Besom

The besom stood in the corner by the door, a bundle of birch twigs lashed to a handle worn smooth by many winters. Each morning, before the light had warmed the stone, Nyra took it up and swept the keeping room in long and even strokes. The girl sat at the table and counted the passes aloud, and she wondered how many strokes a clean floor would require. Nyra told her that a floor did not hold a number, only the memory of being tended.

You could write the count if you wished, Nyra went on. You could write the number of twigs in the binding, the length of the handle, the many mornings the besom had seen. A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there.

For the book could not keep the warmth that rose in the room once the dust was gone. It could not keep the clean smell of birch, nor the way the morning light fell across the swept stone and found no shadow of grit to catch upon. It could not keep the quiet that settled after the last stroke, when the whole room seemed to breathe.

The girl set down the number she had counted and looked at the floor instead. She saw that the sweeping had never been for the tally. It had been for the room, and for the morning, and for the small peace of a thing done well. Nyra nodded, and leaned the besom back in the corner for the next day.

The book keeps the count, and you keep the quiet of it.