Black and grey tattoo of the state of Wisconsin filled with pine tree silhouettes and a star, framed by two scroll banners with script, on the upper body.

Wisconsin state outline with scroll banners

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black silhouette of the state of Wisconsin sits at the centre, with pine tree shapes and a small star cut into the upper part of the outline. Two curled scroll banners above and below carry handwritten script, and the fine linework and smooth black shading are clean and even. The design is entirely black and grey on a light skin tone, centred in the frame.

Back State outline Pine tree Star Banner Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferryman's son came back to the island in October with a sack of cut pine over one shoulder and nothing else he could name as his. Ada Vosk had kept the boat running through two winters for him, breaking the ice with a pole, and she did not ask where he had been. She asked what he had brought.

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He unfolded a map of the mainland on her kitchen table, the southern lakes spilt across it like dropped milk. He pressed his thumb on a small star near the middle. "That's where I was born," he said. "I left it there, and I didn't know I was leaving it until the road was behind me." Ada's grandmother had told her the old saying: a traveller takes one place with him, and the place he walks away from stays behind to be kept by whoever is still standing in it. Nobody on the island had ever tested it. Everyone had only ever grumbled about it.

He had a sliver of pine tucked in his boot, cut from the tree beside the mainland well, and he set it on the map like a hinge. Ada took the pencil from the drawer and drew a second star, beside the first, over the place where the ferry dock stood. Then she pinned the map to the wall above the stove, where the heat would keep the paper from curling.

In the morning the frost had furred the window, and the map was dry, and the two stars sat close together like neighbours who had agreed to share a fence. Ada put the kettle on and did not say anything about it. There was nothing to say that the paper didn't already show.