Dream d3494-s: The Mill Receives the Sheet

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the mill at Fennmill was dark except for one amber lamp the keeper had not yet doused, and the grinding stone sat cold on its table as it had for two witnessed seasons and some number of unrecorded ones between. Lano moved ahead of me into the mill room, her nails finding the grit of old flour on the boards, nose working low along the table's base.

I carried the dated sheet folded once. The entry-keeper stood near the door with the relay clerk at her shoulder, neither of them watching me set it down; they were watching the open window where the beacon lamp at the far tower had begun to pulse in a rhythm that was not its rhythm. The relay clerk said something low to the entry-keeper, and the entry-keeper put her hand flat on the window frame without speaking.

I laid the sheet on the mill table. The date faced up. The place-name faced up. The grinding stone was cold and heavier than I expected and I set it down on the near corner of the sheet so it would not lift if the door opened. The flour dust in the grain of the table pressed through the paper from beneath.

The keeper was at the far wall with a hand-reckoner raised toward the beacon. The beacon pulsed wrong again. Then the reckoner made no reading at all, only a static crackle, and the keeper turned it over as if the fault might be in the instrument.

Lano's ears went flat. She stepped back from the table, sat down facing the window, and barked once, short and hard, the kind of bark that wants an answer back and gets none.

The grinding stone did not move. The sheet lay beneath it, its corner pinned, flour dust settling onto the date and the place-name until both were lightly covered. The mill kept the sheet in the way of a place that has held its own dust since the last season anyone worked it: without intention, without ceremony, by simply continuing to be still.

The beacon pulsed a third time and the relay clerk's face did not change but her hands came up and she began to write something fast in the ledger she carried. The entry-keeper looked at me once. I did not ask what the clerk was writing.

I walked back through the door into the Fennmill night. Lano came after me, close at my heel, her tail low, her ears still back.

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