Franny Billingsley - The Folk Keeper

It was difficult going today. The passage spiraled sharply upward, and I scrabbled through swirling petals of rock that drew in on themselves, and on me, too! It’s lunacy to return to my Twilight Cavern each night and unwind all my hard-won progress. I don’t need light, and I shan’t want for food and drink. Freshwater streams run everywhere, and even a pearl-eyed fish may be caught and devoured.

August 18

For five days I lived in the dark.

For five days I kept company with the voice of my heart.

For five days I lived in a tunnel called Anticipation, pushing through growing piles of bones.

At half past four on the morning of the sixth day, Anticipation burst open into a vast chamber. Across it curled a small arched door.

I was a long while crossing the chamber, wading through bones at high tide. But then — oh, how well my fingers remembered the Folk Door, the rough wood of it, banded by crosswise strips of iron. But from this side of the Caverns it swung outward, and a whiff of the human world wafted through. There was the familiar smell of mice and damp whitewash, and an old-cheese smell, too.

“Taffy!”

Never have I had such a welcome. He tried to leap on me, but his hindquarters gave. I sank to the floor with him, stroked his sticky fur.

“Taffy!” I said it again and again. “Taffy!” My throat swelled with something irrepressible. How long had it been since I’d wept? I’d forgotten how you can never hold back water. It is accommodating, yet relentless, changing its shape to follow its true path.

It was a long time before I could speak. Even then I didn’t say all I understood. That I now knew why Taffy had attached himself to me. He was an older generation of Hill Hound, more closely allied with the Otherfolk — the Sealfolk, and me.

Everything was old but new. The Folk Door, opening in a new direction. Me, feeling a new wetness on my cheek. Me again, seeing old Taffy in a new way. My hair caught the shallow tide of his breath, the thin pulse that keeps him this side of death.

The familiar strangeness didn’t end there. The Cellar door was ajar, which was unusual, as everybody was afraid of the Cellar. But why then did no light shine from the landing? The candle was always lit. And where was the smell of baking bread? Cook always baked at dawn.

The Manor was empty. I realized that at once, but I stood at the bottom of the Cellar stairs for many minutes before puzzling out the why of it. Today was August 18, the first day of the Harvest Fair, when all the world was away to celebrate. A day when a Sealmaiden might roam the corridors wearing only her hair and nothing else.

The door between the landing and the Kitchens had been left open, too, and through the long windows onto the vegetable gardens I caught my first glimpse of the out-of-doors. Six weeks of candlelight and darkness, and what did I now see? Wild rains lashing the Manor, bridges of lightning spanning sea and sky.

I broke the silence then. “There is only one other living thing in the Manor, and that is my Sealskin.”

I ran now, far faster than old Taffy, pounding down marble corridors, dark rooms flickering past. Into the Trophy Room, past the dead glass eyes. My sleek, shiny Sealskin shimmered out to my hair before I touched it in the ordinary way. It was heavy, tensile, just as a living thing must be.

I wrapped it around me first, paused, wondering if it would take me over at once, turn me into one of the Sealfolk, there on the figured carpet. But nothing happened; it must take salt water to stir human flesh and Sealskin into one.

The Sealskin fit me exactly, falling just to my fingertips, just to my toes. How marvelous that when I pulled it round my face, each side followed the curve of jaw to meet exactly at my chin. There was nothing wasted, not a single gap. But I had to be closer still. I sank to the floor, pressed it to every part of me. To my naked spine, to my belly and breast, how alive I was to it, or maybe it to me. We drank each other in through every pore.

Taffy whined from the doorway. You have your own fur, Taffy; do not be jealous of mine.

I have the Sealskin wrapped around me like a cloak as I write in the Trophy Room. Poor Taffy doesn’t know what to make of this new version of me. He thumps his tail but does not lie too near. Yes, Taffy, it may be that I am becoming a different creature and that soon you will not recognize me at all.

Soon, but not yet. I cannot turn myself into a Sealmaiden without warning Finian and Lady Alicia about Sir Edward. I cannot leave without saying good-bye. Soon I will restock my Folk Bag and walk the three miles along the cliffs to Firth Landing.

Everyone is away at the Harvest Fair, every servant, even the other dogs (for whom Sir Edward has doubtless bespoken the best rooms). It is unlikely that anyone will return before I do, but just in case, I will hide my Sealskin in the Cellar. It is too heavy to carry with me. No one would think to look there, and anyway, they’re all too afraid.

I am very happy now, watching the rain fall in fat, hard strands. Have I ever been so happy?

The world is a magical place and I’m lucky to be alive in it. Did my mother watch the rain driving against these windows and think it beautiful?

Have I ever been so happy?

August 18 — the Harvest Fair

Something inside has sprung a leak. I am growing accustomed to the salt water dripping down my face. I lean over my paper to hide, but no one in the tavern looks my way. They stand around the fire and drink to the Harvest Fair and to the rain and to anything else they can think of.

No one pays attention to a serving girl.

I was transformed this morning, from savage to servant with a bar of soap and servants’ clothes borrowed from Mrs. Bains’s storeroom. A laced bodice and calico shift, very clean and almost new. I wonder if Corin’s clothes would fit me now? I shall never be rosy and rounded — never like the Tragic Queen! — but if you squinted, you might almost take me for a young lady.

I left my hair for last, twisting it into a knot at my neck. And then — oh, I was clapped once more into an acorn shell. The singing spaces collapsed around me; gone were the echoes that paint the universe like shadows.

Imagine a world without shadows. You cannot touch a shadow, but a world without them is a hard world, and flat.

I didn’t stumble once on the rough cliff-top walk to the Harvest Fair. Now that I know it’s my hair that gives the world dimension and depth, I can manage without it. It’s knowing the rules, I think.

It’s as though you were standing in front of a mirror and tying a bow. If you know you’re moving in a mirror world, if you know everything runs right to left, back to front, why then, you know how to adjust. You know to move your fingers opposite the way your mind tells them to go. But if you don’t, you keep moving your fingers the wrong way and wonder why you can’t even make the simplest knot.

The fairgrounds began at a grassy square in front of the Cathedral. The ground was a mass of mud, but the business of the first day was done, and the ale was flowing as freely as the rain, and certainly nobody seemed to mind.

Smoky flares shone off canvas booths pitched along the Cathedral walls. “Penny a pitch! Penny a pitch!” called the barker at the coconut shy. “All sharp?” A peddler with a whetstone, his cart hung with knives and axe blades.

The noise and cheer filled me with a delicious anticipation. I looked for Finian and I did not look for Finian. The search itself was an event to savor. Here, smells of clove and nutmeg drifted from the spice stall. There, mounds of sugared almonds and candied cherries glistened beneath striped canvas. The stonecutter had set out a tray of cunningly carved animals. I lingered over a tiny quartz rooster, all swagger and strut.