Engraved illustration of a sword wrapped in grey ribbons in front of a gold globe and sunburst, drawn in a tattoo-flash style with no body placement shown.

Sword wrapped in ribbons over a golden globe

Mixed · Flash

A sword, with its hilt at the top, is wound through several grey ribbon banners that curl around the blade. Behind it sits a pale gold globe with fine meridian lines and a radiating sunburst, all on a flat grey background. The linework is fine and engraved with cross-hatching for shading, and the palette is limited to grey, cream and muted gold.

Sword Ribbon Banner Globe Sunburst Blade

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Four bells in the dog watch and the galley is still ticking with cooling copper when you hear the boy at the hatch calling for biscuit. You have been told twice to leave the locker under the spice rack alone, so naturally your hand finds its latch while the kettle sings. Inside, wrapped in three grey banners gone soft with salt, lies a sword. The hilt has been rubbed so often the cross-guard shines like a bent sixpence.

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Mr Hollis, the purser, swore on his mother's Bible that the blade went over the side off the Cape. Yet here it is, and tucked beneath the ribbons is a sheet of vellum with a globe inked on it: meridians ruled with a steady hand, a sunburst of rays scratched round the rim, and a single word in the corner, Cadiz. You read it twice. The word is underlined, and the underline has been pressed so hard it has torn the skin of the paper.

You unwind the top banner to see where the blade is wound. The silk comes away in long grey tongues, and beneath it the sword is lighter than it has any right to be. Someone has hollowed the grip and packed it with a roll of paper, and when you ease it out the galley smells of tar and of oranges, which is to say of home. The letter is short. It asks the finder to carry the sword to Cadiz and leave it, unwrapped, on the quay.

You do not ask who the letter was meant for. You fold the vellum, rewind the banners the way the sailmaker taught you, tie them off with a sailor's knot, and put the kettle back on the heat. At the hatch, the boy is still shouting. You tell him biscuit is coming, and it is, and the sword stays where it is until morning, which is the only part of the whole business that is yours to decide.