Dream d2734-s: What the Column Holds

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the page was already open when I came back to the ledger room, the second book lying flat under the lamp with the blank column facing up. I had been away long enough that the ink on the other side had dried completely. Lano padded in behind me and settled under the table, her nose finding the cool floor near my feet.

The column asked its question in the usual way: who is there. The answer came back the same as it always does from these forty-seven places. Nobody. I wrote it in the appropriate form, which takes longer to write than the fact itself warrants.

Rurik had come in through some gap I had not seen and was now on the high shelf above the pigeonholes, watching the lamp flame. He did not look down.

I turned the page. The next place was in the same condition as the one before it. I wrote the answer. Lano's breathing slowed under the table; she had gone to sleep.

Thirty-five in good order. Seven tended by hands not present. Two gone green. One left untidy in a way I was not asked to correct, only to note. I noted it.

The oldest place in the book is the Ruins of Pewterlow. More roads leave it than leave any other cold place in the second book. I wrote the number of roads. I wrote that all of them were unoccupied. The column did not ask why. That was not what the column asked.

The lamp guttered once. Rurik's tail moved a single stroke. Lano shifted in her sleep, pressing her back against my heel.

I ruled the line under the last entry with the heel of my hand resting on the page, steadying it. The second book holds what a place still is when there is nobody in it. That is all it holds. I closed it before the ink was quite dry, and felt the slight resistance of the wet column pressing back against the page opposite, leaving its mirror in reverse: forty-seven answers, each one the same word, readable only if you knew how to read a thing backwards.

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