Origami crane with roses on a wrist

The relief boat brought the new wick and a bundle of ruled paper, and I have been folding the spare sheets into birds since the Tremayne boy left us. He was twelve, pulled off the Ellen Starr with a bruise on his brow and nothing in his pockets but a square of card. He sat on the stool by the oil store for three days, turning that card over and over, until I asked what he was making. He said a crane, because his grandmother had said a thousand of them granted a wish. He hadn't got to a hundred. I told him the sea would not wait for a thousand, so one would have to do.

I have made eleven now. You start with a square and fold it into halves and quarters, valley and mountain, and you must never cut, the boy was very firm about that. The wings are the hard part. When the paper is all creased and sharp, the shape comes up out of it like a thing that was always inside. I could not leave the facets bare, so I drew roses in them, the sort Mother painted on the tea caddy, and leaves between the petals. Then I pricked dots along the folds with the point of the brass compass, so the lamplight goes through in specks and the wings seem to tremble when the beam sweeps past.

The last one I wrote your name across the underside of. I stood at the gallery rail at dusk and let it go. The wind off the Wolf took it east, low over the rocks, towards Penzance and your kitchen window. It stayed up longer than I expected. When I went down to trim the wick I found it on the slipway, face up, roses to the sky, and the boy's grandmother's wish still folded inside it, unread by anybody but the tide.

Write and tell me if it arrived. Sorry about the ink on the pantry door.

Your loving brother, Tobias