The Kindness Curse

rip the bundles out of the binding and rearrange everything again?
"I suppose I could just put the pieces in and find some ribbons or even sew a case to hold everything together, and not glue it until I was sure ..."
That solution didn't feel right, either.
"Bother," she snarled, and put the pile of papers down and stomped over to the other end of the table, where she found relief in cutting out the pieces for three pairs of trousers. There was something highly satisfying, almost soothing, in the crunch of the scissors going through the thick cloth, of cutting apart the long, dignified, richly dyed material.
The problem of the order of the book sections gnawed at her all through the basting process and dinner, and made her somewhat short-tempered with Flora and Fauna during that evening's reading. The girls didn't seem to notice she sighed each time they asked her to help them figure out a word. That irritated her, too.
When the silence grew too long, she looked up to see the girls stood at the other end of the table, examining the papers. A shriek of warning caught in her throat as Flora gently flipped open a bundle of leather and wood, the battered cover and binding.
"Mistress Mara, what's all this writing in here? It looks like words, but I don't know any of them," the girl said.
Merrigan's hands trembled as she put down the trousers. Her knees wobbled as she walked down to the far end of the table. The scolding rising up hot in her throat cooled and died away when she saw neither girl had done anything more to the torn binding and covers, hanging together by a few thin, worn pieces of leather and many torn threads. With delicate motions, she tugged the leather of the front cover into place on the inside, left face. Odd. She could have sworn there was very little of the leather left when she first found the mangled book. It looked almost whole now, if faded and stained and threatening to wear through in a few spots.
Flora was right. There was writing on the leather. Not just writing, but a list. The first few words on each line were the titles of the bundles she had sorted. Merrigan's mouth relaxed into a smile. Her pleasure died as she deciphered the next few words on each line. Someone, in a different hand, had made notes to rearrange the list, so that the first item on the list wasn't the first section of the book. In fact, it had been designated the third, then changed to the twelfth, then the eighth. The same had been done to the other sections, their positions changed and changed again.
"Someone was very disorganized and very messy," she finally said to the girls. Merrigan could smile at them, though, because hadn't her discouraging problem been solved?
She should have looked at the cover, instead of nattering herself into a headache.
The odd thing was, she could have sworn she had looked at the pieces of the cover. Not only hadn't there been a list the first time, but far less leather existed in the cover. Was something wrong with her eyes?
THE LIST DANCED THROUGH her dreams. When she woke up long before dawn, Merrigan had a plan firmly in mind. She could almost laugh at herself, how she obsessed over fixing a book that was little more than a collection of tales of idiots who ran into majjians and fell into rewards they didn't deserve. Still, she had a gurgling in her throat that threatened to turn into humming, as she put the glue pot back on the candle to warm and melt, then hurried to wash with the water left in her basin, neatened her hair, dressed, and settled down to work on the book before her breakfast arrived. Between the sunrise creeping through the windows and the oil lanterns in the chandelier, there was more than enough light.
She felt positively buoyant this morning. By rights the prospect of another day putting together grand new clothes Judge Brimble most certainly did not deserve should have made her feel much abused. Repairing the binding and cover of the book felt like enormous progress.
The glue had softened enough that it was easy to stir it around with a little water and the stick end of a brush. Merrigan's hands stayed steady and her touch was delicate and sure, as if she had done this sort of thing a thousand times, as she spread glue on the wooden boards of the cover, stretched the leather into place and pressed it down with a firm but gentle touch. She had thick books ready to put on the mended cover boards to hold the leather in place while the glue dried. Odd. She couldn't remember taking them off the shelves. A chuckle escaped her.
"Mindless obsession. How Leffisand would laugh if he saw me now." She sighed, realizing she didn't feel the usual resentment that came with thinking of him.
There was innate satisfaction in repairing something that had been so tragically damaged. While the cover dried, held in place, she searched through her supplies for the thickest, strongest thread and the sturdiest needles, and prepared them, then set them aside. She knew exactly how to repair the binding to make it ready to take the bundles of pages. Before the seneschal brought her breakfast tray and the two fresh pitchers of water, one hot and one cold, she had two more piles of pages sorted into order. The sorting seemed to go more quickly with each pile, as if the pages were arranging themselves.
The morning sewing flew by. Merrigan caught herself a dozen times with a childhood song bubbling in her throat as she stitched and pinned and turned seams and thought ahead to what piece of the judge's wardrobe she would work on next. Working on the book had become a reward for completing tasks, rather than escape from the