When I stepped into the inner Cellar, I felt at once a new texture, the fabric of the air pulled taut, as though . . . as though there’d been a candle recently burning. I swung my hair, reading the walls —
In that instant, a flint scraped, a spark flared, a lantern cast a halo round Sir Edward and his angel smile.
I leapt for the Folk Door, hurled myself through. It slammed behind.
“Come out, Corinna.” Sir Edward spoke through the Door. “It will be worse if I have to come after you.”
“Come in, if you dare.”
“Oh, I dare,” said Sir Edward. “Didn’t I snuff my candle when I heard you coming down the Cellar stairs? That should tell you I’m not afraid of the Folk.”
That had been astonishingly brave. “Come in, then.”
Sir Edward’s footsteps drew near the Folk Door, paused. He did not dare.
I dived into my Folk Bag and lit a candle to start writing. Have I not told myself things through my writing I hadn’t thought of before? Hadn’t I told myself I could find my way through the Caverns without a candle? What can I tell myself now?
Sir Edward cannot keep me trapped here; in two days, the others will return. Don’t worry, Corinna. You can wait this out.
Why, then, am I terrified? Why have my bones turned to water? Am I melting, Corinna turned to liquid, trickling beneath the Door?
And why is Sir Edward laughing?
15
The
I must have known somewhere deep inside why I could not wait it out. Why, too, Sir Edward might laugh.
“I have your Sealskin,” he said. “The only question is how to destroy it. Fire, perhaps?”
I blew out my candle, as though to keep fire as far from me as possible. And there, in the dark, the spark of an idea flared.
“You think yourself powerful, don’t you?” I cried, as scornfully as I could. “Listen to this: The night of the Storms, it was I who threw the skin of your jungle beast to the hounds.”
“You!” Sir Edward said no more. He gave a piercing whistle, and soon I heard a soft panting outside the Folk Door.
“Liquorice is here with me,” he said. “With me and your Sealskin. At it, lad!”
I sprang through the Folk Door, already casting a net of hair to gather The Last Word.
Liquorice was screaming, a horrible dog scream, but I wouldn’t stop. He’d already sprung at my Sealskin; let him feel the lash of my words.
Sir Edward swung the lantern as though he would pitch it at me. “Liquorice!” I cried. “At him!” Poor Liquorice, under my spell, he could not disobey. “At him, lad!”
The lantern hurtled through the air. I sprang aside, but it was not intended for me. The fiery arc ended where Liquorice had been standing, spattering oil and light on my Sealskin.
I could not leap at once to its rescue. I gathered up my hair and held it in one hand. If my hair caught, I would flare like tinder and flicker out.
Fire sizzled over my Sealskin. I wore stout boots, stomped on the flames, but they’d spread already, they were everywhere. I fell to my knees, fire licked at my skirts, I beat at it with one hand. No good, that was no good. I leapt to my feet.
I let go my hair to free both hands and flipped the Sealskin over. Fire flared bright in the gust of its movement, fire on my Sealskin, and on me, too. My skirts were still ablaze. I flung myself upon it, pressing the flames to the damp Cellar floor, suffocating also the flames lapping my skirts.
We were again in darkness.
When had Sir Edward begun screaming? “Fall off, lad!” I cried. Then silence, save for Liquorice panting, and little sobbing breaths from Sir Edward.
“Liquorice has broken my arm,” he said presently.
“And to think,” I said, “you didn’t believe I had the power of The Last Word.”
“What do you mean to do with me?”
“The Folk missed their sacrifice on the Feast of the Keeper,” I said.
More silence. The door to the vegetable gardens slammed open, footsteps ran overhead.
“It’s Finian,” I said, sure that Sir Edward’s ears were not as keen as mine. “Twice you tried and couldn’t kill him.”
“Midsummer Eve was mostly an accident,” said Sir Edward, as though that excused everything. “I never tried after you disappeared. Old Francis, then you.”
“Lady Alicia might have asked some hard questions,” I said.
The footsteps were joined by a lantern, bobbing into the inner Cellar. I saw Finian in a new way with my hair loose, felt the motion of his neat and heavy bones, the particular way he displaced the air around him. The pattern of Finian, now woven inextricably into my hair.
He knelt beside me, reached out, for my hand perhaps, but drew back at the hurt to my palm. I didn’t feel the pain yet. Strange, not to feel the pain. Finian did not speak. I could not see his eyes for the cracks in his spectacles and the lantern light shining off the glass.
More lanterns now, and anxious voices approaching, each overlapping the other in ragged counterpoint.
It was the Valet who hauled Sir Edward to his feet by the cravat he’d doubtless starched and pressed this morning. Lady Alicia held her lantern high, and I saw Sir Edward’s face again in a halo of light. But instead of his angel smile, Sir Edward had begun to come apart like a tapestry man with a pulled thread, unraveling stitch by stitch, disintegration shivering through his face.
“He says his arm pains him,” said Lady Alicia, disgusted.
“Oh, Mother,” said Finian. “Corinna’s the one who’s hurt.” I heard from his voice that he was weeping.
“My Sealskin,” I said. “My Sealskin’s hurt most of all.”
Finian looked down, realizing now what it was I lay upon.
“I must see the damage to it,” I said. Without a word, Finian lifted me from the Sealskin; the Valet held it before me.
