Black dotwork mandala and flowing spiral linework tattooed down a bare lower back, with dotted lines continuing onto both forearms and upper arms.

Dotwork mandala and spiral down the lower back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A central dotwork mandala sits at the lower back, with a flowing spiral line rising up the spine to a column of small circles and a dotted line. The shading is built from fine stippled dots and solid black strokes, with crisp fine lines and a small outlined triangle near the waistband. The image is in black and grey, and the hands are clasped in front of the lower back, with dotted lines extending onto both arms.

Dotwork Geometric Back Forearm Upper arm Mandala Spiral Dotted line Triangle Circle Dot Geometric pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Maud Tanner had been drawing the same spiral for forty years, a line that began at the river and wound up the hill to the chapel. On the morning of her son's wedding she unrolled it across the trestle table in the barn and weighted the corners with the bride's boots.

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The bride, Ada, had come over the moor from Carrow, where the old people said a road drawn in dots could not be walked wrong, because each dot was a place where a traveller had stopped to think. Ada had walked nine dots to reach the village, one for each night she slept in a ditch, and she told Maud so while the kettle boiled. Maud listened without looking up from her pen, which was how she listened to everything.

At the centre of the map she had inked a rosette of six petals, the place where every road met. Maud said that whoever stood in the middle of it would never be lost again, but they would have to stay. The guests laughed and reached for the cider. Ada pressed her thumb into the rosette, and the ink came off on her skin, still damp.

When the fiddler stopped, Maud rolled the map up tight and put it in Ada's hands. "Keep it," she said. "The ink hasn't set yet, so you'll both have to walk carefully."