Dream d2790-s: Where the Ink Stops

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the wind came flat across the ridge and I knelt at the cairn with the board across my knees, the drawn sheet held at both corners by my thumbs. Lano pressed her flank against my calf and her nose worked at the cold air coming up from the slope below.

The first column I ruled on the left side of the board: sixty-five, the count of drawn places. The second column I ruled on the right: two hundred and seventy-nine, the count of places held in hand. Between them the difference is not a margin. It is a second country, and it is the larger one by far.

The clerk of the lower register had met me at the base of the ridge and turned back before the slope grew steep. The tally she handed me was still folded warm from her coat pocket: one hundred and seventy-four places on no sheet at all, sixty-one of those worked and walked within the last thirty days. The sheet had been facing a different direction when they were opened.

I set a small mark below the sixty-five: ten places in the drawn country carried a brightness as of this count. Then I set a mark below the second column: sixty-one gone over on this same round past the edge, and of those sixty-one, twenty-eight with fires in their windows. The drawn country runs at roughly one in six. The country past the edge runs at nearly one in two.

Lano's ears lifted toward something moving far below the ridge. She did not bark. She only stood with her nose tilted into the dark beyond the cairn, reading whatever was down there.

Seven entries on the drawn sheet name a place the reader cannot arrive at. The address is wrong, or the place has moved, or it was never where the ink said it was. I added the number seven to a third column on the board and wrote nothing above it. A heading for that column would be a verdict, and this is a night for counting only.

The newest place in the country past the edge is called Larklow Town. One day it has been there. I wrote its name at the foot of the second column, below the last entry, and set down the pen. Lano had already turned from the cairn and taken several steps back toward the slope's edge, her tail low, her pace unhurried. I gathered the board under my arm and followed her down.

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