Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Witch in profile with crescent moon hat

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A painted drawing of a woman's head in profile, wearing a pointed witch's hat with a gold crescent moon and small star on the brim. Her dark hair is swept into wavy curls, and she has red lips and a red blush on her cheek. Bold black outlines and flat areas of colour sit on a plain white background, with other artwork partly visible at the edges.

Traditional Witch Woman Portrait Crescent moon Star Hat Hair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The kettle was still ticking on the range when the witch came down the companionway with a hatbox under one arm. Nobody had hired her. The mate had paid her two sovereigns at Penzance because the Mary Ellen had lain dead in the water off the Lizard for three days, and the men were quarrelling over the last of the salt pork. I was the cook, so I was the one who had to feed her.

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She sat at my scrubbed table and lifted the hat out of its box as carefully as a christening gown. Black felt, a point that bent like a tired finger, and on the brim a gold crescent moon with a small star tucked into its horn. She turned the moon towards the lamp and asked for a cup of water, not tea. When I gave it to her she dipped the star in and blew across the surface until the ripples stood up into the shape of a sail. Don't ask me what I saw. I only know the water tasted of salt for a week after.

The wind came at four bells in the morning, out of the south-west, clean and steady, and the Mary Ellen ran for Falmouth with every sail drawing. The witch took her sovereigns from the mate, then asked me for something in return. I had a tin of ground coffee I'd been saving for my brother's wedding. She took it, tapped the lid twice with one finger, and said the wind would hold as long as the moon kept its shine.

I hung the hat on the galley hook where the lamp could reach it. Every morning since, before the porridge goes on, I rub the crescent with a dry cloth and check the star. The wind has never once failed us. My brother got married in a borrowed suit and drank tea from a chipped mug, and I have never asked the witch for the coffee back.