Black ink fine line tattoo of three arrows with feather and leaf fletching and triangle, square and heart arrowheads on a forearm.

Three arrows on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Three arrows run down the forearm, each with a different fletching: a hatched feather, a sprig of leaves and a plain shaft with a bead. The arrowheads are a open triangle, a solid filled square and a solid heart, joined by fine single lines. The tattoo is done in black ink only, with the feather and leaves shaded by short hatched strokes against the pale skin.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Arrow Feather Leaf Heart Triangle Square Arrowhead

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mother Kitto kept the three arrows in the dresser drawer beneath the rent book, and she took them out only on the morning the men went down Wheal Hope. Her husband had cut them the summer before from ash and hazel. The eldest's shaft was fletched with a jay's feather, grey and barred. The middle boy's had a sprig of leaves bound on with thread. The youngest's was plain wood with a single bead of jet for luck.

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The heads were tin, beaten flat at the smithy from scrap off the stamps. Tom, who was nineteen and clever with figures, had the open triangle, because he said a triangle was for going down. Jory had the solid square, because he was the strong one and a square holds fast. Little Ned, who was twelve and sang at the windlass, had a heart.

That afternoon the water came up through the sump faster than the pumps could take it, and the bell stopped ringing at four. The women stood at the headframe in their shawls. Mother Kitto walked to the top of the spoil heap with the three arrows and the spool of line her husband had left, and she shot them one after another over the shaft, each trailing its thread back to her hand. The square fell short. The triangle went wide. The heart sailed clean over the headframe and stuck in the timber, and the thread sang taut.

They say Ned heard the arrow strike and began to sing again, and the men on the far side of the flooded level followed his voice along the new cut until the rock gave. Nobody could agree afterwards which arrow had done it. Mother Kitto never said. The three of them hang now in the chapel vestry, and the square one is worn pale where a hand used to hold it.