Close-up of a fine line black arrow tattoo running along a finger on a hand resting on a bare forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small arrow tattoo on a finger

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A small black arrow with a shaft and feathered fletching runs along the side of one finger on a hand that rests against a bare forearm. The linework is thin and even, with the shading kept minimal. The composition is a close, angled shot of the hand, with a silver ring and pale nail polish visible.

Fine line Hand Arrow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The arrows were made on Sule Holm because the wood came in from the mainland only once a year, lashed beneath the ferry, and nobody on the island would waste a shaft. Old Greet Halvard kept the bench by the north wall and taught her grandson to cut fletching from gull feathers, three to a shaft, each set at the same slant so the arrow would turn true in the wind.

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When the fog came down on the Fell Sound that spring, the boats did not come home. The men had gone out to the skerries after cod, and the bell on the point rang until its rope frayed. Greet sent the boy down to the shore with the bow that had been her husband's. "Shoot it over the white stone," she said. "Where the water stops being grey."

He had never hit a mark farther than the washing line. He drew, loosed, and heard the arrow hiss into the murk. After a long while a faint answer came back from out past the rocks, one knock of oar on wood. The shaft had struck the gunwale of the nearest boat and caught in its rope. Greet's eyes were already wet when she saw him grinning.

The boats came in on the flood with the fog thinning around them. Greet walked down to the shingle, took the arrow from the boy's hand and turned it over. Along the shaft, below the feathers, she had cut a small notch for each man. She counted them twice, then gave it back to him. "Keep it," she said. "You will want a way to count who is home."