Galaxy and nebula on upper arm

Last night the cloud tore open over the back ridge and I went out with the lantern to fetch kindling. The sky was not black at all. It was the deep green-blue of a bottle held up to the light, thick with stars, and low down there was a great smudge of gold going rust-red at one edge, as though someone had drawn a fire across it with a wet thumb. The gold part looked like a hearth banked for the night. A red streak ran clean through the middle like a split in the sky. I stood so long my fingers went white.

The surveyor in number four, who arrived on the last cart, came out in his coat and said it was a cloud of dust where stars are born, and that the light we were seeing had set out before the Romans came. I asked him how he knew. He said he had a book, and that the book had been wrong before but never about the distances. I did not believe him, but I wrote the figures down anyway, the way you taught me to write down anything I cannot explain.

This morning the cloud closed again and the sky went back to grey. I have kept the page folded inside my apron pocket, and every time I touch it I think of that gold coal burning in the dark, a very long way off, not caring whether anybody in the valley was watching. Come home at Easter if you can. I will show you where to stand.