Small wing tattoo on a wrist

The swifts left early this year, so the church tower is quiet and the lane smells only of wet bracken. You asked in your last letter whether I had kept the wings Father made for you. I have. They are in the tin with the tuning forks, wrapped in your blue hankie. Two pieces of grey lead, no longer than a thumbnail, the feathers scored so finely I needed Mr Abbott's loupe to see them properly.

The wings were the work of the woodsman's boy, Tobias, who came down from the edge of Carrow Wood every Thursday with kindling and a pocketful of offcuts. He never finished anything he started, Father said, except that one pair. He cut them the autumn you turned nine, and when you had the fever that January he set them on the sill above your bed so the lamplight would catch them through the frost on the glass.

I found them there again last week when I went to clean the window. The sill is cracked now, and one feather has come loose at the join, so I have put them away rather than let them fall into the coal bucket. I thought you should know I did not throw them out. Tell me what you want done with them when you write, and I will post them to you on Thursday, when the boy's cart goes past the crossroads.