The Folk Keeper (11 page)

I made for the Seal Rock in the mysterious way a pigeon heads for home. But I wasn’t even halfway there before the giant palm of one of those waves slapped at the
Windcuffer.
I slammed into the mast, and precious seconds passed before I could breathe again, before I realized that the water lapping about my ankles hadn’t come from the sea and crashing waves.

I pressed my hand to the floor. My finger fit comfortably into a crack between the boards. How did the flooring come to be damaged? The sea below was filling up the
Windcuffer
faster than the sky from above.

The flooring gave way. The waves were on it in a second, biting and tearing at it, pulling it apart with frothy fingers.

I watched the sea gradually merging with the
Windcuffer,
and the
Windcuffer
gradually merging with the sea. The boat I’d helped bring to life fell to bits about me, and then I hardly cared that I also merged with the water, now pounded beneath as a wave crested, now tossed to the surface by some boiling power beneath.

Pictures flitted through my head like dreams. White water swallowing a bit of planking, dense silver needles of rain. A hand lying against silvered fur. My hand, and my arms, too, wrapped about a round neck, my chest pressed close to a sleek back. These were no common seals ringed round me, with their great silver heads and deep human eyes.

I closed my own eyes. “May our boat be blessed.” Smashing water is nothing to the Sealfolk. We ran effortlessly with the waves, riding them easily as foam.
Boom
and
Hiss,
went the waves.
Boom
and
Hiss.
I was all but one with the sea. And Finian, how he would love this. Where was he?

Boom
and
Hiss.

Was he alive?

As we entered the cove, the song of the waves turned into a steady crashing, and there were human voices, too, calling my name. The storm had lost heart, content just to spit the waves about. I could stand alone; the water came to my chest.

Behind me, the Sealfolk were already racing out to sea. “Come back!” But it was too late.

“Corin!”

My head snapped forward. It was Finian — Finian! — hurrying over the scatter of low-tide rocks, now plunging through the water toward me.

“You idiot!” he cried. “Taking the
Windcuffer
into that storm!”

“You’re alive!” I did not shout as he had, but he heard me nonetheless.

“Imagine that!” he said. “Unlike you, I came back the moment the storm began. And now the
Windcuffer’s
gone.”

“The Sealfolk brought me back.” I could not stop thinking of it.

“I must have called them,” said Finian. “
Seven tears to call the Sealfolk.
I wept enough tears to call dozens.”

“You can’t call the Sealfolk at low tide.”

Then Sir Edward stood beside us, and I had to gulp back the words that were clamoring to leap from my mouth.
Why did you leave me behind?

“You must hurry, Corin,” said Sir Edward. “One of the calves has taken ill, and some of the cheeses have melted into pools of whey. The Folk are angry, and I fear for my crops.”

“Give Corin a chance to draw his breath!” said Finian.

But for once, I agreed with Sir Edward. The Folk Keeper must hurry when the Folk grow wild. So I said only to Finian, “I’m sorry about the
Windcuffer.
”

I don’t remember scaling the cliff. Sir Edward might have helped me, clumsy again as I am. I do remember the endless pounding of my feet across the grass, thinking strange disjointed thoughts. How could the Folk have grown wild when the Feast of the Keeper wasn’t until tomorrow? How could the grass be dry when everything else had been so wet? Then I was pounding up marble steps and down marble corridors to seize my Folk Bag. I had no time to examine it, but I am careful and I knew it held everything it should: my necklet of nails and my writing lead, and then — all wrapped in oilcloth against the Cellar’s damp — this Folk Record and my tinderbox and candles. I had no time to gather bread or salt or churchyard mold. But I could not go without an offering of food. Quick: to the Kitchens.

The Cellar was very quiet. I laid down my offering and edged open the Folk Door. It felt quiet enough, but perhaps the Folk had spent all their wild energy on the calf and the cheeses.

For perhaps the first time, I do not want to be here. I find myself trapped; I see no way out. I’m afraid I may fail with the Folk. I’m afraid the Folk may injure me. But I am also afraid to reveal my secret, ask to become a lady, as Lord Merton had originally intended. Even if Sir Edward didn’t turn me away, I might spend my life waiting on one pier or another. I refuse to wait, and worry, and indulge myself in all the peculiar feelings most people are so fond of. I refuse!

Why did Finian leave me waiting?

Two hours have passed while I’ve been writing. There is still no sign of the Folk. Could Sir Edward be wrong?

But while a calf might sicken of itself, it can be no natural thing that the cheeses melted into whey.

For now, however, the Folk are quiet, and I am back in the dark where I belong.

I said I belong in the dark and the deep, and now my words are coming back, mocking me. But how could I have known? My own deep darkness — it has nothing to do with the Cellar. Yet look where I am, on this, the Feast of the Keeper!

Ah, Corinna, stop. Just be thankful you have your Folk Bag, and that your Folk Record is still dry because it was properly wrapped in oilcloth, and that you have enough light to write in it, too. At least you can talk to yourself.

It was an entire lifetime ago when I sat in the Cellar yesterday, a whole world ago when the Cellar door opened and there came soft footsteps, and a light. I did not even look up when the footsteps stood before me; I could see well enough who it was by the white silk stockings and black rosettes on his shoes.

“Finian has taken ill again,” said Sir Edward. “Very ill. We’re all gathered in the churchyard to pray.”

I rose without a word.

“Quietly now through the Manor,” said Sir Edward. “We must do nothing to disturb Finian.”

The night was warmer than I’d expected, the graveyard dark and still. “The others are all so quiet,” I whispered.

“They are praying.”

I paused at the gate. “They are not even breathing.”

“Trust you to notice, you with that hearing of yours.”

I should have heeded the little prickle that came to the back of my neck, but would it have done any good? Sir Edward was walking me to the tiny grave under the chapel eaves, and his grip was very tight at my elbow.

“There is no one here.” I paused, smelling recently turned earth, rotting wood, and mildew. “You disturbed the baby’s grave!”

A taste like spoiled apples rose in my throat, and the details of that scene froze themselves in memory. Me, looking down, seeing an ivy-covered mound, my worn boots, Sir Edward’s black rosettes. It was a quarter past one.

“No one but you will notice,” he said. “No one comes here much, and I’ve covered the raw earth with leaves and ivy.”

Something was terribly wrong, but perhaps something was also terribly right. “Finian is not really ill, is he?”

“He’s well enough to be looking for you in Firth Landing, making sure you haven’t stolen aboard the Mainland ferry. I told him you’d crept away from the Cellar. He didn’t even stop to look for you there, just went searching. And as you were to be found nowhere on the estate, what would he conclude but that you’d run away?”

“I didn’t run away!”

Sir Edward shrugged. “Finian seemed to think he might even be responsible. Half the serving staff is scattered about Cliffsend, looking for you. The Manor won’t be this empty again until the Harvest Fair, when everyone down to the scullery maid takes a three-day holiday.”

“Liar! I never left the Cellar.”

“I must make you understand.” He pressed at my shoulder, I sank to my knees. His candle shone on the tiny gravestone.

I saw what I’d not before realized. “My birthday!”

A terrible darkness poured itself into my mind; my muscles gathered of themselves to leap away, but Sir Edward snatched me from the air as though I were a sparrow and tossed me onto the grave.

“Damn!” He pressed his finger to my collar-bone, pinning me in place. “My candle has gone out. No screaming, or I shall have to stop you, like this.”

He squeezed my throat, trapping the old air inside. I struggled beneath his hand. Everyone thinks breathing in is so important; no one thinks about breathing out.

Sir Edward relaxed his grip. “You’ll not try again, will you?”

I shook my head, whispered, “What do you want?”

“I want to know what Finian knows. He sees too much, that boy; he’s made more trouble for me than I care to admit.”

“What Finian knows?” I repeated stupidly.

“Does he know who your mother is?”

“My mother?”

“Ah!” said Sir Edward, and laughed. He turned my head on its pillow of dirt. Directly ahead lay the Lady Rona’s weathered headstone.

Another frozen moment: a dimpled moon, an ivory cheek, the smell of fresh-turned rot. Twenty-seven minutes past one.

My mother. I might have denied it, but etched into my memory was the inscription on the gravestone.
Midsummer Eve.
A holiday never celebrated on the Mainland, one I’d never connected with my birthday.

“But the baby died at birth,” I whispered at last.

“So you didn’t know!” said Sir Edward, and his fingers relaxed on my throat. “Then perhaps Finian hasn’t worked out the real story for himself. I only have just today. Hartley tricked me into believing the baby died, just as he always tricked me. Tell me this: Did Finian know about the Lady Rona, know she was a Sealmaiden? Which means, of course, that you are, too.”

Bolts of lightning might have struck my temples. I was dizzy, my thoughts buzzing uselessly, beads on a vibrating string. “I’m no Sealmaiden!” The mere sound of it is soft and tender. Not like me.

“It’s the old story,” said Sir Edward. “Your father out for a moonlight sail. Your mother dancing on the Seal Rock. He fell in love with her, stole her Sealskin, insisted she marry him, live on land. What could she do? Without her Sealskin she couldn’t return to the sea. Perhaps you can guess at the rest. Misery, jealousy, madness, and death.”

“What makes you think I’m her daughter?”

“You gave yourself away by calling up that storm.”

“Calling up the storm?” But already I realized what I had done. The sea cared nothing for my pact. It cared only for my blood.
Three drops of Sealfolk blood to call up a storm.

To think that I had almost killed Finian! Really, I might have, with my casual vengeance.
Finian.
I wanted to say his name again and again, place him firmly on the earth, where he was usually solid enough.
Finian!
said my mind, but I forced myself to attend to Sir Edward.

“I’m a careful man,” he said. “I knew you must be of the Sealfolk, but I couldn’t be sure you were Rona’s daughter until I opened the grave. There are no little bones in that coffin. The story of your death was just that, a story Hartley gave out.”

“I refuse to be his daughter!” Not that hateful man with the dead metal eyes.

“You refuse him just as he refused you. He was entranced by your mother, but you were not an attractive baby, and he must have come a little to his senses. A Merton can’t have one of the Sealfolk as his heir. It would be so like him to give out that you’d died, but instead have you sent away where he could keep track of you from afar.”

“Knowing about me, his baby, all those years?” I hated Lord Merton more than ever. “Having the Matrons inform him when I was moved from Home to Home?” I’d fooled him once, though. He hadn’t known I’d become Corin. He’d known Corinna was sent to the Rhysbridge Home, but no one had known to tell him she’d turned into a boy.

“How he loved to control people,” said Sir Edward. “I could never escape it. Now he’d dangle the Manor in front of my nose.
You shall inherit it,
he’d say. Now he’d say he rather thought he’d get married again.
My bride shall take the estate, and her son after her.
Perhaps he fetched you back to Cliffsend because he could not bear to lose control of you, even when he was dead.”

“But he couldn’t bear to let me inherit, either?”

Sir Edward shook his head. “Although as between you and Finian, there’s little to choose.”

Oh, I understood him then. The estate was Sir Edward’s blood, his life, but as Lord Merton’s daughter, I stood in his way. So did Lady Alicia and Finian.

“I mean to marry Alicia,” said Sir Edward. “She will have me, I am almost sure, if that son of hers doesn’t stick his nose where it’s not wanted. And then I shall be master of Marblehaugh Park by marriage, not by blood. Wouldn’t Hartley be surprised!”

He seized the front of my shirt and pulled me to my feet. What a long walk that was, Sir Edward’s fingers wrapped round the back of my neck, steering me past the vacant eyes of the chapel Saints to the wall circling the shaft into the Caverns.

“You mean to put me in there!”

“We shall get through the Feast of the Keeper very well,” said Sir Edward. “I have every expectation of a good harvest with the Folk quiet and content from their sacrifice.”

“Me, as sacrifice!” But I couldn’t be afraid of that, when first I had to be afraid of dying as I fell into the Caverns. “You won’t have a live sacrifice.”