Ghoulish Song z-2

by William Alexander

  She almost laughed. She also felt panicked. What she really wanted was for everyone else to laugh. They all looked so stricken and serious. Mother and Father were both such sensible people. Why would they even listen to old Boggs? Couldn’t they tell that she was still here and still breathing, still entirely alive?

  The Doctor hit an especially bad note. Kaile winced. How could any of the dead rest in peace with a voice like that singing them down? Two fiddlers from the bridge had come to play and sing for Grandfather, and they had done so perfectly. Everything Kaile had felt on that day had spilled out into the shape of that music, and then the same music had tied her back together again—just as Grandfather had promised her. Now, at her own funeral, the music might just make her throw up. She wanted to leave. Maybe this was how the Doctor thought he could prevent a haunting: sing so badly that the dead were forced to leave.

  Kaile was starting to think of herself as dead.

  Stop it, she told herself.

  “Stop it!” she told everyone else. “I’m fine. I’m right here.” She needed to explain, but she wasn’t sure how to explain.

  The singing faltered and stumbled, but did not stop.

  “My shadow’s in the hayloft!” she protested. “If you’ll all just wait a moment, I can try to coax her back inside. Just wait. Don’t finish the funeral. Don’t finish the song.”

  The singing grew louder to drown out her voice. Practically everyone she knew in the world stood in that room, and they all ignored her.

  Kaile looked down at her feet. Without a shadow it seemed as though they didn’t really touch the ground. It looked as though she didn’t really touch the world.

  She looked up at Mother. Mother was singing, even though she almost never sang. She didn’t like the sound of her own voice. And Mother was grieving, actually grieving. This wasn’t a punishment, not for goblins or inspections, not for anything. This was mourning.

  They really did believe that Kaile was dead.

  “I’m not a ghoul,” Kaile insisted—but she said it quietly, because now she wasn’t entirely sure.

  Doctor Boggs gathered up a handful of greasy ashes from a bowl, took Kaile’s arm roughly with his other hand, and smeared the ash across her forehead. He sang loud and only inches from her face. Then he pushed her through the crowd and through the public door.

  No one else tried to stop him.

  Doctor Boggs shut the door behind her.

  Kaile heard the song and the funeral end on the other side of that door.

  * * *

  She went slowly around the alehouse, across the yard, and up into the hayloft. There she sat with her legs over the edge and stared at nothing. Guzzards scratched in their sawdust below and dreamed the sorts of dreams known only to guzzards.

  It could have been worse, her shadow whispered nearby. It used to be worse. People used to bury suspected ghouls rather than just ignore them. They buried ghouls in three separate graves spaced far apart—one for your head, one for your heart, and a third for all the rest of you.

  “Shut it,” said Kaile. She tried to wipe the ashes from her forehead. The ash stain was sticky. It smelled like they had mixed wood ashes from the oven with butter in order to make the stuff.

  The stain marked her as a dead thing. She kept trying to rub it off.

  “The funeral’s over,” she said. Her voice sounded flat and lifeless in her own ears. “My funeral song is over and sung. That makes it true. That changes the shape of things.”

  You aren’t dead, her shadow told her. Your breathing is obvious and loud.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Kaile. “Everybody in Broken Wall knows that I’m supposed to be dead. It won’t matter to them that I’m still moving and breathing and talking. They sang my funeral.” She noticed, as though from a distance, that she was crying. She wondered how to stop.

  You aren’t dead, her shadow said again, with more impatience than sympathy.

  “No help from you,” said Kaile, as soon as she was able to say anything. “If you had stayed stuck to my feet, then this wouldn’t have happened. If you had just come back inside with me, then it probably wouldn’t have happened, either.”

  I don’t want to be tied to your feet.

  “Then why are you still here?” She heard another sob in her voice, and hated it.

  The shadow’s whisper faded, sounding embarrassed and barely audible. I’ve only ever stood near you. That’s all I know how to do. That’s the only place I know where to be. I’d rather not. But I don’t know where else to go. And it’s dark outside.

  “That shouldn’t much matter,” said Kaile. “You’re a shadow. You’re made out of the dark. You shouldn’t be afraid of the dark.”

  I disappear in the dark, the shadow lashed out, voice rising almost above a whisper. It feels like drowning. I never know which part of me is me, or whether I’ll ever come back again. I might not come back, now that I’m not anchored to you. But shadows are darker and stronger in bright lights. If that lantern burns out, then I might disappear and be forever gone. Turn up the wick as high as it goes.

  “No,” said Kaile. “If I turn up the lantern, then the oil will burn out before morning. It needs to burn low if you want it to last until sunrise.” She turned down the lantern wick. Her shadow made angry noises, but did not make any further protests.

  Kaile wiped her nose, wound up the lantern base, and watched familiar animal silhouettes turn in a slow circle on the walls around them. Then she took another long look at her own shadow, which was easier to see now that Kaile had the knack of looking.

  “What’s your name?” she asked her shadow. “Do you have one?”

  No, the shadow said.

  “I have to call you something. I could call you Shade.”

  The shadow didn’t agree. She didn’t protest, either. She didn’t say anything.

  Kaile curled up in the hay, away from the edge of the loft, and tried to get comfortable. She wouldn’t return to her bedroom, not tonight, not if her family had made her unwelcome, not if they wanted to keep the household free of haunting. Hopefully they wouldn’t mind having a haunted hayloft.

  She closed her eyes. When she finally slept, she dreamed that she was building the Fiddleway Bridge out of bones and bread loaves.

  If Shade dreamed, they were the sorts of dreams known only to shadows.

  Seventh Verse

  KAILE WOKE AFTER SUNRISE. Light came in through cracks in the walls. Guzzards went about their business below.

  She felt like she had overslept. The sun rarely rose in the morning before she did. But she was sore, stiff, and cold from a night spent on unfamiliar and uncomfortable bedding—or else she felt stiff because she was dead, and her body had finally noticed. Maybe she would lurch around from now on, her arms and legs barely bending, the way the Snotfish did whenever he pretended to be something ghoulish.

  She stood up, stretched, and paid attention to her own breathing for a while. Not dead, then—though her shadow was still separate from herself.

  Shade crouched beside the lantern, a girl-shaped patch of transparent darkness. Kaile’s eyes struggled to see the shadow, even though she was looking for her.

  The lantern is almost out, Shade whispered, her voice a rebuke. The oil barely lasted until morning.

  “Then it’s a good thing I turned it down last night,” said Kaile. “We keep a spare jar of lamp oil in the cellar. I’ll sneak in for some breakfast and more oil. It probably won’t take much sneaking—if anyone sees me, they’ll just try not to notice me.”

  She kept her thoughts focused on practical things. Her thoughts and memories flinched whenever they strayed away from practical and ordinary things, and touched on the reasons why she had just woken up in the hayloft.

  Kaile started to climb down. Then she paused. “Do you eat?”

  I don’t know, said Shade. I used to eat the shadows of whatever you ate. Maybe I still can.

  “Easy enough,” said Kaile. “Anything I find for breakfast
should have a shadow of its own.”

  Kaile dropped to the bottom of the ladder and sneaked across the yard. She found the kitchen door closed and latched. A threshold charm made faint music behind it.

  The kitchen door was never locked. Kaile hadn’t even known that it could be locked.

  She could still go around the whole building to the front door. That one would be open at this time of the morning—customers needed to get inside somehow. But Kaile didn’t move. The latch was a message: Don’t come back. Don’t come haunting. You don’t live here. You aren’t alive. Please understand that you aren’t alive.

  She almost kicked the door before she noticed the other message.

  Someone had set a bundle of cloth on the doorstep, wrapped and tied into a satchel. Kaile picked it up and peered inside. She smelled the pastries before she could see them. They were fresh, and steaming, with just the right amount of redseed spice sprinkled over the glaze. She took one out and took a bite.

  It tasted like a perfect morning.

  A pair of neighborhood boys from rock-moving families passed through the alleyway. Kaile flinched, and looked for a place to hide, but they didn’t notice her—or at least they pretended not to.

  “Shouldn’t feed the dead,” one of them muttered before they turned the corner. “Shouldn’t offer them a threshold meal. They’ll keep coming back if you do.”

  Kaile almost shouted after them. She almost threatened to haunt them both. Instead she crept back to the hayloft with the pastries.

  Shade sat in the largest shaft of sunlight with her arms and legs curled up tight against her. Sunlight passed through the shadow, but it made her darker and more solid-seeming, rather than diminishing her. Did you bring lamp oil?

  “No,” said Kaile. “I couldn’t get inside. But I did bring breakfast.”

  She ate one full pastry and chewed it slowly, trying to savor the best of the early-morning batch. Shade reached over, hesitant, and took the pastry’s shadow for her own meal.

  Kaile wrapped up the rest of the food and tucked it into the satchel, along with her empty lantern and the bone-carved flute.

  “We should go,” she said. “Someone will be out here soon, to feed the guzzards and clean the stall. Probably Father. We shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here.”

  He’ll probably just ignore you, when he comes.

  Kaile shook her head. “We should keep out of the way. And I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to watch Father ignore me.” She felt embarrassed then. She felt like she had said too much. “Come on.”

  She slung the satchel over one shoulder and climbed down from the loft. Her shadow followed her around the alleyway and into the street—though she followed at a greater distance than she ever had before.

  Other people were out and about, conducting the ordinary business of the day. No one looked at Kaile. They pretended not to see her. They walked wide around her. And they didn’t seem to notice Shade at all. Kaile wondered why. The shadow seemed almost solid and embodied in direct sunlight.

  You still have ashes on your forehead, Shade pointed out.

  Kaile rubbed the back of her hand on her face. It only smeared the ashes around. The smear still marked her as the lead role in a recent funeral.

  She started to panic, and rubbed harder at the ash stain. Then she forced herself to think practical thoughts. “Okay,” she said. “First thing we need to do is find water I can wash my face with. Then we’ll see about some lantern oil. Then we can ...”

  She stopped to watch a goblin walk down the street. He wore a mask with a crown, and he walked in an imperial and commanding kind of way. It made him look tall, even though he was in no way tall compared with the crowd of people who followed behind him. He also walked with a cane.

  “That’s the goblin who gave me the flute,” said Kaile. “That was him. I’m sure that was him.” She set off after the masked goblin. “His gift cut us apart, and I’d like to know why.”

  Shade walked alongside, keeping pace.

  Watch where you step, the shadow whispered, reproachful. Watch who you step on.

  Kaile tried not to step on other people’s shadows as she walked. She really did try. But she kept forgetting to look at the ground. She didn’t want to lose sight of the goblin.

  * * *

  The girl and her separate shadow followed the crowd that followed the goblin. They passed through Broken Wall and came to the edge of the River’s ravine.

  The masked goblin led them all down a steep, switch-backing road, down to the docks and the Floating Market—a set of narrow piers jutting out from the shore and over the River.

  Kaile came here sometimes with her father to buy fish for the fish pies, and fruit for the fruit pastries, and spices to mix in with the dough or sprinkle over the glaze. Sometimes Father would offer Brunip a few free ales to push a wheelbarrow down to the docks and up again, if they meant to bring home more than they could carry by themselves.

  She looked for her father in the market crowd. She didn’t know what she would do if she saw him, or how she would feel. But she didn’t have to find out, because she didn’t notice anyone she knew—or at least no one she knew by name. A few familiar-looking faces passed through the crowd, but nobody here had attended her funeral.

  They followed the goblin through the Floating Market. Every barge tied up along the piers doubled as a market stall. The barge captains shouted, chanted, and sang about what they had to sell.

  “Sugarcane and sea salt, good for charms and cooking!”

  “Oceanfish! Riverfish! Dried and salted dustfish!”

  An awning of glass and metal covered the market. Morning sunlight broke apart in the glass, and made strange shadows below.

  It’s too crowded here, Shade protested. Everyone is getting mixed and mingled and stomped on. She did a little hop-dance across the docks, stepping in sunlight.

  “Oh, come on!” said Kaile. She wanted to be sympathetic. But she also felt much the same way she did whenever the Snotfish thought it was absolutely tragic that he didn’t get to eat off his special plate with the blotch in the glaze that looked like a bird skull. Just shut it and eat your dinner, she always wanted to say to the Snotfish. Just shut it and hurry, she wanted to say to Shade. This place is full of people, and I can’t help where their shadows fall.

  “We have a goblin to catch,” was all she said out loud. “Hurry.”

  She couldn’t actually see the goblin, but she could still follow the press of people who followed him.

  Kaile pushed through the market and down the length of the upstream pier.

  Shade whispered unhappily at the thickness of the crowd as Kaile pressed through it.

  Upstream mongers sold fine and fragile things, and the air smelled nice around their soap stalls. There was less singing and shouting at this end of the market, less bustle and noise. A few people glanced suspiciously at the determined girl in the simple work dress who had ashes on her forehead and straw in her hair.

  The goblin’s wagon floated on a raft at the end of the pier. One side of the wagon had been lowered to make a stage platform. The tallish juggler stood on the platform and tossed several silk scarves in the air, making a tree that burst into bright spring blossoms. People who had followed the old goblin down from Broken Wall now focused their attention on the juggler, and Kaile was able to make her way through. It was difficult to see. She found the goblin only by stumbling into him.

  He lifted his cane, startled. Then he set it down again. His mask was stern-looking, and it glowered at her.

  “Young lady Kaile,” he said behind the mask. “My troupe and I very much appreciated your gift of bread yesterday. I am less appreciative of your clumsiness, however. Please excuse me. I must be onstage in mere moments.”

  Kaile grabbed his arm. Touching goblins was supposed to cause freckles, but Kaile wasn’t worried about that. She had freckles already.

  “You gave me a flute,” she said.

  “I did,” he a
greed. “You are welcome.”

  “It killed me,” said Kaile.

  The goblin looked surprised, or at least his posture did. She couldn’t see his face behind the mask. “I find that somewhat unlikely, given the vitality of your voice and the strength of your grip on my arm.” He tried to pull away. Kaile did not let go.

  “It cut my shadow away from me,” she told him. She looked behind her, but couldn’t see Shade. “The shadow’s around here somewhere—though seeing her is tricky, and no one else seems to have the knack. Now my family thinks that I’m dead, that I’m something ghoulish. They sang my funeral last night.”

  “Ah,” said the goblin, a noise of understanding and sympathy. “I see. At least they didn’t cut out your heart and send it downstream in a small paper barge. Such things have been done to the dead who will not keep still.”

  “Yes, I’m so very grateful,” Kaile grumbled. “Now tell me why you cursed me with that flute.”

  “That flute was never meant to be a curse,” the goblin said. There was genuine apology in his voice. “I am profoundly sorry that it seems to have become one. I merely recognized your grandfather in the way you carry yourself, and a musical gift seemed therefore appropriate. I had no notion that the gift would come between you and your shadow.”

  “You knew Grandfather?” Kaile asked, surprised.

  “I did,” he said. “I often heard his playing on the Fiddleway. He was a very fine strummer, one who held the bridge together, and the bridge is sorry to have lost him. It will be needing music of that kind one day soon. One hour soon, I think. The floods are coming.”

  “The floods are always coming,” said Kaile. It was something people said, but it never seemed to actually happen.

  “Indeed they are,” the old goblin agreed, “and the time will soon come when they arrive.”

  He took a handkerchief from his coat pocket, handed it to Kaile, and gestured at her forehead. Kaile took the handkerchief and tried to wipe away the greasy ashes.

  “I really must get onstage,” the goblin said.

  Kaile kept a firm grip on his arm. She didn’t squeeze. Her grip was not the threatening, bullying kind. But she did not let go. “Tell me more about the flute,” she insisted.