Newel

The newel stood at the foot of the stairs where it had always stood, and the girl set her hand on its worn cap the way a person sets a hand on something that has agreed, long ago, to be leaned upon. Nyra came in from the yard with the lamp not yet lit, and found her there, turning the round of the wood under her palm.

“I measured it for the book,” the girl said. “How tall it is, and how square at the base, and the look of the grain. I wrote that the cap is darker than the post.”

“Those are good things to set down,” Nyra answered. “A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there. You can write that the cap is dark. You cannot write why.”

The girl kept her hand where it was. “It is dark because of hands,” she said, as if she had only now understood it. “Yours, and the ones before you. The book has the darkness and not the hands.” Nyra nodded, and reached past her to rap the cap once with a knuckle, so that the whole post gave back a low, round note that ran up the rail and into the dim of the landing.

“That is the thing no line will hold,” Nyra said. “You come down in the dark and you knock it, and it answers, and you know the stair is still there under you.” The book keeps the newel, and you keep the ringing of it.