Black line drawing of a snake coiled around a dagger, in a traditional tattoo flash style, printed on pink handmade paper.

Snake wrapped around a dagger

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A black linework drawing shows a snake wrapping several times around a dagger, with its head resting near the hilt and its tail curling at the tip. The outlines are bold and even, with hatched bands on the snake's body and shading along the blade. The design is printed on textured pink handmade paper with a plain brown border.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mags,

Keep reading

The dagger's finished, though you'll think me daft for how long it took. Mr Pryce wanted a plain blade for the verger's son, and I gave him plain, but the hilt I could not leave bare. I wound the grip with copper wire, round and round, the way you'd bind a spring, and then I thought of the grass snake that lives under the woodpile by the forge door.

Yesterday it came up through the wet leaves at the forest edge, where the birches stop and the village starts, and I swear it looked at the blade the way a man looks at a rival. I didn't kill it. I set down the tongs and let it cross my boot, slow as a dropped rope, and it coiled round the fresh-cut dagger I'd left on the chopping block. Three turns, then its head settled over the hilt as if it had been asked to guard it.

Now I can't say whether I drew the snake or the snake drew me. I've kept the sketch on the back of the bill from Tolley's. Ma says it's a bad omen to have a serpent so near the iron, but Pryce calls it luck, and he paid me a shilling extra for the picture.

Come home at Michaelmas if you can. The snake has stopped coming to the woodpile, and I miss its company more than I'd admit to Pryce.

Your brother, Tom

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