Those cunning folk script on side ribs
Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo
A close photograph of black script text reading 'those cunning folk' tattooed across the side of a person's torso. The lowercase lettering has thin, even linework with a slightly looped, handwritten flourish on the 'f' and 'k' descenders. The ink is solid black on pale skin, with a patterned fabric edge at the top and a brick wall in the background.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
The ferry from Orkney has not run since the salt storms, so you walk the last nine miles to Ashwell Cross with a sack of rye on your shoulder and a letter from your aunt tucked into your boot. The letter is in her hand, which means it is more instruction than kindness. Find the one who keeps the blue book. Do not ask for her by name. Say only that the cow has stopped giving milk, and wait to be told what that means.
Keep reading
The woman who answers the door at the cross has flour to her elbows and a ledger open on the table behind her, its pages soft as cloth. She reads your face the way the old doctors used to read a tongue, then reads the aunt's letter without touching it. "Those cunning folk," she says, half to herself, "they always send the difficult ones." She sets the kettle on the iron hob and tells you the cow is fine. It was never the cow. It was your father's debt, and the bell that went quiet over Hollin Water the winter he went under the ice.
You stay three nights. She teaches you to tie the knots that keep a roof from lifting in a gale, and to bless a well without speaking the word for water. On the fourth morning she hands you back the rye, lighter by a handful, and a folded scrap of paper with a single line in looping pen: the spell is the watching, not the words.
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