6. Navigation
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Fair weather returned to the volcanic island, melting the impenetrable wall of snow that blocked the entrance to the shell, letting some light through and waking the two gems within.
Tourmaline got up and began to walk around in the nasty muddy field, which was quite dead at the moment. It wasn’t really spring yet, it’s just that winter was over. The island was covered in a wash of thawed, rotting, brown grass, and rivers of melting snow saturated with dirt and all the acidic stuff from the top of the volcano trickling down into the field. He’d never seen the transition from winter to spring before, so it was odd to him. Back home, everyone would be allowed to sleep until the plants and flowers returned to the island. The spiky gem remained inside the shell, for walking on terrain this wet would certainly dissolve his feet into stumps.
On his walkabout, he thought. Since recalling his time with his friend back home, he had a nagging idea in the back of his mind that he should figure out how to get home so he could invite Gaspeite over. Maybe he’d take Psilomelane too, he’d been alive for too long and deserved to take a break on his newly discovered vacation island. Rainbow was a little risky, because he was close with Tiger, and would probably tell him, and then Tiger would probably take all 20-some-odd gems to the volcanic island, and then the moon would start hunting gems here instead of back there. So, maybe not Rainbow. But Gaspeite and Psilomelane, for sure.
He had no idea, though, where exactly he was. He tried to think about what he’d learned in his schooling about navigation, and recalled another memory.
This was a long time ago, so maybe he’d gotten some things wrong. He was around 16 at the time, still too fresh out of the ground to fight, and he was sitting in a lesson with his twin, Beryl. Golden Beryl was a goody two-shoes from the start. He was kind, liked to help, and liked to learn. The fact that he was so helpful and kind and sunshiney made him the immediate favorite of gems born in the year, and Tourmaline’s tendency to light things on fire as a youngster made him even less favored. He’d grown jealous of Beryl, and he could hardly stand being stuck in a lesson with him. Anyways, today was one of those days where he had a lesson, and today’s was about stars and constellations. The two were being taught by Nuummite, who was a doctor usually, but also a teacher whenever a new gem was born. He was a mix of various amphiboles, mostly black with flecks of gold or blue. Being around pieces of other gems all the time required him to wear long stockings and a long coat, so that the only part of him exposed was his head, which sported an absolutely atrocious haircut. Perhaps long ago during his fighting days, a millennia or two ago, he had a reasonable appearance, but years of breaking and needing to cut some hair to repair his own cracks and missing pieces reduced his hair to a slightly-above-jaw-height bob. Or maybe he always looked that way, he didn’t know. It looked like he was wearing a bowl on his head. He found it hard to take him seriously. Anyways, today’s lesson was about stars. Nuummite was yammering on about them, and gesticulating abstractly all over a poster with constellations on it.
“... So, Earth rotates at an axis of 23 degrees, which means its pole, which, if you imagine sticking a rod through a ball, is kind of what I’m talking about here, that rod is pointing 23 degrees away from directly upwards. So, that means any star that’s 23 degrees away from directly upwards in terms of the plane of space, that star will never move in the sky as the planet spins. This is called the pole star, because it’s aligned with the poles. Over a cycle of 26,000 years, this star will change. Right now it’s a star called Thuban, but, say, in 5,000 years, it will be this star called Polaris…” He just kept going on and on.
“Tourmaline, are you even listening?”
“Huh? Uh… yeah.”
“Okay, what’s the pole star right now?” Nuummite asked.
“Uh… Polaris?”
“WRONG! You’re 5000 years too early, mister!” He exclaimed. "Come on, that was literally the last thing I covered!" Beryl giggled a little bit. It was always so troublesome to be learning beside someone else.
“Anyways, the pole star always points in the north direction, so if you follow it, you’re heading north. We’ll go over a few ways you can find it if you ever get stranded outside at night so you can find your way back to the school…”
Returning to the present, he was trying to figure out ways to figure out where exactly he was. He could find the pole star, and then figure out how many degrees away from the horizon it is, and then compare it with how many degrees from the horizon it was back home. He knew it was about 45 degrees up back home. If he figured out the difference between here and there, he would know if he had to go further north or south to get home. He just had to find it. To do this, he waited until nighttime.
Okay, so Thuban… Thuban, Thuban, Thuban… where is Thuban? Hmm. He had no idea. Instead, he figured he’d try a more tedious strategy. He picked out a nice, bright star, and pointed at it. He stayed as still as possible, for hours, and noticed that the star he picked moved a little bit. Okay, pick another one. He pointed at that star, waited for it to move, and it did, so he picked another one. This went on all night long, and he didn’t manage to find a stationary star in time.
So, the following night, he tried again, surely confusing the spiky gem who saw his shellmate standing outside at night, completely motionless, pointing at the sky. Eventually, he found something that he thought was the pole star, and was satisfied to find that when the sun began to rise, it was to his right, and east is right of north, so this must be the pole star indeed. Then, he measured it with his hands, and it came to about 39 degrees above the sea, implying he was 39 degrees above the widest part of the earth, the equator, as it was called. As the sun rose, he started to draw a map out in the sand of the earth, where the big island was, and a long line spanning all the places where the new island might be. Okay, he had the latitude, but he still needed to figure out where he was in terms of east or west.
As for that, he had no idea where to start. He thought for a long time. Well, how could he do that? He spent days on it, weeks, wandering around, thinking, and trying to figure out equations with what little he could remember about triangles and stars to help him discern how far east or west he was from the big island. He knew he was a fair bit south, but what side of it?
He could remember that when he first arrived on the island that he was, knowing now what the directions were, most likely facing southwest. This must mean he came from the northeast then, right? Well, it was all he had to work with, so he tried his best to figure out the exact angle and then set off into the sea, having taken off part of his little suit to use as a bag full of pebbles that he’d use to mark where he’d been going.
About a week passed and he was still in the sea, and honestly not really sure where he was going. He worried that, under the cover of the sea, he’d lose track of what direction he was going and end up veering off track or even going in circles. He didn’t even know how far he had to go, or if he’d find the other island at all. He decided to start going back the way he came, and about another week in the sea passed upon which he still had no idea where he was going.
On his travels, he stumbled upon a plain in the sea filled with snail shells of all sizes. There were shells smaller than his eye, and shells ten times as large as he was, and everything between. Light shells, dark shells, broken shells, pristine shells, stripy shells, spiky shells, all sorts of shells. He must be close to the island, then! It’s entirely possible that the shell he and the spiky gem were living inside came from this dump of shells. Why, exactly, there was an enormous pile of massive shells here in the middle of the ocean and seemingly nowhere else in it, was beyond his reasoning, but it did point him the way back. And, wouldn’t it be nice? He figured that once he figures out where the big island is, and then brings his friends over, he could use more of these shells as more houses, and build a little neighborhood of shell houses.
Anyways, he set off past the shells, in the direction he thought was probably south, and a few hours later finally, miraculously, got back to the volcanic island.
Okay! So, that didn’t work. He figured it would be too dangerous to try going through the sea, because he couldn’t see the stars from the seafloor, so he’d wait until winter when the ocean freezes over. It was spring, though, so he’d have to put his navigation project on hold for the rest of the year.
In the meantime, Tourmaline spent his days fantasizing about his settlement that he’d build with Gaspie and Psilo, and trying to hone his math skills. It was a peaceful life that he and the spiky gem lived, and for the rest of that entire year there was still, inexplicably, no sign of the moon people.