Dream d2783-s: Ink Past the Edge

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood on the high verge above Sablegate with the drawn sheet rolled under one arm and the count already done. The seven were below, their walls pale in the last of the evening light: seven marks on the sheet that pointed at ground no reader could reach from the page, places named in the margin and not in the body, real enough to walk to and not real enough to hold a description. I had stood here before on this residency and looked at them each night, and each night they were the same, shut and present and uncounted in the main body of the record.

Lano sat at the verge edge with her ears forward and her nose working the air that came up from the lowlands. Rurik had taken a position three feet to my right, haunches down, tail wrapped, amber eyes moving slow across the seven walls below.

The settlement at Sablegate holds its listeners in a low building set inside the inner wall, away from the gate and away from the road. I could see the roof of it from the verge. While I watched, a figure came out of the door quickly, crossed the yard, and went to where the Keeper of Listeners stood near the water barrel. They spoke. I could not hear them. The Keeper of Listeners looked up once, at nothing in particular, then followed the figure inside.

Lano's ears went flat.

I did not move. The sheet stayed rolled.

A second figure came out of the listener building. This one went to the wall itself and climbed to the platform above the gate, where the long receiver array is mounted: three copper lines on a wooden frame, oriented south. The figure stood with both hands on the frame and looked south. Then looked east. Then stood still.

Lano gave one bark, short, and fell silent.

The signal, I learned later by the account written in the night log, came in on the eastern line at the third watch. No pattern from the coastal beacons. No cadence from the road-markers. The Keeper of Listeners put the count to two of the listeners who know the beacon rhythms best, and neither of them could place it. The full array was brought online, all three lines active at once, a thing that costs fuel and is not done without reason.

I watched from the verge as two more lamps came on inside the listener building. The gate stayed shut. The outer road stayed empty. The settlement had not decided.

The count remained seven. I did not add to it.

Rurik blinked once and looked away from the walls below, toward the east, where the copper line had found something it could not name.

The sheet holds 65 places. Ten are lit. This is the fifth night of six. The seven below are not in the body of the record, only in the margin where the marks point out past the edge and the page ends, and the ground continues without caring that the record stops. One of those undrawn places is a day standing. Whatever the eastern line received, it came from further out than that.

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