The girl beneath my needle moans and I brush my lips over her mouth, my perfumed exhalation returning her to a deep and empty sleep from which she will find no rest, only pain and sorrow. She has returned to me for a second time . . . as I knew she must. For each tattoo marks her as my chattel, my offering of blood, and binds her to me as a willing servant. Her head rolls to one side, sweat-slick hair drifting like a shadow over her cheeks. From lips red and curved as Puck’s bow, she sighs. Smiling, I stroke her flesh, tease the nipples to hardness and when she sighs in pleasure, I clutch her breast, squeeze it hard.
“I shall prick you,” I hum softly. “I shall stab you with a pin.” And the girl groans, tries in her sleep to avoid the stinging tap, tap, tap of the needle but I hold her firm and she must take it, and give to me what I want. “I shall hold the basin, to let the blood flow in,” I sing to her as I sing to all of them. When the little rivers of blood have collected into a crimson pool in the hollow of her throat, I apply a small glass pipe and draw the blood, releasing it to a silver reliquary I wear around my neck. Blood to pay the tithes. Blood to make the clans strong again.
I hear someone behind the curtain and my jaw tightens. None may disturb me at my work.
“Excuse me, Hawk, there’s someone here to see you,” whispers the woman I let run my shop. She is huge and ugly, unafraid of anything, except me.
“Who disturbs me?” I ask.
“A girl named Jenna. Says she has something for you.”
Jenna, I think, recalling the arabesques of leaves that hide the snares I have laid over her body. She serves me, hungry for more, which I will gift her if she brings me others like herself with pure skin, smooth as canvas.
I kiss the girl on my table and she falls into a deeper sleep, unaware that she is weeping. Standing at the doorway to the waiting room, I glance over Jenna’s head and see the girl sitting, palms pressed together, shoved between her knees. She looks awkward, as though she might bolt at any minute.
But her skin gleams, white like a sliver of moonlight in the softly lit room. Her chins lifts, her head turning slightly to the side to gaze at a painting on the wall and I can see the arch of her neck. It is slender, graceful like the swan, though the girl is unaware of its beauty. And I can feel the design twitch at my fingertips, the mark that I will leave on that perfect neck.