Franny Billingsley - The Folk Keeper

“I’ll carry it for you.”

“No other human can touch a Folk Keeper’s Bag!”

“I won’t look in the thing,” said Finian. “Come along!”

But I hugged the Bag to me, not arguing (if you don’t argue, you can’t give in), just looking about and smelling the salt and dead fish — wonderfully good together, at least in small doses.

Finally Finian laughed a little. “Perhaps I won’t be quite so bored with you about. I’ll go on ahead and give you a hand.”

I was dragged and bounced up the path behind Finian, setting off waterfalls of stone from the cliffs, but mere rivers of blood from my knees. A flock of gulls beat into the air with indignant cries.

“I’ll leave you to catch your breath,” said Finian, as I lay gasping on the cliff top. “It’s my turn now to fetch my things from the beach. Don’t move, else the Hill Hounds will get you! I’ll be back in a moment to collect my Conviction. You needn’t think I’ve forgotten.”

But he was a great deal more than a moment, and at first I picked bits of stone from my hands, then blew on my knees, and finally I rose to look behind me.

The Manor was as spectacular as the cliffs. Huge granite blocks of it stretched down the coast for quite as far as I wanted to walk. I wondered where the Cellar was; perhaps I could find a door. The park was astonishingly green and beautifully kept, as though the rugged landscape had been shaken out hard and laid down again as a carpet of grass.

There were plenty of windows, gray and flat in the waning light, but I saw no entrance to the Cellar. A long row of French doors caught my reflection just as a wild howling came from behind.

My feet exploded into a run before my mind could make sense of the howling. It was deep chested, savage, melancholy. The Hill Hounds, they were not just some jest of Finian’s!

My feet pounded now into the grass, now into the loose stones of a circular carriage drive. I’ve always despised the foolish hero of the Otherfolk stories who breaks the rules to look over his shoulder. But I did, just the same; I couldn’t not look behind, and the sight of a pack of muscular bodies was punishment enough. No ordinary dogs these, but Hill Hounds, cut from shades of dusk.

Face forward again, seeing a tree growing in the shelter of a wall. Even I could climb it, for like me, it was thin and stunted. One branch, two branches, then a yell, a tug at my breeches. I never felt the fall, but my head exploded with brilliant light.

“My Saints, it’s Corin!” I knew that voice. “Fall off, lads! Fall off!”

I found myself staring into a white moon caught in a web of branches.

A gray rain began to fall inside my head, then the world turned to a whirling wheel of gray. My last memory is of the gray shrinking to the size of a fist, to the size of a coin, then folding in on itself and the whole world turning to black.

February 13 — Saint Valentine’s Eve

I can sit up now without getting dizzy. The lump on my temple’s no bigger than a goose egg, and my brain no longer feels as though it’s been borrowed for a game of croquet. Tomorrow is a feast day, so I shall walk myself to the Cellar, the Cellar and the Folk. Mrs. Bains, who is my jailor (but says she is the housekeeper), has ordered me to stay in bed some days longer. But she doesn’t know Corinna Stonewall!

How improved I am from the night of the hounds, when I awoke to the taste of blood, my own small sea of water and salt. The infinite weight of my eyelids pressed me into darkness, but small sounds rose all around. The crunch of stone, the sound of striking flint, a chorus of soft, quick sighs.

“I warned Corin about the Hill Hounds.” It was Finian’s voice, but very strange, like a bead rattling down a metal cone into the shell of my ear. “I should also have told him they’re susceptible to the power of The Last Word.”

The Last Word? Could it work against the Hill Hounds? I tried to speak, but the furniture of my mind had all been rearranged, my words neatly folded and stored out of sight.

“He’s stirring!” said Sir Edward.

Yellow light swam through the tissue of my eyelids. I squinted them open.

Tall shadows stood behind the torchlight; panting shadows slid about their feet. “Silver eyes!” said Sir Edward. “He has silver eyes in the dark.”

“Corin!” said Finian as my eyes began to slide closed. “Don’t slip away again. Remember, you owe me a Conviction!”

“A what?” said Sir Edward.

“It’s our secret,” said Finian.

The moon still hung in the branches; loose stones pressed into my back. Everything was so very rocky here. The torchlight leaned closer; one of the shadows knelt and turned into white lace and black satin.

“At least they’ve not killed you!” said Sir Edward.

I found at last the place my words began. “I must tend to the Folk!”

“Don’t trouble yourself about the Folk,” said Finian.

“Never say that!” said Sir Edward.

The Finian shadow also knelt and turned itself into enormous fingers, which began very gently to feel my head.

“Where’s my Folk Bag?”

“I have it here.” Finian found the lump and hissed in sympathy. “Ouch! You’ll have a headache for a week. Why did you go walking about? I told you about the Hill Hounds.”

I smelled the salt spray in his hair. “The Last Word works against them?”

“You’ve been eavesdropping!” said Finian. “It’s actually a family secret for which I should charge you a Conviction. But I’ll give it to you free, as an apology for lingering so long on the beach. Yes, you can control our hounds with The Last Word, but mind you, they can be very fierce.”

“So can I,” I said, although it was hard to feel fierce on the long journey to the Manor. It comes back to me now as a jumble of pain sliced with a few vivid memories. A brisk, bossy voice saying Finian might carry me. A sickening surge as my head left the ground. Infinite tiny jolts over those infinite stones.

I bit at the inside of my mouth and squeezed my eyes shut, and all the while the owner of the bossy voice was urging Finian to be careful. “The boy weighs no more than a chicken, Mrs. Bains,” he said, irritated at last. “I shan’t drop him.”

There were more voices then, and the heat and light of many candles. I opened my eyes to a press of faces. Servants in powdered wigs, Sir Edward’s deep blue eyes, Finian’s wild-winged eyebrows. At the corners of his eyes were little lines from squinting. Mrs. Bains, not brisk and angular like her voice, but with a great white biscuit of a face, stuck with two black currants.

Someone poured something nasty in my mouth. I tried to spit it out, but a salt-spray hand wouldn’t let me. The stuff burned down my throat and set a fire in my head.

A sludge of time oozed by until Mrs. Bains tried to undress me. Oh, then I came to life again, shouting, biting, kicking, striking something too solid to be Mrs. Bains.

“The boy’s wild!” said Finian. “Let him be.” And somehow, there I was, fully dressed, between the starched and mangled sheets shouting, “I need my shears!” Was my hair growing? They mustn’t know it grows so fast.

“He’s wandering,” said Mrs. Bains. “I’ll bring him a sleeping draught.”

“I won’t sleep!” I cried, for it is only then my hair grows.

Finian wrapped my arms around my Folk Bag. “Everything you brought is safe here.”

“I still won’t sleep!”

I didn’t, either, although I could not quite stay awake. I was caught in a dim, cobwebbed place, my mind helpless against apprehension, fears breeding freely and multiplying.