The Folk Keeper (3 page)

I reached for another piece. The bread was protection from the Folk, who cannot abide the stuff. But before I could stow it in my Folk Bag, safe from the reach of human hands, doughy fingers snatched it from me.

“Clumsy!” said the Valet.

I buckled my Bag closed and left the tavern. No one — no one! — can say how I provision my Folk Bag.

The coachman’s bugle is about to blow. The crimson coach will set off again, followed by the black hearse carrying His Lordship — His Lordship and the gold coins, one on each dead eye. And this is what I swear: The Valet will feel my vengeance before we reach Cliffsend.

I have lost one of my secret powers. I discovered it just now when I climbed into the carriage.

“We’ve a quarter hour yet, Master Corin,” said the coachman.

“A quarter hour? That can’t be.”

But it can. The coachman showed me his watch, and to be sure, I consulted the clock in the tavern.

I used to be so sure of the hour. My heart pumped out the seconds, which went ticking through my body, meeting other seconds, clustering into minutes, crowding into hours, into days. But now . . . Will my skin grow chilled, just like ordinary people? Will my hair refuse to grow at its prodigious rate?

My secret powers make up for that missing piece of me. I don’t know what it is, but I ache for it each day. It’s as though I have eyes, but there are colors I cannot see. As though I have ears, but there’s a range of notes I cannot hear. But at least my powers set me apart from the rest. Once they are gone, will there be anything left?

How can I describe the sea? It is stronger than anything, announcing its presence miles away, steeping the carriage with salt-and-seaweed fumes that sparked invisible stirrings behind my cheekbones. And the slow, steady singing of it . . . Now, in my room at the inn, my hair rises and the sea-song shivers over my scalp.

It reminds me of my old childish fancies, when I was still Corinna of the long silver hair. I used to think my hair was magic. I used to think it crackled with the shape of life, that with it I could catch the currents of the earth.

But when I turned into Corin, I gave up all my foolish ideas. They will not help you survive.

Sir Edward was in a pickle of impatience. He leapt from the carriage before it had quite stopped, which seemed a waste of heroics, as we are not to sail for Cliffsend until tomorrow. Not even Sir Edward can hurry along the night.

I waited until the wheels no longer rattled over the stones. I am not made for leaping from anything that moves.

There was the sea at last, stretching into infinity. Seagulls floated on the water, feathered whitecaps dotting the waves. Everywhere there was spit and spray, and where the waves had nothing to dash against, they crashed into themselves and curled back into the sea.

Behind me rose the usual arriving-at-an-inn noises. There were instructions about supper, instructions about attending to the horses, instructions to the Valet from Sir Edward. “I shall want a clean neck cloth, and a fresh shirt as well.”

I knew then what my vengeance would be. The luggage had been set upon the ground, and it was easy, while the others were all so busy, to loose the fastenings of Sir Edward’s valise.

It did not take long. I stood with my back to the carriage, facing the sea, not watching, but listening.

There was a gasp from the Valet. I imagined those silks and satins, all in black and white, tumbling to the cobbles. Lady Alicia’s maid gave a tiny squeak.

“Clumsy!” said Sir Edward.

Then I walked to the beach.

It was a fine, wild February night, with a keen wind shrieking past my ears. The beach has a language of its own, with its undulating ribbons of silt, the imponderable hieroglyphs of bird tracks. The receding waves catch on innumerable holes in the sand. Bubbles form and fade. A new language, with a new alphabet, which I will learn to read.

The sea up close is enormous. I squeezed my eyes against it for a moment, which is ridiculous, like fighting a giant with a pin. It comes to you anyway, through your ears and nose and skin and tongue. It is a savage, muscular thing, a vast dim wetness battering at the land and the air and all your senses.

A little dock leaned over the water. I leaned over with it, careful not to fall, as I swim only a little, dangling my hand into the waves. Quicksilver shapes flashed beneath. Idly, idly, my fingers drifted. I was at least as surprised as the fish when my fingers snapped round its thrashing body.

I pulled it from the water, feeling it turn inside my grasp. I smelled it, which was innocent enough, wasn’t it, merely smelling a fish? But one thing leads to another, for I drew it near my nose, which is near my mouth, which then opened. I felt the fish struggling between my lips, my tongue curling eagerly to fold it in.

What was I doing! I flung it back.

Why did I almost devour it? I, who rarely need to eat, hungry for this thing of living flesh and blood? I refuse to be like ordinary people, living their ordinary, powerless lives, who need to eat and eat and eat.

I must be truthful to this Record. Even now, long after I tossed away the fish, I am still hungry for it. Perhaps I’m emptying out, my secret powers slowly ebbing. But when I look at myself now, by the clear light of real wax candles, all is just as usual, my skin almost transparent from the light shining through.

I scarcely recognize myself.

Whoever saw Corinna lying under a gilded ceiling, between blue velvet hangings? Lying in sheets that have been starched, and even pressed? The smell of leftover heat from the mangle lingers in them still.

As even my memory can fail — yes, even mine! — I’ve made it a rule to record events as they occur, not letting days go by. But I couldn’t help breaking it; I am only now coming back to myself.

It seems much longer than three days ago when I waited in the early-morning dark to board the Cliffsend ferry. The cold moon was embedded in a hard sky, picking out the red caps and white canvas jackets of the fishermen, the pale fur trimming of Lady Alicia’s streaming cloak. I didn’t know ladies could run.

“Finian!” She flung her arms around a man you might at first take for a small bear, tall and broad and light on his feet.

“I wondered when you’d see me,” he said.

I tried to puzzle out who he might be. His educated voice and elegant greatcoat went together, but not with his canvas fisherman’s shoes.

“What are you doing here!” Lady Alicia kissed his cheek, then boxed his ears lightly.

Who can explain it? Humans are so odd.

“I missed you, of course.” The young man paused.

“And you wanted an excuse for a long sail. You must have been up all night!”

“I don’t need sleep,” said Finian. “I have to be up and doing!” There came a little silence. “I am sorry for His Lordship’s death. As usual, I say the right thing too late.”

“Let’s not quarrel today,” said Lady Alicia finally. If she grieved for Lord Merton’s death, she kept it close to herself. I like that in her. “Take
The Lady Rona
, and may you have fair winds and good speed.”

The Lady Rona!
The password Lord Merton had given me to assure my place as Folk Keeper. Strange to think
The Lady Rona
was merely a boat. But when I peered over the high stone jetty, I understood why you might remember her in landlocked Rhysbridge. She was such a pretty, graceful thing, particularly beside that lump of a ferry, which would doubtless bump over the sea much as the carriage had bumped over the rutted roads.

Then I, Corinna Stonewall, who never asks for anything, astonished myself by tugging at this stranger’s coat. “I want to sail
The Lady Rona,
too!”

Bears are said to be fast. Before I could regret my words, Finian had whirled around. He knelt and held out his hand, which, like the rest of him, was enormous.

“A fellow sailor!” He had a curving beak of a nose, striking winged eyebrows, and dark-red hair.

“Not a sailor,” said Lady Alicia. “Corin’s our new Folk Keeper.”

“A Folk Keeper?” said Finian. “But I thought . . .” His voice trailed off and he pulled a pair of spectacles from his pocket and shoved them on his nose.

“He has the power of The Last Word,” said Lady Alicia.

I’m sure I stared at Finian as hard as he stared at me. I’d never seen such a young man wearing spectacles.

“I beg your pardon, Sir Folk Keeper,” said Finian at last. “My eyes are playing me some tricks.”

“Furthermore,” said Lady Alicia, “he’s the child Hartley was looking for.”

“Then I’ll be sure not to let him drown, Mother,” said Finian meekly.

Mother! I stared at Lady Alicia, trying for the first time to guess her age.

“Everyone wonders the same thing,” said Finian. “Here’s a little hint. Her eldest son, and only son — that’s me! — is twenty-one.” He stretched out his hand and I stared at it.

“Shake it,” he said. “Shake it and say ‘Pleased to meet you!’ and let’s be off.”

He followed his own command at once, dropping effortlessly off the jetty and into the pretty boat. I stood looking down uncertainly, until Finian gave me his hand, which I all but stood on as he helped me down.

“May the Sealfolk swim unharmed?” cried Lady Alicia.

We shot away from the jetty. “The Sealfolk?” I said.

“Three drops of Sealfolk blood on the waters is enough to raise a storm. So you don’t want to be sailing when one of them is harmed.” I’d never heard that, for all my hanging about the Rhysbridge market. But then, there are no Sealfolk on the Mainland.

The sea is powerful enough without a storm. I felt its deep-running currents, the whole vast world of it, shuddering with life. Dawn had brought a silver sheen to the surface, mercury floating on fathoms of night. It’s extraordinary when you think of it, sailing on those infinite waves with just a thin layer of wood between you and the world beneath.

Finian pressed something cool and round into my palm. I held it to the sky, which had been slowly brightening and was about to snuff out the moon. It was a bead, the color of honey. “Amber,” he said.

“A gift to the sea,” I said. “For smooth sailing.”

“How do you know that?”

“A good Folk Keeper knows all about charms,” I said, which is true, although most are schooled in them, while I ferret them out. I tossed the bead into the waves.

Finian looked at me a long time. “I suppose you do, at that. I can certainly believe you’re casting a spell on me with those big green eyes.” He laughed softly. “I hope it’s a pleasant one. Listen, let’s be friends. I have enough enemies already, although there’s one gone now that His Lordship’s dead. Here then, Corin, what are you staring at?”

I have little family feeling myself, but I couldn’t help thinking it was strange to speak of his father as an enemy, and before he was even buried!

“Not my father, my stepfather! I’m no Merton, but a Hawthorne. My real father died long ago, leaving me a title, but no land to go with it. My mother remarried only last year, and strange as it may seem, I believe she married for love. So here I am, Sir Finian Hawthorne, at your service, but I will box your ears if you call me
Sir.
”

He was teasing. I know people — ordinary people — tease each other, but it felt queer to be teased myself. Should I permit it? After all, I am in no way ordinary.

“He was your enemy?”

“I like to speak broadly,” said Finian. “It goes with the rest of me. He wasn’t terribly happy I was to be the lord of Marblehaugh Park after my mother — although she’ll doubtless outlive me by several hundred years.”

“
You’re
to be the lord of Marblehaugh Park?”

“It isn’t polite to sound so surprised. Yes, my mother is mistress now, and I shall inherit after her. Too bad for me Lord Merton had no children by his first wife, for they would have inherited instead.”

“Most people like to inherit,” I said.

“But His Lordship didn’t like me to indulge my passion for boats, sailing them and building them. I’d planned to have a shipyard someday, but he said that was no fitting ambition for a future lord. My mother stood behind his decision. It’s hard to forgive her, even if I realize she’s trying to learn the ways of the estate. Poor Finian!” He shook his head in mock self-pity. “Poor Edward, too. Had he been a closer cousin to my stepfather, he would have had the estate.”

But I was still thinking of what Finian had said before. “You can’t build a ship if you like?”

“Pity, isn’t it,” he said. “Even Edward chides me sometimes for my inelegant interests. I wish I liked guns and loud bangs. That’s an amusement worthy of a lord, it seems.”

“I’d be ashamed to be you!” The heat in my voice surprised me. “Ashamed to let anyone stop me from having a shipyard if I liked, a great lad of twenty-one and a lord in the making.”

I’d been a powerless foundling, yet hadn’t I managed to escape the endless drudgery of my life? Hadn’t I turned myself inside out, turned Corinna into Corin, to become a Folk Keeper?

“I am only a Folk Keeper, but I do as I like.”

“Tell me how to do that?” said Finian.

I shrugged. I’d already said too much.

“Quite right,” said Finian. “Why tell me for nothing? I propose an exchange.” He was teasing and not teasing, all at once. “Tell me how to get what I want. Tell me that I
can
get what I want. I’ve almost lost all hope. Fill me with words of . . .” He paused.

“Conviction?”

“Conviction,” said Finian. “I like that. You give me a Conviction every few days, to keep my spirits up.”