The Folk Keeper

“Have the Folk made mischief while I’ve been gone?” Oh, that I could simply melt away, like wax. Whatever I’d meant to say, it wasn’t that.

“Rather a lot,” said Finian. “Four cows died, and the hay wouldn’t cure, just moldered away. But the oats and barley are safe, and that’s something. The Folk have been quiet since the first week in August.”

He shoved the spectacles back on his nose. “Your hair! How could it have grown so?”

“You forgot to wipe off the glass,” I said.

“I can still see your hair. Oh, Corinna, where did you go?”

“Where did you go, that day on the pier?” I hadn’t meant to say that, either, but the words had been swelling inside a long time, and now came bursting out.

Finian knew at once what I was speaking of. “I’m ashamed to say what I thought. But when I saw the Windcuffer, saw that she’d been tampered with . . .”

“Tampered?” I remembered sailing the Windcuffer in the storm, the inexplicable burst of water through the floorboards, fitting my fingers between them. “You thought I did it!”

“For revenge,” said Finian. “Although I didn’t know what I’d done to make you so angry.”

“I would never harm the Windcuffer.”

“Never?” said Finian, and I felt myself go red. “But when you set off after me, in the Windcuffer, I knew of course it wasn’t you.”

“Sir Edward!” The probability of this burst on me in a cold wave. He’d been worried about what Finian knew, worried he might not make a complacent stepson. “Trying to do away with you, just as he tried Midsummer Eve, pushing you from the cliffs.”

I could say no more. My throat swelled with the notion that Finian thought I’d avenge myself on him; worse still, it could have been true. A silent rainfall of weeping overcame me.

Finian pressed a square of cambric into my hand. “I’ve gone back to saying my prayers every night like a good boy, praying for the chance to explain. To apologize.”

I waited until I could speak. “I never use a handkerchief.”

“Perhaps you never needed one until now.”

“No, not much like Corin to need a handkerchief.”

“You were never much like Corin,” said Finian. “Lucky me, not to have been wearing my spectacles that first day we met. I missed the fine points of your appearance, but I wasn’t fooled by them, either. I saw from the way you carried yourself that you were no boy.”

“Even Sir Edward never guessed,” I said. “People never think a Folk Keeper could be a girl.”

“Not even Edward, and he’s so clever, too!” Finian said this so seriously, I was sure he must be laughing.

“Why did you never tell?” I said. “All these months, and you knew there was no Corin.”

“Boredom, I suppose. If I told, all the excitement would be over at once. But I never thought it would be this exciting.”

“It’s more exciting than you know,” I said. “It’s my turn now to tell you Secrets. Did you know the Lady Rona was a Sealmaiden? That I’m her daughter?”

There was no room for a large person to be surprised; to start, or step back. Finian only whispered, as I had that night in the graveyard, “But the baby died at birth!”

“Lord Merton didn’t want one of the Sealfolk as his heir and gave out that I’d died.”

“I hear what you say,” said Finian. “I even believe it. But I can’t digest it.” He pressed his fist to his middle as though he might have a bellyache. “How do you know this?”

“Sir Edward told me. He didn’t want me as heir, either, so he dropped me through the Graveyard Shaft.”

“The Graveyard Shaft! Yes, let’s return to Edward. Tell me enough to hang him.”

“He means to marry your mother.”

“Ha!” said Finian. “He might have, six weeks ago. But now she disagrees with him on almost everything. It started when you vanished, which thoroughly upset our ways of thinking. I am to have a whole shipyard if I like!”

I have read and reread my account of that night in the churchyard. It was easy to remember and recount what Sir Edward had said during those long minutes I lay pressed into my own grave.

“Hanging’s too easy,” said Finian. “An axe might do better.”

“Only if it’s blunt,” I said, thinking of my breathless fall through the Shaft.

“You’re right,” said Finian. “The old-fashioned ways have their charms. What do you say to drawing and quartering?”

I was a long time describing my days in the Twilight Cavern, my discovery of Old Francis, my starless night with the Folk.

“Do you mean to say you don’t have the power of The Last Word?”

“I do now,” I said, thinking back to early August. Hadn’t Finian said that’s when the Folk grew quiet?

“I don’t know whether to be worried or relieved.”

“Be both at once.”

“Just tell me there’s a happy ending,” said Finian. “This Otherfolk story of yours is terrifying.”

“It still hasn’t ended, not until I return to the sea.”

I still remember his look of — of what? Puzzlement? Astonishment? Anger? What right had he to be angry?

Just a thin slice of canvas away, a merchant was charging a young man too much for two blue ribbons. “They will go with brown hair?” the young man said. “You’re sure they go with brown hair?”

“I see,” said Finian. “You came to warn me. I’d rather hoped — oh, there’s an end on it.” He seemed to change the subject. “I began leaving the Cellar door ajar for Taffy. He must have known where you were all along, poor fellow. Couldn’t you leave your own door ajar, Corinna? Go to the sea, just come back, too.”

But I couldn’t risk ending up like my mother, my Sealskin stolen or destroyed. “What would I come back for?”

“For the Folk. For me. You could marry me.”

He said this rather indifferently, but he peeled off his spectacles, and when he leaned forward, only our lips touched. Warm, hard fingers around my wrist; warm, soft lips against mine.

The press of air peeled away, and there came a moment of suspension, of liquid floating. I sank into those lips. I was still solid Corinna — I could feel it in the curious little shock that shivered through my middle — but like ice in water, I floated in my own liquid self.

And then my arm was flying wildly, connecting with his hand, with warm flesh and cold spectacles. The spectacles flew against the wall with a sharp crack, and I flew the other way, into the mud and clamor of the Harvest Fair. Finian could have caught me easily, but there came only his voice floating after.

“Listen to this. Corinna, listen! Midsummer Eve, the strands in my peat were silver!”

How I ran then! But I couldn’t run as far as I wanted. A fisherman stationed at the foot of the cliff path advised me to take a wagon inland, as the rains had washed out a section of cliff. And so I did, with a crowd of Harvest revelers, two crying babies, and five chickens.

I wait now at this tavern for a farmer who’s offered to take me the rest of the way in his cart — after he finishes his ale. I’d rather walk, but it would take me hours to reach the Manor, and my Sealskin.

All I can hear in my head is Finian’s voice. The strands in my peat were silver! Silver! Silver!

August 18 — later

Why didn’t I go? Why didn’t I seize my Sealskin this morning and plunge into the sea? Oh, foolish waiting, foolish human waiting. I wanted to warn Finian, I wanted to explain. I wanted to say good-bye. What a stupid thing to do — a stupid human thing! I swore I’d never let myself get caught as my mother had. And where has it left me? Trapped in the Caverns.

Should I have suspected something? But I’m sure everything was just as I’d left it, the doors to the Kitchens and Cellar ajar. At the top of the stairs, I pulled the pins from my hair. I needed no light to find my way to my Sealskin.