Crescent moons on the back of the neck

Forgive the smudged ink. The wind has been blowing grit across the Sallow Flats for three days and the paper drinks it up like a sponge. We reached the last survey peg at dusk, the one Harrow hammered in before he went home with his bad lungs. From there the road runs straight as a ruled line for forty miles, and I stood with the chain in my hands and watched the moon come up over it, a thin pale paring, the sort you could cut your thumb on.

Harrow always said the trick was to take your bearings from the moon, not the stars, because the moon stays put while the stars gossip. So each night I've been sighting from the crescent down to the little brass ring Harrow left in the cairn, then dropping a plumb line to the pegs below. Dots where the chain sagged, dashes where the wind shoved it sideways. Forty-one marks so far. The old moon at the foot of the line is true north, and the upper one is only where the road tells lies.

Yesterday Dobson asked why I bother with the drawings when the road is already laid. I told him a road is only a line somebody agreed to believe in. He laughed, then stared at the sky a long while without saying anything, which for Dobson is as close to an apology as he gets.

I'll be back on the Thursday coach with the drawings rolled in oilcloth. Keep the lamp lit in the east window. I can see both moons from here, and I know you'll be looking for them too.

Yours, as straight as I can manage, Tom