Colour realism tattoo of a phoenix rising above flames and a Deathly Hallows symbol on the calf.

Phoenix and Deathly Hallows on a calf

Realism · Calf · Colour · Photo

A bird with outstretched wings rises above a black outlined triangle, circle and vertical line symbol, with flames rendered in red, orange and yellow behind it. The feathers use soft shading and fine dark outlines, and the symbol is solid black. The design is centred on the lower leg, with the ankle visible at the bottom of the frame.

Realism Calf Phoenix Bird Flame Deathly hallows Triangle Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Old Maud Penrith kept the forge at Caddon Bridge until the winter the river froze to the bottom. The village had never much liked the scorched patch behind her shed, where nothing grew, and when the frost broke in March the men came up with shovels to clear it. They found the iron first: a triangle of black metal no wider than a dinner plate, a ring, and a straight bar that ran through the middle of the ring like a spoke through a wheel. Nobody could say who had buried them.

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Maud said to leave them where they lay. The schoolmaster wanted them for the museum in Ashford, the carrier's boy wanted them for scrap, and the vicar said a prayer over the lot and went home. That night the fire in Maud's grate would not go out, though she banked it with wet slack. Her neighbour saw red light through the shutters and, looking, saw a bird on the roof with its wings spread wide, feathers the colour of coals, and beneath it flames climbing up off the iron in the field.

In the morning the bird was gone and the ground was black in the shape of three things joined together. Maud carried her bellows out and laid the bar across the anvil, hammering it straight, then the ring, then the triangle. When she was done the ash had blown clean out of the hollow and the grass had started to green at the edges. She set the pieces on a shelf above the door and said that a thing which comes out of fire will come back if you let it be.

Each spring after, the bird came down the valley at first light, wings out, and the children ran to the bridge to watch it cross. Maud died in the autumn of fifty-six. The shelf is still there, and the iron is still warm in the morning if you put your palm flat to it.