Black line tattoo of a fictional island map across a person's upper back, with labelled locations, a compass rose and scrolled corner ornaments.

Island treasure map across the upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large black outline map of an island covers most of the upper back, with hand-lettered place names such as Hangman's Tree, Skull Rock, Mermaid Lagoon and Cannibal Cove. A compass rose sits on the right, and ornate scrollwork decorates the four corners and the top and bottom edges. The linework is uniform and bold, with no shading or colour, and the design fills the frame from shoulder to shoulder.

Back Map Island Compass rose Scrollwork Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the map is finally finished, and I expect you'll say I've wasted a summer on it. Mrs Pargeter's boys have been hanging round the tea room since the first week of August, pestering for a proper treasure hunt, so I sat down with the ink pen Dad left in the drawer and drew them an island out of nothing but the coastline we can see from the back step.

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Hangman's Tree went on the high ridge because that's where the gulls sit, and Skull Rock went where the tide comes in white and loud. I gave the lagoon to the mermaids because Ellie Pargeter swore blind she'd seen one off the groyne, and I could hardly tell her she was wrong when she was holding my pencil. Cannibal Cove took me longest. Her brother wanted it called Pirate Bay, and I refused, so he sulked, and I put the name in fancy capitals to make him feel better about it.

Last Thursday the boys found the chest. I'd buried a tin of wine gums under the marram grass, but the youngest, little Sam, dug up something else entirely: your old brass compass, the one you lost off the pier in 1987. He'd followed the rose on the corner of the map straight to it, and he held it up like it had rescued him. I didn't have the heart to tell him I'd never seen it before.

It's on the windowsill now, pointing north like it always did. Come and claim it before Sam decides it belongs to the mermaids.