The Folk Keeper (2 page)

“Do you tend the Folk well?” said His Lordship.

I nodded. The Rhysbridge Home could not have done better, with me as the new Folk Keeper. I was denied the chance to apprentice, as a boy would have, but still, I’ve done better than most. I have pluck, nerve, patience, and an instinct for charms of protection.

“I have the power of The Last Word,” I said.

There was a little silence. Not one in fifty Folk Keepers has that enormous power. “You have the power of The Last Word!”

I looked him in the eye, as you must do when you are lying. “I have that power.”

But I must tell the truth here, although I was happy to tell Lord Merton all the lies I could summon. If I lied in this Folk Record, I wouldn’t be able to trust it to give me an exact account of the activities of the Folk. I wouldn’t be able to examine their behavior and puzzle out their patterns — when they might rage out of control, how best to turn aside their anger.

The truth is this: I do not have the power of The Last Word. Ever since I turned into Corin, I can no longer put together words that scan and rhyme. Only those rhyming words, springing of themselves into the Folk Keeper’s mind, can extinguish the destructive power of the Folk. In The Last Word they sense a power greater than their own. But every rhyme that comes to me now has a hole in its middle, right where the heartbeat should be.

“You look like a boy,” said Lord Merton.

“I know I do.” Even at fifteen, I do not make a bad boy, all skin and bones and angles and awkwardnesses.

“You can choose to be raised as a gentleman,” said His Lordship. “You needn’t be a lady if you don’t like.”

“I won’t be a gentleman, either.” Even a gentleman may be without power. As a Folk Keeper, I reign over the Cellar. I am indispensable.

“But your father was a gentleman!”

“What gentleman would leave a baby outside the Foundling Home with only a blanket and her name and birthday written on a scrap of paper? Who was he, this gentleman?”

But I already knew what Lord Merton’s answer would be, that he was sworn not to reveal my parents’ identity. That’s always the way of it. No one wants to acknowledge a bastard child. But I was glad not to know. That way I could still imagine my mother was a magical creature, not some commonplace laundress with red hands. I could still explain my secret powers. Why I am never cold. Why my heart beats in harmony to some invisible clock. Why my hair grows two inches while I sleep. This last is inconvenient and hard to keep secret. But I learned not to tell. No one likes a child who may not be entirely human.

“Time is running out, Corinna. Come tell me, what’s the time?”

“Thirty-three minutes past four o’clock.”

“Come to Cliffsend as our Folk Keeper as well as one of us.” His voice was so soft I had to bend close to hear. But his grip on my wrist was still tight. I could not help but admire him, for he is strong in his soul, as I am.

“How many households would depend on me?”

“Conscientious to a fault!” Lord Merton made a sound that might have been a laugh if he’d been stronger. “Not households, but a vast estate. It’s not a simple matter of keeping the Folk from frightening the hens or spoiling the milk. Our Folk Keeper must make sure the Folk interfere with none of the business of the estate, from lambing to ploughing to sowing to harvesting. You would answer to both Lady Alicia, who will be mistress there, and to my cousin Edward, who will act as her steward.”

This was power beyond any I could have in Rhysbridge. A great estate that could not do without me! Impossible, then, ever to return to life as a drudge.

“So you will come?”

“I will think about it.” But I am going, of course.

“Time is running out. Say you will come! Tell Lady Alicia I promised you the position of Folk Keeper as well as a place at the table. Tell her I promised in the name of the Lady Rona. Remember that,
the Lady Rona.
Corinna, what’s the time?”

“Thirty-eight minutes past.”

He was running down quickly now, I could see it. Surely as an unwound clock, he was running out of life. I would have to fetch someone to cover the mirror against Soulsucker, which would be here soon.

“It’s very dark, now. What’s the time?” Lord Merton’s blue-tipped fingers fell from my wrist at last and lay curled in his palm.

“Thirty-nine minutes past.”

“The darkness is the worst I’ve ever seen.”

I watched him ebb away then, breathing still, but his mind overcome by darkness.
Got you!
I thought. Death had gotten him before he knew that he had gotten me, and it was still thirty-nine minutes past.

No one can tell a falsehood about Corinna Stonewall and remain unpunished. Matron should have known that. She should have known I’d take a fierce revenge. You have to. The world will otherwise use you shamefully.

I spent my last moments in Rhysbridge watching to see what might result of my revenge. I glanced back at the Home as I followed the velvet cloaks of Lady Alicia and Sir Edward through the yellow fog. Sir Edward’s Valet kept urging me on. He was scornful and splendid in striped crimson livery and powdered curls, but not even he could avoid the soot falling from the chimney pots, the mud, ankle deep. The crimson coach gleamed above the muddy world, and there was a black coach to go with it, with matching black horses. Lord Merton’s body would follow us to Cliffsend.

I slipped on the high carriage step; the Valet grasped the scruff of my jacket and tossed me in. His fingers were puffy, like dough.

“Clumsy!” He clicked his tongue.

It is true that I can trip over anything and nothing — a speck of dust, a patch of sunlight, an idea. I move through life like a person with one eye, through a landscape that looks flat, but is really tricked out with hidden depths and shallows. It didn’t used to be so, but no matter. I navigate the world well enough in my own way.

As we sat in the carriage, waiting to depart, Sir Edward and Lady Alicia wanted only to be talking of Lord Merton’s decision, to take me in not only as a family member, but also to appoint me as Folk Keeper. They were uneasy, and why not? Matron told them I don’t properly tend the Folk.

I let them assume I’d had a proper apprenticeship in the Foundling Home. They’ll never know I’d bribed one of the lads to teach me reading and writing. I did his chores for a year. Another lad I bribed to teach me all he knew about spells of protection. I was two years doing his chores. The rest I picked up by keeping my ears open and hanging about the wise women and the fortune-tellers at the Rhysbridge market.

Still, Lady Alicia and Sir Edward asked me questions about keeping the Folk that any child could answer. I replied as I gazed back toward the Home, waiting to see my revenge begin.

Yes, I know to feed the Folk once a day.

Yes, I know they eat only of and from animals: meat, eggs, milk. After all, those are the only things of the human world they have the magical power to harm without stirring from their dark Caverns. They can harm those, and any planted crops, rooted in the soil under which they live.

Yes, I know a Folk Keeper must pass as much time as possible in the Cellar, so when the Folk grow wild, they spend their anger on him rather than on the crops and livestock.

Yes, I know they grow more wild and dangerous on holy days, which is when it is most important to keep the Record. The Folk are ever fighting the power of our Saints.

It was Sir Edward, still all in black and white, who said, “But will you be prepared for their unpredictability, that they can make mischief even on ordinary days?”

I pointed to the circlet of nails I wear about my neck. Cold iron, an antidote to stone, an antidote to the strength the Folk draw from the rock all around them.

“I do not go unprotected.” I looked at my Folk Bag. Let them think it was brimful of charms instead of the rather ordinary items a Folk Keeper carries always: this Folk Record, and a bit of lead to write with; candles and a tinderbox, all wrapped in oilcloth against the Cellar’s damp. A separate muslin sack held a dozen bits of old bread and biscuit, and I go nowhere without my shears. Perhaps no other Folk Keeper has hair that grows two inches a night.

“But he should know of the very particular danger,” said Lady Alicia. Her maid was counting an extraordinary number of parcels and bandboxes, and I was glad of it, for it delayed our departure; I could still watch the Home.

“I already know the Folk of the rocky lands are especially strong and fierce,” I said.

“Do you know,” said Sir Edward, “that our last Folk Keeper, Old Francis, all but died of the Folk? It was before we left on this extraordinary journey.” He said
extraordinary
as though it were a curse. “I have been sick with worry about leaving the estate with no skilled Folk Keeper in charge.”

I shrugged. What of it? I was not afraid.

“Listen to Sir Edward,” said Lady Alicia. “He knows the ways of the estate better than anyone.”

“What shape are the Folk?” said Sir Edward.

I turned away from the window. “Everybody knows that not even a Folk Keeper can see them, as the Folk cannot bear the light!”

“Ah, but you can feel them. Old Francis felt them. It was weeks before we knew he’d live through the paralysis.
They are mostly mouth,
he said.
Wet mouth and teeth.
“”

“You only feel them,” I said, “if you’re weak enough to let them hurt you. Besides, I have words — words that rhyme and scan. They spring into my mind of themselves.”

Their astonishment was all I could have wanted. “The power of The Last Word!” said Lady Alicia, and Sir Edward said, “This is why Hartley thought the boy would do as Folk Keeper.”

“All original rhymes,” I added, to make sure they understood. “Never the same one twice.”

Lady Alicia’s maid had finished fussing, and the carriage began to rattle forward. I pressed my face to the window. Yes, there, my revenge was unfolding itself, starting at sixteen minutes past noon, with the butcher banging at Matron’s door.

I had told the merchants of our borough that I was leaving as Folk Keeper. That, at least, was true. But I also told them Matron had no mind to retain a new Folk Keeper, which was not true. The hens would fail to lay, I said, the butter fail to churn.

An eye for an eye,
or so the saying goes.

A lie for a lie,
or so my saying goes.

Vengeance. It is not always as delicious as you anticipate, but you must not flinch from it. Otherwise the Matrons of the world would rule us all.

Good-bye Cellar; good-bye Folk. Will the new Folk Keeper come sit with you and keep you content, as I did? Or will he leave your food just outside the Folk Door and slip away? How Matron will curse when the milk spoils.

Everyone else is afraid. Only I am powerful.

The scornful Valet will be sorry, too.

I write this in the courtyard of a country tavern. There are fresh, wet smells all around, distracting me from thinking through ways to avenge myself on him. I don’t think I ever truly breathed in Rhysbridge. The early light spreads over the wet cobblestones, blurring their edges and buttering them with gold.

Two days have put Rhysbridge far behind. We rattled north on the King’s Highway; all the other carriages pulled aside to let the black hearse by. Not everyone would be happy, as I am, to travel north, where the Folk are especially fierce. But although there’s less stone in the south, and the Folk are correspondingly milder, the southlands have their share of dangerous Otherfolk. I, for one, would not like to stumble over an elvish ring, or meet the Headless Trunk.

The rolling hills and tidy farms have already given way to lonely tracts of juniper and rocky outcroppings. We go at a terrific rate even on these country roads, and the shepherds draw their flocks aside to let us pass. By evening, all this will give way to the sea.

The flow of air along my cheek has taken on a predictable sea pattern. The breezes flow inland during the day, then return to the sea at night. No one else seems to notice, and I do not mention it. Perhaps it is another secret power.

The others are all still in the gloomy tavern, with its heavy beams and smoke-stained walls, while I am out, breathing in the wet. They are still eating no doubt — eating, eating, always eating — today a great breakfast of smoked meat and pickled eggs and bread and butter. A cup of ale for Sir Edward. He bears no signs of travel, not that one, always immaculate in black and white. It is his Valet who keeps him so.

Yes, the Valet. I will have to work out my vengeance for what happened this morning, at breakfast, when I ate only a bit of meat, then wrapped the rest in a scrap of oiled paper. It would travel well and please the Folk of Marblehaugh Park.

“Whatever are you doing?” said Sir Edward.

“Gathering provisions for the Folk.”

Such protests then! Sir Edward and Lady Alicia crying out that I must eat the meat myself! That Cook at Marblehaugh Park would give me all I need for the Folk! That I weigh no more than the scrap a dog might leave behind!

I still don’t know whether to believe them. “You don’t mean to say you
give
me food for the Folk!”

Lady Alicia seemed equally amazed. “You’ve been saving your food for the Folk, all these years?”

“That is the way of the Rhysbridge Home.”

“We’ll give you the same again for the Folk, and more,” said Sir Edward. “We, too, want the Folk content and mild.”

I dropped a bit of bread into my Folk Bag. There was an edge to Sir Edward’s voice now. “Do you mean to disobey? Eat the bread or leave it be!”