The Folk Keeper

by Franny Billingsley

Others have survived the fall, Sir Edward had said. I was not his first live sacrifice for the Folk, human sacrifice. He’d used the Shaft rather than the Folk Door, which is never locked. This is why I survived the Storms of the Equinox. The Folk were already brimful of holiday cheer — and Old Francis.

  I waited until my hands were steady before resuming my trip round the chamber. I could not leave this casual graveyard; I did not have that luxury. What if a passage to the Folk Door led from here?

  There were none, however; the chamber was self–enclosed. I hardly cared. It was such a relief to come full circle to the chamber entrance, down the tunnel to the C I’d scratched in stone, sweet evidence Corinna really existed. From there, it was just moments to the friendly twilight of my own chamber, hung with bats, forested with mushrooms, flowing with fish too guileless to evade the snatching skeleton of my own hand.

  July 14

  Five minutes to ten o’clock, morning. I stumbled over another skeleton, literally. It was only a goat, I think, but still I apologized.

  July 15

  Half past midnight. Why did Finian leave me on the pier?

  July 16

  Thirty-one minutes past two o’clock, afternoon. I snatched a ghost-fish from an underground stream. Its skin was absolutely transparent, all its inner workings on display. For eyes, just sightless pearls, sealed by filmy skin. No need for sight where the sun never shines.

  All the tunnels end in disappointment.

  I have used two candles.

  July 19

  Forty-six minutes past nine o’clock, evening. I wonder if the Folk made great mischief on the Feast of the Keeper? I scratch the letter C into every turn to mark my trail, but all tunnels end in disappointment. I think of my mother, scratching her name into the Cellar walls. When her Sealskin was destroyed, she turned away from the sea. It must have been too painful to set eyes on it again. But neither could she quite let go of her need for a deep, dark place. The Cellar was perhaps the closest she could come.

  I have used four candles.

  July 20

  Six o’clock, morning. Why did Finian leave me on the pier? He said that he wept. Was it for the Windcuffer?

  July 22

  Noon, exactly. I wonder why my father had me brought to Cliffsend? Sir Edward thought he could not bear to lose control of me, but perhaps it’s not that simple. Perhaps he regretted what he’d done. Could he not have been speaking of himself when he said: He told me of your existence, of his shame that he placed you in a foundling home? I will never know.

  All tunnels end in disappointment.

  I have used seven candles.

  July 27

  Half past five o’clock, morning. I have one candle left.

  Feast of Dolores, the Skeptic — I will not mark the date

  I cannot break the habit of writing. I do not want to write, I am too low in spirit, but my hand moves on. I do not care to count the days, but there are other ways of marking time. My hair has grown past my waist. My braid, I should say, its weave relaxing more each day. Last night was perfectly dark, no moonlight, or starlight even, penetrated the Graveyard Shaft. I do not count the days, yet my hand knows this is the Feast of Dolores, the Skeptic. It leaps to the paper to write of the Folk.

  I went to sleep, sick with worry that I had only one candle. But on this moonless, starless night, I should have gone to sleep worried about the unalloyed dark. I found myself sitting up, awakened by a change in the pressure of the air about me. They were upon me, they were all over me — oh, they must be ravenous.

  I shook my puny necklet at them, but it hadn’t stopped them before and it didn’t now. They boiled in on me. Theirs is a touch almost without weight, and yet worse, for it sinks beneath the skin, running needles of fire through sinew and bone. My arm was already turning numb when a fresh, hot pain skewered my hip.

  Oh, for the power of The Last Word. What would rhyme? What would scan? But even asking the question defeats the meaning, for The Last Word must be a rhyme so original, springing so spontaneously to the mind, there’s no room for thought.

  Now their touch had weight. Something hard sank into my arm, something wet lapped my hand.

  “Saints save me!”

  The Folk moaned back at the invocation of the Saints. I leapt for the tinderbox. Just one spark, and there came a terrible shrieking that would have shattered my bones — if I’d had any left to shatter.

  It took three tries for my accursed clumsy fingers to light the candle, but at each new spark, the shrieking sounded farther, and by the time the candle finally caught, I was alone.

  I was alone, my flame quivering from the quivering in my hand, my arm a mass of blood.

  I sat all night holding the candle, never heeding the hot wax falling on my skin. My face was warm, I held it so close. It was not yet dawn when the wick staggered into a pool of wax and was drowned.

  July 31 — Anniversary of the Liberation of Rhysbridge

  The Folk have consumed:

  Not quite a bite of Corinna.

  The candlewick is little more than dusty air. I squeeze it between my thumb and forefinger and stare at the ashes marking my fingertips. I blow it into my Twilight Cavern.

  August 1

  Curses on the Folk, curses on Sir Edward. I will circle them with a noose of curses and pull it tight.

  Curses on the Folk!

  Curses on Sir Edward!

  I refuse to be trapped inside my fear of the next moonless, starless night.

  I refuse to be trapped inside myself! Why am I still pretending to be a boy, hanging onto the habit of wearing these damp clothes, of binding back my hair? If I die under a siege of strong, square teeth, I refuse to die as Corin the Folk Keeper. I will die as Corinna the Sealmaiden.

  August 2

  The world is an explosion of beauty. My senses have opened like flowers; everything is an exquisite pleasure. I taste . . .

  What I taste just kneeling beside the stream! I taste the spicy smell of leaves that wash in from the outside. It resonates in a sensitive spot beneath my tongue. The rat brings damp wood into the cave. It tastes light and dark together, deep in the corner of my jaw.

  I feel.

  Each fingertip is a separate small heartbeat that acknowledges the other small lives all around. The smooth, damp pull of the skin of a mushroom. It is full of life. I scoop a spider from the floor. Its weightless legs leave tiny vibrations on my palm. I bring my finger to my cheek. They greet each other. Two consciousnesses, brought together.

  I see.

  Human eyes, or even the eyes of a Sealmaiden, are little good deep below the earth, but my . . .

  Oh, I will not give it away at once. I will delight in the telling of it, in every detail of how it unfolded.

  This morning I turned myself inside out, turned Corin into Corinna. Off came Corin’s jacket, his loose linen shirt, his breeches. Why did I wear them so long? Here they can stay. What the cave rat doesn’t steal for its nest can molder with damp.

  How light and free I felt. Had I ever had so much air on my body? I never knew I had so much skin, the bluishpale skin of the Sealfolk, all underlaced with blue veins.

  And when I loosened my braid and raked my fingers through the weave of hair:

  The world shifted about me, and did not come again to rest. I’d thought the world was full of bounded space, described by walls and footmen and cliffs and coal scuttles. That’s only the smallest part of it. The air is always shifting, boiling around you, full of mysterious and wonderful things to see — if you only know how to see!

  I can see with my hair. When I move, the air bounces off the nearest object, then returns, bearing a description of where it’s been. I take a step: I see the curl of stone draperies high in the roof. I push my palm toward the bat-velvet walls: I can count the bats! There are sixteen hanging in a palm-sized space. I catch an air-sculpture of the cave rat scuttling behind me, quivering whiskers, short legs. How often has it done so when my back was turned?

&n
bsp; For four years I have been wearing blinders. I thought all this time I walked a path of cobblestones, and it turns out to have been an avenue of stars! For four years, my head has been caught in a box. Its sides were painted with pleasant enough scenes, but that I should have thought this was the world!

  I do not need to look back in my Folk Record to remember that the Lady Rona wore her hair long and loose, that she could walk through crowded rooms with her eyes shut. Remember, Corinna — clumsy Corinna! — how astonished you were to hear that! Remember how in darkness she scrawled her name into the Cellar walls?

  You are more like your mother than you think.

  August 5

  I no longer stumble. Now I understand why I could circle the Manor on Midsummer Eve without falling. Why I could leap the fire, run along the cliffs to Finian’s rescue. It was no Midsummer magic, it was my hair, grown to masquerade as Samson. It’s a joy now to walk about the floor without stubbing my toe. A joy to gauge precisely the height of a step. I have been realigned, made true.

  I can now make my way through the chamber in deepest darkness, stirring invisible eddies of motion. They shiver off their surroundings and return, translating what they’ve seen into quivering bits of air. I know the dimension of the Graveyard Shaft, I know the clutter of objects in the rat’s nest. My amber bead is one. Keep it, and welcome, cave rat. I won’t need it again.

  Why did I not have this power when I was eleven and wore my hair long? I grew clumsy when I cut it, but lost no special way of seeing. Who can explain it?

  And writing this now, I am telling myself something new. I can find my way through the Caverns with my hair. I don’t need candles. What of when I meet the Folk in the Caverns? I still have my tinderbox; I can call sparks into the air and drive them back. And if I can’t — better to be eaten alive than return to the old ways.

  When I think about Rhysbridge, it seems I was living in a denser darkness than any in these Caverns. I remember the press of houses, the dirty fog, the smell of city filth, the smoky candles, the bruised lips of a dying man.

  To think I wanted to stay on as Folk Keeper, living always in the dark. To think that was the end of my ambition! The sea is dark, too, but there — yes, there! — I’ll wear my hair long and loose, living always in my own internal light.

  13

  Harvest Rose Festival to the Harvest Fair

  August 6 — Harvest Rose Festival

  The Folk did not frighten me as much as I frightened myself. I paused at the fork in the first tunnel, enjoying the luxury of not fretting about my candles, lingering over that first C I’d scratched to mark my first turn. It was a luxury, too, to have turned from Corin to Corinna, to bathe in soft hair to my knees.

  It was then I heard it, a dull hammering that made me catch my breath and clutch my tinderbox. A quick spurt, which slowed as I listened, and as I breathed deep, grew slower still. There is an expression about being startled by your own shadow. But what of being startled by your heart, clanging in the silent fortress of your chest? I doubt if anyone’s ever laughed in the Caverns before.

  Each day it has taken longer to reach unexplored territory. Rarely have I found tunnels that rise toward the surface. Those that do, run into stony blind ends. Today’s tunnel led down, not up. My footsteps stuck close beside me as I pattered downward, always downward, then skittered off into an echoing cavern with a deep pit in the floor. At the far end was an interruption in the air, a bulge where no bulge should be. I swung my hair, wrapping invisible streamers round the bulge, divining its shape and texture.

  Four limbs and a head — human and not human, all at once. It was not even as tall as I, but made up for it with its thick body and short, powerful limbs. The Folk are mostly mouth, Old Francis had said, and he was right. The mouth gaped into its forehead. It had no eyes, not even sightless pearls like the ghost-fish. Perhaps there was a nose, but as it turned toward me, it seemed all wet mouth and square teeth.

  It made no sign that I could tell, but another joined it, then another still; and the flint from my tinderbox was barely in my hand before they’d gathered themselves into a mass of hungry darkness. Their energy boiled through my hair, set it almost aflame; and there I was naked, turned inside out, all the soft parts showing.

  Sparks, I needed sparks. I raised my flint to strike, when another sort of light burst upon me, an interior illumination. A picture of a silver-haired lady came to me, and words to describe her, too, which wrapped themselves around the image, wove themselves into a net of rhythm and rhyme.

  Why weep you in the Manor, Lady?

  The Manor, proud and high.

  Why scrawl your name in whitewashed

  walls,

  When’er your Lord comes neigh?

  Why walk about without a word?

  Why choose, at last, to die?

  That boiling energy, it drained away to nothing. I could paralyze the Folk just as they could paralyze me. Hurt them, too. How they screamed — big babies! I closed my ears against their cries.

  I cannot cease my weeping, Sire,

  I’m chilled unto the bone.

  I’ve lost my lass, my tiny babe,

  I’ve lost my ancient home.

  The singing sea is far, yet near;

  I’m locked in solid stone.

  It was lovely to see their confusion, knocking against one another and running about. One hurled itself into the pit, and as though they shared one mind, the rest jumped in, too. I hope it was a long way down. Even before I opened my ears, I could tell by the vibration of loose stone that they were still shrieking.

  It was only when I was alone with my own friendly heartbeat that I understood. With my hair long and loose, I can carve words from air and float them on a sea of rhyme.

  I can always have The Last Word.

  August 9

  I am still mapping out the Caverns, carving my C into each new fork, returning each night to my Twilight Cavern. Today I found two tunnels that rise toward the surface. I call one Hope, the other Anticipation.

  The Folk are afraid of me! I string together fluid ropes of verse and beat them off. I’ve always had the words, I know that now. I had the words, but I didn’t have the medium. Just as water dissolves walnuts into dye, my hair dissolves images into rhythm and stirs it all together with rhyme. When I cut my hair to become a Folk Keeper, I took that all away from myself.

  There is a price you pay for power.

  August 12

  Really, what pigs they are, the Folk. The tunnel I call Anticipation is littered with bones and reeks of decay.

  It was difficult going today. The passage spiraled sharply upward, and I scrabbled through swirling petals of rock that drew in on themselves, and on me, too! It’s lunacy to return to my Twilight Cavern each night and unwind all my hard-won progress. I don’t need light, and I shan’t want for food and drink. Freshwater streams run everywhere, and even a pearl-eyed fish may be caught and devoured.

  August 18

  For five days I lived in the dark.

  For five days I kept company with the voice of my heart.

  For five days I lived in a tunnel called Anticipation, pushing through growing piles of bones.

  At half past four on the morning of the sixth day, Anticipation burst open into a vast chamber. Across it curled a small arched door.

  I was a long while crossing the chamber, wading through bones at high tide. But then — oh, how well my fingers remembered the Folk Door, the rough wood of it, banded by crosswise strips of iron. But from this side of the Caverns it swung outward, and a whiff of the human world wafted through. There was the familiar smell of mice and damp whitewash, and an old-cheese smell, too.

  “Taffy!”

  Never have I had such a welcome. He tried to leap on me, but his hindquarters gave. I sank to the floor with him, stroked his sticky fur.

  “Taffy!” I said it again and again. “Taffy!” My throat swelled with something irrepressible. How long had it been since I’d wept? I’d forgot
ten how you can never hold back water. It is accommodating, yet relentless, changing its shape to follow its true path.

  It was a long time before I could speak. Even then I didn’t say all I understood. That I now knew why Taffy had attached himself to me. He was an older generation of Hill Hound, more closely allied with the Otherfolk — the Sealfolk, and me.

  Everything was old but new. The Folk Door, opening in a new direction. Me, feeling a new wetness on my cheek. Me again, seeing old Taffy in a new way. My hair caught the shallow tide of his breath, the thin pulse that keeps him this side of death.

  The familiar strangeness didn’t end there. The Cellar door was ajar, which was unusual, as everybody was afraid of the Cellar. But why then did no light shine from the landing? The candle was always lit. And where was the smell of baking bread? Cook always baked at dawn.

  The Manor was empty. I realized that at once, but I stood at the bottom of the Cellar stairs for many minutes before puzzling out the why of it. Today was August 18, the first day of the Harvest Fair, when all the world was away to celebrate. A day when a Sealmaiden might roam the corridors wearing only her hair and nothing else.

  The door between the landing and the Kitchens had been left open, too, and through the long windows onto the vegetable gardens I caught my first glimpse of the out-of-doors. Six weeks of candlelight and darkness, and what did I now see? Wild rains lashing the Manor, bridges of lightning spanning sea and sky.

  I broke the silence then. “There is only one other living thing in the Manor, and that is my Sealskin.”

  I ran now, far faster than old Taffy, pounding down marble corridors, dark rooms flickering past. Into the Trophy Room, past the dead glass eyes. My sleek, shiny Sealskin shimmered out to my hair before I touched it in the ordinary way. It was heavy, tensile, just as a living thing must be.

  I wrapped it around me first, paused, wondering if it would take me over at once, turn me into one of the Sealfolk, there on the figured carpet. But nothing happened; it must take salt water to stir human flesh and Sealskin into one.