Close side view of a woman lifting her top to show a small black lettering tattoo of a single word on her left ribs.

Single word script tattoo on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with long blonde hair lifts a black top printed with white hearts to show her side. A small black script word sits along the ribs, and the lettering appears to read Protego. The ink is solid black with smooth, even lines, set against a pale, softly lit background.

Lettering Ribs Word Script Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You learn the word before you learn the locks. Uncle Ray paints it every spring on the cabin side of the Mabel Ann, in green enamel, under her name, the letters no taller than your palm. He says a boat wants something said over her that isn't just her name. Protego, he tells you, means I stand in front of, or I shield. You say it back to him with the stress on the wrong syllable, and he laughs until he has to sit down on the coal hatch.

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The winter the Severn came over the towpath at Upton, the mooring chain parted at two in the morning and the barge swung out into the black with you aboard alone. Ray was in hospital in Worcester with his chest. You had the tiller and a torch clamped in your teeth. Ice furred the rail, and the current pushed you towards a line of willows that looked, in the torchlight, like men waiting to take your rope. You knew no spells. You knew the word, and you said it under your breath at every knock of the hull, the way you would run through the times tables to keep your nerve.

The bow met the willow with a sound like a dropped door, and then the boat hung there, shivering, held by a root you could not see. You made fast to the stump with the spare line and sat in the wheelhouse until the light came up grey and the river went back to being just a river.

In April Ray came home thin as a rake and handed you the pot of green. He asked whether you reckoned the word had done its job. You looked at the cabin side, where the paint had run a little at the tail of the O, and said it had held. He nodded slowly and did not ask what it had held against.