Wolf head in a runic circle on the arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A wolf head faces right in profile, its jaw open and tongue showing, filled in with solid black ink against the skin. A thick circular band of runic-style characters surrounds it, with a fine outline separating the band from the wolf. The image is a close, slightly angled photo of the arm, with the design centred and the ink sharply defined.

Upper arm Wolf Wolf head Rune Circle Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

They had been feeding the wolf at the top of Hollin Gate for three winters before anyone thought to ask why it never took a lamb. Old Mattis said it was because the wolf had a bargain with the stone, and nobody argued with Mattis, who had buried two wives and outlived a bear.

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The stone stood where the track bent over the saddle, a grey slab ringed with marks that the shepherds called the counting. Nobody could read them. Each drover who crossed scratched a notch beside the last, and when the notches reached the top of the ring, the pass would be paid for, and the wolf would walk down into the valley and lie among the sheep like a dog.

That spring a carter named Ansel Rudd came over with a cart of salt and no patience. He laughed at the ring, took his knife to the stone, and cut a notch at the wrong end, where the marks ran backwards. The wolf came to the fire that night with its jaw open and its tongue out, the way wolves do when they are working out a meal, and it looked at Ansel for a long time.

In the morning the cart was there and the salt was there, but Ansel was not. The shepherds found his hat on the stone, and in the wet ground beside it a line of paw prints that went up the pass and did not come down. Mattis carried the hat home and hung it by his door. He said the ring had only been waiting for someone to finish the count, and that the wolf had been kind enough to lend a hand.