Close-up of a small black script tattoo reading anise on the side of an ankle, worn with gold stiletto heels and dark trousers.

Anise script on an ankle

Lettering · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A woman walks along a pale paved pavement, wearing dark trousers cuffed above the ankle and metallic gold pointed stiletto heels. A small black script word reading anise sits on the side of one ankle, drawn in thin, even linework with no visible shading. The ink is the only colour apart from the gold shoes and the dark clothing, and the shallow focus keeps the background soft.

Lettering Fine line Ankle Script Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You learn the stall before you learn the rides. Your uncle Tomasz hands you the brass scoop on the first morning at Ferrers Green, the fair's last field before the motorway, and shows you the jar with the hand-lettered label: anise. Eighteen pence a paper twist, three for a shilling on a Sunday. The sweets are hard and pale as river stones and taste of black liquorice that has been told to behave.

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Between the waltzer and the hook-a-duck, the fairground people talk in shorthand. Nobody asks where you came from. They ask whether the generator held overnight, whether the dodgem man has paid his pitch. You sell a twist to a boy who counts coins into your palm one at a time, then to a woman in a headscarf who says her father chewed them through the winter to keep his breath sweet. You wrap each one in newsprint and tell yourself you are not listening for news.

On the last night the wind comes off the flats and the lights of the Ferris wheel stutter. Uncle Tomasz is already dismantling the awning in the dark. You find the ledger under the counter, the page where he has tallied every town since Easter, and in the margin, in pencil, the same word written over and over, as if he were practising a signature. Anise. Anise. You understand, the way you understand a sum you have been avoiding, that it was never the name of the sweets.

You take the jar, fold the label into your pocket, and walk the empty row toward the lorry. Behind you the generator coughs and the last bulb goes out. In the morning you will tell him the stock is low, and he will laugh and say there is always more aniseed, there is always more.