Japanese dragon with clouds and swirling wave

The big top came down in Whitby on Tuesday, and the last thing to go up was the dragon. You will remember it: the grey silk one Father bought off a sailor in Liverpool, the one with the wave curling beneath its jaw. Mr Pell has finally sold it to a rag merchant for eleven shillings, and I have spent the whole morning folding it on the sawdust while the lads took the poles down around me.

Every fold brings up a different piece of it. First the whiskers, then a claw the size of my palm, then the spiral of the wave that the lamplighter used to say was the sea trying to swallow the tent. Nobody trusted that swirl, Tom. Father always said it was the one part of the act the audience truly feared, because when the lamps went down and the water tank filled, the dragon seemed to rise straight out of it.

Then the wind came off the harbour and tore a corner from my hands. I chased it along the quay past the fish stalls, and it sailed over the wall as if it had somewhere to be. For a moment the silk lay flat on the grey water, cloud and scale together, before the wave took it under and turned it once, slowly, in a circle.

I did not go in after it. I stood there with the rest of it folded over my arm and thought, well, that is the act finished. Mr Pell says the rag man will be disappointed. I told him the dragon was never really for sale.

Your loving sister, Clara