Black ink tattoo on the upper back showing a witch on a broomstick, three birds, the words books are proof humans can do magic, and two geometric symbols.

Witch, birds and quote on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A witch on a broomstick sits above three birds in flight, with the words books are proof humans can do magic in a blackletter-style script below. A triangle with a circle and line, and a trident, sit either side of the text. The linework is bold and solid, rendered entirely in black ink on pale skin, and the design is centred across the upper back.

Lettering Back Witch Bird Quote Deathly hallows Trident

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Marjorie Hobb had kept the lending ledger of Pennick Church School for forty-one years, and on the night of the reunion she carried it into the hall in a Co-op bag, because somebody had to prove what had been borrowed. The hall smelled of floor polish and fried onions. Men in good jackets stood by the urn talking about pensions and bad knees, and nobody wanted to hear about the library.

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The old story, the one the children told each other on the bus, was about the woman who lived past the quarry and rode a broom up over the hedges. Her name was Nan Tully, and she would take any child who came to her door with a library card and send them home with a book, asking only that it come back. Those who returned them found a single feather tucked inside the cover. Those who kept them were never seen to fly, and never seen to read again either, which the teachers said was the same thing.

Dennis Rowe, who had once thrown a Sellotaped copy of Kidnapped into the beck, stood up and said the ledger was a fairy tale Marjorie had written herself. She opened it at his name. Beside it, in her small neat hand, was the title of a book about wings he had never handed back, and beside that a line: returned, changed.

Outside, three birds rose from the car park wall and wheeled over the lit windows, and a dark shape crossed the moon above them, low, with its arms out. Dennis went very quiet. Then he laughed, not unkindly, and asked Marjorie whether she still kept a pen behind the counter, because he had a book to sign back in.