Black and grey dreamcatcher tattoo with red-tipped feathers running diagonally across the side of the ribs.

Dreamcatchers and feathers on the ribs

Ribs · Mixed · Photo

Three dreamcatchers, one large and two smaller, are linked by cords and hang with shaded feathers that have red tips. Fine black linework forms the webs and rings, while the feathers use grey and black shading with small green and orange beads. The design runs diagonally from the upper ribs towards the waist, with a black top covering the upper body.

Ribs Dreamcatcher Feather Web Bead Cord

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Our Dad taught me to tie a web the way he taught me to read a roof: slowly, with the knot turned to the light. Every Friday the women of Ryhope Row came to our back step with their husbands' spare cord wrapped in the Chronicle, and I sat with a tin of brass rings and a pair of scissors, making dreamcatchers for anyone whose man was going down the shaft on Monday. Mam said the webs caught the bad dreams before they could reach the bedroom. I never asked where the bad dreams went after that.

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My brother Danny wanted one for his lamp hook. He was seventeen and thought himself too grown for it, so he asked me to make it small and dark, with no fuss. I used grey pigeon feathers from the coop, shaded with ash from the range, and tipped them red with the dye Mam kept for the rag rug. I threaded two green glass beads from the market and one orange bead off Grandad's broken watch chain. He hung it on the nail above his pit boots and said it looked like something a sailor would own.

The Monday after, the roof came in at the east face and the cage stopped for six hours. We stood at the head with the other families, not speaking, while the wind pushed the rain sideways across the spoil heap. I kept picturing that little web on the nail, the way the light went through it and split into a hundred pieces.

Danny came up at dawn with a cut over one eye and his lamp still lit, swinging from the hook I had made him. He stopped at the back step and looked at me like he was waiting to be told off. I didn't say anything. I just took the scissors from my apron and started on a second web, the one for Mam, and I made it wider than I needed.