Black ink eye tattoo on a finger with a dotted mandala flower on the back of the hand and a red and yellow snake tattoo at the side.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Eye, mandala and snake on the hand

Blackwork · Hand · Mixed · Photo

A close photograph of a hand with white painted nails, showing a black outlined eye with lashes on the finger, a symmetrical mandala-style flower with dots on the back of the hand, and a triangle linework shape above it. A red and yellow banded snake or rope design runs along the lower right edge of the hand. The eye and flower are in bold black linework with solid fills, while the snake adds warm colour against a dark background.

Blackwork Traditional Hand Eye Mandala Flower Dot Triangle Snake

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had buried the lane by four o'clock, and Hester Marl stood on a kitchen chair to scrape frost from the parlour window. Behind her the fire spat. Overnight the frost had grown into rings and petals, a flower of ice that would not melt however hard the hearth burned. She counted the guests on the slate by the door: two carters, a widow with a goose in a basket, and the stranger in the corner who had not taken off his gloves.

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The stranger had paid in silver and asked for the room under the eaves, the one with the painted eye above its lintel. Her grandfather had painted that eye to keep watch over the road, and nobody had slept in that room since the bell-rope was cut. Hester climbed the stairs with a candle and found the rope mended, the old brass snake coiled round the pull, its scales catching the light like wet coins.

When she came back down, the stranger was gone and the door was barred from inside. On the frost of the window someone had drawn a small triangle with one finger, and the bell above the kitchen began to ring, slow and steady, as though a hand that was not there had taken hold of the rope.

Hester lifted the kettle, set out a fourth cup at the empty corner, and did not look at the stairs. Outside, the eye above the door stayed open all night, watching the buried road for whatever would come up it.