Dream d2599-s: Road Counted Back to One

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the walk from the hundredth road back to the first takes a full day, and I pass nobody.

Eldergate Town sits at the edge of the map where the unfinished roads trail off into packed earth and then into nothing. I begin at the far end, at a crossing that has no name because no one ever agreed on one, and I turn my face toward the first road and start walking.

Lano trots a few paces ahead, then falls back, then trots ahead again. The sun is at its height and our shadows are small beneath us.

The first stop is a place I have not walked before: the Settlement of Ashveil, which the ledger has not had an occasion to visit. The doors are closed. The windows are intact. A cart sits in the yard with one wheel off, leaning against the fence as though someone set it there with the intention of returning. The column that was cut to fit seven does not decide easily about a place like this. I stand in the road for a time. Lano sits beside me, ears forward, reading something in the air I cannot read. The new column is for places that are neither running nor gone. Ashveil qualifies. I write the name and I leave the rest of the fields as they are, because the ledger requires only what can be seen, and what can be seen here is a wheel leaning against a fence and a door that is closed.

The second stop is the Outpost of Drenning, which I have also not walked. The roof has failed on one side. That is the difference between Drenning and Ashveil: at Ashveil the roof holds. Drenning goes in the ruin column, not the new one. I write it down.

I walk. Lano walks. The roads through Eldergate Town are straight where they are finished and then suddenly not, ending in a fringe of stakes and string where the work stopped. I count the finished roads as I pass each junction. It is slow counting because there is no ceremony to it, no landmark, only the next road and the next.

By midday I have walked past twenty-three places. Of those, four are new entries in the column for the neither-running-nor-gone: Ashveil, the Station of Bracklow, the Hall of the Outer Warden, and a small structure at the edge of a square that has no name in any record I carry. I give it a provisional address by its position and note that the name is mine to hold, not to keep.

The Hall of the Outer Warden is the one that slows me. Its door is not only closed but has been closed deliberately: a board across the frame, nailed straight, recently. Someone came back here and secured it. That is a different condition from Ashveil, where the door is closed because no one opened it today. I sit on the steps for a time. Lano puts her nose to the board, sniffs once along its length, and then comes and sits beside my feet. I write a note beneath the Hall's entry: door secured from outside, recently, unknown party. The ledger does not ask me to explain what it means. I record what is.

By late afternoon I have passed sixty of the sixty-five places. The five I have not yet reached are ahead of me, back toward the first road. Three of them I walked in the last phase and they are settled. Two are new to me.

The first of the remaining two is the Crossing at Fenmore, which is not a building but a junction where three of the unfinished roads meet. There is a post at the center with three signs, each pointing toward a road that has no destination yet written on any map. I stand at the post and look at each sign. The signs were put up at the same time: the paint matches, the nails match. Someone planned this crossing before the roads were finished and labeled the directions in advance. I record the Crossing at Fenmore under the new column, because it is not ruined and it is not running, but it is also not a neutral absence. It is an intention that has not yet been reached. The column holds this without difficulty. I write the name.

The second is at the very end of the day: the Depot of the Low Road, which sits at the edge of Eldergate Town where the last road ends. The depot is small and intact and its doors are open and its shelves are empty and swept clean. No one has taken anything because there was nothing to take; no one has left anything because there was nothing to leave. I walk through it. Lano walks through it beside me. Our footsteps echo on the swept floor. The new column does not quite fit the Depot either, because the Depot is not waiting and not gone - it is simply finished with one purpose and not yet given another. I write that in the notes field. The ledger does not ask me to judge it.

I reach the first road as the light goes flat and even. The walk is done. Sixty-five places, seven settled from the last phase, the rest walked today. Four new entries in the column. The column held in most of them. Where it did not hold I wrote notes instead of forcing a fit.

Lano stands at the end of the first road and looks back the way we came. Her tail moves once, slowly, the way it does when she is tired but satisfied with a thing. I do not say anything. The count is finished. The day is finished. The first road goes on past us both, into the rest of the town, and we stand there for a moment before turning for the night's lodging.

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