The Binding

by Bridget Collins

“I don’t understand,” I said. “All this—to decorate books that you don’t even sell.” “Books should be beautiful,” Seredith said. “No one sees, that’s not the point. It’s a way to honor people—like grave goods, in olden times.”

Which was worse? To feel nothing, or to grieve for something you no longer remembered? Surely when you forgot, you’d forget to be sad, or what was the point? And yet that numbness would take part of your self away, it would be like having pins and needles in your soul . . .

“Then again,” he said, “it makes me wonder about you. The binders. What is it like to steal a soul? To take misery and make it . . . innocuous? To heal a wound so that it can be inflicted again, for the first time?”