The Folk Keeper

by Franny Billingsley

  “Poor Lady,” I said.

  “Poor Lady,” said Finian. “Mrs. Bains says she used to walk round and round, her hair streaming all about. She says the Lady could glide through crowds of furniture and people with her eyes closed!”

  Until then I’d felt a certain kinship with the solitary Lady Rona, set apart from everyone else, but here we parted ways. I could walk through nothingness and stumble every time.

  “She’d spend hours in the Cellar, too,” said Finian, “and never bring a candle.”

  “She must have had a candle!” I said.

  “To hold off the Folk, you mean?” said Finian. “I have always wondered how she survived them.”

  I nodded, but there was more to it than that. Without a light, how could she have chiseled her name into the walls?

  “I love to gossip with Mrs. Bains,” said Finian. “I tell her she’s my sweetheart, and she gossips all the more.”

  “I thought the Windcuffer was your sweetheart.”

  “I lie sometimes,” he said. “You do as well, don’t you, to get what you want?”

  I had a very nasty feeling that Finian could see more without his spectacles than most people could who needed none.

  Finian spoke over my silence. “I’ll have my Conviction now.”

  “You must avenge yourself on people who mistreat you,” I said. “You must destroy what they love.” I thought of the Valet, of his love for himself, and how I’d squashed it.

  “So bloodthirsty, Corin!” said Finian. “Perhaps I’m too weak for your Convictions.” He unfolded his body from the stool. “There’s Mrs. Bains with the cakes, and I’ve always been partial to pink icing.”

  “Wait!” I said. “I have another Conviction, and I need another Secret.” I knew now that Lady Rona was a proper descendant of the owners of Marblehaugh Park, but what of the unnamed person beneath the tiny gravestone?

  “But I can’t digest your Convictions,” said Finian. “Give me something gentler next time. Just remind me it’s worth fighting for my dream of building ships and having a life with the sea.”

  Have I ever felt so dreadful in my life? So squirmy inside, so like an insect or a worm?

  “Think on it, Corin. Come sailing with me and give me a new sort of Conviction then.”

  “I haven’t time for sailing.” The more time I spent in the Cellar, the more likely it was I’d catch the Folk in a moment of mischief and draw off their anger.

  “But you want to know the Secret?” said Finian.

  He knew I did. He had his own way of getting what he wanted. “Very well,” I muttered. “I’ll come sailing.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.” I offered my fingertip, so we could swear on blood, but he said he’d believe me without.

  Why does he insist so on my promise? They are inconvenient things, promises. I rarely keep them, myself.

  February 17

  I didn’t tell Mrs. Bains why I wanted the pins. No one saw me last night when I slipped off to the Cellar, hundreds of pins stuck crosswise in my clothes. No one, that is, except the mournful old dog, Taffy, who followed me to the Kitchens, where I filled a bucket with very fresh and bloody meat.

  “It’s not for you!” I shut the Cellar door in his face and heard him sink to the floor, wheezing like an ancient bellows.

  The pins held the Folk off only a moment. Their cob-webbed energy paused, then struck. My bones echoed with their screams; the pins burned with cold.

  There came a howling from the world above. I fastened on the sound to suspend myself above the tightening round my muscles, the cramping that pulled every nerve to the outside.

  Think of nothing but the time, Corinna, the passing of the hours. A quarter past midnight. Twenty-three minutes past two. Eight minutes past three.

  It was half past four when I opened my eyes. My cheek lay pressed to the floor. The pins were stuck into my flesh, and at all angles. I was twenty-five minutes picking them out.

  As for the meat, the Folk had eaten it, every scrap. Only bones remained, and even those were marked with shapes that looked like nothing so much as a legion of large square teeth. The Folk in Rhysbridge were never so fiercely ravenous.

  I came up the Cellar stairs into the smell of baking bread. I’d forgotten about the old dog, with his watery yellow eyes, who flapped his feeble tail at me. He hauled himself up from his station beneath the ever-burning candle.

  “Go away!” Those blunted teeth were nothing to me now. I’d seen what real teeth could do. But Taffy’s toenails clicked behind me, down the corridor, up the stairs. If I could, I’d turn him back with the power of The Last Word. I heard from the pattern of his toenails that he was winding up the treads, side to side, to soften the angle of his climb.

  I stopped at a rattling from above. Old Francis, coming down with a coal scuttle.

  He stopped too, and there we were, the three of us on the stairs: Taffy below, stiff and arthritic; Old Francis above, stiff and paralyzed; and me in the middle, stiff and silent. There was only the sound of Taffy wheezing.

  “I heard the dogs howling,” said Old Francis presently.

  “Dogs will howl at anything.” But it was too late for bluffing.

  “I know how it is,” he said. “They howl when the Folk scream. You tried the pins, I see. Try scissors, opened to a cross. It worked for me many times.”

  He bowed, then passed without another look. I will accept any advice he chooses to offer, but if he knows I need advice, he also knows I haven’t the power of The Last Word. He’d best not tell anyone. My revenge would be swift and terrible.

  I made sure I was the first one at breakfast. But instead of filling my Folk Bag, I found myself staring at the platters of bacon and poppy cakes, the bowls of sardines in oil, the tankards of honey ale. I peered into a chaffing dish. Steam rose from a mound of eggs in cream, misting the silver lid. It all of a sudden seemed terribly futile. I had lost control of the Folk. What was the point in saving anything for them?

  I reached for the sardines. The smell raised a hungry sea beneath my tongue. I dropped them into my mouth, one by one, dunking bread in the oil to soften it, then catching up the last drops with my fingers. My hands still smell of fish.

  And I am still famished.

  6

  Fastern’s E’en to the Tirls of March

  February 19 — Fastern’s E’en

  The Folk have been quiet. Today they ate:

  Two small lambs

  One tub of butter

  One vat of kidney stew.

  I’ve taken to stringing an open scissors about my neck, as Old Francis suggested, where it hangs in a crude sign of the cross. I will save the churchyard mold for the next major feast day. The dark energy seeps out the Folk Door in the same way, and the Folk batter the lamb bones in the same way, but they’ve not yet again battered Corinna.

  The old dog, Taffy, has joined me in the Cellar. Oh, the smell of him — a combination of unwashed fur and advanced age, rather like sharp cheese. He scratched so at the Cellar door I could not endure it. Neither could Cook who opened the door and sent him down.

  You have been forced upon me, Taffy, make no mistake about it. What gives you the confidence to rest your chin on my boot? Go away! Why do you wag your tail when I look at you? I cannot promise you will not be hurt. But the Folk are quiet, for now.

  March 3

  I am learning the ways of the Northern Isles. The Folk here grow very fierce during the Storms of the Equinox, which occur once in the autumn and once in the spring. The spring Storms are fewer than three weeks away. I must be prudent. These Folk have injured me more on one minor feast day and two very ordinary days than the Folk in Rhysbridge ever did in four entire years.

  I must find out who’s buried beneath that little headstone.

  Finian made me promise to go sailing; perhaps then I could learn the secret. In Rhysbridge, after all, I used to haunt the market, picking up scraps of charms and spells. No, one cannot spend all one’s t
ime in the Cellar. One must be prudent.

  March 7

  I sit on the cliff top, looking at a jar of amber beads. Finian gave them to me this morning. The clean Cliffsend sun slices through, irradiating them with light. There must be dozens, each a key to an exquisite freedom, and Finian says I may have as many as I like!

  I stepped outside this morning into shredded streamers of mist. Saturated air hung from my eyebrows, from the fine hairs on the back of my neck. I tumbled down the cliff path into the smell of tar. “What, no Folk Bag!” said Finian.

  I tapped my forehead. “Everything I need is right here.”

  I did not like to think of losing the Bag overboard in a careless moment, and so I left it in the Cellar, where the Lady Rona will watch over it with her pleas for pity. It will be safe there.

  “Perhaps,” said Finian, “you can untangle this line with those little fingers of yours.”

  I have vowed never again to be anybody’s drudge. But while we waited for the mist to burn off, it seemed foolish not to help Finian with his repairs on the Windcuffer. How different this was — even stirring the pitch! — from the work I’d left behind, the endless scrubbing and hauling and humiliations before I became a Folk Keeper. Finian spoke of replacing the floor with new mahogany boards shipped all the way from the Mainland. I will help him, with a hammer, even if it means losing two thumbs, or even three.

  I could not, however, untangle the line. The mist lifted itself gradually from my hair, and by the time we set sail in The Lady Rona, the day had turned brilliant. The air had a special dazzle, the clouds scrubbed very white, hung out to dry against a bowl of blue. The Lady Rona. Strange to name a boat for a lady who would have nothing to do with the sea.

  Finian handed me a jar of amber beads. I tossed one in the sea. “For smooth sailing,” I said as Finian cast off.

  He smiled at me. “May the Sealfolk swim unharmed!”

  My voice came as an echo. “May the Sealfolk swim unharmed!”

  Finian peeled off his spectacles. “I don’t need these out here. I’m good at distance. It’s being closed up in that damnable Manor I hate, where I’m trapped, expected to learn the ways of a lord. Out here is the only place you can be free.”

  “For you, perhaps,” I said. “For me, it’s the Cellar.”

  “That’s what the Lady Rona thought, too. But she was mad. Perhaps you’ve forgotten about this.” Finian handed me the tiller and the sheet that walks the sail through the wind.

  “I never forget.” Then I, Corinna Stonewall, showed him how I could coax the wind to lean its powerful shoulder against our boat, and the sea needed no coaxing to lift us from below. Off skimmed The Lady Rona between the press of wind and water.

  “And on your second time out!” said Finian.

  “I told you, I don’t forget.”

  We drew quickly away from the cliffs. Finian pointed out a thumbprint of civilization on the Cliffsend coast, not more than an hour’s walk from the Manor. A tumble of slate-roofed cottages and a crazy-quilt cathedral, all red and yellow stone. “Firth Landing,” he said. “You’ll go there in August for the Harvest Fair.”

  “I can’t leave my Cellar,” I said.

  “Everyone goes,” said Finian.

  But I am not everyone.

  “You are stubborn, Corin.” Finian shook his head. “So attached to that Cellar of yours you miss what’s right before your nose. What would be so bad if you gave it up, became a gentleman?”

  “Then,” I said, “I’d be in the position of one Finian Hawthorne. Sir Finian Hawthorne.”

  “Didn’t I say I’d box your ears if you call me Sir. Retract it now, and you shall be spared grievous bodily harm.” As usual, Finian was half laughing, but this time, no more than half. I felt suddenly sorry for him. It is a peculiar feeling; I do not care for it.

  “But I can’t take it back,” I said. “That Sir is attached to your name, and to you. It means that the mistress of Marblehaugh Park may forbid you to do as you like with your life. Sir Edward, too.”

  “You are difficult to argue with, Corin, but still I say you shall come to the Harvest Fair.”

  “Still I say I will not!”

  Finian laughed suddenly. “You are just like your name, stubborn, a stone wall.”

  It is true, and not merely by chance. I was named from the scrap of paper found upon me as an infant. Corinna, it said, but gave no second name. Stonewall was given me one long-ago day, in one of those endless foundling homes, when I refused to boil the soiled linens. Why should I — I who wanted so much to learn to read and write? But that privilege was granted only the most promising boys.

  The Matron there called me stubborn! and whipped me with a leather strap, and ever after I was known as Corinna Stonewall.

  “What are you thinking?” said Finian.

  I couldn’t tell him. Finian wouldn’t like the way I avenged myself for that whipping . . . Now Corinna, you must not fall into the trap of caring what Finian likes, or anybody else.

  “I have a Conviction for you,” I said at last.

  “You first, this time,” said Finian. “I have to know it’s worth a Secret.”

  I was silent a long time.

  “You can trust me. Fair’s fair. Until now I’ve been giving away my Secrets for free.”

  I’d worked out my Conviction, but the words were hard to say. It was too soft for my taste; it wanted backbone. “I sat on the cliffs last night. The tide was low and steam rose from the water.”

  “Sea smoke,” said Finian.

  “The water seemed suddenly marvelous, now it can be smoke, now ice, now liquid. Nothing lost, only rearranged.” I’d thought of how — all unknowing — I’d imitated it, turning Corinna into Corin, nothing lost, just a little surface rearrangement.

  “I plucked my Conviction for you from the sea. Do as the water does. Hide what you’re doing. Hide even what you are. Then no one can stop you.”

  “Are you speaking of your own secrets?” said Finian.

  “I don’t have any secrets!”

  “Of course not,” said Finian. I hate it when he speaks so gently. A person might turn to mush inside and pour away. But not I, not Corinna Stonewall.

  “My Conviction, is it acceptable?”

  “It is a good Conviction,” said Finian. “The Secret is yours.”

  “Who is buried under the headstone under the chapel eaves?”

  “Still looking for friends in the churchyard?” said Finian. “That was the Lady Rona’s child.”

  “A child! What happened?”

  Finian shrugged. “Babies die, mothers die, and often in childbed, which was the case here.”

  “But there’s no name.”

  “It died unbaptized,” said Finian, “which is why the baby’s buried apart from the mother, by the chapel. The vicar hoped the rain falling from the eaves onto the grave might turn holy enough to baptize the baby instead.”

  And so now I have a jar of amber beads, and my Secret, too. The baby was also a descendant of the owners of Marblehaugh Park, and I will take earth from its grave and try it against the Folk. But what if it fails to protect me? Or what if I fail to protect the estate? For the first time, I am afraid.

  March 15 — Tirls of March

  I have been pinched, nothing worse.

  The Folk have eaten:

  Five dozen salted kippers

  Two crates of dried beef.

  And what has Corinna eaten?

  I woke last night, famished. I had been dreaming of water shot with silver bodies. I pulled on my clothes as though in a dream, tiptoed down the marble stairs, and across the sodden grass.

  It was high tide, and waves lapped at the edge of the beach. I plunged my hand into the beating water, snatched at a bright streak. The fish thrashed between my fingers. I did not hesitate. I broke its neck, and before its jellied eye grew dim, I bit into the sweet and living flesh.

  7

  Storms of the Equinox Through Egg Sunday (and Other Matter
s I’d Rather Not Discuss)

  March 21 — The Spring Equinox

  I felt the Storms coming this morning, a gathering of tension, the air winding itself up for a secret celebration. The petrels skimmed the water in black clouds, harbingers of those to come.

  It hit us tonight at supper. A wave of water rattled the glass as lightning staggered from the skies. It seemed alive, the storm, speaking with a voice of its own. I could love this fearsome weather if the Folk did not also grow fierce.

  “It’s started again,” said Lady Alicia.

  “My tender nerves!” cried Finian, clasping his hands to his breast. “Already I can’t stand it.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Sir Edward.

  “There’s nothing silly about the Storms,” said Finian, but he was speaking to me rather than to Sir Edward. “Don’t go out, Corin. The cottagers tether their hens against the wind. You’re such a little thing; we should tether you as well.”

  “Isn’t he a bit bigger?” said Lady Alicia. “I’d swear he’s grown since he first came.”

  “Boys will grow,” said Sir Edward, shrugging. “What’s your sacrifice to be, Corin?”

  “Sacrifice?”

  “Sacrifice,” he said, drumming his fingers on the table. “Only a live sacrifice will do for the Folk during the Storms.”

  “The Folk don’t eat living creatures!”

  “And you call yourself a Folk Keeper!” Sir Edward slapped his palm on the table. “Maybe those pallid creatures you call the Folk in Rhysbridge are contented with a few crumbs. But not the Folk of Marblehaugh Park!”

  “I know the Folk.” But did I know them well enough? Bribing a lad or two for information, listening in on conversations of charms and spells. What had I missed, picking up scraps of knowledge about the Folk as I had?

  Sir Edward echoed my thoughts. “You know everything about the Folk, do you? After caring for a mere hundred households in Rhysbridge!” He peeled his hand from the table. The moist outline of his palm melted from the polished wood.