The Folk Keeper (16 page)

The world seemed unbearably sad. I suppose your heart can never really break, but I felt as though mine must have. I banged at my heart, which alarmed Mrs. Bains, less on account of my heart than my hand, which was wrapped in gauze and began to hurt. This new pain was comforting, taking the edge off the other.

Finian had to leave for me to realize I loved him. I loved him and he had gone away and soon I would try to leave, too, to join the Sealfolk. Even for Finian, I could not confine myself to land. My heart was with him, my heart was with the sea, and I knew which I would choose.

“I wish I were dead!” I said, which was foolish, as I had no intention of dying. But people say foolish things all the time. Why shouldn’t I?

“You’re not to die!” said Mrs. Bains sharply, and snatched the black satin from the mirror. “We won’t be needing this now.”

My reflection surprised me. There were no more secrets. I was all Corinna, in a nightdress of ivory silk and a padded satin bed jacket, hair falling like water all about. With such a monstrous sleep, my hair should have grown to fill the room, but it has wearied of growing and stopped at a mere four feet.

“Very well,” I said meekly. “I won’t die.”

Mrs. Bains sat beside me and ran her fingers through my hair. “Just like your mother’s,” she said. “I used to brush it for her, poor dear.”

“I agree not to die,” I said. “But I’ll never agree to wear my hair up, like a lady.”

But I had misread her thought. “Never!” she said. “I know what it was to your mother, loose like that. Oh, don’t think I don’t know what your hair is to you, being of the Sealfolk. How without it you lose your balance. How after your twelfth birthday it becomes another set of eyes.”

“After your twelfth birthday?” I said.

“Isn’t that the way of it, that you grow into the power of your hair?”

But I wouldn’t know. I cut my hair before I turned twelve. No wonder its powers came as a surprise.

“And it gives you the power of The Last Word,” I said.

“Your mother said nothing about that.”

But she must have had that power, staying as she did in the Cellar. Otherwise, how could she have escaped harm? The Last Word: It is yet another gift from my mother.

I awoke this morning with a broken heart, which broke again after Mrs. Bains showed me my Sealskin.

I’d had a sudden piercing hope: If I could heal, perhaps my Sealskin could, too. After all, it had grown as I had grown.

But after I bullied Mrs. Bains to hold the Sealskin up before me, I had to turn my face away.

“We want you here with us, My Lady,” said Mrs. Bains, as though that might console me. “This is where you belong.” Then, seized with inspiration, “The autumn Storms will be upon us soon. What will we do then, with no Folk Keeper?”

But she had to admit that for now the Folk are quiet. Still smarting, perhaps, from the lash of The Last Word.

“Where is Taffy?” I said suddenly.

Mrs. Bains had to think. She didn’t know.

No one knew. No one has seen him for a long time.

It will be better for the pain if I walk the corridors.

Taffy was in the first place I looked.

I insisted on going alone, although they all said the Valet should help me on the Cellar stairs. I have a surprising companion, however: Liquorice. Poor hounds, I pity them, adrift in a world without Sir Edward.

No Folk Keeper ever looked as I did, green velvet skirts dusting the stone, lace very white by candlelight. Mrs. Bains has tried to make me into a proper lady, and for now I have submitted, given in to petticoats and shifts, to velvets and brocades. I was Corin for long enough. I shall see who else I might be.

I paused at the entrance to the inner Cellar. Damp seeped through my embroidered slippers. The smell came to me first, all but forgotten from the Caverns. Damp bone, with a whiff of decay. I closed my eyes.

I closed my eyes, but I couldn’t escape the picture that tangled with my hair. I couldn’t escape the image of the skeleton — if you could call it so. The bones were mostly splinters now, crushed by wild, wet mouths. Taffy had been old and brittle. Old Francis, at least, had kept his form, his mournful, bony smile. But there was not enough left of Taffy for that. Perhaps just a slice in the air where his smile had once been.

Folk, consider yourselves warned: I’ll stand for no damage during these Storms. You’ve already had your sacrifice, and if you grow wild, you will hear from me!

I buried him in the churchyard. The headstone marking baby Corinna’s grave had been removed; it was easy to dig the loose mold. I eased Taffy into the earth, and although it was impossible to rearrange him, I still take comfort in my last picture of his bones, in the way he burst the darkness in a brilliant constellation of himself.

Something better than stone marks his grave. He lies under dozens of amber beads, all glowing in the cool autumn sun.

I was looking the wrong way when they arrived at last.

I sat on the cliffs with Liquorice tonight, clutching at the heather, for the wind was growing stronger, blowing in all directions, and always in my face. Liquorice and I realized in the same moment they were coming up behind us. But I grew stony still, while he leapt to his feet and stood wagging the tip of his tail.

“She pretends she doesn’t notice us!” said Finian.

I had to turn around then, and wag my own tail, and maybe even smile, which I did not feel like at all.

“Don’t get up,” said Lady Alicia, sinking down beside me. “You have the best seat in all of Marblehaugh Park.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek.

“It’s all very well for two ladies to embrace,” said Finian. “But what’s a poor gentlemen to do?”

“You could shake her hand,” said Lady Alicia.

“I’d rather take it.” This he did, very gently, studying my palm, the blistered redness now puckering to scars. “And you’ve transformed again! Don’t make me work so hard to recognize you.”

“I hardly recognize myself.” I thought of the stranger in my mirror tonight, brocade skirts shot with pewter threads, stiff silver pleats at the bodice, which suddenly seemed cut too low. “You have new spectacles.”

“Yes, someone broke mine.”

“You look like the mistress of Marblehaugh Park.” Lady Alicia was both more beautiful than I remembered, and more worn. I could almost believe now she was the mother of a grown son.

“You shall be mistress here, not me,” I said.

“Help me, Mother,” said Finian. “Tell her she can’t go.”

“I will do no such thing,” said Lady Alicia.

“Then tell her we have a proposal. We do have a proposal for her, don’t we, Mother?”

“That’s one way of putting it.” Lady Alicia set a black velvet box on my lap. “But Finian must do the proposing.”

“Open it!” said Finian. “Maybe it will propose by itself.”

It opened with a little snap. Inside lay a band of opals and emeralds, the colors of the sea. I tipped it into the smooth palm of my right hand.

Waves slapped at the cliffs below, somewhere a curlew cried.

“This is where I leave.” Lady Alicia rose. “Finian, you shall have to fend for yourself.”

“Deserted by my own mother?” Finian laid his hand over mine, trapping the ring between our two palms. “This will come out all wrong, as I can never manage to be quite serious, but here it is: I want to marry you!”

He shook his head and laughed. “No, this is where I should start: I love you. I love you with your stubbornness and conviction and eye for small beauties; and now that you have the power of The Last Word . . . Well, I’m glad I’m not one of the hounds!”

How could I answer that! Finian sighed. “Not very romantic, I suppose.”

“I like your sort of romance,” I said slowly. “I couldn’t do with the on-your-knees-in-the-moonlight kind. But it’s difficult to speak of love. I haven’t the habit; I’ve gone my whole life without.”

“Three words,” he said. “Try it. The pain will only last a moment.”

That Finian! He could always make me smile. This time, I even let it show on my face.

“I love you.”

Finian took a deep breath. “So you will stay?”

How could I explain? “Remember how it was when you were forbidden to be building ships or thinking of a life with the sea? I have a life with the sea, too, but you’d have me confined to land by a promise of love, or marriage?”

“Why does it have to be one over the other?” said Finian. “Live in the sea if you like, only come back again. I’d wait for you, every evening.”

I shook my head. “A Sealmaiden lives in the sea; that is her proper life.”

“You don’t know that, Corinna. Once you were convinced that being a Folk Keeper was your proper life. You’re so one-sided, not even considering the idea.”

“You said you like me stubborn.”

“So I did.” Then, very irritated, “You won’t miss me?”

“I will. But if I stayed, I’d miss myself more.”

Finian’s hand still lay across mine. I drew mine away. Our hands were pressed so tight together, the ring left twin half-moon smiles on my palm.

He closed his fingers around it. “When do you leave?”

“After the Storms. I’ll see the Folk make no mischief.”

“At least a week, then,” said Finian.

“The Storms are coming early, tomorrow perhaps.”

Finian shook his head, but I know what I know, for my eyes are fierce and bright and my hair can see the shadow of the wind.

I’ve sprung another leak. My paper is wet and the lead is smudging. But a few more drops of salt won’t make a bit of difference to the sea. The cry of a tin whistle drifts through the night. Play all the sad songs you like, Finian. I’ll never change my mind.

These may be the last words I ever write. I am on the cliffs, halfway to the sea. Liquorice senses something is not as usual. He lies sphinx-like, four legs tucked beneath, ready to spring. I’m sorry, Liquorice. You can’t come where I’m going.

I will leave my Journal beneath a heavy stone by the cliff path. It’s been months since it was a proper Folk Record. There will be a new Folk Keeper at the Manor, and he shall have to keep his own Record and learn his own ways of tending the Folk.

I have said my good-byes, almost wordless, all of them. Lady Alicia’s face was crumpled, as though she’d not rested well. The late light shone off Finian’s spectacles, turning him into a cipher.

I embraced Lady Alicia. We are new at this, and it is awkward. But how much more awkward to shake hands with Finian, my hand in his, his swallowing mine. I leave behind this ridiculous custom of hands pumping up and down. All meaningless. Up and down, up and down.

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.

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.