Geometric stag head on a thigh

The stag came back to the kitchen garden on Tuesday, and this time he brought the rain with him. You will not believe the neck on him. Father always said the old bucks wore their mantles like cloaks, but this one wore feathers, slate-blue and bruised purple at every tip, laid over his shoulders like the slates on the potting shed roof. I stood at the gate with the trowel still in my hand and he looked at me the way the magistrate looked at Mr Holt, as though I owed him money.

I have been measuring the beds again, the way you taught me, with string pegged to a triangle and a circle drawn round the sundial. Mother thinks it folly. The sun is a red dot Uncle daubed on the wall years ago, and every morning the stag stands beneath it while the shadow of the gnomon falls across his brow like a crack in a pane. I tried to sketch him once, but the lines kept closing in on his head until he looked caught in a net.

Last night I dug up the rhubarb row and found a tin with your name scratched on the lid. Inside was the brass compass you lost the summer you went to Edinburgh. I have set it on the sill. The needle still swings toward the north wall, toward the gap in the hedge where he went out. Come home at Michaelmas and we will walk the line together, and if he is there again we will not be the first to look away.

Your sister, Agnes