The Floating Island

Chapter One The Albatross The morning of my fiftieth birthday found me, as the last twenty had, sneakily examining my chin in the looking glass, searching for a sign, any small sign, of a whisker. And, once again, as on the previous twenty birthdays, I found nothing. Absolutely nothing. It may seem strange to you that I was able to reach the age of fifty years and still have my face remain as smooth and hairless as a green melon, and you would be right. Many lads of my race begin sprouting their beards by the tender age of thirty, and nearly all of them have a full layer of short growth, known as their Bramble, by forty-five. It is all but unheard of among the Nain for a boy to reach his fiftieth year without at least some sign that his beard is beginning to grow in. But then, this is certainly not the first thing about me that the rest of the Nain in the city of Vaarn think of as odd. If I were a human, by the age of fifty I would be entering the later years of my life, and my hairless chin would be of no consequence. In fact, it might even be seen as an advantage, since human men have the rather astonishing habit of removing their beards with a sharp knife known as a razor each morning, a practice that horrifies the Nain. This intentional sliding of knife over throat also permanently cements the distrust they feel for the race of humans. A man's beard is the story of his life to the Nain. And on that morning it didn't seem as if I would ever have onea beard, a life, or a story worth telling of it. How quickly Fate turns things around. Being fifty years old as a Nain is the same as being about twelve or thirteen in human years. We live about four times longer than humans, and grow more slowly. You might think that living four times as long as humans we would have special wisdom upon reaching those teenage years that humans do not have. I certainly thought so. On the night before my forty-second birthday I floated this theory past my mother, who looked at me doubtfully. "Neh," she said, scorn in her voice. "It merely means you have four times as many years being pigheaded and stupid." She had a point. But while Nain can be somewhat pigheaded, I know they are not stupid. They are just uncomfortable in the air of the upworld, with the wind blowing and the bright sky and the commotion of those taller people walking about. Nain much prefer the dark tunnels of the earth, the warm, solid feel of mountain rising around them, the clanging of anvils and the noise of digging that their deep world absorbs. Being out of the earth for any length of time bothers them. It makes them feel as if things are, well, loose. So when my great-grandfather, Magnus Polypheme, chose to leave Castenen, the underground kingdom of the Nain, and make his way in the world of human men, it was considered more than strange. It was a scandal. Magnus the Mad, as he was known, was by no means the first Nain to leave Castenen. Nor was he the first Nain to choose to live among the humans that were the largest part of the population of the Great Overward, where I was born. Nain, in fact, lived in cities all over the vast continent. Oftentimes they were the merchants who sold the wares that were produced within the mountain kingdom of Castenen to humans in their towns and villages. But not my great-grandfather. He chose instead to move to the city of Vaarn. By the sea. To work on building ships. Even the upworld Nain couldn't figure that one out. On the morning of his fiftieth birthday, as Ven Polypheme hurried excitedly to the docks, the light of the sun disappeared for a mHaydon, Elizabeth is the author of 'The Floating Island', published 2008 under ISBN 9780765347725 and ISBN 0765347725.