Ghoulish Song z-2

by William Alexander

  He sighed a dramatic sigh. Everything the old goblin did was dramatic. “I remember that I took it from a bone carver, here in this very marketplace, to answer a debt he owed me. Fidlam was his name. He is here today, I believe, and I imagine he would know more about the instrument and its history than I do. I suggest you go searching for him. I also recommend that you speak with the musicians of the Fiddleway, those your grandfather played alongside. They all know a great deal about songs and their effects, and might therefore know something about shadow-severing tunes.”

  “Thank you,” said Kaile. She let go of his arm.

  “You are most welcome,” the goblin said, and straightened his coat and sleeve. “You might also try to discover whose bone that once was. It was a piece of someone before it played music.”

  He strode forward, stepped from pier to raft, and climbed onstage to address his audience in a booming voice.

  Kaile took out the flute and examined it again.

  Lots of ordinary things were made out of ordinary bones: needles and buttons, dice and beads. Mother had a set of spoons in the kitchen, all carved out of bone. Sailors made fishhook charms out of greatfish bones, and wore them around their necks to catch luck from the River. She assumed that most bone-carved things were made from sheep bones bought cheap at butchers’ shops. It hadn’t occurred to her to wonder what the bone had been before it was a flute.

  The proper play began on the goblin stage, and the audience grew. Kaile pushed back through the crowd and went looking for Fidlam the bone carver. She also looked around for Shade, who was nowhere nearby. Kaile wondered where her shadow had gone now.

  * * *

  She found Shade beneath the Baker’s Cage, and she found her mother inside it.

  The cage dangled high over the crowd and over the River. Mother sat stoically through an especially vigorous pelting of stale rolls and bread loaves. She didn’t see Kaile watching her. She didn’t seem to see anyone. She held her head high and dignified, even as the winch dropped her between piers, even as it hoisted her, soaked and dripping, back above the heads of the crowd, who shouted, jeered, and threw more stale bread. Kaile was proud of her. Then she felt horrible about the second-best bread that put Mother in there. Then she she felt angry again. After that she didn’t know what she felt, exactly. She wasn’t sure how to sort feelings, each from each.

  This is your fault, Shade whispered. There was no accusation in her voice. She said it as a simple statement of fact.

  You’re right, Kaile thought, but she didn’t say that aloud.

  A torn bread heel hit the side of Mother’s face. Kaile couldn’t keep watching. She turned away.

  Mother’s time in the Baker’s Cage would continue for three days running, even though she was the best baker ever to punch dough in Southside, even though she had sung her daughter’s funeral the night before. They could have waited until she was done mourning for me, Kaile thought.

  Can we leave now? Shade asked, her voice small and strained. She had both shadowy arms wrapped around her shadowy self, and she was pointedly not looking at her feet. Other shadows came and went on the ground beneath them as other people arrived to throw stale bread.

  “Yes,” said Kaile. “Let’s find you some oil for the lantern. And keep your eyes and ears open for a bone carver named Fidlam.”

  Shade followed close behind. We don’t have any money to buy lamp oil.

  “Then I’ll play a song in trade,” Kaile said. “And hope that playing this flute a second time won’t separate me from my hair, or my toes, or something. Maybe I can just trade one of our pastries.”

  I don’t think you can buy lamp oil for a song, said Shade. Or for a pastry.

  “Then we’ll spend all night under a streetlamp,” Kaile told her, “just to keep you out of the dark. Now please stop whining.”

  They searched up and down the piers among fruitmongers and clothmongers and clockmongers. Kaile asked questions. Sometimes people answered her, and sometimes they ignored her, but none of them had anything useful to offer.

  “Brooches and buttons!” one scratchy voice called out. “Trinkets and beads! Dice and domini tiles! Catch the best luck, and catch envious looks, with Fidlam’s fishhook charms!”

  “Aha,” said Kaile. “There he is.” She made for the bone carver’s barge stall.

  Her shadow followed slowly behind her.

  Fidlam was a tall man who wore a long squidskin coat. His pale eyes were set deeply in his face, and they had a hungry look to them. He had no customers at that moment, and the pier was empty around his wares.

  Kaile stepped into that empty space and stood at the foot of the ramp. Shade stood beside her, but the bone carver only noticed Kaile.

  “Welcome, young lady!” the artisan said, and smiled wide enough to swallow a pear without chewing first. “Young lady” meant “little girl” the way he said it. “Can I interest you in a fine comb? I have one carved into the shape of a leaping wingfish.”

  “No thank you,” said Kaile, though she knew that her hair would disagree if it could speak for itself. She ran one hand over her braid, and picked out a piece of straw from the hayloft. “I was wondering ...”

  She paused when she saw the artisan’s smile disappear, erased from his face. It left his jaw hanging half open. He stared at Kaile’s forehead. He stared at her feet. Then he turned around, went inside the barge cabin, and shut the door behind himself.

  “Mold, rot, and guzzard lips,” said Kaile. “I still have ashes on my face, don’t I?”

  A bit, said Shade. What now?

  “Now we insist that he answer some questions,” said Kaile. “Even if he does think I’m dead.” She marched up the ramp and onto the deck of the barge. Shade followed.

  Display cases of carvings stood all around the deck. Kaile picked her way between the cases to the cabin door, and she raised one hand to pound on it.

  She didn’t actually get the chance.

  The barge lurched. Carved bones rattled in their cases. Gearworks rumbled beneath them as the ramp and moorings withdrew from the pier.

  Fidlam’s barge made for the open River.

  Eighth Verse

  KAILE FELL OVER BACKWARD. She shouted, alarmed. Then she got to her feet and finally managed to pound on the cabin door. It did not open, and she heard nothing from the man behind it. She gave up on the door, leaned out over the barge railing, and called for help. But the Floating Market was a very loud place, filled with shouting, singing, and the noise of goblins performing a play. Kaile’s own shouts disappeared into that din, and no one else noticed.

  The upstream pier, and the whole of the docks, slid far out of reach. Kaile stopped shouting to catch her breath.

  We should have stayed on the pier, said Shade.

  “You didn’t have to follow me,” Kaile shot back. “You don’t have to follow me at all.”

  But I can’t go my own way now, can I? the shadow responded. We’re both stuck here.

  “You can’t,” Kaile agreed. She was angry, and afraid, and angry about being afraid. “You can’t go your own way, because a strange man with creepy eyes has abducted both of us and now we’re stuck on his barge. If you can think of something helpful to do with yourself rather than sulking and disapproving, I’d like that very much.”

  She turned back to the railing and tried to figure out what she should do. Oars in the side of the barge moved like rippling centipede legs, pushing them into the River’s central current. The air smelled clean and cold. She could still hear the noise of the docks and the city, the sounds skipping over the water’s surface like flat stones. She tried shouting for help a few more times, and then gave up.

  The River flowed strong and deep and wide around them. It had carved the ravine that separated the two sides of Zombay, water slicing through stone over hundreds of thousands of years. The current was very much too strong to swim through. Kaile knew that she couldn’t escape by jumping overboard—not for very long, anyway.

  She
looked up at the towering pylons of the Fiddleway Bridge. Beneath them, Kaile felt entirely helpless and small.

  She looked back at the docks, and saw the Baker’s Cage dunked into the water and hauled up again.

  She glanced around the barge deck, and at the display cases of carved bone. She saw a knife among them and picked it up. It was a delicate thing, with a landscape of trees and mountains carved into the side, and therefore not at all useful. She put it back.

  The barge idled, its oars suddenly still. It was quiet out on the River and away from the docks. In that quiet Kaile noticed something she hadn’t noticed before.

  Dozens of windup charms had been nailed to the inside of the barge railing. All of them turned. All of them made small and jangling music, audible now that the oars had stilled themselves. Kaile listened to the tiny, separate tunes as they tangled up and tripped over each other. She recognized a few. Some of the charms were meant to keep away grudges, vendettas, and very bad weather. Most were intended to keep away ghouls.

  “I’ve never seen so many windup charms in one place,” she said.

  I’m hungry, Shade said.

  “What?” Kaile tried to concentrate around the jangling noise of conflicting tunes.

  I’m hungry, Shade said again. Could you eat something, so I can eat too?

  Kaile looked at the Clock Tower on the bridge, high above them and upstream. “It’s midday,” she said. “I suppose we should.”

  She set down the satchel and pulled out a meat pie, one filled with strips of smoked guzzard and good for a midday meal. She tried to savor it and gulp it down at the same time.

  Shade plucked away its shadow for herself. She looked so solid in the sunlight.

  “Why can’t anyone else see you?” Kaile asked.

  No one ever notices shadows, said Shade. That’s fine. I would rather not be seen by anyone but you. Your attention is bad enough.

  Kaile wished that she hadn’t asked.

  She stuffed the last bit of guzzard pie in her mouth. Then the cabin doors opened again, and the bone carver came out on deck. Kaile jumped up and tried to say something, but her mouth was still full.

  Fidlam saw her, let out a startled yell, and stumbled backward. Once he caught his footing, he looked sideways at Kaile, and then quickly away.

  “Shouldn’t be here,” he muttered. “All my little tinkly-tinkly charms should keep away one such as her. What’s all this tinkling for if they can’t manage that?” He moved around the deck, checking on the workings of his barge and winding up any charms that had wound their way down. He kept clear of Kaile, and his eyes looked everywhere but where she was.

  Kaile swallowed the last of the pastry. She took the flute from her satchel and confronted the bone carver.

  “You made this,” she said. “You carved it. I need to know more about it.”

  Fidlam glanced at the flute and then away again. “Oho, that’s the one you are. Thought it might be you. Didn’t turn into a swan while falling down from the Fiddleway, did you? I wish you had. The songs say you were lovelorn and jumped into a watery rest for your broken heart, but not me. Never me. Always thought you were pushed, I did, and hoped the flute might sing a song of who it was that pushed you. Don’t suppose you might just tell me, now that you’re standing there? Who pushed you down from the high Fiddleway?”

  Kaile noticed how much her heart was pounding. She tried to slow it down. “I’m not—that’s a song, it isn’t—I don’t know what you’re saying, but I’m not the girl you’re mistaking me for.” She held up the flute again. “Please, tell me whose bone this is.”

  Fidlam shook his head. “Your bone, of course. Traded it to goblins long ago.”

  “It’s not mine!” Kaile insisted. “Not unless someone stole it and swapped it out for a stick of wood without my noticing, and I seriously doubt that.”

  Shade made a noise that sounded like a laugh.

  Fidlam took no notice of shadow laughs. He turned away and continued to putter around the deck, tugging ropes and winding cranks. “Certainly one of her leg bones,” he said. “And I’m not sure how she stands without it. Not sure how she’s standing at all. Dead a long time. That’s a long wait before taking up haunting. Must be that the floods are almost here. She drowned. She’s one of the River’s dead, and the River lets go of its dead in flood times. Loses track of them. If the drowned are up from their watery rest and walking around unquiet, then the floods are coming soon. If the floods are coming, then I’d best stash my wares and get myself downstream to safer harbor.”

  “Please make some sense!” Kaile shouted, frustration spilling over and into her voice. “Tell me where you found this bone!”

  “Easy enough,” Fidlam answered, still without looking at her. “The Kneecap’s where we’re going. We’ll be there before the clock moves much.”

  * * *

  The River’s Knee was a downstream bend where the River turned from flowing westward to flowing south. A pebble beach covered the northern shore of that bend. Sailors called it the Kneecap.

  Fidlam drove his barge up onto the Kneecap with a scraping, grinding sound. Then he gathered his wares together: a comb carved to look like a wingfish in flight, several fishhook charms, the knife with a landscape carved into the side, a few simple pip-dice, two sets of domini tiles, and all sorts of other trinkets that Kaile didn’t recognize. He shoved them into a large wooden crate, and then carried them down the ramp and onto the pebbly shore.

  Kaile followed at a distance, cautious but curious. Shade followed Kaile.

  The beach was a desolate place. Tree roots and branches, stripped bare and polished smooth, lay on the stones and grasped at the air. Living trees stood watch in a rim around the shore. They looked as gnarled and unforgiving as the driftwood. The steep slope of the ravine wall rose up behind the trees.

  Fidlam heaved his crate of bones uphill, toward the trees and the cliff face. There, at the very base of the cliff, he kicked aside a few large pieces of driftwood to reveal a metal strongbox, chained and bolted to the ground.

  “Here’s where my wares will rest,” he said. “No one else comes poking around on the Kneecap. No one but Fidlam. The sailors all say it’s a haunted place.” He laughed at that. “And it is haunted now, certainly, by one little ghoul girl—but the River will rise soon to take back its own. The drowned should stay sleeping in their own River bed.”

  Kaile didn’t like the sound of that. “I didn’t drown,” she said with as much iron in her voice as she knew how to put there. “I’m not dead. It’s just that my shadow doesn’t like me very much.”

  Fidlam paid her no attention. He opened the strongbox and set the crate inside. “There,” he said, talking to the box as he closed the lid and latch. “This beach is where you drifted with the driftwood, where you came to rest, before I made you into other sorts of pretty things. Now you’ll all stay anchored here until the flood comes and goes. If any more of you start walking around to make unquiet mischief, you just keep that mischief contained to the Kneecap and off of my barge.” He gave the lid an affectionate pat. “I’m off to race the flood downstream, but I’ll be back for you after.”

  Kaile stared at the box. “You carve the bones that wash up on this beach.” Most things that fell from the Fiddleway Bridge washed up on the Kneecap. Kaile knew that. Everyone knew that. “You carve the bones of people who wash up on this beach.”

  “And birds, and fish, and other things besides,” Fidlam said cheerfully. “Though most birds and fish leave fragile bones. Not nearly so useful.”

  He looked at Kaile then. He actually looked at her with his pale and deep-set eyes. The look he gave her was curious and unsettling. She took a step backward, away from him.

  “It was a good thing to meet you,” he said. “If you can ever see your way to telling me who pushed you off the bridge, then I’ll be sure to track them down—if they still live—and I’ll give them a shameful shouting in some public place.”

  Kaile shook her h
ead, frustrated. “We’re not understanding each other here.” She tried to think of a way to make him actually listen to her. “I’m not—”

  Fidlam nodded in a formal farewell. Then he bolted back through the trees and across the beach, pebbles flying behind him. One struck Kaile in the eye.

  “Ow!” She forced both eyes open and ran after the bone carver. Her sight was blurry, but she saw him climb the ramp and pull it up behind him.

  The barge shuddered into movement, pushing itself away from shore.

  Kaile shouted. She pleaded. She dropped her satchel, picked up a pebble, and threw it hard. She missed. The stone splashed and was gone.

  Fidlam’s barge sailed away downstream, leaving the girl and her separate shadow to haunt the River’s Knee.

  Ninth Verse

  KAILE ROLLED UP ALL of her fears and frustrations into one wordless lump of noise, and she shouted that lump across the River. Then she picked up her satchel and waved the flute over her head. “This was never my leg! I’m not dead, I didn’t jump off the Fiddleway to drown a broken heart, and the flute isn’t my leg bone!”

  Shade’s dark shape stood beside her. You also haven’t turned into a swan. It might be useful if you did, though.

  “I’m not a ghoul, either,” said Kaile. “I’m not haunting Fidlam’s barge, wailing ghoulish things and jumping up and down on his cabin roof to make sure he never gets any sleep ever again.” She rubbed her eye, and then forced herself to stop because that only made it tear up again.

  You’re not a molekey, said Shade. You’re not anything that could scamper up the side of the cliff to get away from here.

  “I’m not a greatfish,” said Kaile. “I’m not swimming in the River. I’m not ramming the bottom of that barge with my tusks.” She sat down on the beach. Pebbles crunched underneath. “I’m not anything useful.”

  Are you something that knows how to make a fire? Shade asked. The lantern’s still empty, and I don’t think there’s any lamp oil on the Kneecap. I don’t know what’ll happen to me when it gets dark. I really don’t want to find out.