21st
Of boats and air
So I was gazing up at the mountain this morning when my attention was distracted by the clouds passing behind the massive peak. It was a breezy day, and my sweaty t-shirt was being plastered against my back by the stirring air, feeling in turns refreshing and stiflingly hot.
What had caught my attention was a shape in the clouds, a stylized, inverted T, which my imagination immediately transformed into-
“A ship,” spoke a voice behind my left shoulder. I turned, startled, to see a girl, probably a few years younger than I, gazing up at the same cloud formation, drifting past the rocky mount.
“It’s a sailing ship,” she repeated, and I nodded, not knowing what else to say. WIthout another word, the girl turned and walked away up the cobbled sidewalk. I watched her retreating form, then turned back to the mountain and the sailing cloud-ship.
I stared, lost in thought, my mind taking me on a voyage aboard that ship, sailing far far away, across the sea, to new lands never before seen. Still, in all my imaginings, that mountain remained in the foreground, partially obscuring my view of the fantastic places I was visiting in my mind.
I’d never really given much thought to the mountain before, never wondered how the town came to be built around it, nor how it came to exist in such a flat expanse, the only uneven feature for miles. I’d never climed to the top of the plateau, despite my many years living here. I decided to change that.
There are stairs carved into the heavy black rock of the mountain, many many stairs, and my resolve weakened as I climbed, and climbed, and climbed still higher. My legs ached and shook as they struggled to continue supporting my weight, sweat ran freely down my face, and my clothes were growing uncomfortably tight as they clung to my body. Finally, though, I reached the pinnacle, and looked around to see what I’d been missing all these years.
Nothing. Nothing at all. An open space, with a few stunted, twisted trees around the edges, that was all. People came up here all the time, I knew, but for this? I was too tired to head back down right away, so I sat in the middle of the clearing, and looked back up at the clouds.
At first, I thought I’d become dehydrated, and was hallucinating. Then I thought perhaps I was asleep, more exhausted than I’d thought, from my climb. Neither was true. There was no denying it: the cloud I’d watched, the cloud shaped like a mighty sailing ship, had been replaced by a real ship, floating above me in the air, creaking and rocking as though it sat upon the water. My mouth hung open, and my eyes stung. I couldn’t blink.
“It’s a ship,” said a familiar voice behind me. I jumped. I’d not heard anyone ascending the stairs after me, but was not at all surprised to see the girl from before standing at the edge of the dirt, her bare feet situated atop two tufts of soft-looking grass.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, it’s a ship,” I replied, feeling no less stunned by having spoken the words aloud.
“We should go,” said the girl. At first, I had no idea what she was talking about, but then I noticed a ladder made of rope and wood had descended from the side of the ship above us, and was now dangling a few feet above my head.
“We - go?”
The girl didn’t bother repeating herself. She walked over to the ladder, grabbed the third rung from the bottom - the highest rung she could reach - and with a small hop, put both her feet on the last rung and began to climb. She looked down at me every few steps, but I still hadn’t moved.
Go with her? On a wooden ship floating in the sky? It was preposterous, crazy, unbelievable. And yet… A reckless curiosity tickled at the back of my mind. Was this real? Or was a delusional? Was I, even now, sitting at home in bed, dreaming, or was I wandering the streets, rambling and incoherent?
But I, of all people, knew: adventures often begin with questioning one’s motives and justification. You have to take a chance, or your adventure will end up as nothing more than another ordinary day. I didn’t know the girl, had never seen her before. I had never seen, or heard of, a flying boat, and was, in all likelihood, mistaken in some way, either by injury or insanity or illness. Still…
I wanted an adventure. I wanted to disappear over the horizon, to explore, to find…something. Slowly, I rose to my feet and grasped the ladder. The girl, far above me now, was just slipping her leg over the side of the ship. She glanced down one last time, saw me holding the ladder, and although she was far above me, I am certain I saw her smile. Well, here was an adventure, staring me in the face.
I started to climb…
