“The marks are so different to yours,” I exclaim. “Aren’t you meant to keep the stories unchanged?” I look at Mel’s skin – full of colour. The sleeping princess is on her arm – a tangle of green thorns that reaches up to reveal a girl standing tall over a broken spindle. I see the story of the lovers on her calf; they stand, sun and moon converging. The mark that shows Saint is partly hidden by her skirt, but I see him golden and glorious. Her marks are like ripe fruit, and yet the book on the table before us is black and grey – beautiful, yes – but it’s only when I really look closely at the skin book that I see any similarity between this illustration of the story and the work on Mel’s own skin. Mel gives a wry smile.

“These are the kinds of questions I love and yet rarely get to answer. Yes, the marks have changed over the years.” She passes a hand tenderly over the page in front of her. “If all the storytellers from every generation met together and recited one of our stories, our voices would be as one. The words would be almost identical – we have a strong and faithful history of passing on and speaking the stories perfectly. But when it comes to our marks, we are free to choose – so long as we reflect the stories accurately.”

“Why would you be given that freedom?” I ask. “It doesn’t sound like the kind of Saintstone I know.”

Mel shakes her head in amusement. “You’ve become cynical.” She sits back, and the tips of her fingers play along the lines of ink on her arm. “A storyteller’s job has never been just to get the words right.” I raise an eyebrow, but Mel doesn’t let me interrupt. “My role is not to simply tell the stories, but to enable the people to truly hear them. I look at the world we find ourselves in and I trust that stories can help us make sense of it – my task is to help our community see how they fit into the stories. The ink on my skin is an interpretation of the stories – a way of telling them for us here now. Isn’t that what all our creative pursuits do? Our attempts at art tell the same tales in new ways so that we can make sense of the world around us and the spirit within us.”

I lean forward. I feel like I am having lessons again. “What if a storyteller gets it wrong? What if their interpretation is false or they are trying to twist the stories to get what they want?”

“This is why we always go back to the beginning. Our skin books stand as a testimony to the generation we served, but every new storyteller starts in the same way – the same words, the same stories, the same fearsome and holy task.” She shrugs. “We just bring something different to it.”