The Folk Keeper Read Online Free PDF Page A

ask for your Secret.”
    “What does your mother love best of all?” It’s when you know people’s secret passions that you can get power over them if need be.
    “I won’t charge you a Conviction for that,” said Finian. “It’s no secret that she loves me!”
    “What does Sir Edward love?”
    “He loves Marblehaugh Park.”
    “That’s hardly a secret, either,” I said.
    “Don’t you want to know what I love best?” said Finian.
    I patted the boat. “I already know.”
    Finian laughed. “You shall see why. Take the tiller.” He pressed a length of wood into my hand, telling me to hold it firmly, to
fall off
as the sails began to flap.
    “I see!” I said, and I did. I pushed the tiller, and the sails belled out with the wind.
    “Well!” said Finian.
    Prisms of light skimmed the surface. A wave broke against us, and before it shook apart into splash and spray, I felt the strength of it, the hundreds of pounds smashing our boat. There were prisms in the spray, too, showering us with drops of light.
    “You must have sailed before,” said Finian.
    “I first saw the sea yesterday night.”
    We were silent then a long time. He did not ask for the Conviction I owed him, nor did I offer it. The sun wheeled through the sky, pausing at the top when Finian took out a lunch of bread and cheese, plunging westward by the time we spied a mound of gray stone rising from the sea.
    “The Seal Rock,” said Finian. “We’re almost to Cliffsend.” Against the rock, waves shattered and turned to gauze.
    “I see no seals.”
    “I’ll call them for you,” said Finian.
    He drew a little whistle from his pocket. It was made of tin, but the music it made was at least silver, wrapping itself round me with an invisible lifeline.
    Five sleek heads rose from the water. They are lovely things, the seals, so alert and intelligent they look as though they might speak. Huge eyes, ringed with black. Dark heads, silvered by the afternoon light.
    “May our boat be blessed,” said Finian.
    My voice came as an echo. “May our boat be blessed.” And even after the last note had died out over the water, every nerve along my spine stood on tiptoe to hear him play.
    “Can you call the Sealfolk, too?” I have always loved the stories of the Sealfolk, who swim the sea as seals. Why, though, do they ever shed their Sealskins to walk the land as humans? If the skin should be lost or stolen, they can never return to the sea. I’d never risk losing any Cellar where I was Folk Keeper, the only place I truly belong.
    “Surely you know how to call them,” he said. “You with your knowledge of charms.”
    I did know that. “Seven tears shed into the sea at high tide to call the Sealfolk. But I have no tears.”
    “I’ll lend you some of mine,” said Finian. “I have plenty.”
    Suddenly the world paused, then turned itself inside out to run the other way.
    “What has happened!” I cried. “What is happening?”
    “What do you mean?” said Finian.
    “Don’t you feel it, everything turned round?”
    Finian sniffed the air as though I were describing a smell. “The tide just turned, but you can’t mean that?”
    “No, I can’t mean that.” But I did. With Finian’s words came a burst of understanding. I knew where my internal clock had gone wrong.
    It is the tide that pulls the seconds through my blood. It is the tide that threads the minutes through my bones. But the Mainland tides are set to a different clock from those of the Northern Isles. I breathed in deeply, settling myself into the ebb of the sea.
    I have more power than I know.
    I will need it all, too. The Folk of Cliffsend must draw terrific strength from their stony home. The red cliffs of the western coast stretch easily for ten miles, and Finian said the whole island runs thirty miles across. There might be hundreds of miles of tunnels, all connecting underground. But much of the island is uninhabited (save for legions of Otherfolk). Just a handful of