Black and grey realism tattoo of a horseshoe, dreamcatcher web, feathers and flowers on the side of the ribs.

Horseshoe and dreamcatcher on the side ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic horseshoe sits behind a dreamcatcher with a heart at its centre, beaded threads and a leather strap with a buckle. Feathers and flowers with shaded petals fill the lower half of the design. The work is rendered in black and grey shading with fine highlights, and the design fills most of the frame against bare skin.

Realism Ribs Horseshoe Dreamcatcher Heart Feather Flower Bead Web

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the fire won't mind. My grandmother's mother lived in the last cottage before the beech wood swallowed the lane, and she kept a horseshoe nailed above her door. It had come off a grey mare who ran for the doctor in the great frost. Every night she hung her net of willow and sinew over the bed, the way her own mother had taught her, so the bad dreams would catch in the web and burn off with the morning.

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One November a stranger walked out of the trees with a leather strap across his chest and a buckle bright as a coin. He asked for water, then for a bed, and she gave him both, because that is the rule at the edge of a wood. He did not sleep. He sat by the hearth turning a grey feather in his fingers, and each time the wind came off the ridge the dreamcatcher swung and the dark beads on its threads knocked together like teeth.

She knew then what he was hunting. The heart woven at the centre of that web was no charm for luck. It was a door, and he wanted whatever slept behind it. So she sat up all night with the horseshoe in her lap, counting the nails and listening to the strap creak every time he shifted. At first light he went to the bed and found the web empty. Lying on the step was the strap, coiled like a sleeping adder, and beside it a spray of nightshade the colour of old bruises, which she had gathered from the ditch and laid there as a warning.

By noon the beech wood had closed behind him. The net was back over the bed, humming gently in the draught, and the mare's shoe hung above the door where it had always hung.