Sunflower with circle on a lower leg

The sunflowers on the Long Terrace of Harrowmere have finally come up, and you would not believe their height. Master Tobin says they are the tallest the palace has grown since the old king's day, though I suspect he says that to everyone who lifts a spade. Every morning I walk the row before the bells and count how many heads have turned overnight. Last Tuesday it was nine. Yesterday it was none, because a grey wind came off the marsh and the whole line stood facing the wrong way, like courtiers who have heard bad news.

Something odd happened by the south wall. There is a bronze ring set into the stone there, the width of a cartwheel, that the old queen had cast to mark the solstice. Its shadow falls across the bed at noon. The sunflower nearest it has stopped following the sun and only watches that shadow instead, bending its great head to lean into the ring. Tobin swears it is the cold. I have started to think the flower is simply keeping an appointment.

The royal surveyors arrive on Thursday to take the ring down for the bridge bronze. The queen signed the order herself, and she has not looked at the garden in years. I have decided the sunflower will not go with it. Tonight I will dig along the stem, past the ring's edge, and lift the root ball whole into a barrow. Its roots are longer than my arm and they curl around the foot of the ring like fingers holding a cup.

Please keep a pot warm for it at the cottage. If it lives, it will want the morning sun and a wall to lean against. Write back soon, and tell me whether the bronze in the Eastgate market is as dear as they say.

Your loving niece, Wren