Black and grey watercolour drawing of three arrows bound with cord at the centre, shown as a tattoo-style design on cream paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three arrows bound together

Black and grey · Flash

Three arrows cross at a central point where they are bound with a looped cord, with their heads pointing up, left and right and their fletched tails pointing down. The arrows are rendered in soft black and grey watercolour washes with darker shading along the shafts and feathers. The design is centred on a plain cream background with no body or skin visible.

Arrow Cord Feather

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the Bramley by the south wall has dropped half its crop into the long grass, and Dad still won't let anyone near the ladder, so I am writing this on the bench under it with a wasp for company. You asked in your last letter whether the cord was still on Grandad's bundle. It is. I found the bundle in the biscuit tin under the stairs yesterday: three ash shafts gone the colour of driftwood, heads up, fletching down, all bound at the middle with the same waxed thread. The knot has held better than the arrows ever did.

Keep reading

He cut the shafts from the ash by the orchard gate the summer before he went into hospital. He said one arrow snaps and two hold, but three will stand up to anything, and then he tied them with a looped cord and gave them to us in the kitchen without saying which of us should have them. None of us would take them out of the tin, so they stayed there, and every time the lid came off someone said we ought to sort it out before the house went.

Dad wants to sell the orchard in the spring. He says it the way he says the boiler needs replacing, flatly, as if the trees had already agreed. Last night I suggested we pull the cord and each take one arrow home. He looked at me for a long time over his tea and then went out to the gate and stood there with his hands in his pockets.

I haven't untied them. I left the bundle on the bench where the sun can reach it, and this morning a single russet came down from the top branch and landed squarely between the three fletched tails, as neat as if someone had aimed it. Come home before the frost. Bring your penknife, and don't argue about the cord.