Black and grey sketch-style tattoo of two magpies and a crescent moon on the forearm, shown in two side-by-side close-up photographs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two magpies and a crescent moon on a forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two magpies are shown in black ink, one perched on a branch and the other in flight with spread wings, beside a crescent moon and ink splashes. The linework is loose and sketchy, with solid black areas on the birds' heads and bodies and fine stippled texture on the wings. The image is in black and grey and is composed as two close-up photographs of the same forearm piece.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pass above Cwm Esgair was the only road my father trusted, so when snow came early in October he sent me up it alone with the ewe's bell and a lantern that smoked. I was eleven and had counted magpies since I could walk. One for sorrow, two for joy. By the cairn at the top there were two, one perched on the wall and one dropping out of the cloud with its tail spread like a fan. I took that as a promise.

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The moon came up crooked over the ridge, a paring of light with the dark still held in its curve, and the perched bird began to speak in my grandmother's voice, saying the ewe had gone over into the scree below the cairn. I should have turned for home. Instead I followed the flying one, which kept dipping ahead of me and rising again, like someone throwing out a rope and then pulling it back just out of reach.

I found the ewe wedged between two grey slabs, her foreleg bent wrong but her eyes calm. The perched bird was waiting on a flat stone above us, sleek as a black glove, and when I reached for the bell it hopped down and tugged a loose thread from my scarf. Then they were both gone into the cloud, and the lantern went out, and I was left to carry the ewe down by feel.

My father met me at the gate with his face white. He said the ewe had been dead a week, that the bell he had hung on her was the one he'd lost in the spring. Above the gatepost a magpie sat with my red wool in its beak. I still count them when I climb the pass. Two for joy, I used to think. Now I think the second one is only the first one coming back to see whether you were brave enough to follow.

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