Monday
I want to say that I woke up on Day Two with a clear head and a solid plan. I want to say that, but I cannot, because what actually happened is that I woke up face-down on a sleeping mat with a line pressed into my cheek from the woven edge of it, and for about four seconds I thought everything was normal.
Those four seconds were the best four seconds of the whole day.
Then I heard Rowley outside saying "Good morning!" to someone in a very loud and enthusiastic voice, and I heard wings, and I remembered everything.
I lay there for a minute with my face still pressed into the mat, running through the possibilities one more time.
Option one: this was a dream. I was still going with this one. It was by far the most logical explanation and I was not ready to let it go.
Option two: some kind of gas leak. I had heard that certain gases could cause hallucinations. Maybe there was a leak at home and we were all unconscious in our beds right now and the paramedics were on their way.
Option three: something actually impossible was happening, which I was not accepting.
I got up and went outside.
The village in the morning was something else. I will give it that.
The light was already that warm golden color, same as the day before, and the air was cool and smelled like rain even though there were no clouds anywhere near the island. The giant trees had this soft haze around their upper branches, not fog exactly, more like the air itself was slightly blurred up there. Little particles drifted through the light, slow and steady, like dust but glowing very faintly, and they moved in directions that did not match the wind.
I stood at the edge of the platform outside our building and looked out at the whole village waking up. The winged people moved between the elevated walkways, some walking, some gliding short distances with their wings half-open. A group of kids were chasing something small and fast between the trees below. An older woman sat on a high platform doing something with long pieces of woven material and not looking at her hands at all, like she had done it ten thousand times.
Everything looked like a painting. That is the only way I can describe it. The kind of painting that hangs in a dentist office where you stare at it for long enough that it stops looking real.
I pulled my cheese pajama top away from my chest and looked at it.
I was still in my cheese pajamas.
This was going to be a problem.
Mom had already connected with several of the villagers by the time I found her. She was sitting on a low platform near the center of the village with two winged women and Rowley, and they were doing some kind of exchange where everyone pointed at things and said words in their own language and then the other person repeated the word.
Rowley was extremely good at this game.
"That is a tree," Mom said, pointing at a tree.
One of the winged women said a word I could not catch.
"Tree," Rowley said, pointing at the same tree. He said it exactly the way they said their word for it, with the same slight upward tone at the end, and the woman made the laughing sound again.
I watched this for a minute.
"Can they understand us at all?" I asked.
"Not yet," Mom said, in the cheerful voice she uses when she is pretending a situation is fine. "But we are working on it! Come sit down, Greg."
I did not sit down. Sitting down would mean accepting that this was a language-learning activity and not an emergency.
"Has anyone thought about the fact that we need to get home?" I said. "Like, at all? Has that come up?"
Mom gave me the look. The specific look she gives me when she thinks I am being negative in a situation that she has decided to treat as positive.
"Greg, we do not know how to get home yet," she said. "So in the meantime we are going to be respectful guests and learn what we can about this place."
"That is not a plan," I said. "That is just describing what is currently happening."
Mom pointed at me and said my name to the winged women like she was introducing me. They looked at me. I was still in cheese pajamas. One of them said something and the other one made a small sound that might have been polite amusement.
I went to find Dad instead.
Dad was at the edge of the island, which I want to be clear is a place I am not comfortable being, because the edge of a floating sky island drops into open air with nothing below it for what looks like forever. Dad was standing about two feet from that edge and looking down with an expression I could not read.
"Dad," I said. "We need a plan."
"I know," he said. He did not look up.
"Mom is doing vocabulary lessons."
"I know," he said.
"Rodrick is still asleep."
"I know."
Dad was quiet for a moment. Below the island the clouds shifted slowly in big white masses. Somewhere far below and to the left I could see the edge of another island, smaller than ours, with a thin rope bridge stretching between them.
"I have been trying to find the edge of the whole thing," Dad said finally. "To see if there is a way down. A real way down, I mean. Not falling."
"And?"
"There are more islands than I thought," he said. "And the bridges go in every direction. But I cannot see the ground anywhere. Or water. Or anything below the clouds."
That was not comforting information.
"So we are just stuck here," I said.
"For now," Dad said.
He finally looked at me. He clocked the cheese pajamas without saying anything, which was actually worse than if he had said something. Then he looked back at the clouds.
"Stay away from the edges, Greg."
I was already backing away from the edge as fast as I could without looking scared.
Here is something that I think needs to be documented because it was humiliating and it is important for the historical record.
…
Some time later
The winged village kid with the blue-gray wings from yesterday found me around midmorning. I was sitting by one of the big trees eating a piece of oversized fruit that tasted like a mango but also like something else I could not identify, and they came and sat down nearby.
We looked at each other for a second.
Then they held out their hand, palm up, and said one word.
I did not know what the word was. I said, "What?"
They said the word again, still with the hand out.
I looked at the fruit in my hand. I looked at them. I figured they wanted a piece of the fruit, so I broke off a section and put it in their hand.
They looked at the fruit. Then they looked at me. Then they put the fruit down on the ground between us very carefully, like they were setting down something delicate, and made the half-open wing gesture that seemed to mean hello or greeting or something polite.
I realized they had been trying to introduce themselves the whole time.
I had handed them a piece of fruit instead of saying my name.
Rowley appeared at that exact moment, because of course he did, and walked over and did the wing gesture and said "I am Rowley!" and the village kid immediately stood up and did the wing gesture back and said their name again.
"Greg," I said, doing the wing gesture approximately three seconds too late.
They nodded at me. They did not look impressed. Then they and Rowley started doing the language exchange thing and within about four minutes they were walking off together toward the elevated walkways while I sat next to a piece of fruit on the ground.
I have to say that for a Monday, this was going pretty much exactly how Mondays usually go for me.
The rest of the day was mostly Mom organizing everyone into what she called "getting our bearings," which meant walking around the village and smiling at people and occasionally pointing at things. The winged villagers were mostly curious and mostly friendly. Some of them came out of their homes to look at us. Some brought things out, small woven objects, a carved piece of something, a cup of something warm that smelled like herbs that Dad refused to drink.
The kids stared the most. There were about eight or nine of them that I could count, and they kept appearing at corners and behind trees and then disappearing again. Not threatening. More like they were playing a game of maximum staring with minimum commitment.
Manny walked directly up to a group of three of them and held up his hand. They all stared. Then one of the village kids mirrored the gesture exactly. Then Manny smiled, which I realized was the first expression I had seen on his face since we arrived.
It was fine. It was normal.
Actually, no no it's not. He's usually unsociable.
This is bothered me.
At night the water below the islands glowed again, that pale blue-green color that had no obvious source. I sat in the open arch of our building and watched it for a while. The light shifted slowly, like breathing.
Somewhere in the upper branches of the trees, something made a sound I had never heard before. Not scary. Just new.
I wrote the first entry in this diary. Or I guess I thought the first entry. I do not actually have a diary here because I did not bring one, since I did not know I was going anywhere when I went to sleep in my own bed two nights ago. But in my head I am keeping track. I am documenting.
Because someone has to.
If we get home and I put this in my diary I can make so much money in the future when I'm famous.
And also because when I get home, which I am going to, I am going to have a LOT to say about this whole situation.
Day Two: still in cheese pajamas. No plan yet. Rowley has more friends than me on an island in a different dimension.
Some things never change.
[SKETCH: Greg sitting alone next to a large piece of fruit on the ground, watching in the background as Rowley and the blue-gray wing kid walk away together, both doing the wing-greeting gesture. Greg's arms are crossed. The fruit sits between his feet.]