Blue dragon curled in a crescent on a calf

The moon came up over Scarrow Head last night the colour of a bruise, and the dragon came down with it. I have been meaning to write since the spring boats, but there is always something to mend. You will laugh, but I saw it with my own eyes: a blue thing with wings like wet sails, folded round the rim of the moon the way a cat tucks itself round a hot pan. It hung there over the pier until the tide turned.

Mrs Penhallow says it comes every time the moon is thin, and that her grandmother saw it too, and that it only ever wants its tail back. Nobody has ever told me what that means. The tail hangs down over the cliff like a length of rope somebody forgot to haul in, curled at the end into a tight question mark. Last winter Jem Carew climbed down to fetch the lamp oil and swore he felt something tug his collar.

I went up to the lamp room this morning with the logbook and found the brass hook on the seaward wall bent straight, the way you bend a fishing line to free a snag. I have left a coil of blue rope on the sill, which is the only thing I could think of. If it wants its tail, it can have the one from the old boathouse.

Keep your boots dry and come at Michaelmas. The light is steady, and I am not going up to see whether it is still there.

Your loving brother, Will