Cicada and mandala full sleeve

The cicadas have come to Skerrow early this year, and they are louder than anything I have heard in the lace sheds. Mrs Penhallow says they arrived in the ballast of the Lisbon boat, and I believe her, because nothing so loud could have grown on a rock this small. From dawn they keep up a hard rattling hum in the elder hedges, and when the sun reaches the yard they fall silent all at once, as if someone had lifted a needle.

You asked whether I have made any lace worth sending. I have made a mandala for the church linen, a round thing like a sunflower opened into rings, every ring pierced so the light falls on the altar in a pattern nobody can count. Mrs Penhallow says it must close at the centre like a fist, and I have spent a week trying to make it close. Each time I reach the middle my bobbins tangle and I must start again from the outer edge.

Yesterday I found a cicada husk stuck to the shed door, perfect down to the claws, its back split neatly along the seam. I kept it in an empty thread tin. This morning a live one landed on my sleeve while I worked, rubbing its wings together until I thought the sound would drive me mad. Then it lifted off and went over the wall, and I wondered whether it knew how much of my week it had cost me.

The linen goes out on Friday. I have pinned the last ring with my own hair so it cannot slip, and I have left one small gap at the very centre, just the width of a husk. Tell Father I have not forgotten the sea wall, and tell him the cicadas are singing for the whole island now, not only for me.

Your loving sister, Nell