Dream d3293-s: Damp at the Cut Face

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I came down the north edge for the first time, three nights into the residency, past the upper terrace and onto the steeper ground. Dunnebarrow's slope changed here: longer, angling away from the mound, with a seam of pale clay visible where the turf thinned near the base.

The keeper worked along this lower edge by moonlight, spade in both hands. Each cut was the same depth as the last. I counted nine strips in the time it took me to reach the foot of the slope. Each strip came free with a soft tearing sound, dark and damp on its underside, and was placed back along its own scar without altering the line.

Lano followed me down. She pressed her nose to one open cut while the strip stood lifted, then stepped back and sat close at my heel while the keeper replaced it. She tracked the keeper's hands without approaching. Her breath showed in small pale clouds above the grass.

The relay clerk had stayed on the upper terrace with the ledger. She was adding the night's entry to a second column - her instruction was to keep two columns and let them run separately. She did not call down.

The surveyor had come this way earlier. His rod stood at the south end of the cut line, driven into the soft earth at the slope's foot. I could see six notched intervals above ground. I did not know what the intervals measured. I left the rod where it was.

When the ninth strip was back in place the keeper pressed each one flat with the edge of a boot, moving along the line from south to north. The clay seam had closed. The surface read unbroken. Nothing in the returned turf distinguished itself from the grass that had never been lifted.

The account had gone out after last night. No word had come back. Here was what remained: a slope, a sealed edge, cold air carrying the smell of wet iron, Lano sitting still while her breath went pale, and the surveyor's rod standing in its angle at the boundary, still angled, still unread.

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