Black and grey photo of a small, simple fine line number 5 tattoo on the side of the ribs, near a dark waistband.

Small number 5 on the side of the torso

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small black tattoo of the numeral 5 in a thin, plain typeface sits on pale skin at the side of the torso. The linework is clean and even, with no shading, and the photo is in black and white. Dark fabric runs along the right edge and a hand with dark painted nails holds the waistband at the bottom of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Number Numeral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The toll-keeper at Harrow Gap had counted every living thing over the pass for forty years, and he counted them the way his father had taught him, with a notched hazel stick and a pebble for each. Goats went by the handful. Carters paid in salt. Once a bishop's clerk tried to pay in promises, and the old man made him hand back the pebble he had already tucked in his glove.

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One November a woman came up from the valley alone, a lantern in one hand and a tin box in the other. Inside the box were five iron nails, bent and rusted. She asked him to count them as travellers. He told her nails were not travellers. She said they had walked a long way to be carried, and he had no answer to that, so he took the stick and cut a fifth notch, deep, and set five pebbles on the shelf beside the door.

Snow came that night. He sat by the brazier with the stick across his knees and dozed. Toward morning he woke to the sound of five sets of feet on the path outside, slow and even, stopping at the gate to be counted. He went out with a lamp. The track was white and empty except for five small prints, each one stopping a little nearer the hut than the last.

He did not count them. He picked up the fifth pebble, which had not been there when he went to bed, and kept it in his coat. The woman's lantern was still burning on the step, though no one had carried it there. In spring the carters found the gate standing open, the stick on the shelf with its five notches, and the old man sitting upright at the brazier with a stone in his fist, still waiting to be asked the toll.