Franny Billingsley - The Folk Keeper

I need no protection against the sea. And I need little against the Folk. They can’t attack me here, as long as a glimmer of starlight seeps through the Graveyard Shaft. I need no salt or churchyard mold. I need only light. I must save my candles for the first overcast night. Sir Edward may know about hunting, but he knows nothing about the Folk. I do. I am partly of the Otherfolk and have always had an instinct for the world of spells and magic.

I am not quite alone.

A cave rat lives in a pile of shredded bark, and of course, there are the bats. To say that the Cavern is filled with bats is like saying the ocean is filled with drops. The Cavern is bats. They fill the walls like water lilies, fantastic flower-heads between folded leaf-wings. Once I tried to count a small patch of them. It was impossible.

And so this is my Cavern; it is really very beautiful. The roof is like water turned to stone, tumbled falls, shining always faintly from the wet. Mushrooms sprout from invisible crevices. But they do not even tempt me, because of course, there are the fish.

The fish, so innocent, so trusting. They are not accustomed to the creature with the five white fingers that dangle languorously into the water. They swim into my grasp; I eat and eat and eat. There is a kind of savage joy in not thinking of feeding the Folk. I never set food aside for them now. Let the stupid, sulky things take care of themselves!

I am lucky, though, that I can catch my own supper. If I were an ordinary human, hunger might drive me to light one of my precious candles and wander through that dark archway at the far end of this chamber, looking for the path to the outside, and to food. But I am the lucky one. I have the luxury of eating and even of tossing aside what I do not care to eat. When it thinks I am not looking, the rat carries away the entrails and skeletons.

I don’t waste much breath calling up the Shaft. Even if there were anyone near, I doubt my voice would carry above the ground.

To pass the time, I have been reading through this Folk Record. How crisp and fresh it seemed in February, when I’d just started a new one. But it is no longer a Folk Record: I relinquish my duties! Call it instead Corinna’s Journal.

Again and again I have said I belong to the cold and the dark and the wet. I was right and I was wrong. I belong to the dark and the wet of the sea. I was once a girl who became a boy who became a Folk Keeper. Now I am a girl again, looking for a way to become a Sealmaiden.

I must find a way out.

July 12

Another day gone, another two inches to my hair. I wear it now in a braid. I have read more of my Journal and I realize something that makes my heart squeeze in on itself — a good reason not to have a heart! I have been reading backward through the pages, thus:

July 6, from Corinna:

Did I have a Sealskin?

June 22, from Finian:

You’ve grown a bit since, but no matter. I can surely help you over the flames.

March 22, from Sir Edward:

I wish they’d destroyed the silvery skin instead. It looks to be ruined in any event, as it is somehow stretching.

March 21, from Sir Edward:

Hartley took a number of silvery ones over the years, mostly smaller, as I recall.

March 21, from Lady Alicia:

Isn’t he a bit bigger? I’d swear he’s grown since he first came.

My senses are peeling away from me. My fingertips are far away in the Trophy Room, running themselves over a silver skin, but they are also here, writing.

His Lordship’s prize trophy: It is my Sealskin! There were not a number of silvery ones as Sir Edward thought. There was only one, but it has been growing as I have been growing.

Everything shivers into place. This explains my strange yearnings, my thirst for something unknowable, my unusual abilities and limitations.

The important thing is this: I am missing a piece. A piece as real as an arm or an eye. I always knew something was missing, that I was a shadow at noon, melting away beneath my own two feet. Once I feel my Sealskin round me, once I press it to my skin, I shall be whole.

His Lordship’s prize trophy — it is me, and I have been growing as my Sealskin has been growing.

I am filled with a boundless rage when I think of Lord Merton watching me from the Trophy Room, watching his prize trophy grow. I spit on his memory, set the hounds on his soul. He destroyed my mother, but he shan’t destroy me.

No, it is not hunger — stomach hunger — that will drive me through the dark opening at the far end of this chamber. I may be a long time finding my way, but they are all connected, these Caverns, and one path or another will lead me to the Folk Door.

I am no Folk Keeper. I am a Sealmaiden, and I know where I belong.

Tomorrow then, when my braid has grown another two inches, I will light the first of my candles and walk into that dark tunnel, remembering always that on the other end waits my Sealskin.

July 13

The Folk were everywhere present, there in the twisted passageways and echoing Caverns where the sun never shines. Their boiling energy retreated from my candle as I entered the first tunnel. Have they lingered there and sniffed at me, licking their lips?

The walls were heavy draperies, stone folded upon stone, lustrous with damp. I counted my steps for comfort, walking slowly. Horrible thought, to fall and lose my candle. The passage forked at three hundred paces. I shone my candle down each branch. The left-hand branch narrowed and dipped sharply. But the branch to my right was easy and spacious, and as far as my light would reach, rose steadily toward the surface.

I wore my necklet of nails, from habit only. It had never shielded me from these Folk. But I had another use for it now. I scratched a C into the soft walls, marking my turn to the right.

The passage did not live up to its early promise. It rose only a bit, then leveled off, and more and more the walls ran with wet. For almost five hundred paces, the tunnel walls pressed close around me, and when they fell away at last, invisible antennae on my backbone rose to meet a vast space.

The walls here were a marvel, delicate filaments of stone swirling over and in on themselves. I held up the candle; it strained into an enormous darkness. A forest of stone icicles winked down at me, my flame caught at thousands of sharp, wet points. A cold drop landed on my cheek, then on my forehead as I leaned back. A stone straw, dripping water from above. I opened my mouth and snatched a drop from the air.

I explored this new chamber cautiously, hugging the walls, wondering if they circled in on themselves or opened into other tunnels. I wore no shoes, and before I saw what lay ahead, my feet splashed into shallow water. A cave pool, edged with rocky lace. A clutch of stone pearls shone from the bottom, flat stone pancakes floated on the top. Then, in this place where even the water was gray, something beyond the pool gleamed yellow-white.

Bones. Fine hand bones, human icicles. I was not afraid; I was barely surprised, in the vast, calm silence of the Caverns. My eyes traveled along more icicle-bones to the head, which smiled mournfully at me.

I cannot say what possessed me to draw near. Perhaps I knew I’d see the square marks of those teeth that had also marked my offerings of meat in the Cellar.

The Folk had been at work here, long ago perhaps. I leaned over the skeleton and held my candle into the darkness beyond. My candle shook — no, it was I who shook. I held it with two hands, and then it shook all the more!