Fine line black script reading no fear across the top of a foot, close to the base of the toes.

No fear script across the top of a foot

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A fine black script reading no fear runs across the top of a bare foot, with a thin vertical stroke crossing the lettering near the start of the word fear. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the ink is solid black against light skin. The foot rests on a dark surface with a blurred warm background, and the red nail polish on the toes is the only other colour in the frame.

Fine line Lettering Other Text Foot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lettering on the Kestrel's transom was my father's work, and he never once spelled a word the same way twice. My brother Owen says it was the paint. I say it was nerve. Whatever it was, the gold leaf across the stern read no fear, two words with a gap between them that he never managed to make straight.

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The boat went out of Carrick Bay the spring the herring failed, and she came back the autumn after with a split plank and a crew who had stopped talking about the weather. Dad took one look at the crack and said nothing. He took a pen from behind his ear, drew a single upright stroke through the lettering just before the word fear began, the way a man rules a line under an account he has finally settled, and went back to his tea.

I asked him once what the stroke was for. He said it was the mast line, the one you cut when you have decided to stop being frightened of the water. I thought it was nonsense until the winter the breakwater went and he walked the whole length of the broken wall at low tide, counting stones, never once looking back at the sea.

When they lowered him into the churchyard above the quay, the Kestrel was still propped on blocks in the yard with her stern to the road. Owen wanted the lettering painted over. I wouldn't let him. Before the first boat goes out each morning I still walk up and trace that upright stroke with my thumb, which is as close to a prayer as anyone in our family has ever come.