The Folk Keeper Page 12

  Sing briney, briney brink,

  Sing briney, briney bonnie doon.

  Liquorice was screaming, a horrible dog scream, but I wouldn’t stop. He’d already sprung at my Sealskin; let him feel the lash of my words.

  She found her way to Cellar small,

  Sing briney, briney brink.

  And stabbed her name in floor and wall,

  Sing briney, briney brink.

  And now in snow and rain and cold,

  She lies alone beneath the mold.

  Sing briney, briney brink,

  Sing briney, briney bonnie doon.

  Sir Edward swung the lantern as though he would pitch it at me. “Liquorice!” I cried. “At him!” Poor Liquorice, under my spell, he could not disobey. “At him, lad!”

  The lantern hurtled through the air. I sprang aside, but it was not intended for me. The fiery arc ended where Liquorice had been standing, spattering oil and light on my Sealskin.

  I could not leap at once to its rescue. I gathered up my hair and held it in one hand. If my hair caught, I would flare like tinder and flicker out.

  Fire sizzled over my Sealskin. I wore stout boots, stomped on the flames, but they’d spread already, they were everywhere. I fell to my knees, fire licked at my skirts, I beat at it with one hand. No good, that was no good. I leapt to my feet.

  I let go my hair to free both hands and flipped the Sealskin over. Fire flared bright in the gust of its movement, fire on my Sealskin, and on me, too. My skirts were still ablaze. I flung myself upon it, pressing the flames to the damp Cellar floor, suffocating also the flames lapping my skirts.

  We were again in darkness.

  When had Sir Edward begun screaming? “Fall off, lad!” I cried. Then silence, save for Liquorice panting, and little sobbing breaths from Sir Edward.

  “Liquorice has broken my arm,” he said presently.

  “And to think,” I said, “you didn’t believe I had the power of The Last Word.”

  “What do you mean to do with me?”

  “The Folk missed their sacrifice on the Feast of the Keeper,” I said.

  More silence. The door to the vegetable gardens slammed open, footsteps ran overhead.

  “It’s Finian,” I said, sure that Sir Edward’s ears were not as keen as mine. “Twice you tried and couldn’t kill him.”

  “Midsummer Eve was mostly an accident,” said Sir Edward, as though that excused everything. “I never tried after you disappeared. Old Francis, then you.”

  “Lady Alicia might have asked some hard questions,” I said.

  The footsteps were joined by a lantern, bobbing into the inner Cellar. I saw Finian in a new way with my hair loose, felt the motion of his neat and heavy bones, the particular way he displaced the air around him. The pattern of Finian, now woven inextricably into my hair.

  He knelt beside me, reached out, for my hand perhaps, but drew back at the hurt to my palm. I didn’t feel the pain yet. Strange, not to feel the pain. Finian did not speak. I could not see his eyes for the cracks in his spectacles and the lantern light shining off the glass.

  More lanterns now, and anxious voices approaching, each overlapping the other in ragged counterpoint.

  It was the Valet who hauled Sir Edward to his feet by the cravat he’d doubtless starched and pressed this morning. Lady Alicia held her lantern high, and I saw Sir Edward’s face again in a halo of light. But instead of his angel smile, Sir Edward had begun to come apart like a tapestry man with a pulled thread, unraveling stitch by stitch, disintegration shivering through his face.

  “He says his arm pains him,” said Lady Alicia, disgusted.

  “Oh, Mother,” said Finian. “Corinna’s the one who’s hurt.” I heard from his voice that he was weeping.

  “My Sealskin,” I said. “My Sealskin’s hurt most of all.”

  Finian looked down, realizing now what it was I lay upon.

  “I must see the damage to it,” I said. Without a word, Finian lifted me from the Sealskin; the Valet held it before me.

  I cannot erase the sight from my mind. In no place was it burned quite through, but it was a limp, pitiful thing, badly scorched in at least a dozen places.

  “It’s not destroyed,” I said. “It may yet take me to sea.”

  But I can’t try it for a long while; my burns are very bad. My left hand, and both legs. I wait now in the Music Room for the apothecary. It is futile to keep writing. There’s no more to puzzle out; everything is clear in this new and bitter twist.

  September 3

  They thought I would die.

  I know this, for black satin drapes the mirror to prevent soulsucker passing through.

  Don’t waste your time, Soulsucker. Don’t hang about, hungry for my soul. It is my own. I claim it, tattered and sorrowful as it is. Go away!

  Two weeks and more have slipped away while I stayed inside my head, healing not just from my burns but also, I think, from the six-week darkness of the Caverns. Perhaps even from the four-year darkness of the Cellar. I remember a tin whistle playing quick, sad tunes, and Finian coaxing me to come out; and when I did creep out this morning, I thought it was still his voice I heard, coaxing, except why would he call me My Lady? And hadn’t he also said he was going away?

  I opened my eyes. It was Mrs. Bains who stroked my hand, entreated me to come out. I burst into tears.

  “There, don’t cry, My Lady. You’ve been ill a long time.”

  “Finian said he was leaving!” I sobbed. “I remember how he whispered it in my ear, told me I should wait.”

  “You heard that in your illness?” Mrs. Bains’s little currant eyes blinked in surprise. “Don’t you fret, My Lady. He and Lady Alicia will return soon.”

  It can’t be very soon, however, as they have gone to Rhysbridge, to testify before the Great Courts that an heir with greater claim than theirs to Marblehaugh Park is still living. “They’ll make it all proper and legal,” said Mrs. Bains. “As for that horrid Sir Edward, he’s fast in a Rhysbridge prison.”

  She couldn’t understand why I would break out crying again. “Don’t you worry about him, My Lady. He won’t ever be back.”

  The world seemed unbearably sad. I suppose your heart can never really break, but I felt as though mine must have. I banged at my heart, which alarmed Mrs. Bains, less on account of my heart than my hand, which was wrapped in gauze and began to hurt. This new pain was comforting, taking the edge off the other.

  Finian had to leave for me to realize I loved him. I loved him and he had gone away and soon I would try to leave, too, to join the Sealfolk. Even for Finian, I could not confine myself to land. My heart was with him, my heart was with the sea, and I knew which I would choose.

  “I wish I were dead!” I said, which was foolish, as I had no intention of dying. But people say foolish things all the time. Why shouldn’t I?

  “You’re not to die!” said Mrs. Bains sharply, and snatched the black satin from the mirror. “We won’t be needing this now.”

  My reflection surprised me. There were no more secrets. I was all Corinna, in a nightdress of ivory silk and a padded satin bed jacket, hair falling like water all about. With such a monstrous sleep, my hair should have grown to fill the room, but it has wearied of growing and stopped at a mere four feet.

  “Very well,” I said meekly. “I won’t die.”

  Mrs. Bains sat beside me and ran her fingers through my hair. “Just like your mother’s,” she said. “I used to brush it for her, poor dear.”

  “I agree not to die,” I said. “But I’ll never agree to wear my hair up, like a lady.”

  But I had misread her thought. “Never!” she said. “I know what it was to your mother, loose like that. Oh, don’t think I don’t know what your hair is to you, being of the Sealfolk. How without it you lose your balance. How after your twelfth birthday it becomes another set of eyes.”

  “After your twelfth birthday?” I said.

  “Isn’t that the way of it, that you grow into the power
of your hair?”

  But I wouldn’t know. I cut my hair before I turned twelve. No wonder its powers came as a surprise.

  “And it gives you the power of The Last Word,” I said.

  “Your mother said nothing about that.”

  But she must have had that power, staying as she did in the Cellar. Otherwise, how could she have escaped harm? The Last Word: It is yet another gift from my mother.

  September 5

  I awoke this morning with a broken heart, which broke again after Mrs. Bains showed me my Sealskin.

  I’d had a sudden piercing hope: If I could heal, perhaps my Sealskin could, too. After all, it had grown as I had grown.

  But after I bullied Mrs. Bains to hold the Sealskin up before me, I had to turn my face away.

  “We want you here with us, My Lady,” said Mrs. Bains, as though that might console me. “This is where you belong.” Then, seized with inspiration, “The autumn Storms will be upon us soon. What will we do then, with no Folk Keeper?”

  But she had to admit that for now the Folk are quiet. Still smarting, perhaps, from the lash of The Last Word.

  “Where is Taffy?” I said suddenly.

  Mrs. Bains had to think. She didn’t know.

  No one knew. No one has seen him for a long time.

  It will be better for the pain if I walk the corridors.

  September 6

  Taffy was in the first place I looked.

  I insisted on going alone, although they all said the Valet should help me on the Cellar stairs. I have a surprising companion, however: Liquorice. Poor hounds, I pity them, adrift in a world without Sir Edward.

  No Folk Keeper ever looked as I did, green velvet skirts dusting the stone, lace very white by candlelight. Mrs. Bains has tried to make me into a proper lady, and for now I have submitted, given in to petticoats and shifts, to velvets and brocades. I was Corin for long enough. I shall see who else I might be.

  I paused at the entrance to the inner Cellar. Damp seeped through my embroidered slippers. The smell came to me first, all but forgotten from the Caverns. Damp bone, with a whiff of decay. I closed my eyes.

  I closed my eyes, but I couldn’t escape the picture that tangled with my hair. I couldn’t escape the image of the skeleton — if you could call it so. The bones were mostly splinters now, crushed by wild, wet mouths. Taffy had been old and brittle. Old Francis, at least, had kept his form, his mournful, bony smile. But there was not enough left of Taffy for that. Perhaps just a slice in the air where his smile had once been.

  Folk, consider yourselves warned: I’ll stand for no damage during these Storms. You’ve already had your sacrifice, and if you grow wild, you will hear from me!

  I buried him in the churchyard. The headstone marking baby Corinna’s grave had been removed; it was easy to dig the loose mold. I eased Taffy into the earth, and although it was impossible to rearrange him, I still take comfort in my last picture of his bones, in the way he burst the darkness in a brilliant constellation of himself.

  Something better than stone marks his grave. He lies under dozens of amber beads, all glowing in the cool autumn sun.

  September 19

  I was looking the wrong way when they arrived at last.

  I sat on the cliffs with Liquorice tonight, clutching at the heather, for the wind was growing stronger, blowing in all directions, and always in my face. Liquorice and I realized in the same moment they were coming up behind us. But I grew stony still, while he leapt to his feet and stood wagging the tip of his tail.

  “She pretends she doesn’t notice us!” said Finian.

  I had to turn around then, and wag my own tail, and maybe even smile, which I did not feel like at all.

  “Don’t get up,” said Lady Alicia, sinking down beside me. “You have the best seat in all of Marblehaugh Park.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek.

  “It’s all very well for two ladies to embrace,” said Finian. “But what’s a poor gentlemen to do?”

  “You could shake her hand,” said Lady Alicia.

  “I’d rather take it.” This he did, very gently, studying my palm, the blistered redness now puckering to scars. “And you’ve transformed again! Don’t make me work so hard to recognize you.”

  “I hardly recognize myself.” I thought of the stranger in my mirror tonight, brocade skirts shot with pewter threads, stiff silver pleats at the bodice, which suddenly seemed cut too low. “You have new spectacles.”

  “Yes, someone broke mine.”

  “You look like the mistress of Marblehaugh Park.” Lady Alicia was both more beautiful than I remembered, and more worn. I could almost believe now she was the mother of a grown son.

  “You shall be mistress here, not me,” I said.

  “Help me, Mother,” said Finian. “Tell her she can’t go.”

  “I will do no such thing,” said Lady Alicia.

  “Then tell her we have a proposal. We do have a proposal for her, don’t we, Mother?”

  “That’s one way of putting it.” Lady Alicia set a black velvet box on my lap. “But Finian must do the proposing.”

  “Open it!” said Finian. “Maybe it will propose by itself.”

  It opened with a little snap. Inside lay a band of opals and emeralds, the colors of the sea. I tipped it into the smooth palm of my right hand.

  Waves slapped at the cliffs below, somewhere a curlew cried.

  “This is where I leave.” Lady Alicia rose. “Finian, you shall have to fend for yourself.”

  “Deserted by my own mother?” Finian laid his hand over mine, trapping the ring between our two palms. “This will come out all wrong, as I can never manage to be quite serious, but here it is: I want to marry you!”

  He shook his head and laughed. “No, this is where I should start: I love you. I love you with your stubbornness and conviction and eye for small beauties; and now that you have the power of The Last Word . . . Well, I’m glad I’m not one of the hounds!”

  How could I answer that! Finian sighed. “Not very romantic, I suppose.”

  “I like your sort of romance,” I said slowly. “I couldn’t do with the on-your-knees-in-the-moonlight kind. But it’s difficult to speak of love. I haven’t the habit; I’ve gone my whole life without.”

  “Three words,” he said. “Try it. The pain will only last a moment.”

  That Finian! He could always make me smile. This time, I even let it show on my face.

  “I love you.”

  Finian took a deep breath. “So you will stay?”

  How could I explain? “Remember how it was when you were forbidden to be building ships or thinking of a life with the sea? I have a life with the sea, too, but you’d have me confined to land by a promise of love, or marriage?”

  “Why does it have to be one over the other?” said Finian. “Live in the sea if you like, only come back again. I’d wait for you, every evening.”

  I shook my head. “A Sealmaiden lives in the sea; that is her proper life.”

  “You don’t know that, Corinna. Once you were convinced that being a Folk Keeper was your proper life. You’re so one-sided, not even considering the idea.”

  “You said you like me stubborn.”

  “So I did.” Then, very irritated, “You won’t miss me?”

  “I will. But if I stayed, I’d miss myself more.”

  Finian’s hand still lay across mine. I drew mine away. Our hands were pressed so tight together, the ring left twin half-moon smiles on my palm.

  He closed his fingers around it. “When do you leave?”

  “After the Storms. I’ll see the Folk make no mischief.”

  “At least a week, then,” said Finian.

  “The Storms are coming early, tomorrow perhaps.”

  Finian shook his head, but I know what I know, for my eyes are fierce and bright and my hair can see the shadow of the wind.

  I’ve sprung another leak. My paper is wet and the lead is smudging. But a few more drops of salt won’t make
a bit of difference to the sea. The cry of a tin whistle drifts through the night. Play all the sad songs you like, Finian. I’ll never change my mind.

  September 24

  These may be the last words I ever write. I am on the cliffs, halfway to the sea. Liquorice senses something is not as usual. He lies sphinx-like, four legs tucked beneath, ready to spring. I’m sorry, Liquorice. You can’t come where I’m going.

  I will leave my Journal beneath a heavy stone by the cliff path. It’s been months since it was a proper Folk Record. There will be a new Folk Keeper at the Manor, and he shall have to keep his own Record and learn his own ways of tending the Folk.

  I have said my good-byes, almost wordless, all of them. Lady Alicia’s face was crumpled, as though she’d not rested well. The late light shone off Finian’s spectacles, turning him into a cipher.

  I embraced Lady Alicia. We are new at this, and it is awkward. But how much more awkward to shake hands with Finian, my hand in his, his swallowing mine. I leave behind this ridiculous custom of hands pumping up and down. All meaningless. Up and down, up and down.

  I’ve written almost to the end of this Folk Record, begun so long ago, at Candlemas. I have reached the end of my human words and have nothing more to say.

  16

  A New First Page

  September 25

  The Sealfolk are calling me; I will join them soon. This is the first page of my new book, my new life. I love the heady feeling of putting words on paper, ink now, my own wet, black letters. A world of ink, and air to dry it, too. I shall never finish my story.

  I can only try to keep up with myself, starting with last evening, when I stood on the beach, my Sealskin bundled in my arms. The wind was strong, trailing behind it a pale ribbon of geese. The sea skittered into whitecaps, my hair whipped round me as I dropped my cloak to the ground.

  I peeled off Lady Corinna Merton in layers. Now overskirt and petticoat. Now under-petticoat and bodice. It never ends, this business of being a lady. I raised my shift over my head, feeling the salt air touch me, feeling newly alive, as though I’d been swaddled in cotton wool all my life and was just now beginning to breathe.