May 1 — Beltane
Old Francis has disappeared.
He vanished during the Storms of the Equinox, but I learned of it only this morning, when the chapel bells shook us all out of bed and into the meadow behind the Manor. It was lovely in the early light, gathering violets and marsh marigolds for the May Day garlands. Clouds of sheep floated in distant fields, and dandelions lay scattered like spots of sunshine.
Lady Alicia made five garlands, and Finian made three. His big fingers are remarkably nimble. Sir Edward gave a little boy a copper to gather flowers for him, but then even he spread his elegant coattails in the grass and constructed his garlands with the deliberate care he devotes to all affairs of the Manor.
I managed one garland, which might, with luck, fit a head shaped like a triangle.
“Of all the feast days,” said Lady Alicia, plucking at the grass, “Old Francis loved May Day best.” She brought her palm level with her face, then blew the grass into the wind. “These are easy days, he always said. Easy for a Folk Keeper.”
Old Francis? I looked about. He was nowhere among the knots of Manor servants laughing and gathering flowers.
Finian set a garland on my head. “You’ll not see him here. No one’s seen him since the Storms.”
I hadn’t thought of him for weeks.
Easy days for a Folk Keeper. Yes, the Folk are quiet now a long while, today eating only a hogshead of boiled pig knuckles. The May Day garlands are scattered in a circle round the Manor, restricting the power of the Folk to the Caverns. Likewise, during the Masquerade Ball on Midsummer Eve, the Manor will be circled with a ring of burning torches. We do not celebrate Midsummer Eve on the Mainland, but Mrs. Bains assures me this fiery ring will keep the Folk subdued.
These have indeed been easy days. I’ve been busy with Finian, putting the final touches on the Windcuffer. We’ve been breaking in her new set of sails, puttying her cracks and seams with lead-and-linseed oil, and painting her properly, with many thin coats. She dried slowly, gleaming in the spring sun.
The Windcuffer has come alive, just as everything in Cliffsend has sprung suddenly to life. Banks of buttercups shine everywhere, and the hyacinths are making a great show of themselves, each of their leaves carefully combed and curled.
Everything’s come to life, and all this while I never noticed Old Francis was gone. I wish I’d noticed earlier. Then I’d never have worried he’d tell my secret, reveal I don’t have the power of The Last Word. He can’t tell anyone, now.
June 16 — Feast of Saint Jerud, Who Throttled a Sea Serpent
It has taken the Folk all day to eat a mere dozen cheeses, but I rose for breakfast at dawn. There was just a tiny brightening to the east, like the pinkish-gray luster in the lining of a shell. The fish were easy marks, hovering at the surface during their great nightly grazing. I struck again and again.
By the time Finian arrived, I was bursting with Convictions.
I told him the sun shines on the seafloor in a grillwork of fractured light.
I told him the sky is delicately cobwebbed with clouds, that gulls fly over the water like scattered confetti.
“I like these new Convictions,” he said. “How wonderfully you Folk Keepers are schooled. You find the right words to describe the Folk, and everything else, too.”
But no one schooled me. I had to school myself.
I told Finian he owes me two Secrets.
When I read this over, I realize how different I sound from the old Corinna. I’m not turning into a sentimental girl, am I? Swooning over the sunset and dabbing lavender water on my wrists? I must be alert to signs of encroaching softness. I need a new morning routine: clean teeth, wash face, check heart for signs of dry rot. Replace it with good mahogany planking, as we did the Windcuffer. It’ll last a long time.
June 21 — Midsummer Eve
It is half past ten, and there’s still an underglow to the sky. The Cliffsenders boast that on Midsummer midnight you can read without a candle, or play a game of ball, if the ball is white.
I sit on the cliffs, but even here I am not far enough removed from the Midsummer festivities. Why do people do it, having guests to stay for a whole week? First you have to endure the washing of draperies and airing of beds and beating of carpets (all of which had seemed more than clean enough to me). Then you have to endure the hideous chatter of the ladies and gentlemen and their maids and valets; and even beg Cook for a barrel of dried beef for the Folk on this feast day.
You can never get far enough away. Sounds from the Masquerade Ball drift across the lawn. Arching streamers of violin music, the rumble of distant talking and laughter, a happy scream. Someone won at cards, or had her dress trod on, or was kissed!
I stood out from the others earlier tonight when I entered the Ballroom in my Samson costume. Yes, I dressed as Samson, he of the long hair. We are a little alike, he and I, for our hair sets us apart. His gave him strength, and mine — well, it is inconvenient that it grows two inches each night, but it is one of my secret powers. Not for anything would I give it up.
My white tunic was very plain among the jesters and their bells, the wizards and their staffs, the fairies and their jewels, fragile shoulders rising from beds of ribbon and gauze. But my costume hid more secrets than theirs. So did my hair, which I’ve grown to my chin and colored with a walnut stain. I seem to be wearing a wig. No one would guess it’s mine. I like to be fooling them all.
Midsummer Eve is my birthday, and there is one disappointment that has come with turning sixteen. I seem to be starting to grow. I can wear the tunic and still be thought a boy, but not for long, perhaps. Not for long.
I slipped round the edges of the crowd, avoiding the crystal chandeliers, whose hundreds of candles were already dripping hot wax. Poor Mrs. Bains. I knew her armies had spent hours polishing the Ballroom floor with beeswax and cleaning the chandeliers until each crystal was beautifully radiant.
A footman handed me a glass. Tiny lines of bubbles streamed through pale liquid. The fiddle cried out in a language that everyone but I understood. Like pieces of a kaleidoscope, the ladies and gentlemen fell into patterns of color on the Ballroom floor.
I slipped out the French doors; dancing is not for me. The indoors and out-of-doors were all mixed together. Armfuls of ivory roses bloomed everywhere inside the Manor; outside, an immense Oriental carpet suffocated the lawn — or so I heard the gardeners complain. On it stood a long buffet table, at which Mrs. Bains was counting bottles of champagne in a hollow ice-swan.
I stood on the lawn, between two worlds, watching the dance. Behind me, a couple of gardener lads argued about how to lay the Midsummer bonfire. Before me, the squares in the Ballroom fragmented, the ladies and gentlemen flowing into separate lines, then swirling themselves together with hooked elbows and clasped hands. It is traditional for the host and hostess to dress only as themselves: Sir Edward, never deviating from his black and white, Lady Alicia in rubies and gold satin.
Behind me, the gardener lads stood on step stools, lighting lanterns in globes of silver paper. Before me appeared Finian, a neat and careful dancer, his red cap bobbing above the others.
Now Finian, that wasn’t a very good idea, was it? To dress as a Cliffsend fisherman! It will cast your mother into melancholy; it will irritate Sir Edward, who like his cousin, Lord Merton, wants to mold you into a copy of himself.
Behind me, the voices of the gardener lads faded away. Before me, the fisherman danced with a young lady dressed as the Tragic Queen, the one who wanted always to be eating cake. What can she be thinking? Even if I were still Corinna, and even if I had golden hair and liked to dress in spangled gauze, I’d never masquerade as someone who let them chop off her head.
Before me, the dancers relaxed into a crowd again. Finian handed a glass to his spangled partner.
I took a sip from my own. It was cold, and not very sweet.
Then Finian raised his glass.
Why can I not forget the picture he made, a mountain of white canvas, pale liquid glowing against bronzed skin?
I left the lawn then for the cliffs, and here I am, all my earlier fizz evaporated. I just had another sip. The champagne is warm and flat. My first champagne, and on my sixteenth birthday, too. It is not as I imagined.
Taffy lies beside me, keeping me company. He is arthritic and I am stiff, and neither of us is much for dancing and crowds.
There is a lump of desolation beneath the bony dip at my throat. It is no bigger than a coin, this spot, a peculiarly small place to hold so large a feeling. I try to shove it to some deeper region, but there it sticks, a fragile skin-thickness from the outside world.
Taffy rests his nose on my foot and sighs.
It’s almost midnight. The dancers have spilled onto the lawn. I must join them now; it’s time to light the bonfire. And then I’ll go back to being the Folk Keeper of Marblehaugh Park. That is what I am, and I can’t pretend to be Samson or anyone else.