Dream d3260-s: The Ferry Clears the Fen

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the planks of the causeway were still damp from the morning's crossing and the fen spread on either side in low dark shapes, sedge and water and the smell of peat opened by autumn. The ferry came in as we gathered at the far end, the keeper unhooking the bow rope without looking, the way a person unhooks a thing they have done a thousand times. We loaded what we carried. Lano stepped aboard last, her nose tracking something across the water.

The keeper did not come with us. She stood at the near end of the causeway as the ferryman drew the pole back, and the gap between the dock and the hull opened, and Fenncrossing began to recede the way it always had, the way it had the first time too: not all at once but in parts, the lamplight going first, then the keeper's outline, then the causeway boards darkening into the reeds.

The surveyor had her notebook open but was not writing. The clerk watched the wake. I watched the place.

What I noticed: the landing post that had been leaning at an angle on the previous visit was leaning at the same angle now. The reed-cutter's tied bundles were hung on the same nails. The lantern bracket had not been repainted. These things had been here before I arrived and were here when I left. A record goes somewhere else and the place does not wait for news of itself.

Lano sat at the prow, ears forward, facing back. She did not whine or pace. The distant reader stood at the rail and said nothing, which was their practice.

The fen surface caught the moon the way flat surfaces catch things when they are not disturbed. We passed the marker stake at the channel's edge. We passed the second one. The ferry moved with a patience I had stopped noticing by the third day and noticed again now.

"Quieta," Lano said softly, to no one.

The causeway was a line and then a mark and then a suggestion and then the place had put itself away. This was not conclusion. The keeper had turned before we cleared the first bend. Whatever she was returning to was already there.

I folded the last page of my notes and put it in my coat. The clerk folded hers. The surveyor closed the notebook. The ferry carried its own silence, and the fen held its own darkness, and neither was ours to take back.

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