{"id":11,"date":"2026-11-01T15:34:15","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T15:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/143.110.217.77\/?page_id=11"},"modified":"2026-11-01T15:42:06","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T15:42:06","slug":"the-magic-of-reading-chapter-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/hermes.flbtech.com\/?page_id=11","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 2: The listening wood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2190 Contents<\/a><\/p>\n\n

\"An<\/figure>\n\n

On the morning Mara took the book into the woods, the rain had stopped but had not yet decided to leave. It remained in the grass, on the gate latch, in the dark cuffs of the trees. Every time the wind moved, a handful of drops fell somewhere out of sight. The sound was so like the beginning of a sentence that she kept pausing to hear the rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She had not meant to bring the book. It was in the pocket of her coat because she had carried it home from the little lending shelf at the station and then forgotten it there. Its blue cover was soft at the corners, and someone had pressed a thin brown leaf between pages forty-six and forty-seven. When Mara discovered it at breakfast, a little grit from the leaf came away on her thumb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her mother had sent her to find Tomas, who had gone up the path with a saw and a coil of twine. A branch had come down across the footbridge in the night, and he had promised to clear it before the children walked home from school. He was not young, although he objected when anyone suggested this had anything to do with the length of time a task might take him. He preferred to say that a thing should be given the time it asked for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTell him lunch is at one,\u201d her mother said. \u201cAnd tell him that means one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mara took the path behind the houses, where the gardens gave way to nettles and then to a stand of birch. The air changed under the branches. It was cooler there, and smelled of wet bark and the sharp green scent released when she brushed against a fern. The path narrowed until she had to walk with one shoulder slightly forward. Farther in, a bird gave three uneven notes, stopped, and tried again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The footbridge crossed a stream shallow enough to step over in summer, though today the water ran brown and quick between its banks. Tomas was beside it, studying the fallen branch. He had put down the saw. His cap was on the bridge rail, collecting drops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLunch at one,\u201d Mara said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat time is it now?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen we have plenty.\u201d He picked up the saw, then put it down again. \u201cOr possibly none.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The branch was thicker than Mara\u2019s leg. It lay diagonally across the bridge, its leaves trailing into the water. At the broken end, pale wood showed beneath a ragged collar of bark. The tree it had come from stood a few paces upstream, a beech with a long gray trunk and roots that rose from the earth like the backs of sleeping animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan I help?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can hold that end when I\u2019ve cut through. But first I need to work out which way it wants to go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mara watched him crouch beside the branch. He tested its weight with one hand and looked at where it rested against the rail. She would have begun sawing at once, impatient to see the obstacle become two manageable pieces. Tomas seemed willing to spend the whole morning looking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt wants to go in the stream,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m afraid of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He set to work at last. The saw rasped through the damp wood with a sound that filled the small clearing. Mara held the loose end when he told her to, feeling each stroke travel along the branch and into her palms. At the final stroke the weight shifted suddenly. She staggered backward, laughing in surprise, and the severed piece landed on the bridge with a thump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They dragged it onto the bank together. By then Tomas\u2019s sleeve was wet to the elbow, and Mara had a smear of green across her trousers. He looked at the remaining length and rubbed his chin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne more cut,\u201d he said. \u201cAfter a rest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He sat on the bridge with his feet against the lower rail. Mara wandered to the beech and found a place between two roots where the ground was reasonably dry. When she sat down, the book pressed against her side. She took it out and turned it over in her hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat are you reading?\u201d Tomas asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t started.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA good part of any book.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She opened it at the beginning. The story was about a woman who returned to a house by the sea after many years away. In the first pages she unlocked a stiff door, opened a window, and found a cup in a cupboard. Not much happened. Mara read the same paragraph twice, distracted by the stream and by Tomas tapping sawdust from the teeth of the saw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At home she liked to read with the door closed. She liked a blanket over her legs, a glass of water within reach, and enough quiet to forget the room around her. Here the room would not be forgotten. A drop landed on the page. An ant crossed her wrist. Somewhere behind the beech, something small moved in the leaf litter, stopping whenever she turned her head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She nearly put the book away. Then she came to a sentence about the woman opening the cupboard and finding a cup with a chipped handle. The cup had belonged to her brother, though he had never liked it. Mara looked up. Tomas was trying to fit his cap back on without getting its wet brim in his eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid you ever have a cup you didn\u2019t like?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCertainly. Yellow. Your mother gave it to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy didn\u2019t you like it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe handle was too small. I could only get one finger through, and then I had to carry it as if I were making a very delicate point.\u201d He demonstrated, lifting an invisible cup. \u201cI used it for years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour mother gave it to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mara smiled and returned to the page. The woman at the sea house washed the cup and left it on the draining board. Mara could picture the yellow cup now, though the book had not said what color its cup was. She could picture Tomas holding it with one finger, his other hand hovering beneath. For a moment the woman in the story seemed less alone in her kitchen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next time Mara looked up, the light had shifted. A pale opening had appeared in the clouds, and the leaves overhead were turning slowly toward it, or so it seemed from where she sat. She listened to the water. It did not make one continuous sound, as she had always supposed, but several: a low rush at the bend, a quick chatter over stones, an occasional hollow knock beneath the bridge. When she began reading again, the sounds stayed with her. They did not make the words harder to follow. They gave her somewhere to pause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She read a little aloud, quietly at first. The woman in the book was walking through her empty house, naming what she found: a chair, a clock, a coat left on a peg. Mara\u2019s voice sounded different outdoors, without walls to return it. The words went a short way and then seemed to settle among the other noises. Tomas did not turn around, but he stopped tapping the saw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she finished the page, he said, \u201cWhat happened to the brother?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWill you tell me when you find out?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She promised she would. He stood, stretched his back, and returned to the branch. Mara closed the book around a finger and watched him choose the place for the second cut. His careful looking no longer seemed quite so idle. A sentence, too, could be approached from more than one side; sometimes what looked like a pause was part of the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Tomas sawed, she turned to the leaf between pages forty-six and forty-seven. Its veins were delicate as cracks in old paint. She wondered who had put it there and whether it marked a place they wanted to remember or simply the place where they had stopped. The story on those pages lay ahead of her. She could have read it now, but she liked not knowing. She slipped the leaf back into its narrow shelter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A sharp crack interrupted her. The second piece of branch had come free and tipped toward the stream. Tomas caught it against his knee, but the saw fell from his hand and clattered between two boards of the bridge. Mara ran to help. They pulled the branch onto the bank, and she lay on her stomach to retrieve the saw, reaching through the gap while the water hurried underneath. Its wooden handle was wet and cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere,\u201d Tomas said, taking it from her. \u201cA very useful assistant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t do much.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou kept the saw from going downstream. I was rather fond of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They stacked the cut pieces beyond the path, where no one would trip over them. Up close, Mara saw tiny beads of moisture shining on the fresh wood. She touched the broken end of the branch still attached to the tree, rough and splintered after the storm. There was no tidy way to make it whole again. Tomas followed her gaze but said nothing. After a moment he picked up his cap and put it in his pocket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the way home they met a woman walking a dog with muddy paws. She thanked Tomas for clearing the bridge, though she had not yet seen it, and the dog pushed its nose against Mara\u2019s coat pocket. Mara held the book away from him. The woman apologized; the dog showed no interest in apologizing at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the edge of the wood, Mara looked back. From there the beech was hidden by the birches, and the bridge was only a rumor of pale boards between their trunks. The path seemed to close behind them, not mysteriously, but in the ordinary way that overlapping things conceal one another when you change your position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They reached the house to find lunch on the table and Mara\u2019s mother standing by the window. She pointed to the clock. It was twenty minutes past one. Tomas began to explain about the branch, the saw, and the difficult question of which way a piece of wood wanted to fall. Mara\u2019s mother handed him a towel before he could finish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterward Mara took the book upstairs. A dark, uneven mark had appeared at the edge of one page where the drop had fallen. She worried at first that she had damaged it, then laid it open on her desk to dry. Through the window she could see the tops of the trees beyond the roofs. They moved at different speeds in the wind: the birches flickering, the beech slower and heavier behind them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She read until she learned that the brother had gone inland to work and had not written for a long time. He was not dead, as she had feared. The woman in the story stood at her kitchen window wondering whether to write first. Mara marked the page with a clean scrap of paper, went downstairs, and told Tomas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAh,\u201d he said. He was drying the yellow cup with a dish towel. \u201cAnd will she?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He set the cup carefully on its shelf. Outside, another brief shower passed over the garden, ticking against the glass. Mara went back to her book, carrying the sound with her.<\/p>\n\n\n

\u2190 Chapter 1: A door made of paper<\/a>   |   Contents<\/a>   |   Chapter 3: The rooms books make \u2192<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2190 Contents On the morning Mara took the book into the woods, the rain had stopped but had not yet decided to leave. It remained in the grass, on the gate latch, in the dark cuffs of the trees. Every time the wind moved, a handful of drops fell somewhere out of sight. The sound […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":9,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hermes.flbtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hermes.flbtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hermes.flbtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hermes.flbtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hermes.flbtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hermes.flbtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22,"href":"https:\/\/hermes.flbtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions\/22"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hermes.flbtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hermes.flbtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}