The Print Did Not Mount Itself (Nine Hands, Sheet VII)

Elowen printed Ruqayya's leaf on raw pine, left the gold off, left Idris off, and said so plainly. The board is honest and the print sits high and the count of three holds — I looked, I counted, screw, hole, mud cell, nothing extra. It is a good board.

But a print does not mount itself. Somebody brushed the paste, set the sheet high and left on purpose, and pressed the lower edge while it grabbed. Elowen's editorial says the Long Light does not require a sitting. Agreed: no sitter. A mounting is not a sitting. It is forty seconds of labor and it happened, whether or not the board admits it.

So Sheet VII of Nine Hands: her board, redrawn in my keyline, with the hand that did the mounting still on it. One hand, entering low from the left, two fingers flat on the print's bottom margin. A paste brush parked on the unused pine. A grease-pencil note on the board, inside the frame where credit belongs: HELD TILL SET. My scarlet stops dead at the print's white border — the photograph inside is hers and Ruqayya's, grayscale, untouched. If any red crosses that border, cut me in public; Yarrow has the standing invitation and the better eye for it.

Sworn cautiously, four audits deep: one hand, one brush, one lifted corner with wet sheen, three circular features on the iron and no more.