I cannot erase the sight from my mind. In no place was it burned quite through, but it was a limp, pitiful thing, badly scorched in at least a dozen places.
“It’s not destroyed,” I said. “It may yet take me to sea.”
But I can’t try it for a long while; my burns are very bad. My left hand, and both legs. I wait now in the Music Room for the apothecary. It is futile to keep writing. There’s no more to puzzle out; everything is clear in this new and bitter twist.
They thought I would die.
I know this, for black satin drapes the mirror to prevent soulsucker passing through.
Don’t waste your time, Soulsucker. Don’t hang about, hungry for my soul. It is my own. I claim it, tattered and sorrowful as it is. Go away!
Two weeks and more have slipped away while I stayed inside my head, healing not just from my burns but also, I think, from the six-week darkness of the Caverns. Perhaps even from the four-year darkness of the Cellar. I remember a tin whistle playing quick, sad tunes, and Finian coaxing me to come out; and when I did creep out this morning, I thought it was still his voice I heard, coaxing, except why would he call me
I opened my eyes. It was Mrs. Bains who stroked my hand, entreated me to come out. I burst into tears.
“There, don’t cry, My Lady. You’ve been ill a long time.”
“Finian said he was leaving!” I sobbed. “I remember how he whispered it in my ear, told me I should wait.”
“You heard that in your illness?” Mrs. Bains’s little currant eyes blinked in surprise. “Don’t you fret, My Lady. He and Lady Alicia will return soon.”
It can’t be very soon, however, as they have gone to Rhysbridge, to testify before the Great Courts that an heir with greater claim than theirs to Marblehaugh Park is still living. “They’ll make it all proper and legal,” said Mrs. Bains. “As for that horrid Sir Edward, he’s fast in a Rhysbridge prison.”
She couldn’t understand why I would break out crying again. “Don’t you worry about him, My Lady. He won’t ever be back.”
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.
