Illustrated flash design of a red-haired mermaid with a teal tail, a small anchor above, a laurel wreath and a starfish, with a lettered banner below.

Red-haired mermaid with anchor and banner

Neo-trad · Colour · Flash

A cartoon mermaid with long, wavy red hair and large turquoise eyes rests her head on one hand, with a teal scaled tail curling below. A small anchor in a circle sits above her, a green laurel wreath frames her tail, and a starfish sits at the base over a ribbon banner with lettering. Bold black outlines and flat fills of red, teal and green give the piece a bright, illustrated look.

Neo-trad Mermaid Red hair Anchor Laurel Starfish Banner Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tide had gone out so far that the rocks at Porz Gwen stood wet and bare, and Erwan was still prising limpets off them when his grandmother called him in for supper. He did not go. He had seen the red hair again, out past the last buoy, a flash of it like weed caught in the sun, and nobody in the village believed him, least of all his mother.

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Grandmother Anna believed him. She set down her bowl and took from her apron pocket a small brass anchor on a cord, gone green at the edges from years of salt. "Your grandfather lost his boat off the Pointe du Raz," she said. "The sea kept the boat, but the little mermaid kept the anchor, and she keeps it still. Every harbour has one, the old women say, a sister who waits for the men who never came home. Give her back what she is owed and she lets the sea give back what it owes."

He went down at dawn with the anchor clenched in his fist. The water lay flat and pale as a plate. He waited on the slipway until his toes were numb, then leaned out and let the cord slide through his fingers. It sank without a sound, turning once, and a ring of silver spread outward from the place. Out of it rose a pale hand, then a head of wet red hair, resting its cheek on one palm as if it had been listening all night.

She did not speak. She only tilted her head towards the slipway, and there, wedged between two stones, was a starfish the colour of rust. Beneath it lay a strip of driftwood painted with letters worn nearly clean, and he could still read them: BZH forever, in his grandfather's careful hand. Erwan carried both up the path. Anna ran her thumb over the paint and said nothing for a long while. Then she laughed, and it was the first time he had heard her laugh since the boat went down.