Tribal sleeve and chest piece with red accents

The prow came off the trestles on Tuesday, and Tomasi wouldn't let me touch the red until the wood had sweated out a full week. He says ochre lies if you rush it, that it sits pale on new grain and then turns on you in the first hard sun. So I sat on an upturned crate and watched him work the spirals with a gouge no wider than my little finger, cutting each curl in one stroke and never lifting to correct it. Old Mrs Faleafa came down from the next village to look, and said nothing for an hour, which from her is praise.

The blades were the hard part. You cut them by eye, he said, and then you cut them again by memory, because the eye lies about angles when you are tired. I asked him how he knew when to stop. He held up the paddle he had been carving before the prow, worn pale at the grip, and said his grandfather had stopped when the water stopped slapping the hull, which he never once explained to anyone's satisfaction.

Last night we walked her down the slip at high tide with eleven men on the ropes and the whole village singing a verse I don't know the end of. She slid in with barely a sound. When she turned I saw the red catch the lamplight along the curls, as if something under the surface was still glowing, and I thought of you on the bench at Dad's, telling me I'd never finish anything I started.

Come in August. I'll row you out myself, and you can tell me what you think of the blades.

Love, Mere