Horned woman and roses on upper arm
Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo
A black and grey tattoo on the upper arm shows a woman's face at the centre, framed by curling horn-like shapes, two roses and a bird-like form at the top. The linework is bold and sketchy, with soft grey shading around the face and horns. The design fills the upper arm vertically and tapers into trailing lines at the bottom.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
The brass lamp at Scarrow Head had not been lit for three nights when Mercy Holt climbed the spiral stair with a tin of black paint and a rag. Below her the sea worked at the rocks like a man trying a locked door. Her father had left her the light, and the light had left her a crack in the lantern glass that let the wind sing through.
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On the gallery rail, someone long dead had scratched a face into the iron: a woman with ram's horns curling back from her brow and roses at her temples. The boatmen called her Old Sorrow and said she kept the fog off the reef. Mercy had never believed it. She had only believed the oil was cheap and the shutters stuck.
Tonight a cormorant sat on the lantern cap with its black wings hung open to dry, and it watched her with a bright, unbothered eye. She rubbed the scratched lines with the rag until the rust came away, and the roses rose pale under her thumb. The bird did not stir. Its outstretched wings made the same curve as the horns against the sky.
When the lamp caught at last, the beam swept out over the water and threw a shadow across the swell, horned and winged, long as a church. A trawler coming in from the far bank saw the light and turned for home. Mercy went down the stairs without looking back, and left the iron woman to keep watch.
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