Unicorn head in a botanical wreath

The unicorn came down to the lower spring the morning after the harvest fair, when the wreaths were still hanging on the gate posts and the blue ribbons had gone limp in the rain. Mother says it was only a grey mare that had slipped her tether at the imperial estate near Venta, but a mare does not stand in the reeds and let a child twist laurel into her mane. This one did. Aunt Ysolde swore it was the same beast that drank from the old cistern when she was a girl, and she made me knot a ribbon at its throat before it wandered back into the alders.

I have been weaving for the market since you left, and I will admit something. I can no longer make a wreath sit straight. The berries slide to the left, the buds open too early, and the leaves keep curling as if they want to follow the horse. Mother says I am looking at the animal instead of the frame. She is right, and I am not sorry.

The proctor's clerk came round on Tuesday asking who had been letting the estate horses out. I told him nobody had, which is true enough. He wrote it down anyway, and then he asked me to make him a wreath for his wife's grave, with a horn at its centre, so I did. He paid in silver and did not ask what the horn was for.

I walked down to the spring this evening. The water had filled the hoofprints in the mud, each one holding a small piece of the sky. Tie a ribbon to something when you come home, Tomas. I will know it is yours.