The Folk Keeper (15 page)

There was no room for a large person to be surprised; to start, or step back. Finian only whispered, as I had that night in the graveyard, “But the baby died at birth!”

“Lord Merton didn’t want one of the Sealfolk as his heir and gave out that I’d died.”

“I hear what you say,” said Finian. “I even believe it. But I can’t digest it.” He pressed his fist to his middle as though he might have a bellyache. “How do you know this?”

“Sir Edward told me. He didn’t want me as heir, either, so he dropped me through the Graveyard Shaft.”

“The Graveyard Shaft! Yes, let’s return to Edward. Tell me enough to hang him.”

“He means to marry your mother.”

“Ha!” said Finian. “He might have, six weeks ago. But now she disagrees with him on almost everything. It started when you vanished, which thoroughly upset our ways of thinking. I am to have a whole shipyard if I like!”

I have read and reread my account of that night in the churchyard. It was easy to remember and recount what Sir Edward had said during those long minutes I lay pressed into my own grave.

“Hanging’s too easy,” said Finian. “An axe might do better.”

“Only if it’s blunt,” I said, thinking of my breathless fall through the Shaft.

“You’re right,” said Finian. “The old-fashioned ways have their charms. What do you say to drawing and quartering?”

I was a long time describing my days in the Twilight Cavern, my discovery of Old Francis, my starless night with the Folk.

“Do you mean to say you don’t have the power of The Last Word?”

“I do now,” I said, thinking back to early August. Hadn’t Finian said that’s when the Folk grew quiet?

“I don’t know whether to be worried or relieved.”

“Be both at once.”

“Just tell me there’s a happy ending,” said Finian. “This Otherfolk story of yours is terrifying.”

“It still hasn’t ended, not until I return to the sea.”

I still remember his look of — of what? Puzzlement? Astonishment? Anger? What right had he to be angry?

Just a thin slice of canvas away, a merchant was charging a young man too much for two blue ribbons. “They
will
go with brown hair?” the young man said. “You’re
sure
they go with brown hair?”

“I see,” said Finian. “You came to warn me. I’d rather hoped — oh, there’s an end on it.” He seemed to change the subject. “I began leaving the Cellar door ajar for Taffy. He must have known where you were all along, poor fellow. Couldn’t you leave your own door ajar, Corinna? Go to the sea, just come back, too.”

But I couldn’t risk ending up like my mother, my Sealskin stolen or destroyed. “What would I come back for?”

“For the Folk. For me. You could marry me.”

He said this rather indifferently, but he peeled off his spectacles, and when he leaned forward, only our lips touched. Warm, hard fingers around my wrist; warm, soft lips against mine.

The press of air peeled away, and there came a moment of suspension, of liquid floating. I sank into those lips. I was still solid Corinna — I could feel it in the curious little shock that shivered through my middle — but like ice in water, I floated in my own liquid self.

And then my arm was flying wildly, connecting with his hand, with warm flesh and cold spectacles. The spectacles flew against the wall with a sharp crack, and I flew the other way, into the mud and clamor of the Harvest Fair. Finian could have caught me easily, but there came only his voice floating after.

“Listen to this. Corinna, listen! Midsummer Eve, the strands in my peat were silver!”

How I ran then! But I couldn’t run as far as I wanted. A fisherman stationed at the foot of the cliff path advised me to take a wagon inland, as the rains had washed out a section of cliff. And so I did, with a crowd of Harvest revelers, two crying babies, and five chickens.

I wait now at this tavern for a farmer who’s offered to take me the rest of the way in his cart — after he finishes his ale. I’d rather walk, but it would take me hours to reach the Manor, and my Sealskin.

All I can hear in my head is Finian’s voice.
The strands in my peat were silver! Silver! Silver!

Why didn’t I go? Why didn’t I seize my Sealskin this morning and plunge into the sea? Oh, foolish waiting, foolish human waiting. I wanted to warn Finian, I wanted to explain. I wanted to say good-bye. What a stupid thing to do — a stupid
human
thing! I swore I’d never let myself get caught as my mother had. And where has it left me? Trapped in the Caverns.

Should I have suspected something? But I’m sure everything was just as I’d left it, the doors to the Kitchens and Cellar ajar. At the top of the stairs, I pulled the pins from my hair. I needed no light to find my way to my Sealskin.

When I stepped into the inner Cellar, I felt at once a new texture, the fabric of the air pulled taut, as though . . . as though there’d been a candle recently burning. I swung my hair, reading the walls —
Poor Rona! Poor Rona!
— to the spot beside the Folk Door where I’d left my Sealskin.

In that instant, a flint scraped, a spark flared, a lantern cast a halo round Sir Edward and his angel smile.

I leapt for the Folk Door, hurled myself through. It slammed behind.

“Come out, Corinna.” Sir Edward spoke through the Door. “It will be worse if I have to come after you.”

“Come in, if you dare.”

“Oh, I dare,” said Sir Edward. “Didn’t I snuff my candle when I heard you coming down the Cellar stairs? That should tell you I’m not afraid of the Folk.”

That had been astonishingly brave. “Come in, then.”

Sir Edward’s footsteps drew near the Folk Door, paused. He did not dare.

I dived into my Folk Bag and lit a candle to start writing. Have I not told myself things through my writing I hadn’t thought of before? Hadn’t I told myself I could find my way through the Caverns without a candle? What can I tell myself now?

Sir Edward cannot keep me trapped here; in two days, the others will return. Don’t worry, Corinna. You can wait this out.

Why, then, am I terrified? Why have my bones turned to water? Am I melting, Corinna turned to liquid, trickling beneath the Door?

And why is Sir Edward laughing?

I must have known somewhere deep inside why I could not wait it out. Why, too, Sir Edward might laugh.

“I have your Sealskin,” he said. “The only question is how to destroy it. Fire, perhaps?”

I blew out my candle, as though to keep fire as far from me as possible. And there, in the dark, the spark of an idea flared.

“You think yourself powerful, don’t you?” I cried, as scornfully as I could. “Listen to this: The night of the Storms, it was I who threw the skin of your jungle beast to the hounds.”

“You!” Sir Edward said no more. He gave a piercing whistle, and soon I heard a soft panting outside the Folk Door.

“Liquorice is here with me,” he said. “With me and your Sealskin. At it, lad!”

I sprang through the Folk Door, already casting a net of hair to gather The Last Word.

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.

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.

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.”