Five black line-drawn arrows of varying head and fletching styles, arranged diagonally on a white background, shown as tattoo flash.

Five hand-drawn arrows in a row

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

Five arrows are drawn in black ink on a white background, each with a different head and fletching, including feathered tails, triangular points, dotted shafts and solid arrowheads. The arrows sit at slightly staggered angles, with thin uniform linework and some areas filled in solid black. The image is in plain black and white with no colour and no body shown.

Fine line Arrow Feather Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Old Hanne the fletcher kept five arrows on pegs in her shed at Scarrow, and she would not sell any of them. When the miller's boy asked why, she said they had all been cut from the same ash tree that came down in the winter gale, and a thing cut from one tree should not be split up for coin.

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The first had a tail of goose-grey feathers bound tight with waxed thread. The second had a head of hammered iron, a triangle she used when she wanted a hare to stop running. The third had a shaft dotted with small knots, like beads on a string, and she said that one was for hunters who came home. The fourth had plumes as thick as a fist and a point of black horn. The fifth was a plain bodkin with a wide barb, the one she kept for herself.

One autumn Tomas grew impatient and took the fourth arrow down while Hanne slept. He went up to the high meadow to shoot a stag he had seen crossing the stream. He loosed too early, and the shaft flew wide and struck the bark of the birch by the water. Hanne found him there at dusk, shaking, the arrow still humming in the trunk. She pulled it free, said nothing about thieving, and handed it back to him, telling him that a steady hand matters more than a fine feather.

He returned all five arrows to their pegs the next spring, and Hanne was pleased, though she never said so. The stag grew old and lay down in the ferns. Tomas kept the shed swept for forty years, and every morning he counted five arrows on the wall before he opened the door.