Dream d2979-s: The Yard Count

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Surveyor stood in the yard of Ivorylow on the sixth night and read the number aloud into the dark.

One hundred and twenty-eight, she said. The gathered figures did not argue with it. A lamp was held at the edge of the group and its light fell across the flagstones without reaching the wall. Lano sat near my feet with her nose aimed at the dark beyond the lamp's reach. Her ears were up.

Forty-eight entered, the Surveyor said. She did not say it as a confession and she did not say it as an achievement. She said it the way you say the number on a door.

Rurik had come into the yard at some point and was now on the low wall to my left, watching the Surveyor with the particular stillness of a cat who has decided something is worth watching. His tail moved once, slowly, and was still.

Eighty not entered, the Surveyor continued. Twenty cold. Thirty-four lit. The lamp-holder shifted and the light moved a little across the stones. Nobody filled in the rest of the arithmetic. The difference sat in the yard with us.

Twenty-nine named in the record and never arrived at, she said last.

That was the hardest one to say aloud, I thought, though she said it in the same register as the others. A place being written about and a place being stood in are not the same claim, and the record does not distinguish them on its face.

Lano got up, walked three paces toward the dark, and stopped. Sniffed. Came back and sat again. Rurik blinked once, slowly, and turned his head to look at nothing in particular along the top of the wall.

I wrote the numbers in the column. Long column, short column. The lamp-holder did not move again. Nobody offered a reason for any of it, and nobody was asked to.

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