Black and white photo of a fine line Roman numeral lettering tattoo running down the centre of a woman's upper back.

Roman numerals down the upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A view from behind of a woman with long hair falling forward, showing a vertical line of Roman numerals in a serif typeface along the centre of her upper back. The linework is fine and crisp, in solid black ink with no shading, and the numerals are separated by small dots. The monochrome photograph is centred on the tattoo, with the background softened and blurred.

Lettering Fine line Back Roman numeral Numeral Lettering Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferrymen of Saltmere counted their crossings in Roman letters, because the first ferryman had counted them that way and nobody had thought to change it. Each season they cut a fresh row into the boathouse post: seven, a dot, twenty-nine, a dot, then whatever the year had come to. The letters were old and the cutting was poor, so the young ones learned to read by tracing them with wet thumbs.

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Ysolde came to the boathouse the winter the river froze hard enough to walk on, carrying a hammer her father had left her and no notion what a numeral was for. She asked why the marks ran down the post in a line. The old keeper, Brannoch, said the line was the river, and every dot was a place where the water had been crossed and had let you go. He showed her how MMXIII was made of two thousands and a thirteen, and how the stroke at the end of it meant the count had not stopped.

When the thaw came she took the chisel to the post herself, while Brannoch was asleep in the reeds. She cut the year's first crossing and then stood looking at the gap beneath it, where the wood was still clean. She had been taught that a count left unfinished was bad luck on the water, so she did not finish it. She only made the dot.

The next spring Brannoch found the post with its gap still open and the dot waiting at the foot of it. He said nothing about it. He took the hammer from her, struck the first stroke of the next numeral, and left the rest to her.