Black and grey mandala tattoos on the backs of two hands and wrists, with small rose tattoos on the fingers and silver rings.

Mandala and rose hand tattoos

Geometric · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Two hands are raised in front of the face, which is hidden by purple flowers. Large mandala and paisley patterns in fine dark linework cover the backs of the hands and wrists, and small rose and flower designs sit on several fingers. The image is in black and grey tones against a soft, warm background, with many silver rings and dark nail polish in the frame.

Geometric Botanical Hand Mandala Paisley Rose Flower Dot Hand Finger Wrist Ring

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

In the last winter of the Mollison and Hale Travelling Show, the lion had died in Carlisle and the big top had a hole the rain walked through. Old Ada Quirk, who had mended the canvas for forty years, sat in the wagon with a tin of ink and a bundle of silver rings that nobody could afford to buy back. The show was owed three towns' wages and a farrier's bill.

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A boy named Tobias came to the ring to ask whether the show would take him on for the spring. Ada told him the show had no spring. She said the only thing she still had to sell was the old pattern her grandmother had pricked into the backs of the strongmen's wrists: lace that spreads outward like a flower opening the wrong way, paisley teardrops, and small roses on every knuckle so the ink would hold through rain. She would ink it on him for a penny, and he could walk into any town and be hired on his hands alone.

Tobias refused the penny. He offered instead the ring he had taken from the ringmaster's box, a moonstone in a thin band. Ada turned it once in the lamplight and told him it was worth more than the show. Then she worked through the night by the stove, pricking dots in rows until the mandalas closed like a clock face. By morning the boy's hands were dark to the wrist, and the moonstone sat on his smallest finger.

The show left without him in April. Years later a horse dealer in Penrith swore he saw a young man on a grey mare, both palms raised as if to shield his face, and every ring on his fingers was silver and old. The moonstone, the dealer said, was still warm when he touched it.