Anatomical heart tattoo covered with concealer
Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo
A realistic anatomical heart in red, pink and blue-grey ink sits on the outer forearm, with blood vessels and rounded shading across the muscle. The collage shows a hand dabbing pale concealer over the design, blending it with a turquoise sponge, and then fading the tattoo to a faint grey outline. The final panel shows the forearm with only a barely visible trace of the heart against a plain background.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Dear Tamsin, the Lord Chancellor's clerk came to the pottery yard again this morning with his ledger under one arm and a pot of ochre paste under the other, asking for the heart of Vellmere to be made quiet by Friday. You will remember what that means here. When a man of the Ninth Guild swears the Covenant of Blood, the master engraver paints a heart on the outer forearm in madder and woad, with the vessels drawn as the old anatomists taught, so that everyone who clasps his hand can count the oaths he has broken.
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I have been given the brush. Master Orrin says my vessels are the finest in the kingdom, which is why I am the one who must unpick them. The method is the old one: a pale clay bound with tallow, pressed thick over the red, then worked with wet wool until the crimson sinks back under the skin like a tide going out. It takes three sittings. On the second I always pause at the blue shadow beneath the ventricle, where the shading lies deepest, because a man who has been forsworn three times does not give up his oath easily.
Yesterday, under the damp wool, that blue shadow resolved into the shape of the old water gate at Callowmere, every branching vessel a sluice and every valve a lock. I had shaded it myself as a girl, never guessing. Master Orrin calls it a fancy of grief. I think the Chancellor knows, which is why he wants the page pale before Friday, and why he sent the silver up front.
I have left the faintest line where the gate's keystone sits. It is nothing to a clerk's eye. I am sending this by the carrier so you can tell the river wardens to open the sluice at midnight, while the bells are still ringing for the Covenant feast. Burn this letter once you have read it. Yours in ink and clay, Ysolde
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