Franny Billingsley - The Folk Keeper

I’ve written almost to the end of this Folk Record, begun so long ago, at Candlemas. I have reached the end of my human words and have nothing more to say.

September 25

The Sealfolk are calling me; I will join them soon. This is the first page of my new book, my new life. I love the heady feeling of putting words on paper, ink now, my own wet, black letters. A world of ink, and air to dry it, too. I shall never finish my story.

I can only try to keep up with myself, starting with last evening, when I stood on the beach, my Sealskin bundled in my arms. The wind was strong, trailing behind it a pale ribbon of geese. The sea skittered into whitecaps, my hair whipped round me as I dropped my cloak to the ground.

I peeled off Lady Corinna Merton in layers. Now overskirt and petticoat. Now under-petticoat and bodice. It never ends, this business of being a lady. I raised my shift over my head, feeling the salt air touch me, feeling newly alive, as though I’d been swaddled in cotton wool all my life and was just now beginning to breathe.

I stood there a long moment, wrapped in the salty twilight, then draped the Sealskin round my shoulders. It looked weary, ravaged, but still it fell exactly from shoulder to heel. I held it closed at the neck.

I was ready, toes pale as shells curling over the edge of the beach, the waves at high tide slapping me with wet. The sea frothed out before me; bits of sky shone through a tattered moon.

I closed my ears, shut myself into my own head. I could hear myself swallow then, hear the thud of my heels when I stepped back, then bounced forward to jump. I collapsed my lungs, leaving all air behind.

The seal-change did not overtake me at once. The weight of the Sealskin eased from my shoulders, but that was only the ordinary magic of the buoyant sea. When I looked back at myself, I was still all Corinna. I still had arms and legs, which I still had to kick to move through the water. I still had to hold the Sealskin at the neck; it drifted behind me like a cape.

The direction of the Seal Rock was built into my bones, unalterable, as perfect pitch might be built into another. I skimmed the pearl-light water, a mixture of moon and sea. My hand was a pale starfish, clearing a path for myself, the sea-light turning blue veins to green. Shooting-star fish arched before me.

I followed the descending slope of the seafloor, gliding over the scatter of rocks I’d often seen at low tide. But everything came alive underwater. The rockweed and wrack swelled into swaying gardens in the watery wind. The crabs had crept from hiding, and the delicate feet of sea urchins waved slowly about.

Deeper I sank, where the moonlight couldn’t follow. But the sea shrugged herself against me, and that brought light enough. There was a new pressure of water against cheek. Was the water heavier? Thicker? No, I was going faster than before.

Two starfish hands stretched before me: The Sealskin clung to my body of itself. Moments ago I’d been groping about, digging a tunnel through the water. But now my hands needed only to steer. In a flashing series of images, echoes of an unfamiliar shape met my streaming hair behind.

What did I see in this watery canvas? I saw the new alignment of my feet, no longer neat L s at my ankles but curving extensions of what had once been legs. I saw the fan-shaped spread of them, the fans moving rhythmically together and apart, shooting me in my own bright trajectory through the sea.

I painted a new path that angled sharply upward, broke through a skim of moonlight into air. The change had begun at my feet. There was the sweep of Corinna’s bluish skin from shoulder to thigh. But webbed flippers fused what could no longer be called ankles and smooth fur bound my legs above the knee.

What had been double was becoming single. The Sealskin still had the power to transform; not even fire could strip that away.

My slow underwater heart sprang into land speed as I watched with fascination, and a kind of horror. My Sealskin was taking me over. Silvered fur stretched, swallowing skin, binding thigh to thigh.

I glanced back to shore. A lantern shone from the cliff. Was Finian watching for me there? The Sealskin yawned over hip bones, sharp as knives. Once you thought being a Folk Keeper was your proper life, Finian had said. Was this what I wanted after all?

I pulled at the Sealskin. Such a relief: It peeled back easily. Should I let it take me over? As Finian had said, it needn’t be one over the other. I could always come back.

I hung in the wind-torn waves. The Sealskin crept up my side, wrapped round my middle. And then, when I was more seal than human . . .

My words vanished. I could no longer shape an image of inky wetness, spitting up pearls. I could no longer name Finian, couldn’t even pretend I didn’t love him.

An aching desolation overcame me. Gone was my new power of sculpting images with rhythm, welding rhythm to rhyme. Gone, too, was my newest power: saying those three words Finian had coaxed from me.

My hands moved of themselves, pulled at the Sealskin. I couldn’t go on before I knew I could retrieve my words. The seal-shape melted away, powerful muscles yielding to a pale belly. As my words came flooding back, so did a searing pain, fire in water.

The Sealskin clung fast to my thigh. I touched the spot; it had been burned there. I had the words now, I could tell my story even as it unfolded. The Sealskin could reverse the fusion of seal to human flesh, but not where it had been burned. The fire had seared all that away.

I wanted myself back. I tore at the Sealskin, ripping it from me, which ripped away Corinna, too. Raw flesh, oozing blood, my own faraway scream.

Five more burned patches showed on the seal part of me below. Perhaps the Sealfolk shrugged their Sealskins from them as a dog shakes water. But to get mine off, I needed to rip at it, which would be impossible once the seal-change took over my hands. If I became a Sealmaiden, I’d stay a Sealmaiden. The Sealskin was no longer a two-way door between land and water.

Quick! The Sealskin peeled away to the next burned patch. I closed my ears against my screams. Now, three more patches, now two. Thank the Saints I had my words. I could name the bitter taste rising from my stomach, describe the arc of pain.

A final savage tearing, a final sickening surrender. My Sealskin floated free. On the water, now in the water, the sea pulling it into herself.

The waves slapped at me. I was so weary. It was hard not to surrender, to follow my Sealskin into the unlighted regions.

The waves smashed at me, and only now I noticed: I had brewed my own little tempest. Three drops of Sealfolk blood. A storm, with the Manor so far away, and me in such a fire of pain!

I clung to the waves, weeping. Then all at once, silvery heads rose all around. I had called the Sealfolk to me. Or perhaps they’d come of themselves, as they had the last time I’d raised a storm.

“I want to go home!” I opened my arms. The smallest of them swam into my embrace, and together, we all sank beneath the churning world.

We left the storm behind. The sea whispered and murmured against me, the Sealfolk speeded me home. It was humbling and comforting to be one tiny piece of this intense life. So one-sided, Finian had said. He was right. I needn’t become a Sealmaiden to have a life with the sea. I was a part of it already, and best of all, I could still have my own words.

My mother went mad when her Sealskin was destroyed. She turned her back forever on the sea. She may never have known her powers, that the sea was open to her still. But I won’t go mad; I’ll make the sea my second home. This is how we are different.