Black tribal tattoo of an animal head above a paw print with spiral details, on the outer upper arm.

Tribal animal and paw design on upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A bold tribal design shows an animal head at the top, with a paw print below it framed by swirling spiral shapes. The linework is thick, solid black with sharp, flowing points, and the ink has a slightly glossy, freshly healed look. The design fills the upper arm, shown against a dark sleeve and a dim background.

Blackwork Upper arm Animal Paw print Spiral Tribal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wolf came down from Kestle Moor the week the snow let go, and by Thursday every family in Harrowden had seen its prints in the mud behind the chapel. They were big, splayed things, and at the heel of each one the earth had been pressed into a curl, as if something had turned in place and thought about it before walking on.

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Mrs Ada Greave put a heel of bread on her step each night, because her husband said a wolf that was fed would not be hungry in the lambing season, and because she had never liked the way the men talked about shooting things they did not understand. Her husband, Walter, laughed at her. The vicar said to leave it be. Only Dr Pascoe, who had come up from Penzance with a rifle he had never fired, wanted to see it dead before the Whitsun fair.

On the third night Ada heard it howl from the top of the lane, a long note that climbed and broke and climbed again. She took the lantern and followed the prints up past the lych gate, past the quarry and the broken stile, until they stopped at the old spring where the water had been fouled by a dead ewe the autumn before. The wolf sat beside it with its head tipped back, and the lantern showed the pale scar of an old wire cut across its muzzle.

It did not run. It looked at her a long while, then rose and walked down the far side of the hill, turning once at every bend so the marks were there for her to read.

In the morning the spring was clear, and the bread on her step had gone. Walter swore the prints led to the Pascoes' gate and nowhere else, and the rifle went back into its case.