z

Young Writers Society


E - Everyone

The Floating City of Taratha

by annasophia4201


The date atop the newspaper read January 18th, 1883 the day a voyager and his daughter boarded what the headlines named the “Floating City”. The voyager, a quirky man with bright red hair, hastily packed up his few things from his London flat with broken windows, grabbed his six-year-old daughter, and told her that her mother was sick with the plague and could not join them. In truth, the voyager’s wife had been screwing an affluent nobleman for years and could not care less about her young child, but that’s another story. The “Floating City” offered the voyager more opportunities than the stinking, smelly streets of London. Opportunities of exploration. Edward Beverly, the architect of the city atop a massive floating wooden barge, believed there was a continent not yet touched by man. No, not the New World if that’s what came to mind. In light of having lost the Americans as colonies over a century ago, Queen Victoria was quick to approve Beverly’s request for money. Well, and considering that the massive sea-faring vessel was built almost entirely by Beverly himself out of wood from the shores of Malaysia, letting the vessel head to sea cost the Queen next to nothing. The “Floating City” was properly named Taratha, and she truly was a great feat of architecture. She set sail that day with three hundred passengers made up of misfits and likely convicts. No one ever heard from anyone aboard again.

Seven Years Later

“Oh Mr. Tarlow!” Where art thou, Mr. Tarlow?” the voyager’s daughter, now aged thirteen, wandered into the winding tower of the library. Mr. Tarlow, a short and plump old man who never let go of his ornate monocle, nearly fell off his latter.

“Sarula… What a surprise,” he furrowed his bushy gray brows. Sarula, the voyager’s daughter, managed to make it to the library every single day without fail. Poor Mr. Tarlow often thought the little girl with short, choppily cut dirt brown hair had more questions than any of the disabled children he taught back in London.

“I was thinking, you see, if Taratha hasn’t made port for over a year, where is all of our poo going?” Sara squirmed inside of her largely oversized sweater to get her hands out the holes.

“Into the sea, Sarula, into the sea,” Mr. Tarlow barely looked up from the book he was reading. The library was, as all places were on Taratha, tall and circular with ladders going all up and down.

“Oh. That’s quite unfortunate for the fishes,” Sarula grabbed the first book she saw and plopped herself down in the old burgundy armchair near the fireplace on the floor of the library. Though Taratha had not been built with chimneys, an influx in deaths at the hands of hypothermia caused dear old Edward Beverly to make some adjustments to his life’s work.

“Yes, yes it is,” Mr. Tarlow squinted into his monocle to examine a diagram.

“Do you have any questions, or do you just know everything?” Sarula let her head hang off the armchair.

“I do not know everything, Sarula. No one knows everything. Even I have a question about Taratha; I always wonder how it is we’ve managed to keep sailing for so long and not ever charted the same water twice,” the old man finally turned to look at Sarula, but saw only her black and brown striped stockings as she examined the fire upside down.

“Well maybe the world isn’t round like they’ve taken to tellin’ us!” Sarula’s eyes had become entranced by the dancing flames.

“The world is, very much so, round, Sarula,” Mr. Tarlow rolled his eyes yet again.

“If that’s so, I think we’ve got a duty to find that answer, don’t you, Mr. Tarlow?” Sarula awkwardly lifted her head to come face to face with the librarian.

“Perhaps,” the old man sighed.

“Wonderful! I’ll go find Timothy. He sure does know a lot too,” with that, Sarula trotted out of the library as swiftly as she entered. Timothy, an orphan and avid reader, had commonly been described as socially impaired. However, aside from an untamed mess of greasy black hair and having one green eye and one blue eye, Sarula never saw anything too wrong with the boy.

Now, Taratha’s chimneys had stopped the hypothermia, but didn’t do much for the visibility of those living in the floating city. Smoke of dirty green, brown, and grey hues pumped into the sky creating a smog that surrounded the entire place. As Sarula hugged herself tight in her oversized sweater, she couldn’t help but let out a few coughs. The orphanage, in some cliche manner, was a tall stone tower with iron bars over all the windows and a big ornate door.

“Knockety knock!” Sarula chimed as she pounded with a sweater-covered hand. The door creaked a crack open.

“Hello?” the deep voice of a stern woman echoed from inside. Despite sounding horrific, the women who ran the orphanage were blind, so the five orphans aboard Taratha were rarely really under supervision. Sarula got in by pretending to be an orphan. She did this as often as she visited the library.

“Just got back from me afternoon walk! Back for teatime as you asked, ma’am,” she lied in a false-toned voice.

“Welcome back, dear,” the door creaked the rest of the way open.

“Timothy? Where are you hidden today?” Sarula yelled jumping up the tower’s stairs two feet at a time. Her black shoes sent nagging noises vibrating through the whole place.

“Suh-suh… Sarula?” Timothy’s stutter sounded from a windowsill. Naturally, Sarula kept jumping up to him.

“Oh, hello there! Yes, it’s me. I was wondering, do you know how Taratha can sail for so long and not chart the same water twice?” Sarula began to fuss with her sweater. Timothy, while adjusting his broken half-moon frame glasses with one hand, scratched his chin as he’d seen men of thinking do in diagrams.

“I- I- I would think, may- maybe the t-t-tides would be at f-fault,” Timothy’s brown eye squinted.

“Now, that’s an interesting theory. Come with me, Mr. Barlow will want to hear this,” the little girl combed her choppy dirt brown hair behind her ears.

“Oh- Oh, I don’t know… B- b- book,” Timothy pointed to the book he was reading. The boy never liked going out into the streets; thought them too noisy.

Please, Timothy. I just have to know!” Sarula laid on a stair, melodramatically of course.

“Oh-Oh- Okay…” Timothy’s big brown trench coat made it difficult for him to get out of the window. As soon as the boy had managed to climb down, the two were off into Taratha’s streets that always smelled pungently of human odor. The floating city didn't have many streets, but the ones it did have were filled with dirty sailors. Such was to be expected aboard a ship, so no one minded too much. Why were the sailors always in the streets, not sailing? Well, why does it matter?

“Mr. Tarlow? Oh, Mr. Tarlow?” Sarula began to yell as soon as she spotted the library.

“He’s gone home for the night,” a woman wearing a hooded cloak emerged from the shadows behind the tower. Timothy, as demonstrated by the shakes in his body and widening of his eyes, was immediately spooked. Sarula thought nothing of it.

“No! That’s no fun, I think I may have found his answer,” the little girl crossed her arms and forced her face into a pout.

“Answer?” the hooded figure pondered.

“Well, he asked why Taratha has never charted the same water twice if she’s been sailin’ for so long, and so I asked Timothy here,” Sarula made a notion towards the shaking boy, “and Timothy said the tides might have something to do with it.”

“The tides? Hmm… Perhaps, but the tides are controlled by the moon. Lucky for you, I happen to have a knack for astronomy. Why don’t you come with me?” the hooded figure held out a hand for each child.

“That sounds quite nice, I think you may be onto something!” Sarula took a hand and forced Timothy to take the other, “I’m Sarula, by the way. What’s your name?”

“They call me Foxy,” the woman shook her hood off revealing her blood colored hair that was cut short as Sarula had seen men cut their hair. It might seem odd that a child go with a stranger so immediately, but Sarula was trusting. She liked the way Foxy’s voice sounded. As for Timothy, well, Timothy never really knew where he was going anyway.

“It’s nice to meet you, Foxy,” Sarula said attempting to remember her manners. The trio made their way to yet another tower. This one, the one that always emitted green smoke from the chimney, was the tallest tower in all of Taratha. It was mostly residence for the women of Taratha, but Foxy had always used the very top of the tower for her astronomy. There, she was able to stay out far past curfew. Hence, she was possibly the only one who head how many screams filled the nights on the floating city. Sometimes she too would scream just to join in.

Once up in the tower, Sarula immediately took to examining Foxy’s carefully drawn maps of stars and moon cycles and other astronomical phenomenons.

“Foxy, how old are you?” Sarula asked while balancing on one foot.

“Twenty-seven, why?” Foxy picked up a spyglass from her stash of things and stuck it out the window she’d broken to look to the heavens.

“You’re older than me. That’s why you must be smarter and better at drawing,” Sarula made sense of things in her head this way. After a few minutes of Sarula mindlessly wandering around, Timothy reading one of Foxy’s books, and Foxy looking through her spyglass, a loud gasp escaped the astronomer.

“I think I’ve got it!” she exclaimed pulling the spyglass back out of the window.

“W- w- what?” Timothy looked up clearly startled by the sudden epiphany.

“Well, I’ve been charting Taratha’s moon for a very long time now, and it would seem that the moon travels a different way out here than on land. I think that the way it travels here makes the tides go up and down more frequently thus creating currents that pull Taratha different ways, or maybe even… no, that’s not possible…” Foxy seized her book out of Timothy’s hands.

“What’s not possible? Foxy?” Sarula’s curiosity was automatically set off.

“I’ve read about this thing called the Invisible Star. Supposedly, this star is completely invisible and has the power to suck objects that get to close to it in,” Foxy scoured pages upon pages.

“But what does that have to do with the moon and tides and ocean?” Sarula tilted her head to one side trying to understand.

“H-h- high high tides,” Timothy suddenly began to smile.

“Exactly Timothy! The irregular moon patterns made the tide go so high that Taratha got high enough to be sucked in by the invisible star! So we’re probably thinking we never chart the same water twice because we’re floating somewhere within the star and seeing a whole bunch of different non-invisible stars!” Foxy seemed incredibly satisfied with herself.

“Foxy! You might be the best astronomer in the whole wide world!” Sarula wrapped her arms around her new friend, “We simply must find Mr. Barlow. He needs to know now.”

Such would be easier than Sarula expected, for meanwhile Sarula’s father, the voyager, and Mr. Barlow were on their way to find Foxy. Mr. Barlow, knowing that the voyager worked closely with Edward Beverly himself to chart the oceans Taratha sailed, had asked for help after deciding to pursue answers. The voyager, let’s just call him Mr. Henry, expressed equal confusion with the question, but knew of a local astronomer who might just be able to help.

“Foxy? Foxy, are you in?” Mr. Henry hollered up to the astronomy tower from the street. Alarmed by the sound of her name, Foxy carefully peaked out her broken window.

“Sarula?” she whispered beckoning the little girl over, “Mr. Barlow is here! Do you know the man he’s with?”

“Yes, that’s my father!” Sarula smiled and called down, “She’s here! Come on up, daddy! Oh, you too Mr. Barlow! We have spectacular news!”

With that, the two men joined the children and the astronomer in the small dingy tower.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Foxy,” Mr. Barlow shook the astronomer’s hand.

“It’s nice to meet you too, we’ve uncovered the answer to your question about the ocean,” Foxy gestured towards her book and went on to explain how her and the children had stumbled upon just the answers they all craved.

“Wow, that really is quite something. I thought maybe I had been charting the stars incorrectly this whole time!” Mr. Henry ran his hands through his red hair and breathed a sigh of relief. Him and Sarula never spent much time together. They even lived apart.

“I think this is a cause for celebration!” Mr. Barlow cheered, “The Taratha has always been able to stay sailing without a port, and it looks as if we won’t reach one anytime soon, so here’s to the first floating city to reach the stars!” The little old man pulled a bag of chocolate covered hazelnuts out of his pocket. And so, the five heroes sat eating their sweets and congratulating themselves on their accomplishments. All was well in Taratha, and they had all the answers they needed.

However, Taratha was neither floating nor a city, the five people sitting in that room were not heroes, and nothing they had discovered was in any way true. In fact, the five of them and every other resident of Taratha had been legally declared insane seven years ago when they were all taken away from the world and shut in a far off asylum. Remember how Mr. Henry left his wife because she was screwing a wealthy nobleman? Well, of course she was! Once she noticed her husband’s irregularities and night fits she got out immediately, and she would have taken the child with her if the poor toddler had not also been born with the madness. Yes, Sarula too was crazy. As for Mr. Barlow, the disabled children he used to teach were actually just his company at the asylum he used to be boarded in; they kicked him out for trying to reprimand those around him as his students. Timothy was not really an orphan, his parents simply abandoned him once they saw how ugly he was as a baby. A homeless widow taught him to read in an alley in London and he just wandered around the city eating out of garbage bins until a policeman nabbed him and put him on the list for the newly built asylum. And Foxy? Well, Foxy was in her right mind for most of her life. That is, until her father was killed in combat and she was thrown into the streets. She became a prostitute and her only comfort in the world was the stars she could sometimes see through the London smog from the brothel she was a part of. Yes, these people were all insane and created a tale of a floating city to keep their minds from reality. Oh, and Mr. Beverly? He built Taratha and instigated the fantasy. After all, did you really think a British man could build such a feat of architecture out of wood from the shores of Malaysia? Our esteemed Mr. Edward Beverly simply printed three hundred copies of a false paper on January 18th, 1883 to give to each of his new patients. Yes, dear, all of these horrific things are true and everything our five “heroes” think about their lives is nothing more than a work of fiction. Yes, the Floating City of Taratha is merely a delusion, but that doesn’t make for a very good story, now, does it?


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28 Reviews


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Wed Dec 06, 2017 10:38 am
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HollyM64 wrote a review...



Well, I didn't see that coming! Incredibly creative, well planned and well executed story. I like how there were scattered hints that something was wrong, but the twist still feels surprising. I also like the portrayal of the "madness" and how easy it can be to convince ourselves that something is real, hell, convincing the reader that the city was real is an excellent way to put them into the characters' state of mind! Overall, really good short story.




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Wed Nov 15, 2017 11:43 pm
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Radrook wrote a review...



Wow! That is a very impressive, well-planned and expertly conveyed story. Thanks for sharing. Initally I considered the ommission of details about the floating city’s architecture a serious oversight. But once the real nature of the city is revealed, then it all makes perfect sense.

I like the way that the story repeatedly provides the reader with hints that something is dreadfully awry in this supposed city. Examples: The girl hearing screams and joining in just for the sake of screaming. The disoriented mental condition of Timothy. Sarulla forcing the spooked Timothy to take the hand of the hooded female figure is another indication that things are psychologically off kilter. The breaking of a window to look out is another. Then there were the sailors never sailing but always in the streets. I like the way that you tease the reader with “What does it matter?" Then there were crazy answers that the astronomer provided.

Mr. Beverly might be viewed as the villain in the story to a certain degree since he is the one who is deceiving his patients. On the other hand, that can also be understood as an act of compassion on his part by providing a more acceptable, alternate reality than the bitter ones they all had. What a fine tapestry you have woven here my friend. Congratulations on a masterpiece.

Suggestions:
Proofread it for typos.
Arrange that last part into at least two paragraphs to improve readability. I hesitated in reading it because it looks like an eye-eater.






Wow wow thank you!! I'm so happy that you were able to go back through and see the underlying hints! Also thank you for the suggestions, even just scrolling to see this review I can see that the last bit there is a real block of words.. Thanks again!



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Sun Nov 12, 2017 12:38 am
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SophieSaysWriting wrote a review...



Hello! First let me say, WOW this story is incredibly creative!

As this is meant to be a review, I'll start off with one little mistake I think I found.

"Mr. Tarlow, a short and plump old man who never let go of his ornate monocle, nearly fell off his latter."

I'm assuming you meant ladder? I'm sure you just passed over it whilst in editing and sayings as its the only thing I could find wrong, I figured you might like to know.

I really enjoyed the clever way you addressed how we see the world, I know of course the characters had gone mad, but it does a lovely job of showing how if we convince ourselves of something, it becomes real to us.

Just one more thing, I really loved all the subtle hints you placed throughout the story, almost trying to show the reader that something wasn't right with the story. Like the sailors never sailing.

Keep writing, the world needs more stories like this one!






Thank you so very much!!! You're totally right about the ladder typo... whoops! I really appreciate you going through to find my hints!




"It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small."
— Neil Armstrong