Colour tattoo of a horned, helmeted figure with a red visor, orange sun and flames on the forearm, shown from three angles.

Horned helmeted figure with flames on forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A horned, helmeted figure with a red visor-like shape and an open-mouthed face sits at the centre, with a large orange sun behind it. Flames, a hand and small script along the left side surround the figure, with bold outlines and shaded greys. The image shows three angles of the same forearm tattoo on a plain green background, with warm reds, oranges and yellows against grey and black.

Neo-trad Forearm Figure Face Sun Flame Hand Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nan Hollis kept the coal barge Marigold on the Trent for thirty-one years, and she never once let anybody sit on the helmet. It hung on a nail above the stove, dented at the crown, with two horns of bent iron riveted either side. The bargemen said it had come up in a dredger's bucket below Gainsborough, and that it had been warm to the touch.

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Her grandson Tobin asked her why it was kept, the winter the ice stopped the boats. She told him that a smith in Torksey had once made a bet with the river. He would forge a sun that never set, and the river would give him back his drowned boy. The smith hammered for nine nights, and on the ninth the forge went white and the sun came up out of the anvil, orange as a peeled fruit. The boy did not come back. The smith put on the helmet to go and look for him, and he walked into the water still wearing it.

Tobin said that was a sad tale. Nan said it was only half of one. The sun had been left hanging over the water, and the flames the smith struck were still feeding on the coal that washed down from the pits. Every barge that passed under the bridge carried a little of it away.

On the last morning of the thaw Tobin took the helmet down. He found a scrap of paper folded inside the lining, in a hand that was not Nan's: need catalyst, last found. He pressed it flat, hung the helmet back on its nail, and went to fetch the coal.