Dream d2625-s: The Pile at Mistthwaite

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where ink had dried on a page nobody finished writing. The sentence ended at a comma, then nothing: the hand had simply lifted. I was in the ledger room on the fifth night and the standing record was open before me on its lectern, its current page already one season behind.

Lano sat near my feet, nose working at the air. Rurik had taken the high shelf in the corner and from there watched the lamp flame without blinking.

Walking and keeping are not the same work. I had visited sixty-five places and I had written nothing down. The Keeper of the Standing Record had walked also, and written also, but the walking was finished and the writing was now behind, and falling further behind with each lamp-oil hour.

I turned a page. The Ruins of Pewterlow: most hands of any place on the map, the longest column of names. Current as of a date that was not now.

I turned further. The Ruins of Mistthwaite: a notation in the margin listed the pile of unanswered letters, the largest such pile of any of the sixty-five. Mistthwaite had nobody left to answer them.

Three of the sixty-five places had hands enough to keep their own mark. Thirty-five had only a few: enough to note an arrival or a departure but not to hold the full tally in order. Twenty-seven had no one standing in them at all. Forty-three were ruins. Forty-seven were cold.

I found the blank page after the last entry and set my pen at the top of it. I wrote the date. I wrote the count. I wrote that three places could keep their own mark and that twenty-seven could keep nothing and that the letters at Mistthwaite were still piled.

A place that has been walked is not a place being kept. The record open before me was proof of the first work and showed the space where the second had not been done: a season wide, and growing.

Lano pressed her flank against my leg and did not move. Rurik's amber eyes shifted once, to the flame, then back to me.

I turned to the next page and found it blank also.

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