The Folk Keeper

hear. But his grip on my wrist was still tight. I could not help but admire him, for he is strong in his soul, as I am.

“How many households would depend on me?”

“Conscientious to a fault!” Lord Merton made a sound that might have been a laugh if he’d been stronger. “Not households, but a vast estate. It’s not a simple matter of keeping the Folk from frightening the hens or spoiling the milk. Our Folk Keeper must make sure the Folk interfere with none of the business of the estate, from lambing to ploughing to sowing to harvesting. You would answer to both Lady Alicia, who will be mistress there, and to my cousin Edward, who will act as her steward.”

This was power beyond any I could have in Rhysbridge. A great estate that could not do without me! Impossible, then, ever to return to life as a drudge.

“So you will come?”

“I will think about it.” But I am going, of course.

“Time is running out. Say you will come! Tell Lady Alicia I promised you the position of Folk Keeper as well as a place at the table. Tell her I promised in the name of the Lady Rona. Remember that, the Lady Rona. Corinna, what’s the time?”

“Thirty-eight minutes past.”

He was running down quickly now, I could see it. Surely as an unwound clock, he was running out of life. I would have to fetch someone to cover the mirror against Soulsucker, which would be here soon.

“It’s very dark, now. What’s the time?” Lord Merton’s blue-tipped fingers fell from my wrist at last and lay curled in his palm.

“Thirty-nine minutes past.”

“The darkness is the worst I’ve ever seen.”

I watched him ebb away then, breathing still, but his mind overcome by darkness. Got you! I thought. Death had gotten him before he knew that he had gotten me, and it was still thirty-nine minutes past.

2 From the Day of the Seven Spirits Through Bledstone Day

February 6 — Day of the Seven Spirits

No one can tell a falsehood about Corinna Stonewall and remain unpunished. Matron should have known that. She should have known I’d take a fierce revenge. You have to. The world will otherwise use you shamefully.

I spent my last moments in Rhysbridge watching to see what might result of my revenge. I glanced back at the Home as I followed the velvet cloaks of Lady Alicia and Sir Edward through the yellow fog. Sir Edward’s Valet kept urging me on. He was scornful and splendid in striped crimson livery and powdered curls, but not even he could avoid the soot falling from the chimney pots, the mud, ankle deep. The crimson coach gleamed above the muddy world, and there was a black coach to go with it, with matching black horses. Lord Merton’s body would follow us to Cliffsend.

I slipped on the high carriage step; the Valet grasped the scruff of my jacket and tossed me in. His fingers were puffy, like dough.

“Clumsy!” He clicked his tongue.

It is true that I can trip over anything and nothing — a speck of dust, a patch of sunlight, an idea. I move through life like a person with one eye, through a landscape that looks flat, but is really tricked out with hidden depths and shallows. It didn’t used to be so, but no matter. I navigate the world well enough in my own way.

As we sat in the carriage, waiting to depart, Sir Edward and Lady Alicia wanted only to be talking of Lord Merton’s decision, to take me in not only as a family member, but also to appoint me as Folk Keeper. They were uneasy, and why not? Matron told them I don’t properly tend the Folk.

I let them assume I’d had a proper apprenticeship in the Foundling Home. They’ll never know I’d bribed one of the lads to teach me reading and writing. I did his chores for a year. Another lad I bribed to teach me all he knew about spells of protection. I was two years doing his chores. The rest I picked up by keeping my ears open and hanging about the wise women and the fortune-tellers at the Rhysbridge market.

Still, Lady Alicia and Sir Edward asked me questions about keeping the Folk that any child could answer. I replied as I gazed back toward the Home, waiting to see my revenge begin.

Yes, I know to feed the Folk once a day.

Yes, I know they eat only of and from animals: meat, eggs, milk. After all, those are the only things of the human world they have the magical power to harm without stirring from their dark Caverns. They can harm those, and any planted crops, rooted in the soil under which they live.

Yes, I know a Folk Keeper must pass as much time as possible in the Cellar, so when the Folk grow wild, they spend their anger on him rather than on the crops and livestock.

Yes, I know they grow more wild and dangerous on holy days, which is when it is most important to keep the Record. The Folk are ever fighting the power of our Saints.

It was Sir Edward, still all in black and white, who said, “But will you be prepared for their unpredictability, that they can make mischief even on ordinary days?”

I pointed to the circlet of nails I wear about my neck. Cold iron, an antidote to stone, an antidote to the strength the Folk draw from the rock all around them.

“I do not go unprotected.” I looked at my Folk Bag. Let them think it was brimful of charms instead of the rather ordinary items a Folk Keeper carries always: this Folk Record, and a bit of lead to write with; candles and a tinderbox, all wrapped in oilcloth against the Cellar’s damp. A separate muslin sack held a dozen bits of old bread and biscuit, and I go nowhere without my shears. Perhaps no other Folk Keeper has hair that grows two inches a night.

“But he should know of the very particular danger,” said Lady Alicia. Her maid was counting an extraordinary number of parcels and bandboxes, and I was glad of it, for it delayed our departure; I could still watch the Home.

“I already know the Folk of the rocky lands are especially strong and fierce,” I said.

“Do you know,” said Sir Edward, “that our last Folk Keeper, Old Francis, all but died of the Folk? It was before we left on this extraordinary journey.” He said extraordinary as though it were a curse. “I have been sick with worry about leaving the estate with no skilled Folk Keeper in charge.”

I shrugged. What of it? I was not afraid.

“Listen to Sir Edward,” said Lady Alicia. “He knows the ways of the estate better than anyone.”

“What shape are the Folk?” said Sir Edward.

I turned away from the window. “Everybody knows that not even a Folk Keeper can see them, as the Folk cannot bear the light!”

“Ah, but you can feel them. Old Francis felt them. It was weeks before we knew he’d live through the paralysis. They are mostly mouth, he said. Wet mouth and teeth.“”

“You only feel them,” I said, “if you’re weak enough to let them hurt you. Besides, I have words — words that rhyme and scan. They spring into my mind of themselves.”

Their astonishment was all I could have wanted. “The power of The Last Word!” said Lady Alicia, and Sir Edward said, “This is why Hartley thought the boy would do as Folk Keeper.”

“All original rhymes,” I added, to make sure they understood. “Never the same one twice.”

Lady Alicia’s maid had finished fussing, and the carriage began to rattle forward. I pressed my face to the window. Yes, there, my revenge was unfolding itself, starting at sixteen minutes past noon, with the butcher banging at Matron’s door.

I had told the merchants of our borough that I was leaving as Folk Keeper. That, at least, was true. But I also told them Matron had no mind to retain a new Folk Keeper, which was not true. The hens would fail to lay, I said, the butter fail to churn.