Black dotwork and line tattoo of a bare tree whose roots form an arrow of overlapping triangles, on the inner forearm.

Bare tree and overlapping triangles on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A leafless tree with thin, branching linework rises from a trunk that shades into stippled dots. Its roots spread into a downward-pointing arrow made of overlapping outlined triangles, with one triangle filled with dotwork shading and a small dotted accent beside the tip. The tattoo is in black ink only, set against the inner forearm on a plain light background.

Dotwork Geometric Botanical Forearm Tree Branches Root Triangle Arrow Geometric shape Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had come over the sill of the Hollin Gate inn by the third night, and the landlady's son, Piers, was sent out with a shovel and a lantern to the old ash in the yard. Nobody had cut it down. It had been bare since the year the bridge washed away, and its branches made a black net against the sky.

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A carter named Dunmore came in stamping, his mule dead in a drift on the high road, and asked for water for his cask. The well had frozen solid. Marta, the landlady, said the water lay under the ash, where it always had. Her grandmother had told her the roots ran down like a pointing finger to a spring that never froze. Dunmore laughed at her, but he took a spade out anyway, because he had nowhere else to go. Marta scratched three overlapping triangles into the frost beside the trunk so he would know which way the roots bent.

He dug three arm-lengths down, through clay and then through grit, and at the third hole the earth went dark and wet. He filled his cask and came back with ice in his beard. He paid for a bed with a silver button, which he said was the last thing he owned. Marta took the button and gave him the top room, the one that looked out on the tree.

In spring the snow went, but the carter did not. Piers found the spade standing upright beside the ash, and the roots had crept a little further down, pointing as they always had. Marta dropped the silver button into the well to pay the spring its due, and then she went out and kept the tree.