The Folk Keeper (7 page)

Finian handed me a jar of amber beads. I tossed one in the sea. “For smooth sailing,” I said as Finian cast off.

He smiled at me. “May the Sealfolk swim unharmed!”

My voice came as an echo. “May the Sealfolk swim unharmed!”

Finian peeled off his spectacles. “I don’t need these out here. I’m good at distance. It’s being closed up in that damnable Manor I hate, where I’m trapped, expected to learn the ways of a lord. Out here is the only place you can be free.”

“For you, perhaps,” I said. “For me, it’s the Cellar.”

“That’s what the Lady Rona thought, too. But she was mad. Perhaps you’ve forgotten about this.” Finian handed me the tiller and the sheet that walks the sail through the wind.

“I never forget.” Then I, Corinna Stonewall, showed him how I could coax the wind to lean its powerful shoulder against our boat, and the sea needed no coaxing to lift us from below. Off skimmed
The Lady Rona
between the press of wind and water.

“And on your second time out!” said Finian.

“I told you, I don’t forget.”

We drew quickly away from the cliffs. Finian pointed out a thumbprint of civilization on the Cliffsend coast, not more than an hour’s walk from the Manor. A tumble of slate-roofed cottages and a crazy-quilt cathedral, all red and yellow stone. “Firth Landing,” he said. “You’ll go there in August for the Harvest Fair.”

“I can’t leave my Cellar,” I said.

“Everyone goes,” said Finian.

But I am not everyone.

“You are stubborn, Corin.” Finian shook his head. “So attached to that Cellar of yours you miss what’s right before your nose. What would be so bad if you gave it up, became a gentleman?”

“Then,” I said, “I’d be in the position of one Finian Hawthorne.
Sir
Finian Hawthorne.”

“Didn’t I say I’d box your ears if you call me
Sir.
Retract it now, and you shall be spared grievous bodily harm.” As usual, Finian was half laughing, but this time, no more than half. I felt suddenly sorry for him. It is a peculiar feeling; I do not care for it.

“But I can’t take it back,” I said. “That
Sir
is attached to your name, and to you. It means that the mistress of Marblehaugh Park may forbid you to do as you like with your life. Sir Edward, too.”

“You are difficult to argue with, Corin, but still I say you shall come to the Harvest Fair.”

“Still I say I will not!”

Finian laughed suddenly. “You are just like your name, stubborn, a stone wall.”

It is true, and not merely by chance. I was named from the scrap of paper found upon me as an infant.
Corinna,
it said, but gave no second name.
Stonewall
was given me one long-ago day, in one of those endless foundling homes, when I refused to boil the soiled linens. Why should I — I who wanted so much to learn to read and write? But that privilege was granted only the most promising boys.

The Matron there called me
stubborn!
and whipped me with a leather strap, and ever after I was known as Corinna Stonewall.

“What are you thinking?” said Finian.

I couldn’t tell him. Finian wouldn’t like the way I avenged myself for that whipping . . . Now Corinna, you must not fall into the trap of caring what Finian likes, or anybody else.

“I have a Conviction for you,” I said at last.

“You first, this time,” said Finian. “I have to know it’s worth a Secret.”

I was silent a long time.

“You can trust me. Fair’s fair. Until now I’ve been giving away my Secrets for free.”

I’d worked out my Conviction, but the words were hard to say. It was too soft for my taste; it wanted backbone. “I sat on the cliffs last night. The tide was low and steam rose from the water.”

“Sea smoke,” said Finian.

“The water seemed suddenly marvelous, now it can be smoke, now ice, now liquid. Nothing lost, only rearranged.” I’d thought of how — all unknowing — I’d imitated it, turning Corinna into Corin, nothing lost, just a little surface rearrangement.

“I plucked my Conviction for you from the sea. Do as the water does. Hide what you’re doing. Hide even what you are. Then no one can stop you.”

“Are you speaking of your own secrets?” said Finian.

“I don’t have any secrets!”

“Of course not,” said Finian. I hate it when he speaks so gently. A person might turn to mush inside and pour away. But not I, not Corinna Stonewall.

“My Conviction, is it acceptable?”

“It is a good Conviction,” said Finian. “The Secret is yours.”

“Who is buried under the headstone under the chapel eaves?”

“Still looking for friends in the churchyard?” said Finian. “That was the Lady Rona’s child.”

“A child! What happened?”

Finian shrugged. “Babies die, mothers die, and often in childbed, which was the case here.”

“But there’s no name.”

“It died unbaptized,” said Finian, “which is why the baby’s buried apart from the mother, by the chapel. The vicar hoped the rain falling from the eaves onto the grave might turn holy enough to baptize the baby instead.”

And so now I have a jar of amber beads, and my Secret, too. The baby was also a descendant of the owners of Marblehaugh Park, and I will take earth from its grave and try it against the Folk. But what if it fails to protect me? Or what if I fail to protect the estate? For the first time, I am afraid.

I have been pinched, nothing worse.

The Folk have eaten:

Five dozen salted kippers

Two crates of dried beef.

And what has Corinna eaten?

I woke last night, famished. I had been dreaming of water shot with silver bodies. I pulled on my clothes as though in a dream, tiptoed down the marble stairs, and across the sodden grass.

It was high tide, and waves lapped at the edge of the beach. I plunged my hand into the beating water, snatched at a bright streak. The fish thrashed between my fingers. I did not hesitate. I broke its neck, and before its jellied eye grew dim, I bit into the sweet and living flesh.

I felt the Storms coming this morning, a gathering of tension, the air winding itself up for a secret celebration. The petrels skimmed the water in black clouds, harbingers of those to come.

It hit us tonight at supper. A wave of water rattled the glass as lightning staggered from the skies. It seemed alive, the storm, speaking with a voice of its own. I could love this fearsome weather if the Folk did not also grow fierce.

“It’s started again,” said Lady Alicia.

“My tender nerves!” cried Finian, clasping his hands to his breast. “Already I can’t stand it.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Sir Edward.

“There’s nothing silly about the Storms,” said Finian, but he was speaking to me rather than to Sir Edward. “Don’t go out, Corin. The cottagers tether their hens against the wind. You’re such a little thing; we should tether you as well.”

“Isn’t he a bit bigger?” said Lady Alicia. “I’d swear he’s grown since he first came.”

“Boys will grow,” said Sir Edward, shrugging. “What’s your sacrifice to be, Corin?”

“Sacrifice?”

“Sacrifice,” he said, drumming his fingers on the table. “Only a live sacrifice will do for the Folk during the Storms.”

“The Folk don’t eat living creatures!”

“And you call yourself a Folk Keeper!” Sir Edward slapped his palm on the table. “Maybe those pallid creatures you call the Folk in Rhysbridge are contented with a few crumbs. But not the Folk of Marblehaugh Park!”

“I know the Folk.” But did I know them well enough? Bribing a lad or two for information, listening in on conversations of charms and spells. What had I missed, picking up scraps of knowledge about the Folk as I had?

Sir Edward echoed my thoughts. “You know everything about the Folk, do you? After caring for a mere hundred households in Rhysbridge!” He peeled his hand from the table. The moist outline of his palm melted from the polished wood.

“One hundred twenty-eight households,” I said.

“An estate is a far greater thing than a handful of city tradesmen and their scrawny chickens. Think what damage the Folk could do to us — blight our spring crop; raise blisters on the pigs; sour the wine we’ve bottled for the Harvest Fair.”

Sir Edward knew nothing of the Folk. “They can’t sour the wine,” I said. “It’s neither meat nor egg nor . . .”

“Before that happens,” said Sir Edward, “I’ll find myself another Folk Keeper.” Lightning flashed through the window and wrapped itself around his head.

Old Francis stood behind me. “I’ve had enough,” I said. “You may take my plate.”

That is all I said. It is best not to let your enemy know your anger. Vengeance, my mind was full of it. Sir Edward loved the estate best of all, but I could not destroy that. My place depended on it.

I trailed after the others to the Music Room, stretching my lips agreeably as they laughed at the hounds, at fierce Liquorice, so terrified of the Storms he tried to squeeze beneath a sofa. He fit only up to his red ears, and there he lay, sides heaving, pretending all of him was hidden.

Taffy was undisturbed by the thunder. I felt rather smug (he belongs to me more than anyone, following me everywhere as he does) until I realized he is so deaf he doesn’t hear it much.

The Storms brought out the worst in everyone, and a good thing too, for it was Finian, gibing slyly at Sir Edward, who found my revenge for me.

“Just the right night for a moonlight sail, eh, Corin?” he said, leaning over the dessert tray and arranging twenty or thirty cakes on his hand.

“Won’t you ever stop this useless playing around with boats!” said Sir Edward.

“That’s all it is,” said Finian gently, but he was watching Sir Edward closely. “Just playing.”

“Why couldn’t you play about with something more fitting?” Lightning struck, illuminating the world fiercely and briefly, catching every leaf and blade of grass in its white eye. “Your stepfather would have been proud to see you add a trophy to our collection. Both he and I have our prizes. Mine, that great pelt from the black jungle beast. Hartley, that silvery one.”

Sir Edward was speaking almost calmly now, his irritation draining away into small talk. “Hartley took a number of silvery ones over the years, mostly smaller, as I recall. I wonder what became of them?”

Finian threw a coal on the fire. “How thoughtless of His Lordship to marry my mother.”

He spoke lightly, but a thread of malice ran beneath his voice, puckering it slightly in hidden places. “Neither she nor I knows how to run the estate, which it seems you must do by tacking dead things to the walls. A pity we ousted you from your inheritance, Edward. I know you were counting on it.”

Sir Edward sprang to his feet, lithe and muscular as a cat — finicky as one, too, in his black and white satin. Finian shook the cakes from his hand and very calmly took off his spectacles.

The bear against the cat. I knew which of them would win.

“For shame, gentlemen!” cried Lady Alicia, spoiling all the fun. Finian bowed coldly to Sir Edward, and I left without a word. I had waited too long to tend the Folk. My revenge would have to wait.

I slipped past Cook in the Kitchens, who was fighting a lump of dough and raging at the wind. “Will it never be still!”

I threaded myself through the vegetable gardens and the tangle of out-buildings, hiding from the weather behind the stables, the brewery, the dairy. But on the exposed seaward side, the wind was a fierce thing, almost alive. It flattened me against the wall with an invisible thumb, but I beat at it with my head and shoulders until it gave way. Nothing was going to keep me from the churchyard, and the wind at last understood.

The latch on the churchyard gate stuck fast. My hands do not grow stiff with cold, but they are clumsy. I finally gave up and scaled the fence, ripping my jacket on a picket. The fingers of the storm scribbled a vast wild portrait on the sky, while through a window, a single candle burned. It was Finian, his hair very red in the glow.

I scooped a handful of wet earth from His Lordship’s grave. “To ward off the Folk.” The Lady Rona’s grave was not so easy, as the grasses and lichens wove the mold fast into itself. But if the wind couldn’t turn me aside, neither could mere grass. I scrabbled about and gathered another handful of earth, much of it under my fingernails.

Last, to the tiny headstone. I felt briefly sorry for the baby, set apart to receive the drippings of water from the chapel eaves. But maybe she’s like me: I don’t mind a little wet.

Before I left, I stood by the stone wall that surrounds the shaft opening into the Caverns. Eight feet around perhaps, and tall as I am. I tried to toss my words inside, where they might fall into the ears of the Folk — if they have ears.

“I’m ready for you!”

But I wasn’t sure.

I was less sure still when I sat in the Cellar, concentric rings of salt, bread, and churchyard mold rippling out around me. I felt the hum of energy behind the Door, closed my eyes, and snuffed the candle.

The Folk first crackled over the roasted lambs — seven of them! — silently picking them clean, then absorbed the butter and the sardines. Only then did they turn their hollow energy my way.

When was it they paused? At the ring of churchyard mold? At the crosswise scissors? I only know that bare seconds before they would have touched me, the energy sank back into itself and retreated.

Sir Edward was wrong: The Folk are mild as lambs during the Storms.