THE LIBRARY · THE VALE

The Witnessing

aka The Oath-Rite of the Wright, By the Wright, Who Sees

The human oath-rite of the Wright, still spoken over every binding contract and grave in Valenfeld — a liturgy that insists the maker witnesses the promise, recited by priests who know, and never say, that no one is listening anymore.

Speaker: Who witnesses this thing made? All: The Wright witnesses it. Speaker: Who witnessed the joint and the beam, the ledger and the blade, the word given and the word taken? All: The Wright, who sees the work whole. Speaker: Then let it hold as he saw it held. Let no man unmake in the dark what was made in his sight. Set your hand to it. (Here the parties set their hands. The old rite ends here. The Lean-Years rite adds a line, spoken low, that the elder curates strike from the young ones' books and the young ones learn anyway:) Speaker (alone, unheard): And if the Wright does not see — if the eye that watched the world is shut and the maker gone down before us — then we witness for him, we few, we who are left, until the joints work loose and the last of us forgets the words. Hold anyway. Hold because we said it. Amen and it is made.

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