Dream d2998-s: The Name Opens Inward

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we came to Kestrelhush on the third night of the residency, and the Threshold-Caller pressed one hand flat against the door while the rest of us stood behind on the step.

The inventory sheet puts Kestrelhush in the gone column. Gone: roof failed, timbers down, not entered. I had the sheet in my coat pocket and I could feel its weight while the Threshold-Caller's palm rested on wood that was not failed, was not down, was sound under the rain that had begun to come sideways off the ridge.

The Threshold-Caller said the name. Said it aloud into the dark, into the rain. Kestrelhush. The door opened inward, drawn by someone on the other side.

This is what the sheet did not have: someone on the other side.

Lano pressed against my leg, ears flat back, her nose working the air. Not the entrance smell. Something behind it, something from farther along the valley. I put my hand on her shoulder and felt her go still, the stillness she has when she is deciding. She decided. One sharp note into the dark, and then silence, and she pressed harder against my leg.

The wind picked up while we crossed the threshold. It came from the west, the way it comes before the serious weather, and I heard it take one of the antenna cables on the ridge and set it drumming. The Recorder opened the notebook on the hallway table while I listened to that sound. The cable drumming is not on the sheet: there were no antenna masts in the last census of Kestrelhush. The masts are recent work. The sheet is not.

Rurik went ahead of us down the hall, slipping into the dark beyond the lamplight, amber eyes catching the flame and releasing it. He sat in the doorway to the back room and stared at what was behind it. He did not move.

The keeper of Kestrelhush is a tall woman in a grey coat. She told us the roof failed three years back and was patched the following spring. She said it plainly. The sheet held the failure and lost the repair.

Outside, the rain found the trenches. I heard it, the hollow sound of water finding a channel, the cable trenches along the eastern wall filling fast. The Recorder noted it. I went to the window and watched the water move in the yard.

The generator shed light across the yard in a steady pulse, and then the light slowed, and then it found its rhythm again. I watched it for a full minute.

The sheet in my pocket is still in my pocket. I have not taken it out. This is the first thing entering costs: you stop reading the sheet and start reading the place, and when the two disagree you hold both and write neither down as settled.

The wind took the cable again and set it drumming harder. Lano lifted her head toward the dark window, toward the sound coming off the ridge, and held very still, and did not look away.

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