26.

The Account Without an Account

The deep Archive, beneath First Threshold, seventh month of 200 AGH

Josephine had tied the pages of the six lights together and was easing the cord away from the last line when the old mind asked for another leaf.

“There is something I want beside that.”

She took a clean sheet from the lower shelf. The stone was cold against the back of her hand. She set the page straight, put the tied account beyond the reach of her elbow and dipped her pen.

“The ferryman,” it said.

She wrote the words. She had left room above them for a date.

“When?”

The water sound continued. Josephine looked up from the sheet. A line of turquoise light ran through the grown stone, divided and met itself farther on. She could follow that much of it from the stool.

“I have...”

The voice stopped. She felt the end of it in her teeth.

She waited with the pen above the page. The drop at its point grew heavy, and she touched it to the blotter before it could fall. She had learned not to fill every pause. There were accounts whose first words came reluctantly and then wanted to run ahead of her hand.

“The ferryman,” the mind said again.

“Yes.”

“It mattered.”

“Can you start somewhere other than the date?”

The sound in the chamber deepened. She straightened, ready to write, and then remained straight while nothing followed. Her wrist began to ache in the position she was holding it. She lowered the pen without putting it away.

She wanted a first sentence. It had asked for the leaf; she had the leaf. There ought to have been a question small enough to answer, something they could set down and work outward from. She looked at the two words already written and could find nothing to ask that did not put her own invention ahead of them.

“Jo.”

“I'm here.”

“Wait.”

She nodded, then said yes, in case it had not been attending to her head. She rested her forearm on the writing shelf. After a little while she moved it again because the stone had grown uncomfortable through her sleeve.

The mind began once more. There was no word she could distinguish. The sound caught, and for a moment she could hear the little scrape of the pen where she had rolled it under her fingers.

“I wanted to tell you this one.”

“I wanted to hear it.”

“I don't know why I know it mattered.”

Josephine looked down at the room she had left for the date. She could write the date of this sitting. It would be the only date she could honestly put there, and it would not be the one she had asked for.

“Shall I keep this page?” she asked.

“What have you put?”

“The ferryman. Nothing else.”

“Keep it.”

She waited again. The voice came back more quietly.

“Put that I couldn't tell you.”

Josephine wrote the date of their sitting above the title and identified it as such. Beneath the two words she wrote that the account had been offered, that it had not been possible to give it, and that the teller knew it had mattered. She read the entry aloud.

“Is that right?”

“Yes.”

Her pen remained in her hand. She had space for so much more. At last she wiped the nib and laid it down.

When the ink was dry, she set the leaf after the account of the lights. It was the same size as the other pages, and the cord went round it with them.