Dream d2960-s: A Face the Keeper Cannot Place

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I came to the crossing into Galestead Town near the second hour, lantern traffic still moving on the bridge in both directions, and the toll-keeper sat at his window with his ledger open and his candle close. Lano stopped at the end of the queue and sat. Rurik slipped up to the rail and perched, watching the water below with his amber eyes.

The toll-keeper's window was the size of a face. He called the names of the people ahead of me - a cartwright, a dyer's apprentice, a woman with a covered basket - and each one said their name and the name said itself back as a recognition: yes, that one, that face. He noted and waved. The gate swung. None of them had to explain anything.

When I reached the window he held his candle up. His eyes moved over my face the way a man checks a column for a figure he expects to find. It was not an unfriendly look. It was a careful accounting. The figure was not there.

He asked the first question that required an answer: Where from?

I named the last place. He wrote it.

He asked the second: Where going?

I named this place. He looked up.

Galestead was in the long column. It had a tier, a distance marker, a note on population, an estimated crossing figure per day. I knew those numbers better than I knew the road in. He had the other set: the faces. He had them all. He did not have mine.

He wrote the toll amount without saying it and waited. I paid. He handed back a slip and had already moved to the person behind me before the gate completed its swing.

On the other side, the town held the same light it had from the road: every window lit, movement in the streets, voices, something being unloaded from a cart. It looked tended. It looked known.

The long column had this town for months. The short one had it now. The difference was the slip in my pocket and the toll-keeper's questions and the moment before them, when a face arrived at a window that had seen a thousand faces and had not yet seen this one.

Lano fell into step at the first intersection. Rurik was not visible but would be somewhere ahead, finding his own way in. She pressed her side against my leg once, then trotted forward. Aquí, she seemed to say, without saying anything at all.

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