Black mandala-style tattoos cover the back of a hand, the forearm and the outer thigh of a person in a brown skirt.

Mandala tattoos on hand, forearm and thigh

Geometric · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows intricate black mandala and lace-like patterns across the back of a hand, fingers, forearm and upper thigh, with small arrow motifs on the fingers. The linework is fine and detailed, with the thigh piece featuring scalloped panels and hanging drop shapes. The work is in black ink only, shown against a brown skirt and a pale wall.

Geometric Hand Forearm Thigh Mandala Lace pattern Arrow Hand Forearm Drop Floral pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell Varga took her needle to the lamp each night after the bells of St Anselm's had struck eleven, because the lamplighters left the lane dark after that and a seamstress needs light for scallops. She was stitching the lace panel for the harbourmaster's wife, a band of small rounds that opened like flowers, each with a drop hanging from its lowest point like rain that had not yet decided to fall.

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The arrows came from her grandmother. Every pattern Nell knew had one hidden in it somewhere, a little barbed mark pointing the way a thing had gone. Her grandmother had said the pattern remembered what the hands forgot. So when the fishing boat Sorrel failed to come in with the tide, Nell did not go down to the quay to weep. She went home, took the unfinished lace off the frame, and laid the drops out on the table in a ring, counting them the way one counts breaths.

There were seven drops. There should have been eight. The eighth she had sewn for her brother Tomas, and she had never finished it, because he had told her the sea did not care for decoration. The arrows on the final scallop all pointed north-east, towards the breakwater where the swell broke over the old wreck. She put on her coat and took the lantern.

At the breakwater she found the Sorrel's oar lashed to a post, and beside it, caught on the iron, a single black thread. She tied one end to her finger and walked the wall until the lace caught the lantern light and showed her the way. Tomas was sitting on the wet stones with his back to the wind, cold and cross and laughing at her. She sat down beside him and finished the eighth drop there in the dark, biting the thread off with her teeth.