would take you. People there have more sense about witches than the mainlanders.”
“Most captains won’t carry our people. You know that.”
Jack scratched the back of his head under his hat, acknowledging the point. “All the same. Sleeping Island’s third largest in the archipelago, and that’s a meaningless distinction if two-thirds of it floods.”
“The witches are best at altering nature,” she said. She was watching the horizon. “And that island is ours now. A place becomes home when you’ve made it yours — not when you find it already suitable.”
“Philosophy,” Jack said, in the tone of a man who found philosophy interesting when it didn’t cost him anything.
“How long since you last visited?”
“A month, roughly. Delivered a group of young women and a hold full of pearl rice. My sailors spent the whole crossing pretending they weren’t watching them.” He shook his head. “Young men on long voyages are like volcanoes. I made sure nobody touched the wine.”
Ashes let the second half of his report go unremarked. “A month is enough time for significant changes. When you see Sleeping Island again, Captain, you may want to revise your estimate.”
“Monkey!” Jack straightened suddenly, leaning over the rail. “Something at the mast!”
The sailor who responded to Monkey climbed the ratlines with the casual efficiency of someone who lived at altitude and found the descent to deck level an inconvenience. From the crow’s nest, glass raised: “Captain, there’s an island ahead.”
“There’s no island scheduled here.” Jack consulted his compass. “We’re not at Sleeping Island yet.”
“I’m looking at it right now, Captain, I swear —”
“Your oaths are worth less than the rope you’re sitting on. Let me see.” A pause while he stared. “Three gods.” Very quietly. Then, louder: “That’s Sleeping Island.”
The Charming Beauty came in slowly, as if the captain needed time to believe what the distance had been hiding.
Sleeping Island rose from the sea as a sheer-walled structure — a basin enclosed by a vertical ring of worked stone, the walls climbing several meters above the high-tide mark. The original coastline was gone. What had been a low island that flooded at tide had been enclosed and elevated: the rim of the wall was the new shoreline, and within it the original island sat, protected.
Jack stood at the bow and said nothing for a long time.
Ashes had grown up with witches. The scale of the wall was still impressive.
A pier had been built at the wall’s midpoint, accessible at sea level. On it stood a small girl with both arms up in greeting.
“Lady Ashes! You came back!” Molly’s voice carried the specific satisfaction of someone who has been waiting and intended for you to know it was worthwhile. “Uncle Jack, it’s exactly as she said, isn’t it?”
“You win,” Jack told Ashes, under his breath.
Molly summoned her magic servant — a pale blue sphere with arms that reshaped themselves to purpose — and loaded it with a dozen grain sacks in thirty seconds. She looked at the sailors watching her and said: “Let’s go.”
The stairs to the interior spiraled up the wall’s inner face. At the top, Ashes understood the full design: the island’s interior sat below sea level, sheltered by the ring of stone, protected from flood tide and storm surge both. What had been a temporary settlement of tents and salvaged wood was now a collection of buildings that seemed to grow from the ground rather than being placed on it — Lotus’s work, the stone fusing with the soil as if it had always been there.
Familiar faces at every turn. Nods. Raised hands. The particular warmth of a community that had learned to expect return.
Homeland. The word had weight here that it did not have anywhere else.
Tilly’s house had no locks.
This was intentional. Ashes knew this in the way she knew most things about the fifth princess — not because she had been told, but because she had watched.
She went in through the vestibule, turned into the hall, and found the familiar back, grey-haired and straight, looking at something outside the rear window.
Ashes padded forward on quiet feet, reached over Tilly’s shoulders, and covered her eyes with both hands.
“I felt you at the door,” Tilly said, perfectly calm. “I have always felt you at the door.”
The extraordinary’s gift: an awareness of magic in others, and between two extraordinaries, something more direct than awareness — a thread, fine and persistent, that the distance of a sea crossing could suppress but not sever.
Ashes lowered her hands and put her arms around Tilly from behind instead.
“I’m back,” she said.
“I know.” Tilly put her hands over Ashes’ arms and held them there. “Welcome home.”
The word was simple and exact and Ashes let it land without adding to it.
Outside, the sea was flat and the walls of Sleeping Island were pale in the afternoon light.
Chapter 203 Home
The sea was like a blue earth, only more flat.
If Maggie had been here, she would be constantly chirping and she could also ask her about how far it still was to the island, nowadays, the only sound she heard were the sea’s waves crashing against the sides of the ship. Although hearing that for a long time became tedious, for the crew, it was actually a lucky beat, it meant that today was a day good for sailing.
Oh, now there is another one, Ashes thought. Under the pressure of a foot, the old teak board issued a slight squeak sound, telling her that someone was coming.
“I did not expect that you actually lived in a place like the Sleeping Island,” a white-haired old man stepped to her side, his hands resting on the railing, “That place, although it looks great, once the tide comes, most of the land will be flooded by the sea, it’s not suitable for a settlement. Why not live in Crescent Moon Bay? It is the second largest Island of the Fjords, there are still many uninhabited spaces there.
One Eye Jack, the Captain of ‘The Charming Beauty’, as his name suggested, he had a blindfold on his face which completely concealed his left eye. He was also one of the few Captains that were willing to transport goods for the witches, even though the people in the Fjords didn’t hate witches, unlike the inhabitants on the mainland, but they also didn’t love dealing with outsiders.
“Not everyone is willing to deal with witches like you are,” Ashes smiled, “The sea will indeed flood sleeping Island, but it is precisely because of this, that as the third largest island of the Fjords, is still a deserted island.
“The third largest island doesn’t mean that it also offers the third largest amount of living area,” Captain Jack just shrugged his shoulders. “If you
cannot live on it, its size doesn’t matter, for example, the Searing Flame Island.”
“What the witches are best at, is altering nature,” she said earnestly, “Moreover, now where the island has became our home. As long as we don’t have to face the suppression of the Church, we can create an entirely different world there, a… ‘New World’.” She paused for a moment. ”How long has it been since the last time you were on Sleeping Island?”
The Captain took off his hat and scratched the back of his head, “It’s been almost a month now. Last time I had to deliver a batch of witches and a warehouse full of pearl rice. To tell you the truth, when they saw the group of young women frolicking on the ship, the expression on the faces of my sailors was only too foolish. You know how difficult it is for a stripeling to sail over the sea, they are similar to a volcano that can erupt at any time, but fortunately I stopped them from drinking. Otherwise, my beloved ship may have met with a disaster.”
Ashes automatically ignored the latter half of his words, “A month is enough time to make radical changes, Captain. I bet that when you see Sleeping Island again, it will be quite differently than from the Island you remember.”
“Is that so?” Jack whistled. “Then I will look forward to it… Wait a minute, what’s that?” He leaned over the side of the ship, trying to look ahead, “Monkey! There is something in front of the mast!”
The sailor, known as Monkey, used his hands and feet to nimbly climbed to the crow’s nest at the top of the mast, and then lifted the observation mirror, “Captain, that should be an island!
“Island? What nonsense are you speaking, “Captain took out his compass and glanced at it,” We still aren’t near Sleeping Island, but except for it, what other island could it be?”
“But it really is an island, Captain, I swear!”
“To me your vow is as useful as a fart, let me take a look,” Jack said, taking off his hat.
“No, no, Captain, do not you come up here, up here, the wind is very strong,” after observing for a while, Monkey continued, “By the Three Gods!” He shouted, incredulously, “I know what it is, it really is Sleeping Island! It’s become taller!”
…
The Charming Beauty slowly approached the pier of the Sleeping Island, and the boatman could scarcely believe his eyes.
The towering island was similar to a small mountain which stood out above the sea level. The mountain wall was perfectly straight and precipitous, distancing the top of it by at least several feet from the sea level.
Ashes, who arrived at the island for the first time showed a much calmer reaction than most of the other people, which was in the eyes of Captain Jack were the very symbol of calm and self-confidence.
“You win,” he sighed. “I never expected that you would be able to make an island rise. It is not surprising that the bunch of madmen in the Church hate your witches after all, your abilities make you almost comparable to the gods.”
“Uncle Jack, it’s not like you said, that the island has risen up,” a young girl that stood at the pier to welcome them laughingly said,” we just built a ‘wall’ around Sleeping Island, if you wait for a moment, you can come with us and take a look to understand it.” Finished speaking, she turned to Ashes and bowed her head in salute, “You have finally come back, Lady Tilly has been talking about you for a long time.”
Ashes touched her head, “You don’t need to be so polite, Molly. I will have to trouble you with carrying my stuff.”
“Leave it to me,” said the girl, patting her chest.
After the sailors had moved the grain from the cargo hold to the pier, Molly summoned her magic servant, a light blue sphere with two arms that could be transformed at will. It took hold of a dozen bags of grain with its arm. Soon
after, the arm turned into a net, and was firmly grabbed by the other arm while the sphere floated in the air. Then she proudly said, “Let’s go.”
“Oh, that’s truly a convenient ability,” the captain slapped his fist in his palm. “Men, have you seen it? A work for which so many of you are needed, was done by a little girl.”
The constructed pier of the Island reached to the half the wall’s height, if they ever wanted to step on the top and enter the island, the entire group of people would have to climb the flight of steps which circled along the wall. Ashes instantly understood the idea behind “building a wall circling the island.”
Instead of raising the island, they had rather raised the outline of the island, turning the entire Sleeping Island into a basin surrounded by a thick edge. And this edge, which circled the island, was the so-called wall Molly had spoken off. At the inner side of the wall, there were many stairs leading down it and nestled below them laid Sleeping Island.
“This… is incredible,” Captain Jack smacked his lips. “You have turned this island into a city, just imagine how it would look like at high tide, my God, you would be living below sea level!”
“It’s indeed as you have said,” Molly was unable to mask her grin, “Because of this, we also have two docks, one at the bottom of the ocean, and one at sea level. Of course, you can also say that one is at sea level and the other is in midair.”
Coming to the center of the island, they came across of all kinds of houses. Unlike those traditional wood or brick houses, these buildings seemed like the wall as if they had just grown out of the ground, fusing the body of the house together with the ground.
There is no doubt that, together with the wall, they count as a Lotus masterpieces.
“Sister Ashes, the house at the most northern end is Lady Tilly’s palace, I will take the Captain with me to complete the delivery, you don’t need to
come along for this, it would be for the best if you first went to go see the Lady,” the little girl waved in the direction of the path.
Ashes nodded, and said goodbye to the two, quickly following the path to the North. Along the way she saw a lot of familiar faces, they all either bowed in greeting or waved at her with a smile. The homeland of the witches, the word grew brighter and brighter within Ashes’ heart, filling her whole body with strength.
The founder of the homeland was Tilly Wimbledon, the Queen of Witches.
And contrary to the Royal Palace, her spacious house had no guards in it, and there were also no locks on the doors. Allowing Ashes to walk through the vestibule, and directly step into the hall, only to see a familiar back in front of her.
She quietly walked on tiptoe to behind her counterpart and blindfolding the gray-haired woman’s eyes with her hands.
“I perceived you as soon as you reached the door,” the other laughed. “Do not forget how I picked you out of the crowd to begin with.”
The extraordinary had the ability to sense the magic in others, and between two extraordinaries this feeling was even stronger. This was because their magic was connected with one another, like an invisible fetter, firmly connecting Tilly and her together.
“I’m back,” Ashes said softly.
“En,” Tilly replied cheerfully, “Welcome home.”