Black and white photo of a fine line arrow tattoo on the inner upper arm of a woman whose arm is raised behind her head.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small arrow tattoo on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph shows a small arrow tattoo on the inner upper arm of a woman whose arm is raised behind her head. The arrow is drawn in thin, dark linework with a simple shaft, a pointed head and small feathered fletching. The soft focus background and the translucent wing-like shape behind the arm keep attention on the tattoo.

Fine line Upper arm Arrow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The arrow was meant for the orchard wall, as every wedding arrow was in Hollin Vale, so that the bride's father could say where his daughter's new house would stand. Tobias Reed drew the bow with his eyes half shut and his tongue between his teeth, and the shaft went over the wall, over the rooks, and dropped into the reeds by the mill race, where Marit Oake found it the next morning with her nets over one shoulder.

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The shaft had lost all its fletching but one grey feather, split at the tip. Marit turned it in her hands and thought about taking it straight to the miller's lad with a scold, since she had no wish to marry anybody, and certainly not a boy who shot like a drunk heron. She walked it up the lane to the feast anyway. Tobias was sitting on a barrel with his cousins, his face going as red as the cider. He took the arrow, looked at its bare shaft, and asked whether she would fletch it properly if she happened to have three goose feathers to spare.

She had three in her apron pocket, kept since the spring moult. She sat on the same barrel and bound them on with waxed thread while the fiddler played badly and the bride laughed at both of them. When she had finished, the arrow was straight and the fletching small and neat, and Tobias said it was the finest thing anyone had ever made for him. Marit said it was only thread and feathers. Neither of them asked for the shot to be taken again.

The arrow now hangs above the door of the house by the mill race, on a nail driven into the beam, and every spring someone changes the feathers so they stay sharp. Visitors are told it flew once, badly, and landed exactly where it was going, which is the only sort of shot the people of Hollin Vale ever claim to have wanted.