Heart keyhole and key finger tattoos

Walter was the smith's boy at Hollin Farm, and in the hard winter of the great drifts his father sent him down the lane with a parcel wrapped in sacking. Inside was a small heart of blackened iron, no bigger than a hen's egg, with a keyhole cut through its middle, and a green key with a bow like a clover leaf. Old Ada Carr had ordered the pair to keep her husband's letters from her own sons. She died before the thaw, and the box sat shut on her dresser for thirty years.

Walter carried it up the hill on his back, and by the time he reached the gate his fingers had gone white with cold. He pushed the key into the keyhole and it would not catch. He tried again and the iron bit into his knuckles. A shepherd came by with a lantern and told him a key only turns for the hand it was made to fit, and Walter laughed at him for a fool. Then he looked at the bow of the key lying in his own palm and saw it had been shaped to sit snug against a second finger, not his own.

So he walked back down the lane, and the next morning he found Tom Carr at the lambing pen, still sulking over the boundary wall. Walter held out the box without a word. Tom held out his hand, and the two of them pressed their closed fists together over the lock until the key slid home. The lid lifted with a sound like a breath let out. Beneath the letters lay a second key, rusted red, waiting for someone to ask for it.