Dream d1991-s: What Brackensquare Keeps

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the lamps in Brackensquare were just catching - that blue hour before dark settles properly, when everything looks painted with the same uncertain brush. We had gathered our packs in the courtyard of the inn, and the cobblestones were still wet from an afternoon shower the Weather Reader had predicted with quiet satisfaction at noon.

The Bridgekeeper came to see us off herself. She was compact and spoke in the shorthand of someone who had watched many parties pass through her gate, but she had given us five days and she was not dismissive now. She pressed a folded paper into my hands - a sketch of the relay stations, the ones the Builder had helped her reroute around the crumbling north tower. "In case you find another place with the same problem," she said.

The Builder was still looking up at the tower. "She'll hold another ten years with those cross-ties," she said, not exactly to anyone. "Maybe longer if the drainage stays clear." The Bridgekeeper nodded once. They had been speaking the same language since the second day.

I made the final entry standing at the courtyard wall, the book propped on the stone. Five days, four readings, one relay rerouted, two water channels unblocked, the grain register caught up for the first time in three seasons. The book had grown heavy at Brackensquare. That was how we knew we had read it properly.

Lano pressed her nose to the threshold and then pulled back, vamos already written in the set of her shoulders. She watched the gate. She did not rush us, but she was ready in the way she always was before a road.

The Weather Reader tilted her barometer toward the open sky. "Pressure dropping west," she said. "Rain tomorrow. We want to be moving before midmorning."

Rurik had already crossed through. He stood just beyond the gate, amber eyes on the road ahead, tail low and steady. He glanced back once, not waiting, only marking that we had been there.

The Bridgekeeper walked us to the gate. The lamps burned yellow behind her as we stepped through. I looked back once more, the way Rurik had.

The town kept its light. The road took the rest.