Franny Billingsley - The Folk Keeper

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.

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 time 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.”