Small black Vagabond lettering tattoo on the back of a woman's neck, shown from behind in a pale blush blouse.

Vagabond lettering on the back of the neck

Lettering · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind with dark hair pulled up and both hands raised to her head. A small black tattoo reading VAGABOND in simple block capitals sits on the back of her neck, just above the tied neckline of a pale blush satin blouse. The ink is solid black on light skin, and the plain white backdrop keeps the focus on the tattoo.

Lettering Neck Word Hair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the cat, and don't touch that brass, it's older than your grandmother's teeth. Right. Where was I? Ah, yes. The winter the Sallow Rock took the mail boat, a boy came up the cliff path with a canvas bag over one shoulder and a word inked at the back of his neck in letters as plain as a fence post. VAGABOND, it said. He'd had it done at Scarrow fair by a needleman with one good eye, and he was proud of it, the way a lad is proud of a thing he can't read properly yet.

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Mrs Ferrier took him in because the gulls were thick that week and she had no man to climb the gallery. He ate her bread, he oiled the fog bell until it sang, and he never once asked when the next boat was due. Each spring the light would go quiet in him, the way a wick does before it catches, and he'd shoulder his bag and walk off down the path toward the fields. Each autumn he came back up it, wet to the knees, grinning like he'd been gone a week.

The year the storm came in off the Sallow, Mrs Ferrier went down the rocks after a lantern that had fallen, and the sea kept her. The boy kept the lamp lit through February by himself, turning the great glass every hour with his shoulder against the iron, and he didn't sleep much. When the weather broke he came down the stairs with ink on his fingers from writing the log in her hand, which was neater than his own.

He left in April. I found his bag on the step, empty, and a sheet of the log tucked under the door. It said only, in those block capitals: THE LIGHT IS STILL ON. I went up and checked, and it was.