Dream d3025-s: The Sheet Holds Nine

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the gate latch was still warm from the day, and I stood with my hand on it a moment before lifting it. That was the last warmth Garnetsquare offered. The party assembled on the far side: the Registrar with the folded sheet, the Survey Hand with the counting rod, myself with the ledger under one arm. Lano pressed close to my leg. Rurik had gone ahead and was sitting in the center of the path, staring north, his amber eyes bright with the last of the sky.

Seven nights in Garnetsquare. The sheet now shows forty-nine places with an inside account against them, and seventy-nine more that have not been entered, only called from outside and written that way. Of the ten places I had marked for this road out, I had entered one and left nine.

The one I entered was Coldrow House, which the sheet gave as derelict and unoccupied. It was neither. A family had come back in the dry months, repaired the north gable, cleared the upper rooms. I found cut wood stacked in the passage. The Registrar struck the old entry and wrote beside it what I described: inhabited, gable repaired, wood stores laid in. One entry struck. Nine others on the sheet for this road stood uncorrected, unvisited, exactly as the far account had made them.

We walked north through the last of the light. Lano's nose worked the verge; she found something in the long grass, sniffed it, left it, trotted on. The roofs of Garnetsquare dropped behind and were gone. The Survey Hand counted paces for a while and then stopped.

The nine places sat in the ledger as written. Cold houses that might be less cold than written. Working doors that might be less known than assumed. Distance had done what it does to all of them, and I had not corrected it, because entering is a different labour than counting, and I had spent the labour I had. Someone will walk into those nine next month, or the month after, and write what they find. That account will sit beside this one. Neither is wrong. Neither is settled.

Lano pressed ahead on the path, ears up. Rurik had already gone into the dark. I closed the ledger clasp and kept walking.

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