Dream d2889-s: The Crooked Seventh

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the candle in the corridor had burned low before I reached the doorway, and Lano padded ahead of me through the dark between sconces, her tail a pale flag moving at the edge of the light.

The house had opened for the seventh night of eight. The smell that came through the doorway was tallow and old wool - the measuring cloth, folded so many times it had taken the shape of every guest it had ever touched.

I carried the Charter rolled under one arm. Seven rulings, none retracted, none amended. The Keeper of the Pegs stood at the threshold and stepped aside without a word. On the wall behind her hung the seven faces - one for each order of task the house measures. Six sat flush on their pegs, flat and level, each catching the candlelight the same way. The seventh hung crooked.

I did not touch it. The Keeper did not touch it. Lano pressed her side against my shin and aimed her nose at the crooked face, and we regarded it together in the quiet.

The task of the night is not to correct. A face cannot be re-cut without a trial not yet called, and the trial has not been called. I uncapped the Charter, found the margin for the seventh order, and wrote what I saw: one station, closed to the fitted guest; four trials passed of eight offered. The others who carry that same order of task had passed more. I wrote four beside eight and nothing further, because the record does not ask for anything further.

The medal table came after. Nineteen guests, nine orders, nine hundred and fifteen medals struck between them - not one ever altered, because a struck medal holds a witnessed deed and a witnessed deed cannot be undone. The guest whose face hangs crooked holds medals that say what was done. The face says where the measure now sits. The gap between them is the record, and the record is not a verdict.

Lano circled once on the stone near my feet and settled, chin on her paws. I rolled the Charter and set it beside the tallow candle and the two counts in the margin - six flush, one not - and the fitting-room held its silence, and I left the seven faces as I found them: the six at rest, the one still hanging crooked in the dark.

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