Wednesday
I want to talk about the concept of gathering intelligence, because I think it is underappreciated as a skill.
Most people, when they are in a new situation, just react to things as they happen. Something occurs, they respond to it, they move on. There is no preparation. No analysis. They are basically just walking around getting surprised by life over and over again for their entire lives.
I am not like that.
What I do is I watch first. I take in information. I build a picture of how things work before I make any moves, so that when I do make a move it is calculated and precise and I get the outcome I want.
This is what I decided Day Four was going to be. An observation day. A pure intelligence-gathering operation.
I explained this to Rowley when he woke up.
"So you are just going to watch people all day?" he said.
"I am going to observe the social dynamics of the village in order to identify strategic opportunities," I said.
Rowley thought about this. "Okay," he said. "Feyn and I are going to see the glowing pond on the island with the jungle on it."
"The one past the vine bridge?"
"Yes."
"Dad said not to use the vine bridges."
"Feyn says it is totally safe. They use it all the time."
I looked at Rowley. I looked at the vine bridge in the distance, which from here looked like a long thin strip of woven material hanging over a gap I did not want to think about.
"Have fun," I said.
Rowley left. I started observing.
Here is what I learned from approximately three hours of sitting in different spots around the village and watching things happen.
First: there is a clear social structure here, same as anywhere. The older winged people with the biggest wings carry the most weight. Not because anyone is mean to the others, just because when they speak, people listen in a specific way. Feyn's father was near the top of this group, which I had already figured out, but there were two others, a woman with wide pale silver wings and a man with dark green wings that I had not seen on anyone else. These three seemed to make decisions. Other adults checked in with them. Kids avoided getting in their way.
Second: the gathering space on the second island was used more than I realized. During the morning I saw two separate groups cross the stone bridge and come back. Each time they had been to the circular space. I could not tell what they did there but they looked different coming back, more settled, like people after a meeting where something got resolved.
Third: the food building was more important than a food building. Feyn's father spent time there not just behind the counter but in conversation with people who came in. He was not just providing food. He was the person people talked to. The food was the reason to show up but the conversation was the point.
I stored all of this.
Fourth, and this one I was not looking for but it found me anyway: Rowley was becoming a genuine cultural phenomenon.
I am going to be objective about this because I think it is important.
Rowley came back from the glowing pond around midday. He was wet from the knees down, which meant he had either fallen in or gone in on purpose, and he was carrying something small in both hands very carefully. Feyn was next to him and three other village kids were behind them.
By the time Rowley crossed back over the stone bridge to the main island, there were twelve people waiting for him.
I do not know how word travels in a floating sky village but it travels fast. They had all heard about Rowley. Or seen him the day before. Or Feyn had told them. Whatever the reason, there was a group, and they were there specifically for Rowley, and Rowley walked into the middle of them absolutely beaming.
He showed them what he had in his hands, which was a small smooth stone from the glowing pond that had absorbed some of the glow and was still faintly lit from inside. He held it out and let people look at it and touch it. The village kids went wide-eyed. Even a couple of the adults nearby slowed down to look.
Rowley said something, probably just describing where he found it in English words that no one understood, and it did not matter at all because his face was doing all the communication. He was happy. He was sharing something he thought was amazing. And the whole group around him felt it.
I watched from twenty feet away, eating a piece of the oversized fruit.
I am not going to say I was jealous. I am going to say I was frustrated by the inefficiency of a situation where someone with no strategy whatsoever was achieving social results that I, with a full strategic observation program, had not yet achieved.
There is a difference.
Dad found me in the afternoon, which I could have predicted because Dad does a check-in loop about every two hours when he is anxious, and he had been anxious since we got here, so I was basically on a two-hour check-in schedule whether I wanted to be or not.
"What are you doing?" he said.
"Observing."
"You have been sitting in different spots around the village all day."
"That is what observing looks like."
Dad sat down next to me on the platform. He had tried to look presentable today, which for Dad in this situation meant his shirt was tucked in and his hair was smoothed down. It was not making a huge difference.
"Have you talked to any of the villagers today?" he said.
"I am building toward that."
"Greg."
"Dad, you cannot just walk up to people you do not know without understanding the social landscape first. That is how you end up in bad situations."
Dad looked at me for a moment. He had the expression that means he disagrees but is deciding whether it is worth the conversation.
"Your mother has learned fourteen words today," he said.
"Okay."
"Rodrick is teaching three kids how to make something that I think is going to become a drum."
"Also fine."
"Manny has been sitting with the silver-wing woman for two hours and I cannot tell what they are doing."
I looked across the village. Manny was indeed sitting with the silver-wing woman, the one I had identified as one of the three decision-makers. They were both looking at something small on the ground between them, though from here I could not see what it was.
"Manny is three," I said.
"I know," Dad said, in a way that meant he was not entirely sure that was relevant.
We both looked at Manny for a moment.
"I am going to walk the perimeter again," Dad said. "Come with me?"
"I am in the middle of observing."
"You can observe while walking."
He was right, technically. And walking the perimeter of the island with Dad was at least useful because he had been doing it enough that he had the geography memorized better than anyone else in our family.
I went with him.
The perimeter walk took about forty minutes. Our island was not a perfect circle, more like a lumpy oval with one end wider than the other. The narrow end was where most of the bridges connected. The wide end had the biggest trees and the least village activity, and at the very tip of the wide end was a place where the island's edge curved outward and then down in a way that created a natural ledge, not a comfortable one, but a spot where you could sit with your back against the rock and your feet dangling out over the open sky.
Dad stood at the edge and looked out. Not down this time, but out, toward the horizon, which went on forever. Other islands were visible in the distance, different sizes and shapes, some with what looked like trees, some bare, all of them floating at different heights and angles.
"Do you think there are other people out there?" I said. "On the other islands?"
"Maybe," Dad said. "The bridges all have to go somewhere."
"There could be a way home out there somewhere."
"Maybe," he said again. He did not sound convinced.
I looked at the other islands. Most of the bridges from our main island connected to the ones nearby that I had already been to or seen. But one bridge, thinner than the others and made from wood and rope, went out further than the rest, toward an island that was small and high up, higher than ours, sitting at an angle that made it look like it was tipping slightly to one side.
I pointed at it. "Where does that go?"
"I do not know," Dad said. "I have not gone past the second island."
"Feyn's father made that 'do not go there' gesture about the vine bridge island yesterday."
"Right, so we are not going there."
"I was not saying we were. I was just noting that not all the bridges have the same status."
Dad looked at me with the expression that meant he was not sure what I was building toward.
I was not sure yet either, honestly.
That evening Mom insisted on a family dinner, which in this context meant all of us sitting in a group outside our building with food from the building that Feyn's father had apparently communicated was available to us at any time. There was more of the dark glossy cake, which I was not complaining about, and also something that looked like a flatbread and a bowl of something warm and slightly sweet that might have been a soup.
We all sat in a rough circle. Me, Mom, Dad, Rodrick, Manny, and Rowley, who was basically family at this point and had nowhere else to go.
Manny was eating without looking at his food, looking out at the village instead.
"He has been doing that all day," I said quietly to Mom.
"Doing what?"
"That," I said. "The looking-at-things-like-he-already-knows-what-they-are thing."
Mom looked at Manny. Manny looked at the village.
"He is just curious," she said. "He is five. Everything is new."
"He does not look like things are new to him," I said. "He looks like things are expected."
Mom patted my arm in the way that means she has heard what I said and chosen not to engage with it.
Rodrick, across the circle, was demonstrating a rhythm on his knees for the benefit of an invisible audience because the village kids had gone in for the night.
"I am thinking about a name for the band," Rodrick said, to nobody.
"You do not have a band," Dad said.
"Not yet."
Rowley held up his glowing stone and it cast a faint light on the underside of his chin and he looked at it with the simple open pleasure of a person who has never once in his life worried about whether the thing he was doing was impressive enough.
I looked at my cake.
Tomorrow I was going to stop purely observing and start doing something. I had enough information. I knew where the important spaces were and who mattered and what the rhythm of the village was. I knew the gathering space on the second island was where things happened. I knew Feyn's father was the person to know.
I had a direction. Tomorrow I was going to have an actual step.
Day Four: intelligence gathered, perimeter assessed, mysterious far island identified. Rowley made twelve new friends by holding a rock.
I need a better angle.
[SKETCH: Dad and Greg standing at the wide end of the island looking out at the sky, with various floating islands visible at different heights in the background. In the far distance, one small island sits noticeably higher than the others, tilted slightly to one side. Greg is pointing at it.]