The Sewing Frame

In the far corner of the room stood a sewing frame, a plain thing of wood, two uprights and a bar, with lengths of cord strung taut from the top of it to the base. Nyra had kept it there for as long as the girl could remember, and on the quiet afternoons of late autumn the two of them would sit before it and gather the folded pages of a book.

The work was slow and asked for patience above all. Each folded gathering was laid against the cords, and a needle drawn through the fold and around the cord and back again, so that the pages were bound not by paste alone but by a thread that ran the whole length of the spine. Nyra moved without hurry, and the girl learned to match her pace.

A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there. The frame could hold the cords and the thread could hold the pages, but neither could hold the long golden light that lay across the floor, nor the warmth of the room, nor the small unhurried gladness of the two of them at their task.

When the sewing was done the book would be lifted free of the frame, the cords cut and frayed into soft brushes to be pasted down beneath the boards. What remained upon the frame was only the empty cord and the quiet, waiting for the next book and the next slow afternoon.

Nyra wound the loose thread and set the needle by. The book keeps the stitch, and you keep the lacing of it.