Roses and heart padlock on upper arm

Her name was Nell Cobb, and she worked the chain-swing stall on the green at Little Wenham every August. Her sweetheart, Joss Penry, could beat a horseshoe flat in six strokes. Before the fair rolled east that year, he forged her a heart out of old spoon silver, pierced it, and set it with chips of blue glass the glazier had swept off his workshop floor. A padlock, he called it, because Nell had told him she would never trust anyone whose promises she couldn't lock away.

He threaded a chain through the shackle and hung a key on the end, small as a wren's foot, and told her to keep it close. Then he rode off with the peacock-feather man, who had won a cart of ribbons at cards, and the roses on her stall went that red summer as if they'd been fed on something. Nell kept the key. She never once turned it in the keyhole, not through the whole winter, because a lock is only a promise until somebody opens it.

Come spring, the fair came back down the lane with no Joss in it, only his cart with a feather stuck in the axle. Nell walked out to meet it, took the chain from her neck, and dropped the key into the tin cup of pennies the driver rattled at her. So there it is. Still shut, and likely to stay that way. Now, who wants a go on the chain swing?