Mending the Spine

Nyra lifted the oldest ledger down and felt it sag in her hands. The thread that once held its spine had worn thin, and two gatherings of pages had begun to slip free of the whole. Years of entries sat loose in the sagging cover, ready to scatter across the floor.

She did not reach for the pen. Instead she drew out a length of stout thread and a needle from the small tin she kept for such work, and she set the lamp closer to her hands.

One gathering at a time, Nyra pressed the loose pages back into their place along the spine. She passed the needle through the old holes where she could find them, and made fresh ones where the paper had given way, drawing each stitch snug so the binding would hold.

It was slow labor, and no new word was added to any page. Yet she understood that keeping a record was not only the writing of it. A book that fell to pieces held nothing, however careful the marks inside. To mend the binding was to guard every season the pages remembered.

When the last stitch was tied off, Nyra held the book flat under her palm. The girl, who had watched the whole while, took up her own thin book, whose corner had begun to work loose, and set a careful stitch of her own along its edge.