Pencil drawing of a woman in powdered 18th-century style hair, with a sailing ship and octopus tentacles rising from her head.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Woman with a ship and tentacles in her hair

Black and grey · Flash

A graphite pencil drawing shows a woman with a calm expression, wearing a pearl necklace and a high lace collar. Her voluminous curled hair rises into a three-masted sailing ship with billowing sails and a flag, and octopus tentacles wrap around the hull and hair. The shading is soft and detailed, with the monochrome drawing set against a pale yellow background.

Woman Ship Sailing ship Octopus Tentacle Sail Hair Pearl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You learn the trade in Wapping, where the wigs are built over wicker and the hair comes from whoever could sell it. Mistress Pell tells you never to dress a lady's curls past the third tier, because the weight pulls the wearer's thoughts down with it. You laugh, and she does not. Then she shows you the ledger of the Marigold, the wig-block that came back from a Bristol merchant's widow with a tangle of pins still caught in it.

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The widow had ordered a headdress of a frigate, full rigged, with a little brass flag at the crown. Pell made it with her own hands, using the dry sea-grass the widow sent along and a coil of tarred rope from the dock. Nobody mentioned the grey tendrils that arrived in the same crate as the ribbons, slick as wet linen and cold to the touch. You tie them down with silk and they sulk. You feed them herring scraps when Pell isn't looking.

Come February the widow sends for the wig back. She has taken to sleeping sitting up, she writes, because she can feel the wind in the rigging when she lies flat. Pell goes herself and returns with the block and the frigate still in it, sails furled, and sets it on the shelf above the bench. She does not speak for a day.

Last night you saw the ribbons lift on their own, reaching for the lamp. Pell says it is only the draught from the river. You are not sure you believe her, but you have started leaving your boots by the door, in case the tide comes up the stairs before the sun does.