Metallic gold and silver arrow and feather flash sheet

The swallows came back to the cloister on the feast of Saint Brendan, the same morning Brother Osric dropped the good goose-wing shafts in the rain, so you can tell Mother I have not lost my knack entirely. They have mended the nest over the north door with mud from the millrace, twelve trips an hour by my count, and the prior has forbidden anyone to knock it down. I am glad of it. I have been sitting at the window with my cup going cold, watching them dive through the gap in the bell louvres as though it were the easiest thing in the world.

You asked whether I miss the fletching bench. I do, though not the smell of hot glue or the way the barley-beer flies got into everything. What I miss is the matching: taking three feathers from the same wing, cutting each to the same angle, and knowing that if they fly true the arrow will too. Here the brothers call that vanity. Brother Anselm says a man who measures his own pride will never finish his psalter, and he is probably right.

Last week I found a dreamcatcher in the almonry, woven from old bowstring and a rim of willow, left by a pilgrim who never came back for it. I hung it beside the nest. It turns in the draught from the door, and the swallows seem to treat it as a kind of weather vane, sliding past its feathers on the way out. I think they like the company.

Write to me when the wool is in. Tell the boys to keep their thumbs off the fresh-cut nock, and burn the spoiled shafts rather than sell them as good.

Your brother, Tobin