Black fine line eye within a triangle with small lettering on the upper arm, and the words be strong girl with small stars on the ribs.

Eye in triangle and strong girl lettering

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with her back and arm turned to the camera shows two black tattoos. On the upper arm, a small outlined triangle encloses a drawn eye, with tiny block text running around it. Below the grey vest and mesh bra, on the side of the ribs, the words be strong girl sit in a neat script above a few small star shapes.

Fine line Lettering Upper arm Ribs Eye Triangle Text Script Word Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, sit down, and mind the sawdust on the step. You want the tale of the painted eye? Then you'll hear about Nell Tarrant, who ran the hoopla stall at Ashby Michaelmas Fair the summer the big top went up in smoke.

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Her caravan was the green one at the back, behind the gingerbread van, and Hob Crane the sign-writer had lettered its panels in gold. When Nell asked for something to keep the evil eye off the takings, he painted a triangle on the door with an eye inside it, and around the edges he crowded in a little verse her gran had always sworn by: look hard, lift your chin, see the thing before it sees you. He charged her a shilling and a jar of cold tea.

The night of the fire a boy from the rides went missing. The whole field was lanterns and shouting, and everyone ran the wrong way. Nell stood on her step, pressed her eye to the knot-hole at the centre of the triangle, the only hole in that door Hob had never meant to be there, and she saw him: hunched behind the dodgem cars, crying into his sleeve. She walked straight to him through the smoke without once looking down.

Ask anyone at Ashby and they'll say the eye saw him. They're wrong. The eye never saw a thing. It was Nell's own girl, Pip, who'd scratched the words be strong girl into the wagon's back board that winter with a nail, every letter wobbling, and who had drawn a star for every night her mother came home late. Nell read them each evening, the stars climbing the wood like a ladder. The boy was only found because she knew which way a frightened child would run. That's the whole trick, my lovelies. The eye's just a picture. You have to be the one who looks.