Dream d2825-s: The Tally Before the Map

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood in the Willowden yard on the third night with a board nailed to a post and a column of marks that had reached, by then, the bottom edge of the paper. The crates were stacked in rows behind me, each one carrying a chalk mark on the end board, and I was counting.

Lano sat at my feet and watched the crate rows.

The count was this: one hundred separate pieces of work, inside thirty days, all belonging to one name that has no drawing under it yet. The name sits in the book clearly lettered, set down in the long sitting when sixty-four waiting names were written in sequence and then the pen was laid aside. One name had been set down long before that sitting and has waited far longer. The page does not say so. I know because I counted the gap between the ink color and the section-head date.

One hundred in thirty days. I wrote the number at the foot of the tally column and drew the line under it.

Of the hundred and twenty-nine names in the book, sixty-four have a drawing under them and sixty-five do not. No drawn place has gone unnamed: in every case the name came first and the ground followed or did not follow. Forty-eight of the waiting names share a first part with a place already drawn. Thirty of them show a light somewhere inside the pages. Fifty-four had work done in them this past month. The whole stock of names the book could carry is nine hundred and sixty. It has made a hundred and twenty-nine.

I set the chalk down on the board ledge.

Rurik came through the gap between two crate-stacks and took the top of the lowest one, amber eyes level with the tally column. He blinked once and then watched nothing in particular.

I did not write anything else. The count was the count. Lano pressed close against my leg, and I stood with the yard quiet around me, and then I turned and went back inside.

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