Scrollwork cross on the ribs

The wire drawer on Saltgate has finally agreed to sell me his old draw-plate, the one with the brass rim worn to a smile, so the bench is mine now. I have been winding scrolls since Tuesday. The first ones came out lumpy, too tight at the curl, and I threw them in the melt pot out of spite. The third set held. You curl the end back on itself, then turn it outward once more, and the whole thing wants to spring open if your hand isn't patient.

The commission is a cross for a woman who walks the seawall road to the new reservoir every dawn. She wanted nothing plain. Her grandmother's cross was lost in the last surge, she said, and she wanted something that looked like it had grown rather than been made. So I drew the arms from a single length of silver, bent each terminal into a spiral, and let the spirals breathe against the upright. At the centre I left a small open window where the arms meet, because a closed join looks like it is holding something in, and I did not want that.

She came for it this morning. She turned it over in her palm, found the loop at the top with her thumb, and asked if I had made the ends too fancy. I said no, that the ends were the point, that a cross with plain ends is only a sign, and one with curls is a thing a person can hold on to while thinking. She laughed and said that was what the priest had told her when she was seven.

Come home when the tide is low. The bench needs someone who can hold the wire steady while I solder, and your hands were always steadier than mine.

Mama