Close view of a red pentagram inside a circle with a spiked sunburst border, tattooed on the back of a hand, shown in three photographs.

Pentagram in a spiked ring on the hand

Geometric · Hand · Colour · Photo

A five-pointed star sits inside a thin circle, with lettering or markings set around the inner edge, and a ring of sharp points surrounds the whole design. The linework is clean and solid, with no shading, and the ink is a deep red against pale skin. The collage shows the same hand from three angles, with the design placed centrally on the back of the hand.

Geometric Hand Pentagram Star Circle Sunburst Spike Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The ram sale was a waste of a morning, but I have the tin of ink back from Mr Pollard, who swore he had never seen the stamp before and then handed it over with the look of a man who had. It is the old brass ring Dad kept in the tack room, the one with the star inside and the saw-toothed edge round it like a sun that has been out too long. Mum says it was Granddad's and used on the ewes in the bad years, so the flock could be told apart from the Hartley lot over the wall. I did not know we still had it. I did not know we had a tin of red ink to go with it either.

Lambing came early this year, nine days before the frost turned the yard to glass. I have been stamping the new ones on the rump, and the mark comes up clean and dark as a bruise, and the sheep stand for it as if they have been waiting. Dad would have laughed at me for trying it on my own hand first, to see whether the ink would wash off. It did not, not with soap or the cold tap or Mum's lemon scrub. It sits in the creases of my knuckles as if it has always been there.

I keep telling myself it is only ink. Perhaps it is. Yesterday the first lamb born in the snow stood up on the stamp I had pressed too hard, and she never once looked back at the gate. Come home at Christmas if the road holds. Bring your good boots, and bring the scrubbing brush, because I am not sure I want it gone.

Love, Nell