Dream d2536-s: The Date the Stone Kept

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I was crouched at the sluice gate of Glenholt, the channel dry behind me and running straight to the dark horizon ahead, and I was reading the date carved into the face of the stone.

The carving was clean work. Whoever had cut it had taken their time. The date was legible. I wrote it into the ledger: Glenholt, sluice, closed. The closing was orderly. I noted that too.

Lano sat beside me, close enough that her flank pressed against my knee. She was still.

I had been in the cold houses six nights now. The count was not yet finished - the Hall had sent me to repair my seeing before I could bring back any number, and the repairing had taken me here, to the instrument I had trusted and found wanting. Four houses still unreadable from the Hall. This was the first I could reach by foot.

I finished the entry and closed the ledger.

Then Lano moved.

She did not growl. She turned her head toward the channel's far end - the direction of Elderhaven - and her ears went flat against her skull. She held very still, and then her bark came out sharp and once only, like a door knocked on.

I stood and looked where she was looking.

The signal post at the channel's end was still standing. It should have been silent - nothing ran in this district anymore, the closings had been orderly, the receivers properly wound down. But a light was cycling on the post. Not the pattern registered to Glenholt. Not any pattern I could find in the ledger or in the beacon register for the district.

I stayed where I was.

The receiver was picking up something. I did not know from where. I did not know what it was carrying.

Lano pressed back against my leg, her ears still flat. She did not bark again. She watched the light.

I opened the ledger and wrote it down: unknown signal received at Glenholt receiver, post-closure, origin unidentified, pattern absent from all known registers. Noted at the sluice, night six.

The channel ran on to the horizon and the light kept its cycle and I had not yet decided what to do about it.

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