Traditional tattoo of a red lantern with a banner reading There is a light, with card suit symbols and script above, on the back of a hand.

Lantern and banner on the back of a hand

Traditional · Hand · Mixed · Photo

A close photograph of the back of a clenched hand showing a traditional tattoo of a red lantern with a white star on its glass, flanked by two banners reading THERE and IS A LIGHT. Above sit card suit symbols and a script word, with a hand-rendered band of dark grey smoke or cloud shading behind the design. Bold black outlines contrast with red, orange and yellow fills and grey shading across the knuckles.

Traditional Hand Lantern Banner Heart Spade Diamond Club Script Star Smoke

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The oil ran low on the third night of the gale, and Tom Pascoe knew it before he reached the store room, because the lamp he carried was guttering in its red glass like a man losing his breath. His brother Walter was already at the table in the keeper's room, shuffling a deck gone soft and grey with salt. They had played for the paraffin since midsummer, and Walter had won nearly every hand, so that the store held barely enough to see the stair by.

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"One more round," Walter said, dealing with his thick fingers. "Winner keeps the light. Loser sleeps in the boat." Outside, the wind leaned on the tower, and the window smoked with spray that ran down the glass like tears. Tom looked at his cards: two spades, a diamond, the ace of hearts he had kept back since their father died. He thought of the Penhale boat, four men and a lad, who had gone out after the mackerel before the weather turned, and who would be looking for the one thing on this rock that did not move.

He laid the ace down and said nothing. Walter stared at it a long while, then swore and pushed the deck away. They climbed the iron stair together with the lamp between them, and when Tom lifted the red glass and turned the wick up, the white star painted on its side threw a ragged brightness across the water.

Far out, a small light answered, then another, and the boat came round the point toward them, slow and steady, following the one that had been kept for it.