Black ink tattoo on the upper back reading books are proof humans can do magic, with a silhouetted broom rider, flying birds, a triangle with a circle and a trident symbol.

Quote with broom, birds and symbols on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a silhouetted figure on a broomstick above a trail of four flying birds, with the words books are proof humans can do magic set in a blackletter-style script below. A triangle enclosing a circle with a vertical line sits to the left, and a trident symbol sits to the right. The design is in solid black ink on pale skin, photographed close up from behind with the neck and hair visible at the top of the frame.

Lettering Back Witch Bird Book Text Triangle Circle Trident Deathly hallows

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lost property box on the Harwich run held one thing nobody had claimed in eleven months, a paperback swollen to twice its thickness, its cover gone soft as bread. Chef dropped it on the pass beside the mop buckets. "Yours now, Nell. You read more than the rest of us put together."

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I dried it on the grill rack overnight, turning the pages one at a time with a butter knife. Most had fused into a brick, but near the back someone had pencilled in the margin: books are proof. Beneath it sat a tiny broom with a bird's tail trailing off the bristles. I laughed at that over the fryers. The handwriting was small and furious, the hand of someone who had argued with the page and won.

Four days later, north of the Dutch coast, a squall took the galley lights and left us swaying in the red emergency glow. When I went out to the rail for air, four gulls were riding the wind alongside the hull, not flapping at all, just keeping pace with the bow as if they had somewhere to be. I counted them the way you count children at a crossing. Back in the galley the lights came on, and under the old line someone had written in fresh graphite: humans can do magic.

I should have thrown it over the side. Instead I wedged it between the spice tins, under the hook where the trident-handled gaff hangs, and it has stayed there since, dry now, and nobody on the crew will admit to the pencil.