Black script tattoo reading All the stories are true sits above a dark geometric symbol on the upper back.

Quote and geometric symbol on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a black ink tattoo on the upper back, with a line of italic script reading All the stories are true. Below the script is a solid black geometric symbol with angular, diamond-shaped lower section and curved upper strokes. The ink is uniform black on skin, with a dark strap and some loose hair visible at the top of the frame.

Lettering Geometric Back Script Quote Symbol Geometric shape

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Margaret Coyle had kept the hens alive through three hard frosts when the letter came from the solicitor in Carlisle, and she read it standing in the byre with her breath hanging in front of her. The farm was to pass to a cousin she had never met. On the back of the envelope her father had written a line in the slanted hand that once recorded every ewe and calf in his ledger: All the stories are true. Keep the north gate shut.

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She took it for one of his jokes, the sort he made over the Christmas pudding. But the north gate stood open that morning, and by noon eleven ewes were scattered across the frozen beck. She walked the field with a lantern, counting heads, until she reached the hollow below the ash tree, where the snow had been trampled into a rough circle. In the middle lay a flat grey stone with an angular mark cut into its face, a diamond with two curved strokes above it, the one her father had scratched there the winter she was born. He had sworn it kept the old wolves of his own childhood tales from the lambing pens.

There were no wolves in this valley. There had not been for a hundred years. Yet the tracks led away from the stone and stopped at the wall, where a man in a long dark coat stood with his hands in his pockets, watching her as if he had been waiting a long time. He said his name was Edwin, and that he had come about the farm.

Margaret held up the lantern and looked at him properly. Then she turned, walked back to the gate, and shut it with a clang that rang off the hills. Her father had never once told a lie in his ledger, and she was not going to start doubting him now.