Realistic colour tattoo of a treble clef formed from twisting branches, with two red songbirds, a small red rose and green leaves, on the upper thigh.

Treble clef of branches with two red birds on thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a treble clef made from twisting brown branches with dark shading along their edges, with thin roots and leaves trailing down the leg. Two red songbirds perch on the branches on either side, rendered with soft shading and fine feather detail, and a small red rose bud sits in the lower loop. Warm browns, reds and greens dominate against the pale skin, and the design fills the thigh from the upper leg to below the knee.

Botanical Realism Thigh Treble clef Bird Songbird Branches Vine Leaves Rose Music

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The organ at the Saltmarsh fair has gone quiet again, and Mr Fenwick says it is my fault for oiling the wrong bellows. I have not told him the truth, which is that the bellows were fine and the roll was wrong. Someone punched the holes for the treble clef crooked, so every tune comes out with the high notes sliding off like wet slates. I spent Tuesday night with a candle and a hairpin, straightening them one by one.

Old Tam, who keeps the generator, says the clef on the roll was cut by a man who once toured the Michaelmas fairs with a sideshow of singing finches. He kept two red birds in a cage painted with ivy, and when the wagon was struck by lightning near Carlisle, he lost the cage, but the birds flew up into a hawthorn and would not come down. Tam says they still sit there, whistling the tune the organ plays. I told him he drinks too much rum to be trusted with birds.

Still, I keep thinking about the roll. Whoever cut it left a small round mark in the lower loop, like a rosebud, and when the organ plays that note the whole wagon smells of roses for a moment, sweet and wrong in the August dust. I have not found the rose on the roll yet. I think I may be looking for the wrong thing.

Tomorrow we move on to Brampton. If the birds are real, I will bring you a feather. If they are not, I will bring you the hawthorn leaf I picked off the wagon roof, which has a little clef's shape worn into its veins.

Yours, Ada