Close-up of a small black fine-line tattoo of angular symbols on the upper arm, with a tiny cross mark to the left.

Angular symbols on an upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A close-up photograph of a small black tattoo of angular symbols, set vertically on the upper arm near the shoulder. A tiny cross-shaped mark sits a short distance to the left. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the skin is shown in warm, low lighting against a blue top.

Fine line Upper arm Symbol Cross

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fog came in off Skerry Sound on the third night of the gale, and by the time Nell Fenwick had trimmed the lamp, the mainland was gone. She sat at the kitchen table with the cipher card propped against the teapot and her pencil chewed flat. The angled marks on the card were the ones she had made up at nine years old, copied from the shapes a broken gate makes when the wind works it loose, and nobody else on the island could read them.

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The Teal was due in at six. Her brother Owen was aboard her, somewhere past the Hollow Rock, and the wireless had been silent since noon. Nell wrote the message in the old angles, then pressed a small cross beneath the last symbol. Her father had taught her that a cross on a chart meant stop and look again. He had never seen her use it, and she had never told him she still believed it.

At half past five the lamp caught a shape low on the water. Nell climbed the iron stair two steps at a time, flashed the message through the glass and waited. The answer came back in a single angle and then a cross. Owen had read her. They had both been ten once, lying in the same boat, pretending the gate code was real.

She pressed the pencil flat and drew the cross again on the card, smaller this time, so the next keeper would know exactly where she had been standing.