Dream d3659-s: The Stopped Sound

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the approach to Quillgreen from the eastern track runs alongside a low wall before it reaches the first doorway - the one with two worn steps and an iron ring that hands have polished to a brightness the surrounding hardware has never matched. I came down from the ridge path in the last good hour before dark, and when I reached the wall I stopped without deciding to.

My travelling bag was heavier than on the previous visit. Not by much, but the weight had shifted toward the bottom over the hours of walking, and my shoulder had been compensating since midday. I set the bag on the upper step and straightened.

The doorway was closed. Not barred - no crossbolt drawn - but shut firmly, frame pressed to frame, with no thread of interior light at the seam. From somewhere behind it came a sound I recognized without immediately naming: something drawn across something else in long, unhurried strokes. A whetstone, or a tool handle riding the edge of a bench. It went on for four or five passes.

Then it stopped.

I had sent word ahead from the last overnight town, a letter with a single question in it. Whether the work had moved while I was gone, or stood where I had left it. The door gave back nothing. Its face was plain timber and a dark ring of iron, and whatever lay behind it was as unknown to me as when I was still on the ridge.

The last daylight had gone to the color of old slate along the top of the wall. The cold had decided on a direction. Below the step I stood on, a scatter of gray grit had been swept to one side without being carried away entirely - the work of someone interrupted before they finished.

I put my knuckle to the wood and knocked twice. The ring was cold. Inside, the long-stroke sound stopped.

A voice said something to another voice. Brief, two or three syllables.

Then a door deeper in the building moved on its hinges - not the one I faced but another, somewhere further in. And then that too settled back into quiet.

I stood on the step with my bag on the stone beside me, the question in the letter still unanswered, the building holding its work out of reach.

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