Pencil drawing of a raven above a wolf's head with a Celtic knot between them, shown as a tattoo design with no body placement visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Raven, Celtic knot and wolf design

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a raven in profile sits above a wolf's head in profile, with a symmetrical Celtic knot motif between them. The raven is shaded with soft greys and the wolf has bold dark markings and sharp fur lines. The composition is simple and centred on a plain white background.

Raven Wolf Celtic knot Bird Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wolf had already taken the ewe's hindquarters by the time Nell Ashby reached the top field, and the raven on the drystone wall was making the kind of noise that meant it had been right about everything. Nell had her father's crook in one hand and a lantern swinging from the other, and she stopped short at the gap in the hedge, breath smoking, while the wolf lifted its grey head and looked at her with no hurry at all.

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Three nights before, the raven had come down to the cottage window and tapped until she opened it. It had dropped a loop of knotted cord on her sill, the old kind her grandmother used for binding lambs' hooves, and said in its dry way that the forest had a debt to pay and the village owed one back. The wolf, it said, would keep the foxes off the lower pasture. In return, the flock would be left alone through the winter snows. Nell had not believed a word of it. She had tied the cord to the gatepost anyway, and it had held.

Now she set the lantern on the wall beside the raven. The bird cocked its head at the carcass, then at her, and said nothing, which was its way of asking. Nell counted the flock by lamplight, one, two, eleven, and found the whole number standing where it should be, pressed against the far fence and shivering. Only the ewe was missing, and the ewe had been a poor one anyway.

She tugged the knotted cord from her coat, pulled it tight around the gatepost, and tied it off twice. The wolf watched the knot with its amber eyes. Then it turned and slipped back into the dark of the trees, and the raven lifted off the wall without a sound, following it, and Nell stood a long while with the lantern guttering, reckoning what a winter cost.