Feather wing with splatter on ribs

The road over Cold Fell closed on Tuesday, so I am writing this at the long table by the grate, where Mrs Pargeter lets anyone sit who will keep the fire fed. Your letter came up with the carrier before the drifts took the lane. I read it twice, then read the bit about Father's ewes a third time, and then I tucked it inside my coat so the damp would not get at it.

My room upstairs is cold but clean, and its window looks straight onto the stable wall, which is no great view. This afternoon I copied out the old guest ledger, a volume with a cracked spine, names and townships back to 1861. One signature stopped me. A Monsieur Lacroix, clockmaker from Lyon, had come north to mend the church bell and never gone home. Under his name he had written a single word, aile, in a hand so careful each letter looked like a quill feather laid flat on the page.

I knocked the ink pot over this morning and it ran across the ledger in a black fan, the drops flying off the edge like a bird shaking snow from its back. Mrs Pargeter went white and reached for a cloth, but I asked her to leave it. Some of the blots have dried into the margin now, and I have started tracing them with a fine pen, feather by feather, the way Lacroix might have.

I have decided to stay until the thaw. Tell Father he can have my share of the hay. Tell him there is a wing on the ledger now, and it is not going anywhere until the road opens.

Your loving sister, Nell