Geometric bison head on an upper arm

The crate came off the lighter at Valparaíso with every pane intact, which I count as a small miracle given how the stevedores handled it. I told them only that the glass was cut to angles and must stay level, and a boy with a bandaged thumb nodded as if he had cut glass himself. The bison went into the hold with the sugar and the lamp oil, and I have checked on it twice a day since, the way you checked on your rabbits.

You remember the drawing Mr Ashdown sent up from Penzance. Every edge of that beast is a decision. The horns slant up like two blades, and the mane is nothing but sharp triangles stepping down toward the jaw. He wanted the black facets to read as stone and the grey ones as smoke, so I spent three nights at the bench with a straight-edge and a box of lead came, working out which panes should swallow the light and which should throw it back.

The second mate asked to see it on Tuesday. We propped a finished panel against the rail in the evening sun, and the whole head went dark at once, every facet flat and certain, like a thing that had been there before the ship and would be there after. He stood looking at it so long the bell for the watch rang without him moving.

When we reach Penhallow the window goes in the east wall, where the morning light comes through. Mrs Ordway has asked that the bison be set low, so that on still mornings its shadow falls across the flagstones and the congregation walks over it on the way to the pews. I told her a beast made of shadow ought to be trodden on. She said that was exactly what she had in mind.

Your loving sister, Eliza