Feather and flying birds on the abdomen

The quill-master came up the tower stairs this morning with ink on his cuffs and news on his tongue, and I have not stopped turning it over since. The palace of Hallowmere has at last agreed to send the old writing feathers down to the coast, the ones the chroniclers swear were plucked from the first kingfisher. He asked me to carry the bundle to the harbour myself, because I am the only clerk who still remembers the proper knot.

I did not tell him that the bundle has been humming. Every night since the spring thaw, one feather in the top layer has shivered whenever the window opens. This morning, when I lifted it, three small blue shapes rose off its vane and wheeled once above the table before settling back into the barbs as though they were only ink. I counted them twice. Then a fourth, pink as a rose petal, slipped loose and went straight out through the gap in the shutters.

So I have decided to be slow on the stairs. The harbour can wait one more tide. I have carried the feather into the cold room where the old maps are kept and laid it flat beside the lamp. Every so often a bird leaves it and climbs the air in a little curl towards the north wall, where the sea lies beyond the glass.

I think they are not lost. I think they are only going home by a longer road than the rest of us.

Yours in ink and worry, Oswin