Black script lettering reading Wild Child on a white background, with a leafy sprig beneath the words, in a design suited to a tattoo.

Wild Child script lettering with leafy sprig

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

The image shows the words Wild Child written in a flowing black script with a looping, hand-lettered feel, the W and the d carrying large swashes. A slender branch of pointed leaves curves beneath the lettering, drawn with a single consistent black outline and no shading. The design is in solid black ink on a plain white background with generous margins.

Lettering Botanical Script Lettering Leaves Branch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Margery, you will think me mad to write from Carrow Keep, but the steward has finally given up on the east stair and I have been left with nothing but the library, a tallow candle and your last letter, which I have read so often that its folds have gone soft as cloth.

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The girl is still out there. The cook calls her Ada, though she answers to nothing unless it is whistled. Yesterday I found her on the broken wall above the moat, bare feet in the ivy, a sprig of bay tucked behind one ear as though someone had crowned her with it. When I asked how she knew the old well was beneath the bramble, she only laughed and pointed up at the lintel over the gate, the one carving the fire left legible: WILD CHILD, scratched in a looping hand, with a branch of leaves curving beneath it like a sweep of breath. She said the words had told her where to look. I did not argue. I have given up arguing with stone.

I have decided to stop trying to tame her. I handed the schoolroom keys to the goat, who seems to have a better claim to them. Ada climbs where I cannot follow and comes down with her pockets full of hawthorn and small grey feathers, which she leaves on the windowsill of the library as if paying rent to the ghosts.

Come in the spring, and bring your good boots. The well is real. Ada swears the water tastes of rain that fell a hundred years ago, and I find I am inclined to believe her. Your friend, Eleanor.