Dream d3294-s: Board of the Outward Days

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the stone chamber at Dunnebarrow was darker than I remembered it, or perhaps the board drew all the light toward itself. It was pine, I think, pinned to the north wall with iron pegs, and the days of the outward journey were still written there in a careful hand: Day One, Day Two, counting out to a number I could not read from where I stood.

Lano moved ahead of me to the board. She nosed the wood just at its lower edge, her breath clouding briefly in the cold, and then she stepped back and sat.

The relay clerk had the record open and was reading from it without speaking aloud. The surveyor stood at the far wall with a candle cupped in one hand, measuring nothing, only looking at the join where the stone courses met. A second candle burned in a bracket beside the board, and its light made the written numbers waver.

I had come here before. The account was in the record and the record had gone forward. What came back was only the place itself, the same board, the same iron pegs, the seam of damp along the floor.

I crossed and read what was written there. Day One. Day Four. Day Nine. They did not tell me where the party had been going or whether they had returned. They were the count of a thing already done.

Lano moved to my heel and pressed there. The surveyor did not look up.

The board was a thing someone had made to keep track, and the keeping had ended when the journey ended, and the board had stayed. That was all it was doing now: staying. The iron pegs held it flush against the stone. The damp had reached the lower edge and the wood there was soft and dark, but the numbers on the upper half were still clean.

I ran my finger along one line. The clerk turned a page. Outside, somewhere above the chamber roof, the wind moved through whatever passage it uses at Dunnebarrow in the deep part of the night.

We did not speak. The candles burned at their own rate. Lano settled on the floor with her chin on her paws, watching the board.

It did not do anything. The place went on.

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