Aquarius crystal ball design with skeletal hands

The crystal cracked on the third night out from Liverpool, a hairline running up through the wave that Mr Varley insists is Aquarius pouring his jug. He says the sea did it, the damp and the salt, and that the ball will hold for Halifax if I keep it wrapped in my good flannel. I have kept it wrapped. I have not told him the crack was there before we sailed, because I saw it in the crate and said nothing.

Every evening in the saloon he lifts the sphere from its brass stand with those two bony hands, the ones Mrs Gorse painted white for the footlights, and the ladies gasp when the candle flickers inside the glass. I stand behind the curtain with the cards and the coin tin and count the change. Last Tuesday a man from Manchester asked whether his brother had drowned in the Mersey or merely gone to America, and Varley peered into the cloudy water for a long time before answering that the brother was happy and would write. The man paid double. I keep thinking of the letter that will never come.

Pass that on to Mother, but not the bit about the coins. Here is the odd thing. Yesterday the crack had closed. I held the ball up to the porthole and the line was gone, as if the glass had mended itself in the cold. Varley says it is the light. I think the sea has simply decided to keep one of our secrets.

Write soon, care of the purser at Halifax. Tell the boys the parrot is not coming home with me.

Your loving sister, Edie