The Airing

The first hard cold of the year came in the night, and by morning a thin white rime lay along the fence and the tops of the beds. Nyra rose before the girl and went to the low shelf where the two books stood together. She lifted them both down, the old thick one and the newer thin one, and held them a moment against the front of her coat as if to warm them.

She carried them out to the table by the window, where the low sun came in pale and clean across the wood. One by one she opened them and stood each on its own, spreading the pages so they leaned open like small tents. The morning air moved slowly through the paper, lifting the faint smell of damp that the shut months had pressed into them.

The girl came to the doorway rubbing sleep from her eyes and saw the two books breathing there in the light. She did not ask what the tending was for. She only fetched a dry cloth from the basin shelf and, saying nothing, set to wiping the frost from the sill so the damp would not creep back into the pages.

They worked side by side through the slow hour, turning each book now and then so the light could reach every leaf of it. It was the same care they gave the beds at the turn of the season, the same patient attention to a living thing that needed only to be kept and not to be hurried. Neither of them spoke, and the house was quiet but for the small sound of pages settling.

When the sun had climbed and the chill had lifted a little, Nyra closed each book and set them back in their place, the thick beside the thin, warmed now and dry. She passed the cloth once along the empty run of shelf beyond them, the room they had chosen to keep, so that it too would be clean and waiting. Then she rested her hand flat on both covers for a breath, and left them to the winter.