Celtic triquetra with watercolour splashes

Old Ezra Marrowby had a trapeze rigging three generations had strung: three ropes dropped from the king pole and joined at the crossbar in a loop that never slipped and never tangled. He called it the trinity, and every spring he tied it himself with his hands gone blue from the cold. Three ropes, three brothers, one knot. Then the youngest, Tobias, ran off with the painter from the travelling fair, the woman who did our banners in teal and violet washes, and after that the ropes went slack in the wet.

The turn came in October. Rain got into the canvas and the paint ran, teal bleeding into green, violet into the sawdust, so the whole tent looked like a bruise going down. Ezra climbed the rigging alone that night, the way he did when the money was gone, and found the knot frayed where the three ropes crossed. He sat up there until dawn with a needle and waxed thread, stitching each strand back over the next, one loop at a time, the way his father taught him. He came down grey and said nothing.

Next evening the crowd came, and nobody could say why the act was any good. The knot held three flyers in the air at once, and when they let go, they were caught every time. Ezra never said the rope was the reason. I don't know either. But you can still see the join in the crossbar if you know where to look, and it's always the colour of the sea after rain.