Fine line tattoo of five arrows in black ink on the upper arm, with feathered fletching at the top of each shaft.

Five arrows on an upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

Five arrows are arranged in a loose fan on the outer upper arm, each with a feathered tail and a pointed head. The linework is thin and precise, with small dot and hatched shading in the feathers. The black ink is set against plain skin, and a checked shirt sleeve sits at the right edge of the frame.

Fine line Upper arm Arrow Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the quiver on a Tuesday, wedged behind the tea urn in the left-luggage office at Hollin Bridge, where the 6.14 to Settle has been late since the autumn. Inside are five arrows with no bow, their feathers still crisp, as if someone has only just stopped carrying them. Mr Pell, who has kept that office for thirty years, says nobody has claimed a thing from the locker since the war, and he is not about to start with weapons.

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You take them home on the last train because the rules say everything goes to the station safe by Friday. On the platform the wind comes up off the moor and the feathers lift together, all five tilting the same way, as though they are pointing you somewhere. Each head is shaded with tiny hatched strokes and dots, drawn so fine you have to tilt them to the lamp to see the barbs. Near the nock of the longest shaft someone has pencilled a date, and beside it a single word: Platform.

You open the ticket hall ledger that night and find the same word on every page, next to a name you recognise. Marta Hollis ran the kiosk for two summers and left in a hurry, owing the cafe a few pounds and leaving her tin of pencils on the sill. Folded inside the tin is a timetable with one arrow drawn beside each line where a train was never caught.

On Friday you pin the fan to the noticeboard by the barrier, feathers out, pointing at the footbridge. A child asks what they are for. You tell her they show the way to the platform, and then you go back to the window and open it, because the moor air is coming through and it smells of rain.