Leopard print cross tattoo with black swirl linework on the back of a hand, beside turquoise and zebra print nail art.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Leopard print cross on the back of a hand

Hand · Colour · Photo

A cross sits on the back of the hand, filled with a tan and black leopard print pattern and outlined in black. Black swirling linework curls out from the top and sides of the cross. The hand is shown close up with a diamond-style ring on one finger and nails painted with turquoise, zebra and leopard patterns.

Hand Cross Leopard print Swirl Ring

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cross was meant to be plain black, the way Mr Hollis wanted it for the chapel gate at Saltburn, but the menagerie's old leopard had died in March and its keeper sold Ada the hide for two shillings and a bottle of gin. She cut a stencil from it instead, pinning the spotted skin flat across the workbench while the lamp smoked. Her brother Tom leaned in the doorway with his cap in his hands, saying nothing, because he had said plenty the week before about what the vicar would think.

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She painted the swirls last, freehand, the way their mother had taught her to letter the carrier's wagons: long curling strokes that started thick at the stem and thinned to nothing, like smoke leaving a chimney. Tom said they looked like the tendrils on the carousel organ. Ada said that was the point. A gate ought to have something a little wild in it, or people walking past would never look up.

Mr Hollis came on the Thursday with his spectacles pushed up into his hair. He stood a long time in front of the panel without speaking. Then he asked, very politely, whether the spots near the bottom bar could be smaller, so the children reading the names on the railings would have something plain to look at. Ada did it that afternoon, a fine brush and a steady hand, and charged him nothing extra.

The gate went up in July. By four o'clock the sun came in low off the sea and threw the cross across the path in broken gold, and a girl from the carousel stopped to trace one of the spots with her finger. When she lifted it away, a small bright smudge of paint stayed on her thumb, and she held it up to show her friend as if she had been given something.