Black linework tattoo on a forearm showing a striped-shirt figure with a long braid, a monkey face and a wolf head, in fine line style.

Wolf, monkey and braided figure on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows three illustrated heads stacked together: a monkey face with wide eyes on the left, a pale face with closed eyes and a dark mark on the cheek in the centre, and a snarling wolf head on the right. A figure in a horizontally striped top sits at the bottom left, with a long braid hanging down the middle. The design is drawn in solid black outline with fine parallel hatching for the hair, and it is set against a plain, unshaded area of skin.

Fine line Forearm Monkey Wolf Braid Hair Face Figure

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wolf always came out of the trunk first, because Nell's grandfather had painted its ears last and they were the only part still tacky. He kept the three heads on a shelf above the lathe in Saltery Row, and every Saturday the fishermen's wives came in to choose one for the Harvest Ball. Nell was too young for the ball. She was not too young to carry the monkey, which was the lightest and smelled of glue and pear drops.

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The trouble began in September, when the pale-faced one lost its cheek mark. Grandfather swore a moth had eaten it, but Nell had seen a small black smudge on the wolf's tongue that morning, like a dropped ink spot. She said nothing. She plaited her hair tight that night, the way he liked, and sat with her back to the lathe while he sang to himself.

On the night of the ball the wind came off the harbour thick with salt, and the wolf's mouth would not stay shut. Nell carried all three heads down to the hall in a hatbox, the striped jersey tucked up under her chin against the cold. At the door the wives laughed and lifted the monkey, the wolf and the pale one, and not one of them noticed the cheek mark had crept across to the wolf's muzzle, where it sat looking very pleased with itself.

Grandfather found her on the harbour steps at dawn, braid half undone, counting stitches on the jersey. 'Well,' he said, 'they've learned to behave for you.' She did not tell him the mark had been hers all along, pressed on with a thumb of ink when she was six. Some things, she thought, are only safe when someone else is carrying them.