Dotwork mandala on upper back

The old Ellery pear at the bottom wall had not fruited in nine summers. Its bark had gone grey and split like a dry loaf, and its leaves hung limp and tidy as if they were waiting for someone to ask them a question. The stranger had come up the lane that morning with a tin of Indian ink, a pair of dividers and a coat too heavy for August. He said his name was Tobin, that he mended things for money and drew them for free. He looked at the pear for a long time before he said it had forgotten where its middle was.

So they found the middle together. Tobin pressed the points of the dividers into the bark at the heart of the trunk and drew a ring, then another, then a third, each one a finger's width wider. Between the rings he set petals, eight to begin with, then sixteen, each one turned a little so the whole thing seemed to spin. Mab filled the spaces with dots pricked in with a sharpened nail, because her hands were steadier at small work than his, and the afternoon went by in the tick of metal on wood.

When the last dot was in, the sun had dropped behind the hedge and the wasps had given up. Mab climbed the ladder and sat with her back against the trunk, and somewhere in the dusk a branch creaked and a pear dropped into the grass. By morning the whole tree was hung with fruit, ringed in neat circles from crown to roots, and Tobin was already gone up the lane. Mab never learned where he went, but she kept the dividers, and every August she checks the rings for new cracks.