Owl with spread wings across a back

Old Mrs Pellow swore it was her late husband's ghost, which was nonsense, because Arthur had been a carter with a loud mouth and would never have chosen a bird with such good manners. I tied each letter to a brass ring on its leg. It lifted off over the beeches with its wings spread wide, feathers catching the lamplight like the gills of a fish, and was gone before the church clock finished striking.

Its first run carried my sister's reply to the foundry in Sheffield. The second took the boundary dispute that had split the parish for a decade. The third came back with a single grey plume and a pressed violet from a woman in the mill town whose name I had never heard. I kept the feather in the till drawer, under the stamps.

On the last hard frost the sack was empty when I opened it. Only the plume lay on the ledge, laid out neatly as if someone had combed it. I wrote one more letter, addressed it to the owl, and left it beneath the feather. By morning the paper was gone and the frost had grown thick on the sill, unbroken except for a single clean print where a talon had rested.