Black linework tattoo on a person's upper back showing an arched gateway flanked by trees, a star and crown motif, and a four-line verse beneath, placed on the back.

Arched gateway and verse on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black linework tattoo across the upper back shows an ornate arched gateway with two columns, twisting tree motifs on each side, a small star or sun at the centre and a crown-like emblem above the arch. Four lines of text sit below the design in a plain serif-style hand. The ink is black only, and the design is centred on the back with the subject's head and hair cropped at the top of the frame.

Lettering Back Arch Tree Star Crown Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell Harrow had counted the gate's stones every morning for eleven years, and every morning there were the same thirty-one, one of them cracked at the keystone where frost got in. The arch stood alone at the top of Bramling Lane, where the village gave up and the beeches began, two pillars wound about with carved roots that nobody had ever managed to trim back. Between them hung a round stone with a sun worked into its face, and above the arch sat an iron circlet that the children called the crown.

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The drover's boy came running on a wet Thursday with a tale that the crown had moved. Nell told him crowns did not move, but she climbed the ladder anyway with a rag and a pot of linseed. The circlet had worked loose and sat a finger's width askew, like a hat on a drunk man. She set it straight, and when she looked down she found the boy gone quiet, staring past her into the trees.

A stranger stood under the arch with a satchel and boots worn pale at the toes. He had walked from the coast, he said, following a letter that had reached the inn addressed to a woman who had died before he was born. Nell read it by the lamp. It asked that the gate be opened on the next new moon, and it was signed with a small drawn sun.

They lifted the stone together, and beneath it a hollow held a brass key gone green with age and a folded scrap in a hand Nell knew from her mother's recipe book: keep the lamp lit for those who come late. She lit the lantern and hung it on the left pillar. Down the lane the beeches leaned in, and the stranger stepped through without looking back, which Nell decided was the closest thing to trust the woods had ever offered.