Crown tattoo on the lower back

The snow closed the Hollin Gap on Tuesday and has not opened since, so you will have to take my word for what happened at the chapel. Father Aurel sent up for a silversmith from Brenner last spring, a thin man called Gerrit Vahl who smoked a clay pipe even on the steepest switchbacks. The statue of Saint Ilse had lost her crown in a rockfall, and the parish had scraped together enough coin to replace it with something worthy of a saint who once walked the pass barefoot.

Gerrit spent a month in the sacristy with his bellows and his little brass rules. He would not let anyone see the spire until it was finished. When he finally lifted the cloth, the crown looked less like silver than like smoke caught in a bowl of frost, its arches curling outward like the fronds of a fern and the band at the base pressed with tiny dots, as though someone had rolled a bead of rain along it.

The trouble started when he asked for his payment. Father Aurel said the chapel had nothing left. Gerrit only shrugged, wrapped his tools in oilcloth, and went down the mountain with the first thaw. Two days later the crown was gone from Saint Ilse's head, and so was the pipe he had left on the sill.

I have not told anyone I saw him at the bottom of the Gap, but I did, Tomas. He was wearing a crown of his own, grey and shining, perched on a hat too small for it, and he tipped the brim to me as the carts went past. Burn this letter if you like. I think the saint has come down to the valley to see what her silver is being spent on.