Black and white photo of two bare heels, with a fine line compass rose on the left and a bold black anchor on the right, both placed near the ankle.

Compass and anchor tattoos on the heels

Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

Two bare feet are photographed heel-first against a grey floor. The left heel carries an eight-point compass rose with the letters N, E, S and W, drawn in fine lines with light shading. The right heel carries a simple black anchor with a bold outline and a rope loop at the top.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The needle had gone lazy again by the time I got the lamp lit, so I tapped the brass case twice with my thumbnail, the way Silas had shown me, and watched it swing round and settle on the wrong letter. Rain came sideways off the estuary and rattled the shutters of the chandlery. Eight months Tom had been gone on the Mary Ellen, and the only thing of his I still trusted was the ink he had carried away on his heel.

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Silas had done the pair of us the winter before she sailed, in the back room over the rope store, with a machine that hummed like a kettle. Tom took the compass, because he always wanted to know where he was. I took the anchor, because somebody had to stay put and mind the boats. Silas wiped away the red beads with a rag that smelled of tar and said a compass is no use if nobody is holding the other end of the line.

The letter came at last in a tin box with a Madeira stamp, three lines in pencil. The Mary Ellen had lost her mainmast off the Azores and put in at Ponta Delgada to patch herself. Tom wrote that he kept the old compass in his shirt pocket, though the glass had cracked, and that on night watches he could not find his bearings without picturing me on the harbour wall with my back to the lighthouse.

I took the brass compass down from its hook and set it on the sill beside the coil of rope I had been splicing all winter. The needle wobbled, then steadied, pointing straight at the window and the black water beyond it. Tom would have to find his own way home, and I suspected he already knew where I was waiting.

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