Black and grey tattoo of a large moon with a spiral hill, two silhouetted figures, bats and clouds across the upper back.

Moon, spiral hill and bats on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large crescent moon sits behind a dark spiral hill, with two standing silhouetted figures on top and several bats and wispy clouds around the edges. The shading is soft and smoky in the clouds and sky, with solid black in the hill and figures. The composition is centred on the upper back and shoulder blade, and the design is almost entirely black and grey ink.

Back Moon Spiral Silhouette Bat Cloud Hill

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mags had been hauling canvas off the back of the lorry since five, and by the time the moon rose over the common the big top was still a heap of grey tarpaulin. Her uncle Ezra swore the painted backdrop had been packed upside down in Carlisle, and he wanted it hung before the Saturday crowds from the estates came through the gate. She climbed the ladder with a mouthful of tent pegs and a hammer tucked in her belt.

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The backdrop showed a crooked town under a moon the size of a cartwheel, a hill that coiled like a snail shell, and two figures standing on the crest. One was tall and thin, with a stovepipe hat and a coat that hung like a crow's wing. The other was shorter, with a scarf knotted at the throat. Nobody in the company could say who had painted them. Ezra said the painter had drunk his fee in Kendal and walked into the sea. Mags only knew the figures seemed to lean closer together whenever the lamps were lit.

That night, while the others slept in the wagons, she sat on the spiral with a flask of cocoa and counted bats crossing the moon. The painted clouds drifted when the wind came off the fens, and the tall figure's hat had a fresh dent in its crown that she could have sworn was not there at dusk.

In the morning there were footprints in the dew, leading from the foot of the hill to the door of her wagon and back again. Pinned to the tent flap with one of her own pegs was a scrap of card in careful handwriting: Hang us properly next year.