Franny Billingsley - The Folk Keeper

Bolts of lightning might have struck my temples. I was dizzy, my thoughts buzzing uselessly, beads on a vibrating string. “I’m no Sealmaiden!” The mere sound of it is soft and tender. Not like me.

“It’s the old story,” said Sir Edward. “Your father out for a moonlight sail. Your mother dancing on the Seal Rock. He fell in love with her, stole her Sealskin, insisted she marry him, live on land. What could she do? Without her Sealskin she couldn’t return to the sea. Perhaps you can guess at the rest. Misery, jealousy, madness, and death.”

“What makes you think I’m her daughter?”

“You gave yourself away by calling up that storm.”

“Calling up the storm?” But already I realized what I had done. The sea cared nothing for my pact. It cared only for my blood. Three drops of Sealfolk blood to call up a storm.

To think that I had almost killed Finian! Really, I might have, with my casual vengeance. Finian. I wanted to say his name again and again, place him firmly on the earth, where he was usually solid enough. Finian! said my mind, but I forced myself to attend to Sir Edward.

“I’m a careful man,” he said. “I knew you must be of the Sealfolk, but I couldn’t be sure you were Rona’s daughter until I opened the grave. There are no little bones in that coffin. The story of your death was just that, a story Hartley gave out.”

“I refuse to be his daughter!” Not that hateful man with the dead metal eyes.

“You refuse him just as he refused you. He was entranced by your mother, but you were not an attractive baby, and he must have come a little to his senses. A Merton can’t have one of the Sealfolk as his heir. It would be so like him to give out that you’d died, but instead have you sent away where he could keep track of you from afar.”

“Knowing about me, his baby, all those years?” I hated Lord Merton more than ever. “Having the Matrons inform him when I was moved from Home to Home?” I’d fooled him once, though. He hadn’t known I’d become Corin. He’d known Corinna was sent to the Rhysbridge Home, but no one had known to tell him she’d turned into a boy.

“How he loved to control people,” said Sir Edward. “I could never escape it. Now he’d dangle the Manor in front of my nose. You shall inherit it, he’d say. Now he’d say he rather thought he’d get married again. My bride shall take the estate, and her son after her. Perhaps he fetched you back to Cliffsend because he could not bear to lose control of you, even when he was dead.”

“But he couldn’t bear to let me inherit, either?”

Sir Edward shook his head. “Although as between you and Finian, there’s little to choose.”

Oh, I understood him then. The estate was Sir Edward’s blood, his life, but as Lord Merton’s daughter, I stood in his way. So did Lady Alicia and Finian.

“I mean to marry Alicia,” said Sir Edward. “She will have me, I am almost sure, if that son of hers doesn’t stick his nose where it’s not wanted. And then I shall be master of Marblehaugh Park by marriage, not by blood. Wouldn’t Hartley be surprised!”

He seized the front of my shirt and pulled me to my feet. What a long walk that was, Sir Edward’s fingers wrapped round the back of my neck, steering me past the vacant eyes of the chapel Saints to the wall circling the shaft into the Caverns.

“You mean to put me in there!”

“We shall get through the Feast of the Keeper very well,” said Sir Edward. “I have every expectation of a good harvest with the Folk quiet and content from their sacrifice.”

“Me, as sacrifice!” But I couldn’t be afraid of that, when first I had to be afraid of dying as I fell into the Caverns. “You won’t have a live sacrifice.”

“Listen: There’s a stream beneath.” Sir Edward held up his finger. From deep underground came the sound of running water magnified by a cavernous space. “Others have survived the fall through the Graveyard Shaft, so will you.” He turned me by the shoulders so my back was pressed into the stone, my face full in the moonlight.

“But the Folk won’t touch me. I have the power of The Last Word.”

Sir Edward shook his head. “It all comes together for me, now that I know you’re no boy. How did you manage so well all these months as Folk Keeper without that power?”

He shook his head. “You are so very like your mother. Those broad cheekbones, those eyes, set slightly at a slant. I can’t imagine how I didn’t see it. But Rona’s baby was a girl, and it never occurred to me you could be a boy. Your disguise as Folk Keeper was a good one.”

“Did I have a Sealskin?” I bit down on my lip, but too late, the question was out. Corinna, never never again let your enemy know what might be precious to you!

“Now there’s a question,” said Sir Edward. “If you had, Hartley might have destroyed it. He burned your mother’s; that’s when she went mad, refused ever again to look at the sea.”

I knew then the taste of true fear. It tastes of dark places deep in your stomach and holds you by the neck, tighter than Sir Edward ever could. I must have tried to leap away, for my next memory is of Sir Edward holding me by the wrist, my Folk Bag lying at my feet.

“I’ve hunted long enough that I can tell when an animal’s about to bolt. Don’t try again or I shall become annoyed.”

I was choking with fear and the unspent energy of that leap. I bared my teeth and lunged. I missed his neck, found his shoulder.

“Vixen!” Hard knuckles struck my head, which affected me somehow in my middle, for the next thing I remember is being very sick all over a pair of satin rosettes.

Very carefully, I settled the Folk Bag over my shoulder. “Are you annoyed now?” And I bit him in the arm.

The rest is just a confused struggle, me trying to bite him, him bolting my arms tightly to my sides — which at least kept me attached to my Bag — scraping my back up the Shaft. My last frozen memory is looking into his forget-me-not eyes, seeing the livid scar behind his eyebrow, then falling, falling, clinging to my Bag, breaking through water, sinking deep, hitting rock, shooting up again.

It was fresh water.

“Corin! Corinna!” Sir Edward’s voice sounded faintly through the Graveyard Shaft. “Corinna, answer me!”

I swam about blindly. I could not tell where the stream ended, or if the stream ended. There was only the echo of Sir Edward’s voice to tell me which way was up. It seems odd now as I write this, but there, flailing about in the water, I was mostly full of a joyful rage. I wouldn’t give. Sir Edward the satisfaction of my being eaten by the Folk. My Folk Bag was properly packed, candles and tinderbox wrapped in oilcloth. The Folk would not come near a lighted candle.

I splashed about, slapping water, slapping more water, finally slapping stone. I eased myself onto the bank.

“Corinna! Corin!”

I shook myself at the edge of the stream. “Corin! Corinna!” I said nothing, and shedding water makes no sound.

“Corin! Corinna!” Let him think I’d perished!

He called until dawn bloomed in the patch of sky through the Shaft. His final shout of “Corin!” turned into a cry of horror as a stream of smoke poured itself downward, past his head.

The bats had returned home on this, the morning of the Feast of the Keeper. The Folk won’t eat me, Sir Edward, and I know why. May your crops fail, Sir Edward; may your milk spoil.

And when you ask for her hand in marriage, may Lady Alicia slap your face.

July 11

My hair reaches past my shoulders. Two inches a day it grows. Even if I didn’t have my internal clock, I’d know I’ve been here six days. I’ve tried spreading my clothes on the floor, but they are always a bit damp, dreadful to put on. This morning I turned out my pockets and found a single amber bead. I hurled it from me. It bounced off the floor and rolled into a corner.