Realm II of VIII
The Skyward Isles
Islands adrift beneath the aurora
Between the frozen west and the World Tree, whole islands hang in the air. Some carry small castles and spires, others only moss and roots that trail down into the clouds below.
Above them the aurora ripples in green and violet across a sky full of stars, and a fairy crosses the open air toward the light of the tree.
Look closer
- A castle crowned island high in the aurora
- Roots and vines dangling beneath the isles
- The green and violet curtains of the aurora
- A fairy in flight against the stars
One fairy hides in this realm.
In our world
Laputa, the flying island
In the third part of Gulliver's Travels, published in 1726, Jonathan Swift sent his traveler to Laputa, an island about four and a half miles across with a base of adamant, steered through the air by magnetism. Swift used it to satirize thinkers so absorbed in speculation that they lost touch with the ground beneath them.
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Stone pillars in the clouds
The floating mountains many people picture today owe a great deal to Zhangjiajie in Hunan, China, where more than 3,100 quartz sandstone pillars rise from the forest, over a thousand of them taller than 120 meters. When mist fills the valleys the peaks seem to float. One pillar, once called the Southern Sky Column, now bears the name Avatar Hallelujah Mountain, after the floating mountains of James Cameron's Avatar (2009).
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