Bold black silhouette of a stylised bird in flight facing left, with spiral wing tips and white line details, shown as a flash design.

Stylised black bird with spiral wings

Black and grey · Flash

A solid black bird in flight faces left, with a pointed beak, a small open eye and two spiral-curled wings sweeping back above and below the body. Fine white lines outline the spirals, the wing edges and the beak, while the tail feathers fan out to the right as separate pointed shapes. The design is shown in black on a plain white background with no shading or colour.

Bird Raven Spiral Wing Flight Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The raven came down the Stanwick cut every morning that March, flying the wrong way up the towpath wind with its wings thrown back like a pair of ferns. My father swore it was the same bird that had followed our boat from Leeds, though he also swore the Leeds lock-keeper had a glass eye, so I didn't take him at his word. What I knew was that it sat on the lock beam and watched us with one bright eye while Dad worked the paddles.

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That spring I was sixteen and sick of the Eliza Jane, sick of the smell of diesel and wet rope, sick of being the one who went ashore with the windlass in the rain. I told the bird so. I told it about the girl in the chandlery in Thorne who had laughed at my boots. The bird tipped its head and said nothing, which is more than my mother ever managed on the subject.

On the last Tuesday of the month the wind swung round and the bird didn't come. Dad moored up at Thorne and found me on the lock steps with a tin mug of cold tea. He didn't ask what was wrong. He just pointed at the water, where a single black feather was turning slow circles in the eddy beside the gate, its tip fanned out like a little rudder.

I kept it in the tin with the spare lock keys. Some mornings now I hear the wings before I see anything, that double sweep of spirals beating against the wind, and I open the hatch and let the cold in. I still haven't decided whether I'm going to leave the boat or stay on it. The bird never decides. It just flies the wrong way until the wind comes round.