Franny Billingsley: The Folk Keeper

“Hartley!” called Lady Alicia softly as we entered a dim room. She drew aside the velvet hangings of a massive bed. “We found a Corin for you, Hartley. There was no Corinna.”

Lady Alicia was married to that old man! So old, and so disagreeable to look at, too, with a sharp watchful face and lips the color of bruises. The Lady drew me into the bitter smell of herbal plasters and bade me stand very close. Lord Merton’s pale eyes hung on my face. It took him only a moment.

“Got you! And not a minute too soon.”

“But he’s not a girl!” said Lady Alicia.

“I’d recognize that face anywhere,” said His Lordship. “I was misinformed about his sex, but girl or boy, this is the face I want. Leave us alone together.”

Got you! I kept thinking as the door clicked shut. Got you! That had given me a nasty shock, but nothing like so nasty as when his arm shot out and his fingers circled my wrist. “Corinna!”

“It’s Corin!” I said, pulling back. “Corin Stonewall.”

But his grip was like death. Perhaps it was death, starting in his marble hands, working inward from bluetipped fingers, leaving a pattering of bruises as it went.

“Now that I’ve got you,” he said, “I will keep you! You shall come with us to Cliffsend.”

“I won’t! I’ll never leave my Folk.” I refuse to become a curiosity in some grand Manor. I know the gentry collect Folk Keepers and show them off, like jeweled snuffboxes. But a mere showpiece has no power, and without power — well, even in rocky Cliffsend, there’s still scrubbing to be done; and daily doses of humiliation are to be found everywhere.

“I always get my own way,” he said.

“So do I!”

I don’t know if I glared at him, but he certainly glared at me. Twenty long seconds passed, and as though he could read my mind, he said, “I know you well enough to know you’re counting out the time. Tell me the hour, Corinna, what’s the time?”

“I’m Corin, I tell you!” I jerked back, but those hideous fingers held tight. “You said yourself you were misinformed. Are you blind? There’s no Corinna here!”

“Blind, no,” he said, “but the darkness is coming for me fast. I did you the favor of playing your game with you. Now you do me the favor of telling me the time. You always know the time, Corinna.”

How can he know that? That is one of my secrets.

“Corinna, the time!”

I looked into myself, into that inexplicable built-in clock that ticks off the seconds running through my blood. “Sixteen minutes past four o’clock.”

“You shall come with us to Cliffsend.”

“I will bring you such trouble,” I said. “You wouldn’t want me there.”

“Oh, but I would,” he said. “All the trouble will belong to my good Lady and my cousin, for by then I’ll be dead and gone. Corinna, what’s the time?”

“Seventeen minutes past the hour.”

He turned my hand, then stared at my wrist. “Yes, the same skin. There can be no doubt.”

“The same skin as whose?” My skin is the most striking thing about me — since I cut my hair, that is, which now merely puffs out from my head like a silvery dandelion. My skin is very white, and if you were fanciful (which I am not), you might say it was translucent, a window of milk glass skimming a blue filigree of veins.

“I knew your parents. You resemble your mother remarkably. I remember how in a dim room those green eyes of hers turned silver, like mirrors.” The old man hesitated as though he might say something more, then swallowed his words back down, where I hope they poisoned him.

“What do you want of me?” I said.

“Your father was very ill,” said the old man. “Just before he died, he told me of your existence, of his shame that he placed you in a foundling home. He entreated me to rescue you, bring you up as a lady. How did you become a boy, Corinna, and a Folk Keeper?”

“I changed my name on the Foundling Certificate. It’s been four years now.”

But I said no more. He needn’t know I was sent to the Rhysbridge Home with a shipment of other orphans, including one boy who had apprenticed to become the Home’s new Folk Keeper. He needn’t know I took advantage of being unknown to them all to steal a pair of breeches, cut my hair, and turn myself into Corin. I will never tell anyone how I frightened the new Folk Keeper so dreadfully his very first night in the Cellar that he fled. I do not like to think of what I did — of how he screamed! — but I force myself to write it. I cannot let myself go soft.

“Do you tend the Folk well?” said His Lordship.

I nodded. The Rhysbridge Home could not have done better, with me as the new Folk Keeper. I was denied the chance to apprentice, as a boy would have, but still, I’ve done better than most. I have pluck, nerve, patience, and an instinct for charms of protection.

“I have the power of The Last Word,” I said.

There was a little silence. Not one in fifty Folk Keepers has that enormous power. “You have the power of The Last Word!”

I looked him in the eye, as you must do when you are lying. “I have that power.”

But I must tell the truth here, although I was happy to tell Lord Merton all the lies I could summon. If I lied in this Folk Record, I wouldn’t be able to trust it to give me an exact account of the activities of the Folk. I wouldn’t be able to examine their behavior and puzzle out their patterns — when they might rage out of control, how best to turn aside their anger.

The truth is this: I do not have the power of The Last Word. Ever since I turned into Corin, I can no longer put together words that scan and rhyme. Only those rhyming words, springing of themselves into the Folk Keeper’s mind, can extinguish the destructive power of the Folk. In The Last Word they sense a power greater than their own. But every rhyme that comes to me now has a hole in its middle, right where the heartbeat should be.

“You look like a boy,” said Lord Merton.

“I know I do.” Even at fifteen, I do not make a bad boy, all skin and bones and angles and awkwardnesses.

“You can choose to be raised as a gentleman,” said His Lordship. “You needn’t be a lady if you don’t like.”

“I won’t be a gentleman, either.” Even a gentleman may be without power. As a Folk Keeper, I reign over the Cellar. I am indispensable.

“But your father was a gentleman!”

“What gentleman would leave a baby outside the Foundling Home with only a blanket and her name and birthday written on a scrap of paper? Who was he, this gentleman?”

But I already knew what Lord Merton’s answer would be, that he was sworn not to reveal my parents’ identity. That’s always the way of it. No one wants to acknowledge a bastard child. But I was glad not to know. That way I could still imagine my mother was a magical creature, not some commonplace laundress with red hands. I could still explain my secret powers. Why I am never cold. Why my heart beats in harmony to some invisible clock. Why my hair grows two inches while I sleep. This last is inconvenient and hard to keep secret. But I learned not to tell. No one likes a child who may not be entirely human.

“Time is running out, Corinna. Come tell me, what’s the time?”

“Thirty-three minutes past four o’clock.”

“Come to Cliffsend as our Folk Keeper as well as one of us.” His voice was so soft I had to bend close to hear. But his grip on my wrist was still tight. I could not help but admire him, for he is strong in his soul, as I am.

“How many households would depend on me?”

“Conscientious to a fault!” Lord Merton made a sound that might have been a laugh if he’d been stronger. “Not households, but a vast estate. It’s not a simple matter of keeping the Folk from frightening the hens or spoiling the milk. Our Folk Keeper must make sure the Folk interfere with none of the business of the estate, from lambing to ploughing to sowing to harvesting. You would answer to both Lady Alicia, who will be mistress there, and to my cousin Edward, who will act as her steward.”