Sketch-style elephant tattoo wearing a feather headdress, with teal and red accents, on the upper arm and shoulder of a woman.

Elephant in a feather headdress on the upper arm

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

An elephant walks forward, wearing a headdress of teal and red feathers, with a red circle behind the plumes. The elephant is drawn in fine, loose black linework with light shading, and its feathers and ears are filled with teal, red and orange. The tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder, with the subject centred on the arm against a dark background.

Upper arm Shoulder Elephant Feather Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dolly would not step onto the plank until somebody had lit the lamp, so every evening at Stoke Lock I climbed down with the matches and waited while she considered the water. She was the last thing the travelling fair still owned that cost money to feed. Father had sold the horses in March. The headdress had come with her from Leicester, a tangle of teal and scarlet plumes sewn to a brass band that pinched her ears flat. She hated it, and she wore it anyway, because the printed bills promised crowds an elephant in full regalia, and nobody had yet burned the bills.

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We were hauling the old barge Wren down to Shardlow, where the fair folk meant to sell her for scrap. Tom walked at the front with the tow rope over his shoulder, and Dolly followed him as steady as a bank clock. The feathers caught on every low willow, and each time she stopped to pull a plume free, Mam's red paper disc swung in the cabin window behind us. Mam had painted it for the sunset backdrop in the big top, and it had never once matched a real sunset, but she kept it up there out of stubbornness.

At the aqueduct the rope snapped. The Wren slewed sideways and began drifting towards the weir with Tom shouting useless things from the towpath. Dolly didn't hesitate. She walked straight down the bank into the cut, water breaking white over her knees, teal ribbons streaming from her crown, and she set her shoulder to the bow until the barge swung back in line. Tom said afterwards that she looked like she was leading a parade through the wrong country.

The sun dropped behind the poplars as we tied up, and the light came through the cabin window and hit the paper disc so that it glowed like something real. Dolly lowered her great head and let the water run off the feathers. We sold the Wren in the morning, and the fair went with it, but Dolly we kept.