Colour tattoo of a bird in flight with a black lace-patterned wing and red and black feathers, placed on the side of the ribs.

Red and black bird with lace wing on ribs

Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A bird in flight with outstretched wings and a long trailing tail is tattooed on the side of a torso. The wings and tail are finely lined, with the lace-like pattern worked into the black wing and feathers rendered with detailed shading. Red and black ink dominate against the pale skin, and the design sweeps diagonally from the upper left to the lower right of the frame.

Ribs Bird Feather Lace pattern Tail feather Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mags Torrance had been pricking lace since before the ferry was timetabled, and she had never once seen the red bird come in on the wind until the spring my brother sold the boat. It came low over the drying green at Skerrin, a thing the colour of rowan berries, with a tail that trailed behind it like a wet rope of weed. The gulls scattered. Mags did not even look up from her pillow. "That'll be the one wanting its wing mended," she said, and went on working the bobbins.

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She had made the lace wing the winter before, out of linen thread so fine it broke if you breathed on it. Every hole in it was a choice. Her mother had taught her that a bird with a lace wing could not be shot down, because lace has no edge for a shot to catch, only gaps. I thought she was talking nonsense. I was nineteen and angry at the island, and I wanted the bird to tell me what to do with my life, so I stood in the doorway and waited for it to speak.

It did not speak. It landed on the wall of the kirkyard, folded its red wings, and let its tail spill down the stones. Mags walked out with a needle and a pot of tea and sat beside it as if it were a neighbour's cat. She threaded the needle, tugged a loose strand, and tied it off with a knot I did not recognise. When she was done the bird lifted, and a single feather with an eye at its tip came loose and drifted down onto my boots.

I still have it. Some mornings I hold it to the window and count the gaps in the lace, and the light comes through the eye like a small, patient question.