Black line drawing of a geometric wolf head above two crossed arrows, shown as a flash design in the Geometric style with no body placement visible.

Geometric wolf head with crossed arrows

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows a wolf head built from angular, faceted lines, with pointed ears, a triangular nose and a stylised muzzle. Two arrows cross beneath it, each with a barbed head and feathered fletching drawn in simple striped lines. The design uses uniform black outlines on a plain white background, with no shading or colour.

Geometric Wolf Wolf head Arrow Crossed arrows Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The brass stamp had come back from the foundry with its teeth worn down, so Nell spent the first hour of the morning filing the wolf's ears square again. Her father had cut the die the year before the fever took him, working from a drawing he'd made on the back of a bill of lading: a head built from angles with no curve anywhere, and two arrows crossed beneath it, like a warning or a blessing depending on who was reading.

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The fletchers in Ashby Wold sold their shafts by the gross and stamped every one, so a buyer could tell a true arrow from a cheap copy at ten yards. Nell knew the order by heart. Goose feather, three to a shaft, striped fletching bound in waxed thread, barbed heads ground on the stone at the back where the water wheel turned slow in January. Mr Pell from the bow shop had come twice that week asking whether the die was ready, and twice she had told him it was nearly there.

On the third evening she found the mistake herself. The arrows in the drawing were crossed so that each head would have pierced the fletching of the other, and she had cut the stamp to match. She sat with the lamp until the oil ran low, then took the file to the steel and reversed the points, one at a time, until the wolf looked out over arrows that could actually fly.

When Pell came for the batch in the morning he turned a shaft over in his hands and laughed. 'Your father would have caught that.' Nell took the drawing from the drawer and showed him the bill of lading, where in the corner, in her father's cramped hand, someone had written the arrows the right way round and then scored them out. 'He did catch it,' she said. 'He just wanted to see if I would.'