Black and grey compass rose tattoo with a central flower and scrollwork border, with a small fleur-de-lis above it, on the calf.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose with fleur-de-lis on a leg

Traditional · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A compass rose sits within a circular border of scrolling ornament, with a small flower at its centre. A fleur-de-lis appears at the upper left, outside the circle. The linework is bold and the points of the star are shaded with grey tones, while the scrollwork is finer and lighter.

Traditional Geometric Calf Compass Compass rose Fleur-de-lis Flower Star Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Harrow Travelling Wonder had shrunk to one tent, one lion with bad teeth, and a wagon that Ada Pell kept under a tarpaulin because she could not bear to look at its peeling gold. Her navigator was a boy called Tom Lusk, who could read a map upside down and right way up with equal sorrow. The company had lost its road somewhere past Pickering, because the signpost at the crossroads had been carried off by someone years before, and nobody could say which way the next town lay.

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Ada took a brass compass out of her coat and pressed it into his palm. The glass was cracked and the needle wandered, and on the back someone had scratched a star with more points than a child could count, and a flower in its middle. A lily was stamped on the lid, the sort of mark the old French mapmakers used to show a true road. 'North is north,' she said, 'whatever the lion tells you.' Tom laughed, then saw she meant it. He walked the stubble field until the needle settled, then set off the way it pointed, past the sleeping horses and the lion's cart, into the dusk.

He walked until his boots gave out and the hedges turned to stone walls. He reached a village with a shut chapel and a woman in a yellow shawl who was sweeping her step. He asked her the way to the next town. She looked at the compass, then at him, and said that every road from here ran back to the crossroads, if you kept going long enough.

Tom turned around. The needle swung with him and pointed steadily back the way he had come, towards a single tent, a lion with bad teeth, and Ada standing under a leak with a tin bucket, waiting for him to bring the lamp.