Black ink flash design of a swirling tree with spiral branches and roots, with a small central figure, shown on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Swirling tree and figure design

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A black linework drawing of a tree with curling spiral branches at the top and spiral roots at the base. A small human figure sits in the centre of the trunk, with its arms raised and its body formed from the curling lines. The image is in black ink on white with no shading or colour.

Botanical Tree Spiral Swirl Branches Root Figure Line drawing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ash had split the chapel floor before I was born, and by the time the estate's new agent came up the valley with his measuring tape, its roots had lifted the flagstones in curls like the tops of fiddle scrolls. 'Cut it to the stump,' he said, tapping his clipboard against the broken arch. 'The buyers want a view of the sky from the nave.'

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Old Mrs Pryce, who had kept the key to the gatehouse for forty years, only shook her head. She took me down the spiral stair to the undercroft, where the roots came through the wall in a hundred pale coils and the air smelt of wet stone and sap. 'Everybody sees a tree,' she said. 'Look where the trunk narrows.'

I looked, and at first there was only grain and knots. Then, where the bark bellied out above the root fork, I saw a figure worked into the wood, arms lifted as if to catch rain, its body drawn out in the same unbroken curls that ran up into the branches. Someone had loved the ash enough to wait for it to grow around them, or the tree had decided to keep someone.

I put the saw back in its case that evening and left the agent's clipboard face down in the mud by the gate. In the morning the nave was still roofed with leaves, and I tied a strip of red wool around the first spiral root so that whoever came next would know to walk around it.