Stylised koi pair on upper back

The guard at the footbridge finally let the cart through this morning, after he had turned over every one of Father's panels and held each to the light as if it might confess something. You know the pair I mean: the two carved koi that hung either side of the kitchen hatch in Lower Varna. He said nothing about the scrolls. Only that the fish were too heavy for a gift and too pretty for a bribe.

I had them wrapped in oilcloth and tucked under the sacks of barley, and I sat on the tailboard with my boots in the mud while he counted the boxes twice. Every time the mule shifted, I could feel the carved tails knocking softly together through the cloth, the way they always did when Mother swept the wall.

Here is the thing I meant to tell you before I lost my nerve. Father cut them from one plank, so the fish were never meant to be apart. The river on the far bank bends the same way ours does, and the painted water beneath them curls into the scrollwork you and I used to trace with our fingers. Set them side by side on the new wall and they will almost touch at the nose.

The guard waved me through at last. I did not look back at the bridge. I have them now, on the seat beside me, and when the road dips and the wood knocks I tell myself it is only the two of them greeting each other, as we used to, before the river was a border.

Mira