Free The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley Page A

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