Feather with mountain and pine scene on arm

There was a clerk here once, Tomas Glennie, who sorted parcels in the back room under the clock. One January a sack came up from Inverness with a single goose feather in brown paper. No name, no return, only a label reading Carry this where it's wanted. Turning it over, Tomas found a faint pencil drawing: a ridge of peaks, and pines climbing the slope where the barbs should have been.

He took it home and held it to the lamp. The lines had gone deeper than pencil ever does. Each tree was a scatter of dots, the way frost settles on glass, and the peaks had black edges sharp enough to nick a thumb. Every morning after that he carried it in his breast pocket, and every morning the mountains seemed a little closer to the window.

When the sender never came back for it, Tomas bought a ticket north himself. He stepped off at a halt where the pines came down to the water, and the ridge was there exactly as inked, the tallest peak ducking under cloud the way the feather showed it. He stood a long while, then pinned the feather to the timber of the halt and caught the next train home, lighter by one mountain range. Mind the draught as you go.