Two people stand side by side holding wands, one with a colourful floral sleeve tattoo on the forearm and upper arm and a small heart tattoo on the chest.

Two people with wands and arm tattoos

Forearm · Colour · Photo

Two people stand close together, cropped below the chin, holding wands with their hands clasped at the front. The person on the right wears a white corset-style wedding dress and has a colourful floral sleeve running from the upper arm to the forearm, plus a small outlined heart and fine script above the neckline. The person on the left wears a white shirt, red and gold striped tie, suspenders and black trousers, with a faint script tattoo on the forearm; the warm red and yellow tones of the background complement the styling.

Forearm Upper arm Chest Wand Heart Script Floral Sleeve Tie Corset

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

In the harbour town of Saltcoe, the wand-maker Orla Tennant kept her workshop above the fish market, where gulls sat on the sill and watched her turn rowan and hazel on the lathe. Every spring the town held handfastings on the quay, and every spring the couples asked for wands, because a wand cut from the town's own driftwood was said to hold a promise until the tide came in and took it back.

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One March two young ones climbed her stairs: Mattie Crane, who mended nets for her uncle, and Idris Vale, who had been out on the boats since he was nine and could not sit still in a chair. They wanted matching wands, red and gold, to hold for the vows. Orla asked what they would promise. Mattie said she would stop wandering off to the harbour wall. Idris said he would come home when he said he would, which was the harder promise. Orla set a strip of gold into each handle so they would know which was which.

On the day the rain held off. The two stood on the stones with their hands folded over the wands, and the old women on the quay said the painted doors behind them looked like they had caught fire. When the vows were done, the wands were laid on the water as custom required. Orla watched from the wall as the tide carried them out, one ahead of the other, then both together past the breakwater.

The next spring Idris came in off a late boat and found a wand lying on his kitchen table, freshly cut, with a small heart burned into the grip. He turned it over twice. Mattie was at the stove with her back to him, and she did not say where the old one had gone, only that the tide had been very obliging.