Fine line tattoo of a clenched hand holding a knife, in black outline, on the inner forearm.

Fist gripping a knife on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small black outline tattoo shows a clenched fist gripping the handle of a knife with its blade pointing upwards. The linework is thin and even, with the handle and fingers filled in solid black and the rest of the design left as open skin. The tattoo is shown in close view on a pale forearm against a dark sleeve and a stone wall.

Fine line Forearm Fist Hand Knife Blade

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody in Harrowmere ever asked Ada Pell why she kept the knife in her fist instead of the drawer. She had carried it since the winter the weir broke, when the water came down the lane at dusk and the miller's boy was caught in the sluice rope.

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She went down the bank with the knife in her right hand, blade up, because her father had taught her to climb wet stone that way: keep the point clear of your own face and grip the handle as if it were a rung. The rope was twisted round a post under six feet of brown water. Ada did not cut at first. She waited for the boy to surface, counted to nine, and then sawed through the rope where the knot sat.

The boy lived. The knife did not go back in the drawer. It hung on a nail by the mill door, its handle worn pale, and the village children learned to wave at it from the road, the way you greet a neighbour's dog that is kind but large.

On the blade, near the heel, Ada had scratched a small S the night after, so that her hand would always know which knife to trust. Nobody else ever touched it. The river still rises some springs, and when it does the knife comes down off the nail, and someone runs for the bank.