Black and grey flash drawing of a Celtic cross with bat-like wings, a knotwork centre and a vine wrapped around the shaft, shown without a body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged Celtic cross design

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A black and grey drawing of a Celtic cross with leathery, bat-like wings spreading from the arms and a circular knotwork panel at the centre. A vine or rope coils around the lower shaft and the ends of the cross. The linework is bold and heavily shaded with hatching and solid black, set against a plain white background.

Neo-trad Cross Celtic knot Wing Vine Knotwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The awnings along the top end of the market have started to sag under the rain, and the iron man is already packing up when you reach his stall. "Last one," he says, and lifts a cross from under a tarpaulin, heavy as a fire iron. Its arms are wide and its wings are flat and leathery, cut from metal gone black with age.

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He tells you it came out of a chapel on the Pennine edge that was pulled down in 1931, and that the bats came with it, roosting in the rafters until the mason gave up and left them the place. You laugh. He doesn't. The knotwork circle at the centre has no start and no end, and when you trace it with your thumb the drumming on the awning above you seems to pause, as if the whole market is listening.

You pay him four pounds, which is more than you can spare, and carry it home wrapped in a feed sack under your coat. That night you hang it above the door of your flat, and the wings creak in the draught off the moor, settling a little lower each time the wind comes round. In the morning the rope-thin vine at the foot has tightened its coils, and a pale green shoot has pushed out from between two loops.

You leave the door on the latch that night, just a crack, and you don't mention it to anyone, least of all the iron man, who would only nod as though he had expected it all along.