Black and grey pine forest silhouette tattoo on the back of a lower leg, fading into dark shading near the ankle.

Pine forest silhouette on a calf

Blackwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A row of tall pine trees in dark silhouette covers the back of a lower leg, with the trunks and branches drawn in fine black lines. The shading becomes a solid, smoky dark grey band at the bottom that fades into the ankle and heel. The image is in black and grey on a pale leg against a plain white wall and grey floor.

Blackwork Botanical Calf Pine tree Forest Tree Silhouette Landscape

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the puddles, the lot of you, and fetch your coins closer, for the rain has got into my teeth and I'll not say this twice. Up past Carrick, where the road gives up and becomes a sheep track, there was a wood of pines so tall the crows had to climb them in stages. Nobody cut them, because the old laird had put a curse on the axe. What he never cursed was the ground.

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Each evening the mist came down off the hill and the wood sank into it, trunk by trunk, until only the tops stood out like the masts of a drowned fleet. A girl named Ysolde, who sold eels at the harbour, walked up there every morning with a basket because her mother's hands had gone to knots and the herbs had to be fetched. She noticed the trees stood a hand's breadth nearer the village each time she came.

On the feast of Saint Brendan she counted them. Forty-one at dawn, forty-two at dusk. The forty-second had roots like grasping fingers and stood in the churchyard with its crown against the bell rope. She went to the laird and asked what he had done to the axe. He laughed, then stopped laughing, for the wood had reached his garden wall and the mist was following it like a dog at heel.

They say the trees are still walking, slow as a tide. Stand at the foot of the hill at dusk and you will see the grey climb the trunks, soft as ash, and the wood will have moved one more yard. Ysolde kept her eel stall to the end. Her mother's hands healed, which is the only part of this story anyone believes. Now buy your eels, and mind the wet at your feet.