Black and grey pin-up style illustration of a crowned mermaid with white curled hair, a pearl necklace and a seahorse tail, on a grey-blue background with bubbles.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mermaid with crown and seahorse tail

Black and grey · Flash

A stylised illustration of a pale-skinned mermaid wearing a small crown, with white curled hair, red lips and pink cheeks. Her tail is a black and grey seahorse form with a scaled lower fin, and she holds a strand of pearls. Smooth shading and clean outlines sit on a grey-blue background decorated with bubbles and small sparkles.

Mermaid Crown Seahorse Pearl Bubble Hair Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad always said the cut keeps whatever it is given, so when the pearls slid off the roof at Hatton Locks, nobody went looking. Mum was counting coal bags and Dad was cursing the tiller, and I was nine and sulking on the back step with my chin in my hands. That was why I saw the crown come up through the green water, bright as a coin, and a pale face turning to watch us go.

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She called herself the Queen of the Cut. She was no longer than my forearm, and she sat astride a black seahorse whose tail curled round the lock beam like a fern. Her hair kept lifting in the current as though it had ideas of its own. The pearls were her grandmother's, she said, and she wanted them back before the lock emptied on Thursday. I asked what she would give me. She looked at me for a long time, then asked what I wanted most, and I said I wanted to go somewhere the boat could not follow.

She laughed, a noise like bubbles breaking, and pointed one pale finger at the silt by the bottom gate. Under a rusted bicycle wheel, the string lay in a tangle like wet cotton. I went in on the lock rope in my vest while Dad shouted and Mum went white, and I came up with my fists full of sludge and pearls. She took them without thanks, threaded them round her wrist, and the seahorse reared and turned towards the dark arch of the tunnel.

We moved on at six. That night I found a single pearl in my coat pocket, warm as a sleeping cat. Dad says I made it up. I keep it in a tin with my milk teeth, and every time we pass Hatton I look down at the bottom gate, and once, I swear, a pale hand rose from the water and held something up to the light before it let go.