Clockwork heart on upper back

It was Eilidh Strand who made it, the year the Mary Cotter went down off the Needle with nine men aboard. Eilidh was the only watchmaker on the island, and she had salvaged a chronometer from the wreck, its face cracked and its works full of salt. She spent a whole winter taking it apart on her kitchen table, then rebuilding it into a heart-shaped case, every wheel and cog turning against the next like a promise kept in brass. She set it to count the boats home, one tooth for every hull that came back past the breakwater.

The storm that came in March was the worst anyone had seen. The boats were out, the bell in the harbour rang on and on with no answer, and the sea rose up the lighthouse steps. Eilidh carried the heart down to the wall in her shawl, wound it with her own cold fingers, and set it on a stone where the spray could reach it. The gears began to turn faster than any clock should, and the swell, as the old women tell it, started to lean back towards the open water like a dog called to heel.

They came in at dawn, all of them, the Mary Cotter's three survivors among the rest. The heart is still in the chapel, ticking slower than your own pulse. If you look close at the last cog on the left, you'll see it's worn bright where the fishermen's thumbs have rubbed it, one touch for every man who stood on that wall and waited.