Colophon

Nyra turned the ledger to the very last leaf, past the final row of figures, to a small block of words set apart at the foot of the page. This was the colophon, she told the girl, the note a maker leaves of the making. It gave the season the book was bound, the name of the one who sewed the signatures, the weather of the week the glue had dried.

The girl read it twice. It was plainer than a poem and shorter than a prayer, four lines only, and yet it held a whole workshop inside of it. Bound in the late autumn of a cold year, by a steady pair of hands, in a room that smelled of paste and tallow.

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

The colophon could keep the season and the name and the count of the gathered leaves. It could not keep the ache that settled into the wrists by evening, or the low singing that kept the long hours moving, or the slant of amber light across the bench at the close of the day.

The book keeps the colophon, and you keep the making of it.