Franny Billingsley - The Folk Keeper

I stood on the lawn, between two worlds, watching the dance. Behind me, a couple of gardener lads argued about how to lay the Midsummer bonfire. Before me, the squares in the Ballroom fragmented, the ladies and gentlemen flowing into separate lines, then swirling themselves together with hooked elbows and clasped hands. It is traditional for the host and hostess to dress only as themselves: Sir Edward, never deviating from his black and white, Lady Alicia in rubies and gold satin.

Behind me, the gardener lads stood on step stools, lighting lanterns in globes of silver paper. Before me appeared Finian, a neat and careful dancer, his red cap bobbing above the others.

Now Finian, that wasn’t a very good idea, was it? To dress as a Cliffsend fisherman! It will cast your mother into melancholy; it will irritate Sir Edward, who like his cousin, Lord Merton, wants to mold you into a copy of himself.

Behind me, the voices of the gardener lads faded away. Before me, the fisherman danced with a young lady dressed as the Tragic Queen, the one who wanted always to be eating cake. What can she be thinking? Even if I were still Corinna, and even if I had golden hair and liked to dress in spangled gauze, I’d never masquerade as someone who let them chop off her head.

Before me, the dancers relaxed into a crowd again. Finian handed a glass to his spangled partner.

I took a sip from my own. It was cold, and not very sweet.

Then Finian raised his glass.

Why can I not forget the picture he made, a mountain of white canvas, pale liquid glowing against bronzed skin?

I left the lawn then for the cliffs, and here I am, all my earlier fizz evaporated. I just had another sip. The champagne is warm and flat. My first champagne, and on my sixteenth birthday, too. It is not as I imagined.

Taffy lies beside me, keeping me company. He is arthritic and I am stiff, and neither of us is much for dancing and crowds.

There is a lump of desolation beneath the bony dip at my throat. It is no bigger than a coin, this spot, a peculiarly small place to hold so large a feeling. I try to shove it to some deeper region, but there it sticks, a fragile skin-thickness from the outside world.

Taffy rests his nose on my foot and sighs.

It’s almost midnight. The dancers have spilled onto the lawn. I must join them now; it’s time to light the bonfire. And then I’ll go back to being the Folk Keeper of Marblehaugh Park. That is what I am, and I can’t pretend to be Samson or anyone else.

June 22

It is the gloves I remember best, elegant gloves of all colors, scattered on the ground. What a strange tumbled garden of lilac, primrose, and jonquil. And I remember, too, the naked, glittering fingers wrapped around unlit torches.

“Folk for the darkness!” cried Sir Edward, approaching the unlit bonfire with a burning taper. “Humans for the light!”

“Folk for the darkness!” echoed the crowd. “Humans for the light!” The skeleton pile of sticks burst into flame. “Ah!” The crowd fluttered around like moths.

Sir Edward again. “The first light goes to Lady Alicia!”

Again, the echo. “The first light . . . Lady Alicia!”

Someone pressed a torch into my hand, but I am no moth and stood back. Lady Alicia touched her torch to the bonfire. She seemed more fire than flesh as she broke off from the crowd, a torch-star floating round the Manor. One by one, the jesters, queens, and wizards dipped their torches in the flames and fell into a blazing orbit behind her.

I hung back until only Sir Edward and I stood before the fire. “Off you go, little Samson, and don’t you fall.”

That was just like Sir Edward, attending always to the business of the estate, organizing a mass of fire into a tight ring around the Manor in order to trap the mischief of the Folk in the Caverns.

I dipped my torch into the flames. “Do not fall!” I told myself, for any break diminishes the circle’s power, and I joined the fiery constellation.

I usually despise crowds, all that senseless jostle and laughter, but now there was only the rustle of silk, the whisper of velvet. How could it be that I didn’t even stumble? I flowed into that silent, blazing stream, running faster, now faster still — me, the slow after-thought of a star!

The crowd was dissolving into shrieks and laughter when I rounded the last wing of the Manor. Sir Edward and I stood a little apart from the others, watching them toss their torches into the flames; and when the clamor had organized itself into a chant, he tapped my shoulder and said, “They’re calling for you.”

“For me?” The words came clear, but not their meaning. Jump! A great shout. The Folk Keeper shall jump!

“What does it mean?” I cried as the crowd split from itself, forming a long, snaking path to the fire. “What do they want!”

“You must leap the bonfire,” said Sir Edward. “The Folk Keeper always goes first.”

“Me?” They wanted me to run down the path they’d made and jump the flames? “I am too clumsy.”

“It makes the strongest charm against the Folk,” said Sir Edward. “The Folk Keeper must go first.”

The crowd had found out my name. Jump, Corin! Jump!

“I’ve heard of no such thing,” I said. But I didn’t add it was most likely because Midsummer is not celebrated on the Mainland.

“It is time,” said Sir Edward.

His hand was very tight on my elbow. Sir Edward, implacable about matters concerning the estate, steering me rather roughly to the head of the path.

The fire burned bright and hungry, licking its lips with a yellow tongue. “I shall fall into the flames,” I said. Why did they keep feeding it old torches and armfuls of heather? “Even if I do not die, I shall be useless as your Folk Keeper.”

“Then we shall find another.” Sir Edward smiled to take the edge off his words, but he meant it, I could tell. I did not like him any the worse. You have to be ruthless to care for what you love.

Jump! Corin! Jump! The Folk Keeper shall jump!

I wrested my elbow from Sir Edward’s grip, but he swung me back, lifting me half from my feet. A jeweled button raked my cheek. My breathing was trapped in a bubble of pressure. My arms were trapped, I had only my teeth. I snapped out, they sank into something soft. And then there was air and solid ground and the metallic taste of blood.

Most people would have cried out, but there was silence first, then Sir Edward saying, “That costume cannot disguise what you really are.”

I had not thought it possible to be so afraid. My hair — could he tell it wasn’t a wig? But a pair of canvas shoes moved into my ant’s-eye view through the grass. He meant Finian, the fisherman.

“You know I love to argue with you, Edward.” Finian lifted me from the ground and set me on my feet as though I were an egg. “But let’s leave my costume for another day. I don’t like these rough games with our little Folk Keeper.”

“A true Folk Keeper,” said Sir Edward, “would not hesitate to jump the flames.”

The Folk Keeper shall jump!

Finian held out his hand. “I carried you from the Cellar the night the Storms began. You’ve grown a bit since, but no matter. I can surely help you over the flames.”

“The Folk Keeper must go first,” said Sir Edward.

“I promise,” said Finian. “Our Folk Keeper shall be first over the flames. And Samson, I promise you’ll clear the flames, although you must land on your own feet. I’ll carry that damned inconvenient Folk Bag for you.”