Red and cream vector illustration of a skull wearing a patterned headband with a peace symbol, framed by feathers, a tomahawk, a pipe and a dreamcatcher.

Skull with peace signs, dreamcatcher and tomahawk

Colour · Flash

A cream skull with a red peace-symbol headband sits at the centre of a circular, dreamcatcher-style frame. A tomahawk and a pipe cross behind the skull, with smoke rising from both, and feathers and a small dreamcatcher hang from below. The work uses clean, bold outlines with flat fills and red gradient shading on a limited red, cream and grey palette.

Skull Peace symbol Dreamcatcher Feather Pipe Smoke Headband

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody aboard the Mary Ellen Ross had ever seen Auld Tam light his pipe without first tapping the bowl twice against the wheelhouse rail, like knocking for admittance. That was the morning the net came up heavy with cod and the wind dropped so suddenly the sea lay flat as pewter. I was the youngest deckhand, and I asked him why he bothered with the ritual when the tobacco was so damp it barely drew.

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He didn't answer straight away. He never did. He reached up and touched the dreamcatcher hung from the wheel spokes, a willow hoop with sinew webbing and a peace sign scratched into its centre, faded to rust by years of salt. "Keeps the bad weather in the net," he said, "where it can't come aboard." I laughed. He didn't. He pointed the stem of his pipe at the grey smoke curling past the boom and said, "Watch where it goes."

It went straight up, then bent east towards the Hebrides, and the swell that had been lying sullen all morning lifted under us like a sleeper turning over. Tam wasn't a superstitious man. He kept a hatchet by the hatch for cutting bait and a painted skull on the bow from some earlier crew, but he treated the sea like a neighbour who'd lent him money and might want it back.

We hauled the last fleet that afternoon with the wind backing southerly, and we were home before dark. The next morning Tam was on the ferry to the mainland, and he left his pipe on my bunk with one instruction: watch where the smoke goes. I still do, every time I light it.