The Folk Keeper

The stuff burned down my throat and set a fire in my head.

A sludge of time oozed by until Mrs. Bains tried to undress me. Oh, then I came to life again, shouting, biting, kicking, striking something too solid to be Mrs. Bains.

“The boy’s wild!” said Finian. “Let him be.” And somehow, there I was, fully dressed, between the starched and mangled sheets shouting, “I need my shears!” Was my hair growing? They mustn’t know it grows so fast.

“He’s wandering,” said Mrs. Bains. “I’ll bring him a sleeping draught.”

“I won’t sleep!” I cried, for it is only then my hair grows.

Finian wrapped my arms around my Folk Bag. “Everything you brought is safe here.”

“I still won’t sleep!”

I didn’t, either, although I could not quite stay awake. I was caught in a dim, cobwebbed place, my mind helpless against apprehension, fears breeding freely and multiplying.

I remember those days as a series of separate sketches. Finding myself lying on the dressing-room carpet for some reason, looking through the legs of the rosewood dressing stand. My memory is etched with an image of Cardomy Castle painted on the washing-up basin. And they had actually gilded the chamber pot!

Leaning against pillows, seeing my reflection in the mirror opposite. Broad, flat cheekbones, huge eyes set at a slant, a gray-yellow bruise on my temple, my hair grown a bit during unguarded fits of sleep.

Opening my eyes, thinking I’d been quite awake, but seeing that Finian had magically appeared. “Sleep, Corin. I’ll save you from an attack of the Mrs. Bains!”

Rummaging in my Folk Bag during one lucid moment. It was undisturbed. I still had the candles, the tinderbox, this Record and my bit of writing lead, all properly wrapped in oilcloth. Also the bits and crusts of bread and the smoked meat from that Mainland tavern. Out came the shears, off came the hair, back I went to dandelion fuzz. I dragged myself to the fireplace and tossed in the cuttings. There was a bright flare and sizzle, the acrid smell of burning hair, and I was safe once more.

Almost safe. Once I am in the Cellar, proving myself indispensable to the safety of Marblehaugh Park, they’ll never send me away. I will be safe then, absolutely safe.

February 14 — Feast of Saint Valentine

At last I am where I belong. It is still early morning, but I have already been on a long journey. It was raining when I awoke, and very dark. The grand staircase forked from itself at the landing and met itself in the great hall below. The sconces were unlit. I made my way down by a thin, watery starlight.

It should be easy for a Folk Keeper to sink to the Cellar, water finding its own level. But the Manor was tricky, sending me down corridors, round corners, with nothing but more corridors and corners ahead. There came finally the sound of someone laying a fire.

My feet followed my ears, past a half-dozen doorways breathing cold sighs on my shoulders, to a doorway through which hundreds of eyes shone from bodiless heads. There was a deer with branching antlers; a fox with bright, sad eyes; a fish longer than I, smiling grimly.

Guns and loud bangs, Finian had said. An amusement worthy of a lord.

Then another, most peculiar trophy. My eye glanced over a tall-backed chair to a mirror above the mantle. In the glass was reflected Sir Edward’s face. His lips opened. “Come in.”

The fire crackled; a glow slid round the chair and along the walls, illuminating other trophies. Here were the bodies without heads. Some I recognized — that shaggy skin was surely a bear! — but what could that enormous blue-black one have been? What about that silvery skin, the size of a small goat, or a large dog?

“That will do,” said Sir Edward, and the person lighting the fire shuffled round the chair and into sight.

Such a face I have never seen. One side of his mouth opened, stretched, smiled as mouths do, addressed me as Master Corin and said he was at my disposal. The other side was frozen, and the terrible paralysis didn’t stop there but ran up his face and into his eye, trapping it neither open nor shut. It must have been difficult to lay the fire, for his left arm hung limp at his side.

I knew him at once: the Folk Keeper before me. Old Francis.

He had not grown old, he had been made old.

“Breakfast is not laid until seven o’clock,” he added. The words fell from his stiff mouth like wooden blocks between us.

“I don’t eat,” I said, which is not quite what I meant, but close enough to the truth. “I’m looking for the way to the Cellar.”

“Old Francis will show you,” said Sir Edward, rising at last, his mirror image turning into flesh and blood as he, too, appeared around the chair. He clapped sharply. “Come, lads. Liquorice, Honeycomb, make your apologies to Master Corin.”

Two hounds slid past Sir Edward and sat at my feet, fawning in the contemptible way of dogs. Their heads rose past my waist; their eyes were yellow, their ears red.

“They won’t attack once they know you,” said Sir Edward. “Sniff him well, lads, take good note of our new Folk Keeper.”

I lifted my hands from the hounds’ warm breathing. I hid my fright, I think, hid how my heart leapt like a rabbit and staggered against the bony walls of my chest. “You didn’t tell me you keep Hill Hounds.”

“Finian likes to call them so,” said Sir Edward. “But he also likes to exaggerate. Their ancestors bred with our hounds, and this generation is rather less than more of the Otherfolk.”

But I wasn’t sure. I remembered the savage melancholy of their voices. I remembered they are subject to the power of The Last Word.

“They’re still wonderfully fierce,” said Sir Edward. “See here.” To my astonishment, he drew a pair of gloves from his pocket and flung them onto the carpet. “At it, lads!”

The hounds leapt upon them, savaging them silently. It seemed such a waste of good gloves, just as putting gold coins on Lord Merton’s dead eyes had also seemed a waste, when coppers would have done just as well.

A third hound came to stand by me, as though to replace the others. He was very old, with a grizzled muzzle and watery eyes. “Fall off, Taffy,” said Sir Edward. “You’ve no need to apologize.” The dog lay down, very stiff in the hindquarters.

“It is a feast day,” I said. “I cannot delay finding the Cellar.” It was already eleven minutes past six.

“Old Francis knows the way well enough,” said Sir Edward, which seemed rather cruel, but Old Francis merely bowed and said he’d be honored to escort me.

I could have found it on my own if I’d known to follow the smell of baking bread. The Cellar stairs were just outside the Kitchens. But Old Francis shuffled dutifully before me, then lit a candle from another candle, burning opposite the Cellar door. “This one’s always kept burning. Our Folk Keepers sometimes need to reach the Cellar in a hurry.”

The Cellar seemed like an old friend, although I was just now meeting it for the first time. The light from my taper illuminated the familiar rounded ceiling, the familiar wooden barrels — port, wine, brandy — the familiar whitewashed walls. The inner Cellar was smaller still, smelling damp and deep. Now I was home! I pressed my hand to the walls, felt the familiar homey chill, and also something peculiar etched into the stone.

I shone my light about. The walls were broken by words carved over and over again.

Over and over, they said the same thing:

Poor Rona: take pity on her.

Poor Rona: take pity on her.

Poor Rona: take pity on her.

Again and again. Poor Rona. Perhaps the Lady Rona was more than a boat. Not even the most clever boat built by Finian could have written these words. How long had it taken this mysterious woman? Months? Years? What did she use? A nail?

I touched my own necklet of nails.

The carvings had been made long ago, for they’d been whitewashed over, and the whitewash was not recent. But you could see them easily when you knew to look.

Poor Rona. I felt sorry for her, whoever she was. But her passion to make her mark on these Cellar walls must have been a great inconvenience to the Folk Keeper.

The curving top of the Folk Door reached the middle of my forehead. Its crosswise bands of iron were clean