Black and grey tattoo on an upper arm showing an axe embedded in a tree stump beside a small animal, with the words K is for Kate beneath it.

K is for Kate with an axe and stump

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows an axe lodged in a tree stump, with a small rodent-like animal and some rough ground detail beneath it. Below the illustration, the words K is for Kate are set in a plain serif capital typeface, with a partial book shape visible at the lower edge. The linework is bold with solid black areas and hatched shading, and the image is entirely black ink on skin with a plain background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pull your collar up and stand under the awning, the rain won't stop for either of us. You're after K, are you? Everybody wants the A with its apple and the Z with its zebra. K is the letter nobody reads properly, so I keep it till last. My sister Kate lived out past the sawmill on Hollin Lane, and she had a temper as sharp as the axe her father left her.

Keep reading

The trouble started with a vole. It had dug under the woodpile and eaten every seed potato we had put by for the spring, and afterwards it sat on the stump washing its face, bold as a deacon. Kate told it plainly that it had been warned. The schoolmaster had read us the alphabet book that week, with its tidy lines and its tidy rhymes, and Kate decided a letter could be a promise as well as a sound. She brought the axe down once, clean, and the blade stayed fast in the wood.

The vole, to its credit, did not die that day, nor the next. It went under the stump and stayed there, and every evening it came out to sit by the axe handle, looking at Kate through the bracken. She fed it crusts, and it grew fat and wise. When the schoolmaster came up the lane to collect his book, Kate was out in the field, and the book lay open on the stump, weighted down with a flat stone. The K page is wet, but you can still make out the words.

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