Billet

The woodpile had grown over the week, and the girl was sorting it, setting the short logs apart from the long ones. A billet, Nyra had taught her, was a log cut to a tidy length, no longer than a forearm, ready for the small autumn fires that took the chill off a morning. The girl held one up to the pale light and turned it, reading the rings the way she might read a page.

“How many fires will this pile make?” the girl asked, stacking another billet onto the row against the wall.

Nyra set down the ledger and came to stand beside her. “The book could tell you a number,” Nyra said. “I wrote the cords down in the autumn column, and the number is honest. But a number is not the same as a warm kitchen on a grey morning, and it never will be.”

The girl frowned at the neat row, then at the worn cover of the ledger. “So why write it at all, if the page keeps only the count and not the warmth?” she asked. Nyra answered without hurry, laying a billet square on the top of the stack. “A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there. The count is the part that must travel from year to year. The warmth is the part that stays with you, and asks nothing of the page.”

They worked on until the row reached the window, each billet settled into its place with a small sound like a word laid down. When the last one was stacked, the girl rested a hand on the pile and felt it hold steady. The book keeps the count of the billets, and you keep the carrying of it.