Tattooed forearm holding a cigarette

Gray ran the shooting gallery at Coldharbour Fair the summer the big top burned down at Ashby. Nobody saw him tattoo himself, though everyone heard the buzz of a machine behind the caravan at three in the morning, and by dawn a serpent coiled from his wrist to his elbow, its head resting in the crook of his arm as if it were listening for something. He swore it was the only honest thing he owned.

The snake had a habit. Whenever a child dropped a coin in the sawdust, the serpent shifted beneath the skin, and that coin turned up in the pocket of whichever boy had won the ring toss. Gray would tap his cigarette on the cobbles and say, 'Not mine to keep, that one,' and hand the prize over. The fair folk called it his bargain. The strange part was that the snake never once let him pay for his own supper.

The night the fair packed up for the last time, a stranger in a grey jumper asked Gray to sell the arm. Gray laughed and offered him a light instead. In the morning the caravan was gone, the gallery was bare boards, and the lad who had been sweeping the sawdust had a small grey snake coiled round his own wrist, its head turned, listening.