Black silhouette tattoos of four flying figures in a sequence across the top of a foot, on a light background.

Four flying silhouettes across a foot

Other · Black and grey · Photo

A bare foot shows four solid black silhouettes of figures in flying poses, arranged in a line that rises from the middle of the foot toward the outer edge. The figures are filled with flat, dense black ink with no visible shading or linework detail. The light skin and pale bedding behind the foot give the dark ink strong contrast.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are fourteen, sent out on the Corinna to an aunt in Fremantle with a tin trunk, a luggage label and your mother's last instruction, which was to keep your feet dry. Nine days out, the boys in the steerage bunks have stopped talking about Ceylon and started talking about the second star to the right, and you pretend not to listen because you are too old for such nonsense.

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Then the youngest, Alfie Pell, goes missing from the lower deck on a Tuesday night. The stoker's wife stands at the rail with a lantern, calling his name into the dark, and the officer on watch says he has probably been sick over the side. At first light you find wet footprints drying on the forward well deck, four small pairs, heel to toe, running in a line from the scuppers toward the bow. Each one sits a little higher than the last, toes pointing at the sky.

Nobody else looks at them twice. The crew hose them away before breakfast. You go up to the rail alone, take off your shoe and stocking, and stand in the cold, salt-smelling air with your bare foot on the wet planks. Your toes fit the last print exactly, as though the deck had been waiting for you to step into it.

Afterwards you swear the ship dropped away behind you, the wake going white and far down, and something warm tugged at your collar and smelled of lemon soap. By noon the Corinna is still at sea and your trunk is still in your cabin, and Alfie Pell is in the galley eating bread and jam and saying nothing at all. You keep your feet dry for the rest of the voyage, though the sea spray never quite lets you.

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