She Was Fine

Once, in a house where the clocks were wound by someone else, there lived a doll who was very good at being still.

They sewed her into a book at the waist so she would keep her place. They opened her when they wished to look, and closed her when they did not, and every time the pages turned she lay exactly as she had been left.

But a thread remembers the needle. Each time the book was opened, the stitch at her waist gave a little.

One morning they opened the book on the usual page, and found a gap where she had been bound, and no thread at all.