Thursday
Okay so I had a plan.
I want to be upfront that the plan was good. Whatever happened after the plan does not change the fact that the plan itself was solid, logical, and would have worked in most normal circumstances. The circumstances of this specific situation were not normal, which is the only reason things went the way they did.
Here is what I was working with.
Feyn's father, whose name I had figured out sounded approximately like "Solen" based on hearing people say it, was the central figure of the village's social structure. He ran the food building. People came to him. The food building was where conversations happened.
If I could make myself useful to Solen in some visible way, people would notice. That was the basic logic. Attach yourself to the person who matters, reflect their importance, become important by proximity. This is a strategy that has worked in documented human history for thousands of years. I did not invent it. I am just smart enough to use it.
The question was what "useful" looked like when you could not speak the language and had no skills that were relevant to a floating sky village.
I thought about this for most of the morning, sitting outside the food building and watching the flow of people going in and out. There was a rhythm to it. The same people came at the same times. Some came for food. Some came to talk. Some came and spent a long time near the counter in a way that looked like they were there for something specific that I could not identify.
Then I saw it.
The system was not organized. Or at least, not organized in a way that was efficient. People came in, looked at the shelves, sometimes found what they were looking for and sometimes did not, and Solen had to move around behind the counter pulling things from different places based on what each person wanted. There was no clear arrangement. Things seemed to be placed wherever they fit.
I am not a professional organizer. I want to be clear about that. But I have spent a significant amount of time at the school supply room waiting for Mr. Nolan to find the right size of construction paper, and the whole time I was thinking about how the room should be reorganized so the most-used things were at the front, and the whole thing would take thirty percent less time.
This was the same problem. Different location. Same solution.
I went inside.
Solen looked at me when I walked in. I did the wing-greeting gesture. He did the small version back, same as before.
I pointed at the shelves behind him. Then I held up one finger in what I hoped communicated "wait a second" and went behind the counter. Which, in retrospect, was probably not the right way to start.
Solen stepped back and watched me with an expression I would describe as cautious neutrality. Not angry. Not welcoming. Just waiting to see what was about to happen.
I started looking at what was on the shelves.
There were about nine different types of things, from what I could count. Some were in woven containers and some were just stacked on the wooden slats. The cakes were in the middle, mixed in with something that looked like dried fruit and something that was wrapped in flat leaves and tied with a cord. The flatbread was at the far end. The bowl-soup things were in a lower section. Everything was kind of everywhere.
I picked up one of the wrapped leaf-bundles and put it near the other wrapped leaf-bundles on the right side. Then I picked up a woven container and moved it to where the other woven containers were. I did this slowly so Solen could see I was trying to group like things with like things.
Solen watched.
I kept going. Every thirty seconds I looked back at him to check his expression. He was not stopping me. He was not helping. He was watching with the same cautious neutrality but with, I thought, a small additional amount of curiosity.
It took about fifteen minutes to get the shelves in order. Front row: things people asked for most based on what I had observed. Second row: things people asked for sometimes. Back: things I had not seen anyone ask for.
When I was done I stepped back and looked at it.
Then I looked at Solen.
He looked at the shelves.
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he moved one thing from where I had put it to a different spot. Just one thing. And then he nodded in a way that did not seem unfriendly.
I had not made us best friends. I was under no illusions about that. But I had done something useful, in a visible place, and the most important person in the village had watched me do it and not kicked me out.
That was a foundation.
I had built with less.
Mom appeared at the food building entrance about twenty minutes after I had done the shelf thing. She did the greeting gesture to Solen and said one of the words she had learned, which I gathered was a general positive greeting because Solen's expression shifted slightly in a good direction.
"Greg," she said, coming in. "Have you been in here all morning?"
"I reorganized the shelves."
Mom looked at the shelves, then at me, then at Solen.
"Did he ask you to do that?"
"Not in a language either of us could understand," I said. "But he watched me do it and adjusted one thing at the end, so I think the answer is yes."
Mom had her thoughtful expression, which is the one right before either approval or a lecture. I could not tell which direction it was going.
Then Solen said something and held out one of the cakes toward me.
I took it.
Mom made a sound of genuine surprise. Then she looked at me with the expression that meant I had done something she had not expected.
"That was actually very nice, Greg," she said.
I ate the cake and tried not to look too pleased about it.
The afternoon was where things got complicated.
Rowley came to find me around midday with Feyn and two other village kids I had not been introduced to. He was doing that thing where he had an exciting idea and his whole face showed it before he said anything.
"Greg, you have to come see this," he said.
"See what."
"There is a thing happening at the gathering space tonight. Feyn tried to explain it to me. I think it is like a festival or a ceremony or something. Everyone is going."
I straightened up immediately.
This was the moment I had been building toward. The gathering space. The circular floor, the raised platforms, the sightlines from every angle. Whatever the important event was, it was happening tonight, and I needed to be there in a visible way and not just as part of the audience.
"How did Feyn explain it?" I said. "You do not speak the same language."
"We have been working on it," Rowley said simply. "Feyn knows a few of my words now and I know some of theirs and we kind of figure out the middle part."
Of course Rowley had developed a working pidgin communication system in four days without even trying. Of course.
"Does Feyn know what we would need to do to be part of the event?" I said. "Not just watching it. Actually participating."
Rowley asked Feyn. There was a brief back-and-forth that involved several words I did not recognize and a lot of gesturing.
"He says anyone can participate," Rowley reported. "You just have to bring something."
"Bring something."
"Like an offering kind of thing. Or a contribution. He was not totally clear but it was something you make or find and bring to the center."
I thought about this for the rest of the afternoon.
Here is where I have to be honest about a mistake in my process.
I spent four hours trying to figure out what to bring to the gathering event. I considered and rejected about twelve options. The glowing stone from the pond was Rowley's and I was not taking Rowley's thing. The food from the building was Solen's and using that felt like it would cancel out the goodwill I had built. I could not make anything because I had no materials and no skills relevant to this world.
I finally decided on something I had in my pajama pocket, which was a small flat button that had come off the pajama top on Day Two and that I had been carrying around because I did not know where else to put it.
It was a small white button. Plastic. About the size of a coin.
I know how that sounds. But here is my reasoning: the villagers had never seen plastic. They had never seen anything machine-made with that kind of perfect uniformity. To them, it might be genuinely interesting. An object from another world, which technically was exactly what it was.
I polished it on my pajama sleeve until it was as clean as it was going to get.
Then we went to the gathering space.
The space at night was different from the space in the day. Torches burned at the edge of the circular floor, low and warm, and the raised platforms around the edge were full. Every villager I had seen in five days was there plus more, people from the other islands who had come across the bridges, and the golden light mixed with the torch light in a way that made everyone look like they were part of something painted.
People moved to the center one by one and placed things, or said things, or did something brief and simple. I watched the pattern. Some brought objects. Some made a gesture and a sound, like a short phrase. Some brought small amounts of food.
Nobody brought a plastic button from a pair of cheese pajamas.
I looked at the button in my hand.
I looked at Rowley, who had brought his glowing stone and was holding it in both palms with complete calm confidence.
Then Solen walked to the center and said something in a carrying voice and everyone was quiet and it was clear this was the part that mattered, and afterward people began to come forward with their contributions, and I made a decision.
I went forward.
I put the button in the center of the floor.
It sat there under the torchlight, small and white and perfectly round.
Everyone looked at it.
There was a moment of silence that lasted about four seconds and felt significantly longer.
Then the silver-wing woman, the one who had been sitting with Manny, stepped forward and crouched down and looked at the button very closely. She said one word, quiet.
And everyone else leaned in.
I did not know what the word meant. I could not tell if it was good or bad. What I could tell was that fifty winged people were currently looking at a plastic button from my pajamas with the focused attention of people encountering something they could not explain.
Which, honestly, was the most visibility I had gotten since we arrived.
I looked over at Rowley, who was smiling at me with genuine enthusiasm.
I looked at the button.
Okay. So maybe the angle was the button.
Day Five: strategic position established, gathering space accessed, button becomes cultural artifact.
I will take it.
[SKETCH: Greg standing in the center of the circular gathering space, surrounded by torchlight and a ring of winged villagers all leaning forward to look at something tiny on the floor. Greg has his hands clasped behind his back and is trying to look like he planned all of this. The silver-wing woman crouches at the center examining the small white button. In the background, Rowley stands on a raised platform holding his glowing stone and beaming.]