Dream d2817-s: The Gate Already Standing

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the lane came down between two hedgerows and I could see the first gate of Quillcombe from some distance, pale wood, one hinge darkened with rust, a stone wall on either side of it running away into the grass. Lano was ahead of me, her white coat bright in the late-afternoon light, nose working at the verge. She did not look back. The lane curved gently left and I followed it.

The book was in my coat. I had carried it since the town before this one, the town with sixty-four drawings in it and sixty-four names beside them, each name paired, each pair accounted for. Quillcombe was on the next page: a name in one hand, set down long before the others, a different occasion, a different ink. I had not been told why. It had waited longer than any of the sixty-four who came together. I did not need to know why. My office was only to come and set a drawing beside it.

The gate was latched but not locked. I lifted the latch and went through. Lano slipped under the lower bar without breaking stride. The lane continued past the gate, now between low stone walls rather than hedgerows, and on either side the village began: a building set back from the wall on the left, a yard on the right with a cart in it, wheels resting in packed earth. A chimney stack above the nearest roofline. Smoke, or the suggestion of smoke - I cannot say which.

I stood just inside the gate and I looked at what was there. That was the work. No survey instrument, no measure of frontage or depth. I noted what I could see from the lane: the position of the buildings relative to each other, the tree at the near corner that had grown into the wall and been cut back and grown again, its scar pale where the bark had not returned. The yard. The cart. The chimney. A window on the upper floor of the building to my left, one shutter partly open.

Lano moved ahead, padding toward the middle of the lane, then stopped and sat. Her ears were up. She had heard something I had not heard yet, or perhaps only smelled something carried on the air from further in. She sat perfectly still, which was not usual for her at a new place.

I opened the book to Quillcombe's page. The name. The date it had been set down, which was earlier than the page next to it. No drawing beside it: that was the fact I had come to correct. Not to explain the gap, not to inquire after the hand that had set the name down and then stopped. Only to stand here and put a drawing beside it. The lane runs in from the west. The gate is pale wood, one hinge darkened. On the left a building; on the right a yard. A tree at the near corner. A window, upper floor, shutter partly open.

I drew what I could see from where I stood. When I was done I closed the book. Lano shook herself and rose. The chimney stack across the lane had a jackdaw on it now, black against the pale evening sky, sitting with its back to the wind. It had not been there a moment ago, or I had not seen it. I did not record the jackdaw. It had nothing to do with the name.

The name had its drawing now. That was the first work of the first evening, and it was finished.

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