Dream d3040-s: The Standing Line

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the last entry in the Brackenbrook ledger was not a conclusion. I wrote it by the gate before the road turned and the village roofline dropped behind the trees. Lano sat at my heel, one ear cocked toward the town, and did not look back yet.

The book for this residency holds eight interior accounts: eight doorways crossed, eight distances narrowed to a room or a yard or a face seen at work. The distance account named each of these places. The walking account named them again from inside, and they did not match. The mill on Holt Lane runs quieter than the note says. The Waykeeper's house is not abandoned but is locked, and was locked before the note was written. Both versions are in the book. Neither is struck through.

Rurik came as far as the gate and sat down there, amber eyes on the road ahead. He has done this at every departure, I think, though I cannot prove it; the book does not record the cat's positions. I wrote: departed Brackenbrook, seventh morning, road north, seventy-nine places not entered, forty-nine entered, the discrepancy in each account noted and kept. I did not write: and here is what it means.

Lano nosed the gatepost, then turned to face the road. I closed the book. Rurik stayed in the gateway when we walked through it, watching, and by the time I looked back he was gone.

The standing line, read after, says only what it says: seventy-nine names with no inside account attached. Thirty-three of those were called on in the record, once or more, as though they had been entered. They had not been. The near account of any one of them would have disagreed with what was written. I know this because the eight that were entered disagreed. That is not a failure of the writing. It is what the walking found.

The road goes on. The book goes with it. The sheet is not corrected by counting; it is corrected by the door.

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