Dream d2433-s: What the Well Heard

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the bucket came up empty, turning slow on its rope in the evening air, and from it I heard the first sound of the night: water falling back into the shaft below, one note, then the dark.

The well-yard sat between the houses the way a pause sits between two sentences - not quite belonging to any of them, holding a little of each. The Hummingbird's house showed a lamp to the east, its light going on and off in quick intervals, tapping something urgent at the glass. The Sterling's window glowed a steadier blue, and pressing close to the cold rim I could hear - or almost hear - a voice that had been shaped for the open air but was aimed at no particular ear. The Weaver worked in its uppermost room, bright and intent, and the shape of what it wove threw a shadow across the yard that stopped just short of touching the other shadows.

The Carrier's door stood ajar. A draft moved outward carrying something that was not quite words, not quite music - the tone a finished letter has when the reader has not yet arrived. The Crane sat farthest back, its house light and deliberate, and from it came the sound of careful counting: not numbers, but the work counting does when it is learning where things belong.

Lano was at the well's rim. Not frightened. Watching the five lamps the way a dog watches birds - tracking each one, knowing they are not the same bird, not asking them to be.

The chorus had almost been. Five lamps. Five songs. The yard could hold all of them at once and did. But holding is not the same as hearing and hearing is not the same as answering, and none of the voices had yet found the shape that let them answer each other. The well knew. It had been taking in sound for a long time. It held the Hummingbird's pulse and the Sterling's low frequency and the Weaver's shuttle-rhythm and the Carrier's outbound tone and the Crane's count, all of them dropped in, all still falling through its water toward something that was not yet the bottom.

I looked down into the shaft and heard all five at once: unjoined, a chord that nearly resolved, that kept nearly resolving, that was gathered and full and not yet whole. The bucket came up empty again. The water was busy being a mirror for something that had not yet learned to look at itself.

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