Excerpt from The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The next day, after helping with the slips, I pestered Da for another story. In my enthusiasm I forgot to be as quiet as a mouse; I was getting in his way.

"A scapegrace will not be allowed to stay," Da warned, and I imagined being banished to Ala-ed-Din's cave. I spent the rest of the day beneath the sorting table, where a little bit of treasure found me.

It was a word, and it slipped off the end of the table. When it lands, I thought, I'll rescue it, and hand it to Dr. Murray myself.

I watched it. For a thousand moments I watched it ride some unseen current of air. I expected it to land on the unswept floor, but it didn't. It glided like a bird, almost landing, then rose up to somersault as if bidden by a genie. I never imagined that it might land in my lap, that it could possibly travel so far. But it did.

The word sat in the folds of my dress like a bright thing fallen from heaven. I dared not touch it. It was only with Da that I was allowed to hold the words. I thought to call out to him, but something caught my tongue. I sat with the word for a long time, wanting to touch it, but not. What word? I wondered. Whose? No one bent down to claim it.

After a long while I scooped the word up, careful not to crush its silvery wings, and brought it close to my face. It was difficult to read in the gloom of my hiding spot. I shuffled along to where a curtain of sparkling dust hung between two chairs.

I held the word up to the light. Black ink on white paper. Eight letters; the first, a butterfly B. I moved my mouth around the rest as Da had taught me: O for orange, N for naughty, D for dog, M for Murray, A for apple, I for ink, D for dog, again. I sounded them out in a whisper. The first part was easy: bond. The second part took a little longer, but then I remembered how the A and I went together. Maid.

The word was bondmaid. Below it were other words that ran together like a tangle of thread. I couldn't tell if they made up a quotation sent in by a volunteer or a definition written by one of Dr. Murray's assistants. Da said that all the hours he spent in the Scriptorium were to make sense of the words sent in by volunteers, so that those words could be defined in the Dictionary. It was important, and it meant I would get a schooling and three hot meals and grow up to be a fine young lady. The words, he said, were for me.

"Will they all get defined?" I once asked.

"Some will be left out," Da said.

"Why?"

He paused. "They're just not solid enough." I frowned, and he said, "Not enough people have written them down."

"What happens to the words that are left out?"

"They go back in the pigeon-holes. If there isn't enough information about them, they're discarded."

"But they might be forgotten if they're not in the Dictionary."

He'd tilted his head to one side and looked at me, as if I'd said something important. "Yes, they might."

I knew what happened when a word was discarded. I folded bondmaid carefully and put it in the pocket of my pinny.

A moment later, Da's face appeared under the sorting table. "Run along now, Esme. Lizzie's waiting for you."

I peered between all the legs--chairs', table's, men's--and saw the Murrays' young maid standing beyond the open door, her pinafore tied tight around her waist, too much fabric above and too much fabric below. She was still growing into it, she told me, but from under the sorting table she reminded me of someone playing at dress up. I crawled between the pairs of legs and scampered out to her.

"Next time you should come in and find me; it would be more fun," I said, when I got to Lizzie.

"It's not me place." She took my hand and walked me to the shade of the ash tree.

"Where is your place?" 

She frowned, then shrugged. "The room at the top of the stairs, I s'pose. The kitchen when I'm helping Mrs. Ballard, but definitely not when I ain't. St. Mary Magdalen on a Sunday."

Excerpted from The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. Copyright © 2021 by Pip Williams. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.