Gridiron

The gridiron lay across the hearth on its low feet, a grid of flat iron bars black with long use, and under it Nyra had raked a bed of red coals. She set the fish along the bars and let them take the heat, and the kitchen filled with a low steady sound. The girl crouched close and asked how much a gridiron could hold. Nyra said that the measure of it was easy to write, but the holding was another matter.

You could set down the length of the bars, Nyra went on, and the gap between them, and the weight the iron would bear without a bend. 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 hiss that rose when the fish first met the iron, nor the smell of it browning over the coals. It could not keep the moment when the skin had set enough to turn, which no clock would ever name and no line would ever hold. It could not keep the small sure flick of the hand that lifted and turned and laid each piece back down without tearing.

The girl watched the bars print their dark stripes along the fish, and she saw that the gridiron gave nothing of itself to the page. It gave only to the coals and the food and the one who tended them, and it asked a watchful eye in trade. She stopped counting the bars and learned instead to read the heat, and Nyra nodded and let her take the turning.

The book keeps the measure of the gridiron, and you keep the tending of it.