Black and grey dotwork tattoo of butterflies lifting a hot air balloon with two small figures in the basket, placed on the calf.

Butterflies lifting a hot air balloon on a calf

Dotwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A cluster of butterflies with dark outlines and stippled wings forms a balloon-like shape that lifts a basket carrying two small figures in top hats. The shading is built from fine dots and soft grey tones, with bold outlines on the wings and thin rigging lines running down to the basket. The design sits in the centre of a calf against a dark woven background, and the image is entirely in black and grey.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Spalding fair had sold every balloon it owned by noon, so Ambrose Tennant went up with the one he had left, a patched silk the colour of old pennies, and a wicker basket with a split rim. His lad, Piers Coote, held the guy ropes and kept his hat on with one hand while the crowd jeered from behind the hop-bines. Tennant wore his good top hat for the occasion, the one he had bought for a funeral he never attended.

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The wind off the Wash was fresh, but the silk hung slack and would not lift. Then the butterflies came over the dyke, hundreds of them, pale and dark-edged, drifting out of the willows as if they had been sent for. They settled on the silk and along the rigging lines, folding and opening their wings, and slowly the patched balloon rose, lifted by something soft and patient that did not weigh a feather.

They drifted over the church tower, the sluice gates and the black ribbon of the river. Coote, who had never been higher than the mill roof, grew quiet and then asked where they were bound. Tennant looked down at the fields stitched with dykes and said the butterflies knew better than either of them, so he had stopped trying to steer. Below them a heron lifted, saw them, and thought better of it.

At dusk the swarm thinned and set them down in a stubble field near Holbeach, gentle as a hand laid on a sleeping child. The last butterfly walked along the rim of the basket, opened its wings once, and went. Tennant kept a single wing that had caught on the wicker, and for years after, a pale butterfly came to the shop window every June and waited there until he opened the door.

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