Knob

The brass knob on the garden door had gone loose in its collar, and Nyra knelt in the cold morning to tighten it before the first hard frost. The apprentice crouched beside her, chin on her knees, watching the small screwdriver bite and turn.

“Why bother with it,” the girl asked, “when the latch still holds the door shut on its own?” Nyra answered without looking up from the work. “A latch keeps a door closed,” she said. “A knob lets you choose to open it. Those are not the same labor, and only one of them is yours to decide.”

The girl took the loose knob and rolled it in her fingers, frowning at the dull shine of it. “It is only a handle,” she said. “It knows nothing. It holds nothing.” Nyra nodded. “No more than a book holds anything while it waits closed on the shelf,” she answered. “But it sits at the very place where inside becomes outside. That is worth keeping true.”

Nyra set the final turn and tested the door, swinging it until the hinge sang one clear note. “You take hold of a hundred of these in a day and never once think of them,” she said. “A book is no different. It keeps its patience, shut and quiet, until a reader decides of her own will to turn the cover and go in.”

The girl wrapped her whole hand around the mended knob and pulled the door wide, letting the raw garden air pour over them both. “Then I will open it,” she said. Nyra smiled down at her, because the choosing, and not the brass, had been the whole of the lesson.