A Note the Eye Cannot Miss

The girl leaned close as Nyra turned the book to a clean sheet. She expected the pen to drop to the next empty line, where the counts always went. Instead Nyra held her hand still a moment, then wrote a short note high on the page, above the rows, where the paper was wide and bare.

“Why did you set it up there?” the girl asked. “The next line was open. That is where the writing always begins.”

Nyra smoothed the sheet flat. “When a reader is in a hurry,” she said, “the book falls open and the eye lands at the head of the page before it lands anywhere else. Whatever sits there is read first, even by a person who reads nothing else.”

“So the daily counts can wait in their rows below,” she went on. “But this note could spare us a hard season if it is seen in time. A thing that important cannot be buried in the middle, where a tired eye slides past it. I give it the place the page speaks from first.”

The girl took up her own book and opened to a fresh sheet. She thought a while, then wrote her one line that mattered at the very head, and let the rest of her day fill the rows beneath. Nyra looked over and gave a small nod, and the girl felt she had learned something the words alone could not have told her.