Black and grey photo of a row of small bird silhouette tattoos running diagonally across the upper back and neck.

Row of small birds across the upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey photograph shows a diagonal row of seven small bird silhouettes tattooed across the upper back and neck, with the subject's hair pinned up. The birds are solid dark shapes in varying sizes and angles, with little visible shading. The soft, grainy monochrome frame leaves the skin tone and surrounding background plain and unfocused.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the stove, Tomas, and leave that net alone while I'm talking. Seven of them there were, the autumn the Kittiwake Rose went out past the Skerries and didn't come back on the tide. Seven swifts, small hard things that should have been over Africa by then, came down on the harbour wall at dusk as if someone had counted them out and set them in a line.

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The women of Sandwick Quay watched them. Eileen Corrie, whose man was aboard, went down with a heel of bread and a bucket of herring heads and found the birds unafraid, picking at the cobbles. When she spoke to them they lifted together and arranged themselves one behind the other, pointing out past the breakwater, the way a shoal turns when it has decided something. She swore to it on her mother's Bible, and nobody laughed at her for long.

Nobody believed her until the second night. The birds were gone by then, and so was the boat, and the lamp in the Corries' window rattled with a knock that was Donal Reid, soaked to the bone and shaking. He said the swifts had flown him in through the fog, one at a time, each landing on the bow rail until he could see the light of the pier and steer for it.

Eileen asked him where the seventh had gone. Donal said it had stayed at the stern, tight against the wind, keeping an eye on the lamp until the others were safe. So you see, Tomas, you never throw a crust to a swift, for they are keeping count. Eileen hung the last heel of bread on the nail by the door, and it's still there, and that's the end of it.

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