Dream d2617-s: All Afternoon the Calling

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Hall filled early and the figures settled into their seats before the stated hour, and then the wide count began and took most of the afternoon.

The seven places already walked were not called. I turned those pages and moved on, and the seated figures did not remark on it.

Rurik came in through a side door and found his way to a high ledge near the back wall, where he settled with his paws folded and his amber eyes on the room below. He did not move from that ledge through the whole of the calling.

I began with the lit cities, which are five: Emberford, Frostridge, Osierlow, Willowholt, Willowhythe. Each has a keeper seated in the Hall, and each keeper stood when the name was read and sat again when the mark was made. Lano moved through the space between their chairs, unhurried, nose low, investigating something she did not share.

The cold places are forty-seven. A cold place is not closed; it has addresses and offices and someone who might answer a letter sent there, but no warmth running through it at present. I read each name. I entered each one in the appropriate column. The figures watched.

The column the last phase cut had been made to fit seven. Carrying it outward to sixty-five meant testing whether it held for every shape of place on the map. For most ruins it held. For cold settlements it held. For places that are neither running nor gone it held, which was the question the column was built to answer.

The ruins number forty-three. Three of them were not left in good order: the Ruins of Frosting, the Ruins of Mossness, the Ruins of Zephyrden. Their names went into the column with a mark beside each. No further notation.

At the Ruins of Mistthwaite I paused longer than at the others. That place holds the largest pile of unanswered letters anywhere on the map. The letters are not part of the column. I entered the name and moved on.

Eldergate Town was entered with the notation: unfinished roads.

By the final name the afternoon had nearly given out. I read it, made the mark, and closed the folio. Among the sixty-five, the ones left in good order number forty-one. The column held for all forty-one and for many besides.

I gathered the folios. Lano appeared at my side, moving at my pace toward the door. She had been somewhere in the Hall through all of it. I had not always seen where.

The walk back to the ledger room was quiet, the city in the dark around us. I set the folios on the table. Night three of six here. I opened the window a small way.

Lano lay down near the door with her chin on her paws. Rurik had not followed from the Hall. From the direction of the window came one note, then silence.

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