Headband

Nyra set the sewn block of pages on the bench and turned it so the top of the spine faced the window. At the head, where the folded sections met the air, a small band of coloured thread ran across the gap, wound over a slim core. Nyra called it the headband, and said it sat at the head and at the tail, one at each end, where a hand would reach to draw the book down from a shelf.

The girl asked whether the band held the book together, and Nyra said it did a little and mostly did not. The weight of the block rested on the sewing that ran down the folds, and on the glue and the cover. The headband took the small pull of a finger at the top edge, and it closed the gap at the end of the spine so that dust and time found less of a way in. It was part work and part finish, a neatening of the place where the book met the open air.

Nyra threaded a needle with two colours and showed how the band was built. She laid the core along the end of the spine and wound the thread over it, carrying the needle down into the sections now and then so the band was tied to the body of the book and did not merely sit upon it. The two colours crossed and alternated, a small bead of pattern forming along the core, each turn pressed close to the one before it.

A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there. The record would hold the title and the count of pages and the day of the binding. It would not hold the hour Nyra spent winding two colours over a cord, the breath held at the corner, the small ache in the fingers that had made the band lie even and true. That labour closed itself into the finished edge and asked for no line of its own.

When the second band was wound and tied at the tail, Nyra ran a thumb along both ends and set the book upright to show the girl. From the shelf only the two small beads of colour showed, neat at the head and the tail, giving no sign of the hours behind them. The book keeps the finish, and you keep the sewing of it.