Black ink tattoo on the upper back with a bird and arrow, four small birds, the words books are proof humans can do magic, a triangle symbol and a trident.

Birds, quote and symbols on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink tattoo across the upper back shows a bird with an arrow at the top, followed by four small birds in a diagonal line. Below them, the words books are proof humans can do magic are set in a blackletter style, flanked by a triangle with a circle and a vertical line on the left and a trident on the right. The ink is solid black with clean edges, and the skin is lit evenly against a pale background.

Lettering Back Bird Arrow Quote Book Triangle Deathly hallows Trident

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Gillespie kept the Kittiwake guest house on the Cornish cliffs, and her one rule was that nobody read at breakfast. Dolores Pim, who had come for a fortnight in October and stayed three winters, broke it every morning with a paperback propped against the marmalade. The postman swore she had lifted six library books from his satchel, tied in string, and that he would never see them in Truro again.

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The storm came off the Atlantic in a single night. By dawn the lane was choked with gorse and the lamps were lit in the dining room, where a boy called Tobias was kicking his heels and asking for something to do. Dolores pulled an old almanac of birds from under the stairs and showed him a sketch of a bird with an arrow through its wing. Four starlings were wheeling above the chimney stack just then, flying in a ragged diagonal, and Tobias insisted the first one was leading the others out to sea. Dolores said that was exactly what books were for.

He asked whether books really proved people could do magic. She said a book was a boat you built for someone else to sail, and that was the closest thing to magic she knew. Mrs Gillespie, clattering plates in the doorway, said it was the closest thing to nonsense she had heard before nine o'clock, but she left the lamp burning.

When the road was clear, the postman came up the drive with his cap pulled low. Dolores met him on the step, handed over the six books, string still knotted, and a pressed starling feather tucked inside the cover of the thickest one. He opened it, found nothing overdue, and for once could not think of a single thing to say.