Small nautical finger tattoos on a pair of fists

The first was a rosette for his mother, who had grown sea-pinks on the cliff until the salt took them. The second was a ship, the very boat they'd lost, though nobody in Kellan would tell him where she lay. The third was a ship's wheel, because his father always said a man should learn to turn before he learned to sail. The fourth was a palm, cut from a coin a Dutch merchant gave him for carrying oranges up the quay. The fifth was a pair of crossed arrows for the two lads who had pushed him off that same quay and laughed.

He walked the cliffs for a month. The sea-pinks were dead. The harbourmaster would not say a word about the boat. So he went to the castle gate with his hand closed and knocked five times, one knuckle for each token, and the steward opened it only because he remembered the boy's father rowing him home from a christening. Tam opened his fist on the table and said nothing at all.

They say he sailed the next spring on the Dutchman's ship and never came back to Kellan, though the wheel he carried turned in every harbour he ever named. The lamp still burns for him in the east window, and on still nights, if you lay your ear to the gate, you will hear five soft knocks, one for each token he left behind.