Two black and white magpies in flight tattooed on the upper back of a woman with short auburn hair, one hand resting on her shoulder.

Two magpies in flight on upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is seen from behind with bare shoulders and back, and her hand rests on her shoulder. Two magpies in flight are tattooed near her left shoulder blade, one with wings spread wide and one seen from the side with a long tail. The birds are rendered in solid black ink with white patches and fine feather detail, against plain pale skin on a white background.

Realism Back Bird Wing Flight Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The second magpie landed on the washing line before you had finished pegging the last sheet, and Mrs Ferris, leaning out of the kitchen door with a tea towel over her shoulder, called down the yard that it was two for joy. You did not argue. Nobody argued with Mrs Ferris before ten in the morning, and the sea was flat and bright beyond the wall, the gulls quarrelling over the bins at the end of Cliff Terrace.

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The lodger in the attic, Mr Abbott, had come in April with one suitcase and a box of charcoal pencils. He drew the harbour every afternoon from the bench by the slipway and never showed anyone what he had made. On the Thursday the two magpies came, and he stood at his window with his sleeves rolled up and watched them work the hedge behind the bins, black wings flicking white at the edges. He said magpies were the only birds in England that would bother with a stranger.

He left on the Saturday boat with the suitcase and the box, and a note under your door that said only: keep the one on the left, it knows the way. You found the drawing folded in the back of the box. Two birds were going out over the water, one with its wings thrown wide and one streaking low with its long tail trailing, the sea shown in a few hard strokes. Mrs Ferris read it over your shoulder and said nothing at all, which in that house was the sharpest thing she had ever said.