Close-up of a small fine line cross on the side of a finger, with slightly reddened skin around it.

Small cross on a finger

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A small upright cross is drawn with thin, pale lines on the side of one finger, shown against a blurred indoor background with a wooden cabinet and a framed picture. The lines are simple and even, with no shading, and the surrounding skin looks pink and slightly inflamed, which may suggest a recent tattoo. No colour ink is visible, and the composition is a tight side-on view of the hand.

Fine line Hand Cross

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mother Abernethy always said the sea gives back what it takes, but only on its own schedule, so you mustn't go pulling at it. She said this to my brother Tam the night before his crossing, and he laughed, and then he went out on the Marigold anyway with a cross of white paint on the side of his left finger, a thing his sweetheart Nell had drawn there with a sharpened stick of chalk while the kettle boiled. Nell said it would keep the wind honest. Tam said the wind had never once been honest in his life.

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The Marigold came back in March with one man short. Tam had gone over the side off the Shetland banks in a squall, and the crew swore they'd seen his hand waving a moment before the black water shut. Nell walked down to the harbour every evening after that, and every evening she was told the same thing by the same tired men, that the sea keeps what it wants. She stopped listening to them by April. She went instead to the old cabinet in our kitchen, the one with the iron hinges, and took out the carved wooden box where Tam kept his fishing hooks and his mother's letters.

In the bottom of that box, under the letters, there was a small rolled sheet of paper with a cross drawn on it in chalk, the same shape exactly, and written beneath in Tam's cramped hand: keep the line straight, Nell, and I'll find my own way back. She folded it into her apron pocket and said nothing to anyone. The following spring she sailed out herself, and the wind, the old woman swore, was honest that day.