Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hooded woman and skull on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman in profile wears a dark, angular hood, with long hair flowing into a tentacle that wraps around a human skull held near her hands. Sprigs of botanical foliage with seed heads climb the upper arm behind her. The linework is fine and clean, with dotted and smudged shading in the hood and hair, and the composition wraps around the arm, with a close-up panel showing the skull in more detail.

Botanical Geometric Upper arm Woman Profile Hood Skull Tentacle Botanical Sprig Hair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dearest Harriet,

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The tide brought the skull in on Tuesday, wedged in a lobster pot off Gull Point, and Mr Pardoe wanted it buried by the chapel before the vicar heard. I told him I would keep it instead. You know what the village says about the hooded woman who walks the shingle at low water, and you know I never listen to the village. I have her now, or rather I have her skull, and she has been very quiet about it.

I have been drying the seed heads you sent from the Cornish garden, the ones like little burst umbrellas, and hanging them in bunches above the window. They rattle when the wind comes off the sea. Last night one bunch fell and I found the skull turned to face the door, as if it wanted to see who was coming up the path. Three long grey threads had come loose from under its jaw and lay across the sill like wet hair. I swept them into the bucket with the mussel shells and went to bed with the lamp lit.

This morning the bucket was empty and the sill was dry. I have decided not to mention it to Pardoe.

What I think she wants, though, is her hair back, which belongs to the sea, and someone to tell the sailors' wives that the Gull Point drownings were never a curse, only a woman who grew tired of waiting at the top of the steps. I have written it down on the back of the tide tables. Come at Michaelmas and read it yourself, and bring the fine brush, the one for the shading.

Love, Margaret