Black and grey traditional tattoo of a Medusa head with snakes, wings and wheat ears within a triskelion, on the upper back.

Medusa and triskelion on the upper back

Traditional · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo shows a woman's face framed by wavy hair, with snakes curling beneath her chin and small wings at either side. Three bent legs radiate from behind her head to form a triskelion, with wheat ears sprouting outward between them. The bold outlines are filled with smooth grey shading, and the design is centred on a pale, unmarked area of skin.

Traditional Back Snake Wing Wheat Leg

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ilse, the wheat came up grey again this spring, which the elders blame on the sea and I blame on the sea too, since it creeps a little closer to the lower vaults every year. We have moved the seed stores up to the old quarry on the third tier, the one the first families called the Hill of Snakes because the ferns coil over its rockface like hair left out in the rain.

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Marcu repainted the sign on the vault door last month. You will remember the one: three bent legs running out from a woman's head, snakes for hair, wheat ears sprouting between the toes. He says the old people believed her gaze could turn a raider to stone, and that a gate with her face on it makes strangers stop and think. I told him the raiders cannot read anyway. He said the face was never meant for raiders.

Last night the lamp shutter cracked in the wind and Marcu sat outside the vault with a bowl of seed in his lap, sorting the good grains from the grey ones by touch, because the dark is cheaper than oil. The children sat with him and counted the wheat on the door out loud, nine ears in all, until they fell asleep against the stone. I went down at dusk to see what they had been counting. Three legs, nine ears, one face that stares past you toward the water. I have decided she is watching the tide and not us, and that is enough comfort for a Tuesday.

Come home before the spring tides. Bring your hook and the good brass, and tell Oyelaran we still owe him a pair of boots.