Black and grey arrow tattoo with a shaded spearhead and feathered fletching, running across the upper arm.

Arrow tattoo on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A grey arrow runs diagonally across the arm, with a shaded spearhead on the left and feathered fletching on the right. The linework is clean and the metal head and shaft are filled with soft grey shading and highlights. The tattoo sits against plain skin in a close, slightly angled shot.

Upper arm Arrow Feather Fletching

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the lodger in number four has finally paid, so you can stop nagging me about the gutter. He came down the stairs this morning with a canvas roll under his arm and asked me to hold the door while he carried a bundle of ash shafts out to the cart. Forty of them, straight as a rule and banded in copper wire near the nock. I asked what a man wanted with forty arrows in Saltcombe in February. He said the ones on the beach would do for the regatta, then laughed as though I had missed the joke.

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He has been filing the heads himself at the back of Pryce's forge on Fore Street, where Pryce lets him use the big bench on Sundays. Mrs Pryce told me the steel is old horseshoe iron, shaded with a flat file until it looks like pewter from across the harbour. She thought it a waste of good iron. I thought it a waste of good Sunday, but the man is quiet and pays on the nail, so I keep my opinions to the washing up.

Last night he knocked on my door with one of the arrows in his hand. The fletching was grey, feathered like a gull's back, and the spearhead was so black at the edges it looked wet. He said it was for the window ledge of the front room, where the light comes off the water in the evenings. I told him the ledge was for geraniums. He put the arrow on the ledge anyway, point towards the sea, and went upstairs without his supper.

This morning it was gone, and so was he, and the forty shafts with him. There is a note tucked under the teapot addressed to the woman who keeps the stairs tidy. I have not opened it yet. The arrow is still in the umbrella stand by the door, and I cannot bring myself to pull it out. Come at Easter and you can carry it to the pier yourself.