Rope

A coil of rope hung on a peg by the shed door, and Nyra took it down without hurry. It had been cut years ago from a longer length, and the ends were bound with waxed twine so they would not fray. The girl watched the way it fell into loops across the open hand, each loop the same size as the last, as though the rope remembered its own shape.

A rope is a simple thing to name and a hard thing to keep. It holds a gate shut, it steadies a young tree against the wind, it draws a bucket up from the dark of the well. Each task leaves its mark, a shine where the fibres have been handled, a darkening where the rain has soaked and dried a hundred times.

A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there.

The book could record the length of the rope and the season it was bought. It could not record the weight of a full pail at the end of it, or the ache that weight left in the shoulders, or the quiet trust that the rope would hold one more time. Those things lived in the hands, not on the page.

Nyra wound the rope back into its coil and hung it once more on the peg. The book keeps the length of the rope, and you keep the pull of it.