Growing the Raft
“Let’s make the raft bigger and heavier.”
They needed to improve the raft. Even if Chester and Monia were still unfamiliar with the sea, having the whole thing flip from a single wave or gust of wind was simply too much.
“We’ll enlarge it for better stability. And we’ll make anchors.”
“Anchors?”
“Yeah. Remember those bamboo baskets we made while working on the backpacks and stashed in the storehouse? We’ll use those as anchors.”
Chester pulled a folded bamboo basket from a corner of the storehouse and opened it to show her.
“We tie a rope to this, fill it with plenty of stones, and it’ll work just fine as an anchor. That’ll add weight to the raft.”
“There are two baskets, so we can make two.”
“Mm.”
“But didn’t you say a bigger size would make it harder to handle?”
“It will. We’ll have to enlarge the sail too, and that means it’ll catch more wind and get heavier.”
As he spoke, Chester glanced at Rex.
Once Rex grew a little more, he would be able to manage even a much larger sail with one hand.
If Rex comes with us when we leave this island, that is.
Enlarging the boat. Enlarging the sail. Both choices rested on the assumption that Rex would solve problems that human strength alone could not.
“So how big do you want to make it?”
“Big enough for us, all our gear, and Black Wind to ride comfortably.”
“Black Wind?”
At the mention of Black Wind, Monia’s eyes naturally shifted to Rex. Chester would not have brought him up without reason.
“You’re thinking of taking Rex off the island?”
“…….”
“No. It would be too hard for him out there. You know that.”
People could be cruel for no better reason than the accident of birth that made one a noble and another a commoner.
The People of the Summit had accepted Chester and Monia; outside, they would surely be seen as monsters.
Chester knew it well and nodded.
“I don’t want to make things hard for Rex. I don’t want him to have any bad experiences.”
“……Yeah.”
Having watched firsthand how nobles treated commoners, Chester understood exactly what kind of suffering Rex would face if they entered human society.
“Maybe it would be better—”
Maybe it would be better to stay on this island forever.
Monia had been about to say it, but the words died on her tongue of their own accord.
Life on the island.
Life beyond it.
Revenge against the father who had abandoned her, against Jordy and Tiara.
And the love Chester, Rex, and Ant gave her—along with the other friends on this island.
While worrying about Rex’s future, Monia realized that the thirst for revenge she had carried since the day she was cast ashore was slowly fading.
The happiness and love Chester had given her were painting over that revenge.
Once, just thinking of them had filled her with rage. Fury had boiled up inside her so fiercely that she had woken from sleep grinding her teeth and spitting those hated names like curses.
Anger. Vengeance. Back when she had not yet loved Chester, those feelings had been the very engine that let her endure life on the island.
So she had vaguely believed she would carry them forever.
But that was no longer true.
She was changing.
Just as life on the island kept changing, Monia herself was changing—and so was Chester.
Are we becoming better?
The thought came to her unbidden.
Life on the island improved with every season. The hardships they had suffered when first abandoned no longer touched them.
They no longer needed to trek all the way to the distant river for water; they simply opened the aqueduct they had built and filled their vessels.
They no longer struggled with crude stone tools. Iron tools forged from melted metal made every task easier.
They no longer had to patch and re-patch crumbling clothes. With cloth in abundance they could sew whatever they wanted.
They had a house that kept out the scorching sun and the cold wind, a comfortable bed, and plentiful resources.
Above all, hunger had become a distant memory.
Life on the island kept getting better. Did that mean the changes taking root in Monia under its influence were also leading somewhere better?
She laid a hand over her heart.
Hatred and resentment had grown so faint that she now had to strain to summon them. It was astonishing that she had not noticed the change sooner—especially when she still spoke of revenge every time she talked of leaving the island.
Or perhaps… she had spoken of revenge precisely because it was fading. Perhaps, without realizing it, she had been afraid of letting it vanish completely.
Yet—
……I think it would be all right if it disappeared.
That was the thought that rose in her.
Sailing practice, week one.
Instead of the proper raft, Chester built a lighter, simpler one and practiced by riding the river from the upper levels all the way down to the lower ones.
He had steered a raft down the river before, but this time a sail was attached.
A raft driven by wind was far faster, rougher, and more willful than one that merely rode the current.
Where the current quickened, or where river flow and wind collided, the raft would pitch violently more often than not.
This is better practice than I expected.
He had worried whether river practice would help at all, but once he saw how effective it was, Chester felt satisfied.
Sailing practice, week two.
After several days on the river, Chester took the small raft out onto the sea alone.
He simply tied a rope to the island and let himself be towed along its edge, yet the waves that battered against the Floating Island were nothing like the river’s.
Even being passively dragged made the raft heave and roll so hard that standing upright was a struggle. A moment’s inattention and the pitching craft would smash against the island and break, so he had to stay alert for that as well.
I heard sailors in the taverns talk about watching out for reefs, but those are huge sunken ships lying deep underwater.
“Chester, are you all right?”
“Yeah. Want to try it yourself, Monia?”
“Oh—would that be okay?”
They took turns on the raft. Even Rex and Ant climbed aboard for fun.
Rex had hated going near the water for a while after the spectacular capsizing, but he was still a child; the bad memory faded quickly and he began to enjoy the raft again.
Sailing practice, week three.
This time they fitted the small raft with a sail and practiced handling it under wind.
They learned to reef and unfurl the sail according to the breeze, and they fashioned oars so they could do more than simply go forward—they practiced turning left and right as well.
A sudden headwind and a wave once carried them far from the island, but otherwise there were no major mishaps. Monia had screamed when it looked as though Chester might be swept away, though.
The near-drift made one thing clear: at some point Chester had stopped tethering the raft to the island and was practicing free.
“Next time shall we try fitting an anchor? Let’s see how well it works.”
While practicing seamanship, Chester was also refining raft construction itself.
He poured every scrap of knowledge he possessed about boats into making each new raft a little better, a little more advanced.
The sail that had once stood rigidly upright could now, under his hand, pivot slightly left or right so the wind itself helped turn the craft.
What had begun as a simple lashing of logs gained extra buoyancy from bamboo; instead of merely paddling, he mounted an oar at the stern that served as both paddle and rudder.
The one-man raft gradually grew until he could take the whole family—starting with light Ant, then Rex, then Monia—and practice together.
As the raft improved, so did Chester’s skill.
Where once he had only tried not to fall, he began to read the waves and wind, to anticipate how the raft would move and prepare for it.
Collisions with the island grew rarer. Near-capsizes from wild pitching grew rarer still. He even managed to fish from the deck.
“Why are you fishing?”
“In case we never reach a continent and end up drifting. We’ll need food. I’m testing different baits.”
Little by little Chester edged the raft farther from the island, practicing the approach and the retreat.
Away from the island, then back again.
How many times had they repeated it?
“Huh? Is that… a continent?”
As always, Chester and Monia had been waiting at the seaside villa for any passing ship or glimpse of land when they spotted a small mass of earth slowly drawing nearer in the distance.
They stopped what they were doing and stared, eyes wide, at the land that kept coming closer.