Dream d3034-s: First Lamp in Seven

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the brook crossing came up shallower than written, the stepping stones more evenly spaced, and I arrived at the first lamp as it lit and turned the water below it from grey to gold.

The survey of Brackenbrook, taken at a distance from the far ridge, had it as a compact place: self-contained, flat-fronted, the kind of settlement that makes no demand on the walker. Standing at the crossing I could see at once that the far account had flattened something. The houses went further back into the hill than any outer view had shown. The lamp arrangement was not as charted. Neither account was wrong about its own vantage. They were two accounts of one place, and both are written down here without settling which is right.

Lano crossed behind me on the stepping stones, then stopped on the far bank and stood very still. Her ears had gone flat. I wrote in the entry log: arrival, first lamp lit, animals attentive.

The Crossing Warden met us at the bank. She had a tally in one hand and a relay transcript in the other, and before she said a welcome she said the relay had come in garbled. Not the usual fading. The pattern had arrived with the count transposed. She had run it three times and the transposition held. The Register of Relay had been sent for.

Rurik had gone ahead up the bank without us and sat on the low wall above the crossing, amber eyes on the upper village, tail still.

I read the transcript. The count in the relay did not match the count in the survey. A settlement further along the road had sent word that their own relay had come in scrambled at the same hour. The corruption was not on one end.

Lano barked once, short and flat, directed at nothing I could see. The Crossing Warden wrote it down.

The lamps above Brackenbrook came on one at a time from left to right until the whole crossing was lit. The relay transcript lay between us on the wall, garbled at the counting line, and the Register of Relay had not yet arrived. The last lamp came on above the highest house, and the first of seven had not yet closed.

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