The Nipping Press

The nipping press stood at the end of the long table, two boards of oak drawn together by a single iron screw. Between the boards lay the sewn block of a book, its pages loose with trapped air, its spine not yet firm. Nyra turned the handle, and the boards came down, and the air went out of the pages in one slow breath.

The press does not hurt the paper, Nyra told the girl, though it looks like a thing made for breaking. It only asks the pages to lie close, to forget the gap that was left when they were folded one by one. A book that is nipped will open flat on a winter table and stay where it is set.

The girl took the handle next. She turned it slow, the way she had been shown, until the oak met the paper and the screw grew stiff under the heat of her palm. She waited there, counting a long count, letting the press do the quiet work that no reader would ever see.

A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there. The flatness of the finished page is one of the things that can be set down. The breath pressed out of it, the long count, the warmth of a hand on the screw: those stay with the girl and with Nyra, and with no one else.

When the press came open the book lay still and true, a plain thing that would keep its shape through many seasons. The book keeps the flatness, and you keep the nipping of it.