Black and grey pencil drawing of a small fairy with a hair bun and large wings, sitting with her knees drawn up and pom-pom shoes.

Pencil drawing of a seated fairy

Black and grey · Flash

A cartoon-style fairy sits with her knees drawn up, wearing a fitted bodice and a short skirt, with her hair in a bun and large feathered wings behind her. The drawing uses soft graphite shading on the wings and dress, with fine outlines on the face, arms and legs. It is set on a plain pale background with no colour.

Fairy Wing Hair bun Character

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fairy first appeared on the back wall of the Palace picture house the week after Mr Tennant went off to Korea, a small woman drawn in grey pencil with her knees tucked up and her hair knotted on top like a bun left to rise. Nobody in Hollin Cross admitted to drawing her. Mum said it was a child's mischief and Mrs Oakes at the post office said it was a sign, which was her answer to most things.

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I was twelve and I knew it was me. Not the face, which was too pretty to be mine, but the way she was perched there, pretending to be settled while she listened for something. I'd been sitting on the cinema steps every Saturday since Dad's letter came, waiting for the second post. So each night I went down with a stub of carpenter's pencil and added something. A pair of furry slippers, because the drawing needed warm feet. A smudge of shadow under the wings, so they looked like they'd been used.

On the third Saturday there was a reply. Someone had shaded in a second bun, neater than mine, and beside it in careful capitals: SHE WAITS FOR THE SAME BOAT YOU DO. My hands went cold. I looked up the High Street at the grey railway bridge and the empty platform, and I understood that the drawing had been answering me all along, in pencil, from somewhere inside the town.

Dad's ship came in the following spring, on a Tuesday, with the tide. I didn't tell anyone where I'd been that morning. I left the last of the carpenter's pencil on the cinema wall, and when I came back at dusk the fairy had her feet on the ground at last, the furry shoes tucked neatly side by side, as if she had finally stepped down to meet someone.