Compass rose on upper back
Traditional · Back · Black and grey · Photo
A shaded compass rose with an eight-point star, a fleur-de-lis at the north point and the letters N, E, S and W marking the cardinal directions. The linework is bold and dark, with grey shading in the outer rings and the star points. The tattoo is centred on the upper back, framed by a patterned black, white and pink top.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Brother Anselm sends you up the tower on the feast of Saint Brendan because the wind has been wrong for a week and the bell rope has frayed. Up there the lantern room smells of tallow and wet stone, and the ink pots have frozen again. You kneel on the boards and open the chart the abbot wants copied before the spring boats leave Hallow Quay. It is a sea chart drawn by a brother long dead, and in its corner sits a compass rose of thirty-two lines, the star points inked so black they have bled into the vellum.
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At the top of the rose, where north should be, someone has drawn a fleur-de-lis. You ask Anselm why, and he laughs, because the lily belongs to Our Lady and Our Lady belongs to every sailor who comes home. Pilgrims and fishermen alike, he says, need one fixed point they can trust. You do not believe him, but you grind the blue-black ink anyway and shade the outer rings grey with a wet brush until the paper puckers under it.
On the last night you finish the letters. N, E, S, W, small and neat as beads on a string. The wind turns at the bell, and below you the rope goes slack in the dark. You write the initials of the brother who made the first chart beside the lily, and you find that your hand is steady. By morning the boats have gone out, and the chart rolls up in the abbot's satchel, pointing somewhere you will never see.
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