Small tattoos on ankle, finger, arm and wrist

The fox came back on Tuesday with one of Ewan's oilskin gloves in its mouth, the good pair he bought in Oban, and it sat on the harbour wall and looked at me as though I owed it something. I think it is the same one that took the ferryman's pasty last winter. It has a narrow white tip to its tail and a way of tucking one forefoot under itself while it considers things, which I suppose is how foxes consider things.

Ewan says I should stop feeding it. I have not fed it. I have only left the back door open and the fish heads by the bins, which is different, and which he knows perfectly well. He is at the far end of the island this week, mending the wall above Cnoc Ban, and the boat is still tied up where he left it, so the glove is a message of sorts. He wrote on the back of the tide chart before he went: Come home before the equinox gales. Then underneath, smaller: the fox has been by.

Yesterday I walked up past the peat cuttings to find him. The mountains across the water had gone that particular blue they go before rain, three peaks standing out of the sea mist as if somebody were counting them. I found him at the old shieling with his trousers rolled to the knee and his hands full of wet wool. He did not look surprised. He said the fox had shown him the way, and I told him foxes do not show anyone anything, and he laughed and gave me the glove, dry now.

We came down the hill together with the wind at our backs. The fox was sitting on the wall where we had left it, watching us go, and when I looked back it had put the other glove down beside its paws, as neat as a parcel. Come home, love. The kettle is on, and there is a second glove waiting for you on the hook.

Your sister, Isla