Dream d3450-s: The Cart Sits Still

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I sat on a bench at the edge of Tamarackcroft with the ledger open across my knees, and the clerk sat beside me, writing.

The cart was behind us. It had no wheels, just the flat bed resting in the grass where someone had left it, season after season. The wood was dry and pale at the grain lines. I did not turn to look at it more than once.

The clerk wrote the date first, then the name of the turf, then the cart with no wheels. The pen moved without hesitation. Lano sat at the foot of the bench, her nose pointed toward the tree line, ears up. She did not bark.

The entry-keeper stood to one side, hands folded. The keeper of the place came out of the low building across the croft and walked to the far edge where the tamarack rows began, then stood there with their back to us. Nothing was said.

The moss on the bench post was wet from the morning. I could smell it: cold water in green. Somewhere behind the cart a thrush made two short calls and then stopped. The croft was otherwise quiet, not the quiet of absence but of something going on at its own rate, indifferent to the ledger, indifferent to the pen.

The clerk wrote. Tamarackcroft. Dormant. Three visits on record. Cart, no wheels. I did not ask what came next in the column. My notebook was in my coat pocket. I had stopped taking it out.

Lano shifted, turned in a half circle, and settled again with her chin on her forepaws. The keeper at the far edge had not moved. The entry-keeper opened their hands and folded them again.

I looked at the bench post, the wet moss, the grain of the wood under my hand. The ledger entry was almost done. The thrush called once more, from a different tree. The cart sat where it had been left. The turf held the shape of the croft the way it always had: low, patient, getting on with the work of being a place.

The clerk closed the column. Set the pen down. We sat there a moment longer in the cold morning air, and the croft continued, and no one asked anything of it.

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