The Lying Press

A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there. Nyra set the sewn block between the cheeks of the lying press, and the girl watched her turn the long screw until the wood closed on the pages with a slow and patient grip.

“Why so slow?” the girl asked. “Could you not turn it fast and have it done?”

Nyra said, “A fast grip bruises the paper, and a bruise never leaves. Go slow, and the press holds the book square without a single mark.”

The girl set her own hands to the screw and felt the wood answer under them. “It wants to be even,” she said. “Each quarter turn the same as the last.”

Nyra nodded, and the two of them left the book in its steady hold while the paste set. A book pressed square would open square for a hundred years, and no reader would ever think of the quiet hour that made it so. The book keeps the squareness, and you keep the gripping of it.