He shook his head. “You are so very like your mother. Those broad cheekbones, those eyes, set slightly at a slant. I can’t imagine how I didn’t see it. But Rona’s baby was a girl, and it never occurred to me you could be a boy. Your disguise as Folk Keeper was a good one.”
“Did I have a Sealskin?” I bit down on my lip, but too late, the question was out. Corinna, never never again let your enemy know what might be precious to you!
“Now there’s a question,” said Sir Edward. “If you had, Hartley might have destroyed it. He burned your mother’s; that’s when she went mad, refused ever again to look at the sea.”
I knew then the taste of true fear. It tastes of dark places deep in your stomach and holds you by the neck, tighter than Sir Edward ever could. I must have tried to leap away, for my next memory is of Sir Edward holding me by the wrist, my Folk Bag lying at my feet.
“I’ve hunted long enough that I can tell when an animal’s about to bolt. Don’t try again or I shall become annoyed.”
I was choking with fear and the unspent energy of that leap. I bared my teeth and lunged. I missed his neck, found his shoulder.
“Vixen!” Hard knuckles struck my head, which affected me somehow in my middle, for the next thing I remember is being very sick all over a pair of satin rosettes.
Very carefully, I settled the Folk Bag over my shoulder. “Are you annoyed now?” And I bit him in the arm.
The rest is just a confused struggle, me trying to bite him, him bolting my arms tightly to my sides — which at least kept me attached to my Bag — scraping my back up the Shaft. My last frozen memory is looking into his forget-me-not eyes, seeing the livid scar behind his eyebrow, then falling, falling, clinging to my Bag, breaking through water, sinking deep, hitting rock, shooting up again.
It was fresh water.
“Corin! Corinna!” Sir Edward’s voice sounded faintly through the Graveyard Shaft. “Corinna, answer me!”
I swam about blindly. I could not tell where the stream ended, or if the stream ended. There was only the echo of Sir Edward’s voice to tell me which way was up. It seems odd now as I write this, but there, flailing about in the water, I was mostly full of a joyful rage. I wouldn’t give. Sir Edward the satisfaction of my being eaten by the Folk. My Folk Bag was properly packed, candles and tinderbox wrapped in oilcloth. The Folk would not come near a lighted candle.
I splashed about, slapping water, slapping more water, finally slapping stone. I eased myself onto the bank.
“Corinna! Corin!”
I shook myself at the edge of the stream. “Corin! Corinna!” I said nothing, and shedding water makes no sound.
“Corin! Corinna!” Let him think I’d perished!
He called until dawn bloomed in the patch of sky through the Shaft. His final shout of “Corin!” turned into a cry of horror as a stream of smoke poured itself downward, past his head.
The bats had returned home on this, the morning of the Feast of the Keeper. The Folk won’t eat me, Sir Edward, and I know why. May your crops fail, Sir Edward; may your milk spoil.
And when you ask for her hand in marriage, may Lady Alicia slap your face.
My hair reaches past my shoulders. Two inches a day it grows. Even if I didn’t have my internal clock, I’d know I’ve been here six days. I’ve tried spreading my clothes on the floor, but they are always a bit damp, dreadful to put on. This morning I turned out my pockets and found a single amber bead. I hurled it from me. It bounced off the floor and rolled into a corner.
I need no protection against the sea. And I need little against the Folk. They can’t attack me here, as long as a glimmer of starlight seeps through the Graveyard Shaft. I need no salt or churchyard mold. I need only light. I must save my candles for the first overcast night. Sir Edward may know about hunting, but he knows nothing about the Folk. I do. I am partly of the Otherfolk and have always had an instinct for the world of spells and magic.
I am not quite alone.
A cave rat lives in a pile of shredded bark, and of course, there are the bats. To say that the Cavern is filled with bats is like saying the ocean is filled with drops. The Cavern
And so this is my Cavern; it is really very beautiful. The roof is like water turned to stone, tumbled falls, shining always faintly from the wet. Mushrooms sprout from invisible crevices. But they do not even tempt me, because of course, there are the fish.
The fish, so innocent, so trusting. They are not accustomed to the creature with the five white fingers that dangle languorously into the water. They swim into my grasp; I eat and eat and eat. There is a kind of savage joy in not thinking of feeding the Folk. I never set food aside for them now. Let the stupid, sulky things take care of themselves!
I am lucky, though, that I can catch my own supper. If I were an ordinary human, hunger might drive me to light one of my precious candles and wander through that dark archway at the far end of this chamber, looking for the path to the outside, and to food. But I am the lucky one. I have the luxury of eating and even of tossing aside what I do not care to eat. When it thinks I am not looking, the rat carries away the entrails and skeletons.
I don’t waste much breath calling up the Shaft. Even if there were anyone near, I doubt my voice would carry above the ground.
To pass the time, I have been reading through this Folk Record. How crisp and fresh it seemed in February, when I’d just started a new one. But it is no longer a Folk Record: I relinquish my duties! Call it instead Corinna’s Journal.
Again and again I have said I belong to the cold and the dark and the wet. I was right and I was wrong. I belong to the dark and the wet of the sea. I was once a girl who became a boy who became a Folk Keeper. Now I am a girl again, looking for a way to become a Sealmaiden.
I must find a way out.
Another day gone, another two inches to my hair. I wear it now in a braid. I have read more of my Journal and I realize something that makes my heart squeeze in on itself — a good reason not to have a heart! I have been reading backward through the pages, thus:
My senses are peeling away from me. My fingertips are far away in the Trophy Room, running themselves over a silver skin, but they are also here, writing.
His Lordship’s prize trophy: It is my Sealskin! There were not a number of
Everything shivers into place. This explains my strange yearnings, my thirst for something unknowable, my
