Geometric fox head on a forearm

You will think me mad for writing from the cutting-shed again, but the fox came back to the glazier's yard this morning and I had to tell someone. Master Haldane sent me down to the Lowmarsh kiln with the cartoon for the chapel window, a fox's head for the Saint of Thornwick, and I was carrying the pattern under my coat against the rain when the hail started.

The fox in the window is no fox anyone has seen. Haldane cut every face into facets, the way the old mapmakers drew mountains, so each ear is a shard of rust and each cheek a slab of tan or ash grey. Where the light passes through the orange plates it lays a warm stripe across the stone floor, and where it passes the grey it goes cold as a well. He would not let me paint the eyes. "The eyes are the only soft thing," he said, "so the rest must be hard enough to keep them safe."

Then the kiln cracked on the third firing and the whole muzzle slumped to a puddle. I thought we would have to begin again from the first lead came. Instead Haldane sat on an upturned bucket, blew out his cheeks, and drew a single black line down the bridge of the nose, straight as a surveyor's chain. Every other edge followed from it. By dusk the head had settled into its shape again, sharper than before.

I have the offcut in my pocket now, a triangle of orange glass no bigger than a thumbnail, and I mean to keep it. Come to Thornwick at Michaelmas and I will show you the window. You can tell me whether a fox made of edges can still look at you as if it knows you.

Yours in soot and solder, Corwen