Black and grey lotus mandala tattoo with hanging feathers and beaded chains across the upper back, in a fine line botanical style.

Lotus mandala with hanging feathers on upper back

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large lotus flower with layered petals is centred on the upper back, its inner petals filled with lattice and ornamental patterns. Beaded chains hang from the base of the flower and end in three feathers with soft shading. The piece uses fine black linework and grey shading throughout, with strong symmetry along the spine.

Botanical Fine line Back Lotus Mandala Feather Chain Bead Lattice Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The third feather went somewhere after the cattle grid outside Beatty, and by the time we pulled into the lay-by my mother had decided it was a sign. She had carried the chain since her own mother died, a string of jet beads with three grey feathers and a brass lotus hanging from the rear-view mirror of the hire car, and she would not drive another mile without it whole.

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A woman was selling things from a trestle table under a faded awning a few miles on, where the road bent towards the dry lake. Her name was Ines, she said, and she mended things other people threw away. She turned the brass lotus over in her palm, tracing the lattice on its petals with one thumbnail, then threaded a new feather onto the chain with a length of waxed cotton. "Feathers want to be the colour of the hour they were picked," she said. "This one came off a hawk that crossed the basin at dawn."

My mother asked what she owed. Ines shook her head and asked instead for the story of the chain. My mother hesitated, then told it: how her mother had hung it in every car they ever owned, so the beads would knock together on bad roads and keep time. Ines nodded as if this were ordinary news. She said the chain should be counted, not paid for, and placed a single bead in my hand to hold.

We drove on with the sun sliding behind the ridge. With every mile the beads knocked against the glass, one, two, three, a steady rhythm, and somewhere past the salt flats my mother reached over, lifted my hand from the wheel and set the bead in my palm. "Your turn to keep count," she said. The road ran on ahead, straight and pale, and I counted.