Colour tattoo of a stylised figure in an ornate headdress beside a small skull, in traditional style, on the outer upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate figure with skull on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A stylised figure wearing a tall, ornate headdress, with a small skull set among scrolling motifs beside the face. Bold black outlines and grey shading define the headdress and scrolls, while red, green and yellow ink fill the striped border and patterned garment at the base. The design fills the upper arm, with part of another dark tattoo visible at the top right edge of the frame.

Traditional Upper arm Figure Headdress Skull Scroll Pattern Stripe

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mother Ysolde always said the stone woman at the top of the Pelham pass had been carved to watch the road, not to be looked at, and that a traveller who stared too long at her headdress would find themselves counting the scrolls for a week. So when my brother Teodor came down the switchbacks with his mule and a bag of silver that was not his, I told him to leave the hat-stone well alone. He laughed and said the thief's luck was in the ribbons and the little bone-white skull tucked by her cheek, and that a skull was only a reminder to be quick.

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He went up in the grey before dawn, when the frost still held the stripes of red and green and yellow in the carved cloth at her hem. I waited at the inn with the fire banked and the ostler's boy polishing the same tin cup for an hour. When Teodor came back he was not running. He walked slowly, his coat open, and he set the silver on the table as if it might bite him.

He said the figure had turned her head to follow him, the curls of her headdress unwinding like the spirals of a fern, and that every scroll he passed had a small grey skull hidden inside it, grinning at him from the grain of the stone. Then he took a breath and told me the real trouble. The silver was not stolen from the carriage at all. It had been left in the stone woman's lap, and he had taken it back down with him, which was the one thing a guardian of the road would never forgive.

We rode up together at noon with the silver returned and a loaf of bread as an apology. Teodor set the bread at her feet and stepped back quickly. Mother was right about the counting. I still count the scrolls when I cannot sleep.