Dream d2683-s: The Short Cord, the Long

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Keeper of Measures and I unrolled two cords on the desk after the lamp was trimmed. The wall map behind us showed the full circuit of places in brown ink, sixty-eight roads between fifty-eight marks, and we had already agreed by the second night that we would not look at that map tonight as a whole. We looked at it as two distances.

The old round: I walked the cord along every road on the circuit, mark to mark, pressing it flat with two fingers where it crossed a junction. When it reached its end I held both termini together and the Keeper of Measures made a mark in the margin: three hundred and fourteen units of road.

The new round, which belongs only to the second book: the cord is shorter. I walked it the same way, mark to cold mark, forty-three places, the roads between them only. When it reached its end and I held both termini together the Keeper of Measures made a second mark: two hundred and seven units of road.

Neither of us said anything for a moment. The two cords lay across the map, one reaching nearly to the eastern edge, one stopping somewhere past the middle. The difference between them is one hundred and seven units of road. That is the measure of what the first book keeps.

Lano sat under the desk through this. When I set the second cord down she came out and pressed her nose against my ankle, then went back under. Rurik was on the high shelf above the map all evening, eyes half-closed, watching the cords as they moved.

The Ruins of Pewterlow sits where three roads leave the second-book circuit. I ran my finger across its mark when the short cord passed over it. The road lines there are old and the ink is faded but they go three ways and each way goes somewhere that is also in the second book. I did not follow any of them. I lifted my finger and continued.

We folded both cords when we were done. The Keeper of Measures put them in separate trays. Two hundred and seven. Three hundred and fourteen. Written in the margin of the map, one below the other, no sign between them.

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