Geometric heart on the ribs

The boundary stones are all in now, and I have stopped pretending the fence line makes any sense. Old Mr Pardoe wanted the wood cut square along the lane, but the trees at the edge of Hollin Wood grow where they please, so I ran my chain from the church tower to the three oaks and back again, and the lines knotted together the way wet string does in a drawer. Pinned to the table tonight, they look like a net someone dropped.

Yesterday, though, I stood on the rise above the mill pond with the theodolite and saw it. Sight every corner, draw every line between them, and the whole parish sits inside a heart with its facets showing. Each triangle is a bearing I took in sleet, and each crossing is a place where two sightings disagreed by a hair. I have sketched it three times and it comes out the same shape every time, which I did not expect from a map of hedges.

I told the vicar and he laughed until he had to sit down on the font. He says it is a sign. I told him a sign is a thing somebody else reads into a mess, and that I would rather write the figures out honestly. So I have, and the sum is this: the heart is not in the wood. It is in the lines I drew. Mr Pardoe can have his square fence. I am keeping the heart, folded in my notebook, and I will show you when the frost lifts.

Yours, Tom