The How of It

The girl knelt in the damp row, working a length of twine around a young vine and the stake beside it. She wound it once, then again, her fingers unsure of how tight to pull. It took her a long moment to settle the knot, and when she drew back to look she frowned at it, as if it might come loose the instant she looked away.

She tried the next one, and it went no faster. Each time her hands stopped to puzzle out the same small question of over or under, of snug or loose. Nyra stood at the end of the row and watched her work without hurrying her.

“Fetch your book,” Nyra said. “Write down how that knot goes, now, before you tie another.” The girl looked up, surprised. Her fingers were slow and unsure, and the twine sat crooked on half the stakes she had done.

“But I am not good at it yet,” the girl said. “Should I not wait until I can do it right?” Nyra shook her head and came to kneel beside her. “That is just why. While it feels strange to you, you can see every step of it. Wait until your hands know the knot on their own, and you will forget you ever had to learn. Then a newcomer will ask you how, and all you will have to give her is, you just do it.”

So the girl wiped her fingers on her apron and drew her own book onto her knee. She wrote it out in patient words, the over and the under of it, while the twine was fresh and awkward in her memory. The best moment to set a thing down, she was learning, was while it was still new enough to puzzle her, before habit swallowed the how of it whole.