Black and grey blackwork tattoo of a skull-headed figure in a dark cloak beneath a dotted sun with a star, on the forearm.

Skull figure with sun on forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A stylised figure with a skull for a head stands in a dark cloak, with a drawn face on the body and a shaded sun with a central star above it. The solid black cloak contrasts with stippled dotwork shading on the lower section and the sun, and rays radiate from the sun's outline. The design is set against plain skin in a tall, narrow composition.

Blackwork Dotwork Forearm Skull Figure Cloak Sun Star Face

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hush now, and let the fire have your ears, because the road is shut under six feet of white and nobody leaves this inn before Thursday. The Carrick brothers came up the moor the winter the sun went missing, carrying one lantern between them and a debt their father could not pay. The debt belonged to a man in Keld who kept a steward made of nothing but bone, polished white as a dinner plate, and the steward wore a black cloak down to his shins. Across his chest was a second face, painted in charcoal, and it watched you the way a magpie watches a dropped ring.

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The steward held the sun himself. It hung on a chain at his back, a dull iron disc with a star punched into its middle, and when he lifted it the rays went out over the valley and the frost came off the barley. Without it, Keld had gone grey and bitter for three seasons. Tobias, the younger Carrick, stood in the cold doorway and asked for the sun back. The skull tipped its head and said he could have it if he named the star at its centre. Nobody had ever named it. The old folk called it a nail, a thorn, a wolf's eye.

Tobias had been a shepherd's boy before he was anything else, and his mother had sung the lambing song every spring under that same star, pointing to it over the ridge with a floury finger. He opened his mouth and sang her the first line. The disc cracked like river ice, the light poured out of it in a long gold sheet, and the steward folded into his own cloak like a bird settling for the night, leaving only the painted face staring up from the empty fabric.

So when the snow lies thick on the lane, the Keld folk still walk to the gate with a candle and sing the lambing song to the sky. Now, who wants another hot ale, and who has been counting the cups while I talked?