Collage of four black linework tattoos on forearms: an ornamental arrow with a knotted shaft, a geometric arrow, a spiral with a lotus flower, and a dagger with a crescent moon.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Four linework arrows, knots and dagger tattoos on forearms

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The collage shows four separate tattoos on the forearm, each in black ink. The designs include an arrow with a looping knotted shaft, a geometric arrow with a diamond tip, a spiral line ending in a lotus flower with dots above, and a dagger with a crescent moon pommel. The linework is clean and even, with solid black fills on the arrowheads and dagger blade against plain skin.

Geometric Blackwork Forearm Arrow Knot Spiral Lotus Flower Dagger Crescent moon Dot Linework

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Put that knife down and pick up the next potato, Tobias, because I am not telling this to a boy who peels like he is shaving a goat. Right. Ezra Cole sailed the Margery Ann out of Hull for eleven years, and he came home from the last voyage with four new marks on his forearms and a sack of wet tobacco. Each one was a different thing. There was an arrow with its shaft tied in a loop, as if the wood had been knotted by a worried mother, and a second arrow, all corners and angles, its head a diamond like a lantern seen through a window.

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The third was a spiral that ran down the arm like a fishing line and opened at the wrist into a lotus, with three dots floating above it like gulls that had not yet made up their minds. The fourth was a dagger with a crescent moon for a pommel, so the moon seemed to be holding the blade in its horns. Ezra said the man who inked him in Valparaiso worked by one candle, a needle lashed to a bamboo stick, and refused payment because the sea would see to the bill.

Here is the part that matters. Each mark was a promise made about Harrow, the first mate who sold the crew's wages to the owner's brother. The arrows were for the crossings they would make to get clear of him, the knots for the ropes he was never allowed to cut, and the dagger was for the night the moon went dark and nobody came to check the lamp. Harrow went over the side off the Falklands with his pockets full of stones, and nobody wrote a word of it in the log.

Ezra never said who pushed him. He took his tea and turned his arms to the galley lamp so we could see the ink, and every line was as steady as the day it was cut. Now the water's boiling, Tobias. Lift the lid, mind your fingers, and tell me what you see in the steam.