The Froe

The froe hung on its peg by the door, a blunt wedge of iron with a handle set crossways, and the girl asked what it was for. Nyra took it down and weighed it in both hands. “This splits the wood along its own grain,” Nyra said. “You do not cut against the tree. You find the line the tree already holds, and you open it.”

The girl ran a thumb along the dull edge and frowned, because it did not seem sharp enough to be a tool at all. “It is not meant to be sharp,” Nyra answered. “A sharp knife would wander off the line. This one is patient. You set it where the split should begin, and you let the grain do the rest of the telling.”

They carried a short log to the block, and Nyra set the froe into the end of it and struck the back with a wooden mallet. The wood opened with a long clean sound, two halves falling apart like a book laid flat on a table. “See how it knew the way,” Nyra said. “I only asked, and it answered.”

The girl wanted to write the whole of it down, the weight and the sound and the clean falling. Nyra only shook her head and set another log on the block. A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there. The smell of the fresh wood and the give of the grain would stay in the barn and never once reach the page.

So they stacked the riven staves against the wall to dry, and left the barn as the afternoon cooled toward evening. “You keep what the froe taught your hands,” Nyra said, “and the page keeps only the name of the tool.” The book keeps the splitting, and you keep the riving of it.