Neo-traditional style colour tattoo of a red-haired mermaid with a green tail on a forearm, with the words NEVER LOSE YOUR VOICE in black lettering above and below.

Mermaid and lettering on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A red-haired mermaid leans back with her head tilted up, one hand near her shoulder, and her green scaled tail curls down the forearm. Bold black outlines define the figure and the flat colour fills, with soft shading on the skin and hair. The words NEVER LOSE above and YOUR VOICE below frame the mermaid in plain black capitals.

Neo-trad Lettering Forearm Mermaid Long hair Red hair Lettering Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Your grandmother kept the lighthouse key on a length of tarred string, and she said the sea had taken three of her teeth and one husband but never her voice. So when the crab boat came in past the breakwater on the Thursday after the gale, you went down to the slipway with your hair still salt-stiff and listened. The woman they had hauled from the nets lay on the wet stone with her tail curled under her, singing the same four notes over and over, like a kettle that would not come to the boil.

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The harbourmaster wanted her sold to a travelling showman from Penzance who had promised a new roof for the chapel. Mr Tregarthen counted coins into his palm while the gulls argued over the bait tub. Nobody asked the mermaid what she thought of the bargain. You noticed her hand move up to her shoulder, fingers curling around the little shell comb she wore there, and you noticed that she was holding it the way your mother held her wedding ring when she was deciding whether to keep it.

That night you crept back with a bucket of seawater and a pair of your brother's oilskins. She said nothing at first. Then she tapped the comb against the stone, twice, and a bright thread of sound came out of her that was not the four notes at all. It was the tune your grandmother hummed over the mending, the one with no words, and it carried all the way up the cliff to the lamp room.

You left the comb with her and walked home by the harbour wall. Behind you the great lamp swept out over the water, and under it, very faint, somebody was singing the rest of the song.