Ghoulish Song z-2

by William Alexander

  Kaile noticed how cold she was, surrounded by River winds. She wrapped her shawl tight around her shoulders. “I’m a baker’s daughter,” she said. “Of course I can start a fire.” She stood up, glad to have something to do, and began to gather driftwood into a pile. There was plenty of driftwood to gather.

  Bones also lay scattered on the beach, but Kaile left those undisturbed.

  She stacked large, small, and tiny sticks into a proper pile for fire starting, and then used the lantern flint to light it. The driftwood caught quickly. Soon she had a strong blaze burning.

  “There,” said Kaile, satisfied. “I’ve got warmth, and you’ve got light.” She sat down beside the bonfire and felt the heat of it soak into her fingers, toes, and face.

  Shade sat on the opposite side. She grew darker and stronger beside the bright flames. Kaile could make out the lines of her features.

  The wood’s burning quickly, the shadow said, sounding worried. I hope we have enough to last through the night.

  “I’m sure we do,” said Kaile. She wasn’t actually sure. She had no idea how quickly they might exhaust their store of driftwood. But she was tired of her shadow’s complaining. “Besides, we might not have to spend the whole night here. A passing barge might see the bonfire and come pick us up. Sailors are supposed to help the stranded.”

  Maybe, said Shade. But this is a boneyard, remember? This is where pieces of the drowned wash up. Fidlam seemed pretty sure that no one else ever comes here. No one but him.

  “We’ll shout for help when they go by,” Kaile insisted. “Voices are supposed to carry across the River, as long as the River feels inclined to carry voices.”

  I’m sure that strange lights and shouting from a haunted place will bring us dozens and dozens of rescuers, said Shade. I’m sure that will happen before the floods come and wash us away. I’m just sure of it. Sarcasm smeared over her words like a glaze over sweet rolls.

  “Shut it,” Kaile said. “I bet it won’t really flood. The floods are always coming, but they never really get here.”

  She watched the River go by. Then she examined the flute in her hand. Her fingers rested comfortably on the stops, as though each stop had been carved with her fingers in mind.

  “Grandfather used to sing about the girl who jumped from the Fiddleway,” said Kaile. “The one who maybe turned into a swan.”

  I know, said Shade from the other side of the fire. I was there, too. I heard. I always listened.

  Kaile was uncomfortable with the fact that her shadow, which had always been with her, had always been listening—especially considering how sulky and disgruntled her shadow had turned out to be, now that they could speak to each other.

  “Were you the girl who jumped?” Kaile asked the flute. “Was Grandfather playing your song? Did you get a bit cracked, and throw yourself down? Did you get your heart broken, and then go a bit cracked? Or did someone else push you, like Fidlam said? Did you wash up here afterward? Would you recognize that song if I sang it to you?”

  The flute said nothing—unless a breath of breeze passing through it counted as something.

  Kaile hummed the tune until the words of the first verse came to her. It was the only verse she remembered. Her memory caught notes and tunes more easily than it ever took hold of words and lyrics.

  “A lovelorn girl from the long bridge fell

  To rest in the River’s bed.

  A heart half-given broke her own,

  And words half-given broke instead.

  Her mind half-muddled, she believed

  She was a lovely, flying thing

  And so flung herself down,

  And so flung herself down,

  And so mad Iren fell down from the bridge.”

  She stopped. The tune still broke her own heart a little, but she liked the girl in the song less and less the more she thought about the lyrics. She couldn’t remember much of the second verse, in which Iren’s fingers grew feathers while she fell.

  “Do you remember a customer named Tacklesot?” Kaile asked Shade. Shade said nothing. Kaile went on. “A sailor. He used to come to Broken Wall whenever his barge came through Zombay. He told stories about sailors who despaired about one thing or another and then jumped overboard. Usually they drowned. The River isn’t kind to swimmers. But sometimes they got fished out again, either by their own crew or by some other passing barge. Tacklesot said there’s not a single living jumper who didn’t regret the jump afterward—usually before they even hit the water. Each and every one of them said, ‘Whoops, wish I hadn’t done that.’ I think he might have been one of the jumpers who got fished out again. He never said so, but I think that’s how he knew.”

  Shade still said nothing. The fire snapped and crackled between them.

  “Did you fling yourself down?” Kaile asked the flute again. “Did you say ‘Whoops’ afterward, before you hit the water, just like Tacklesot?”

  Nothing and no one answered her. Kaile heard waves against the pebble shore. She heard a distant hum and buzz that might have been the Floating Market. She heard nothing else. She shifted her weight, uncomfortable sitting on small, cold stones, uncomfortable with no voices or music or movement around her. She was accustomed to the bustle, warmth, and company of her family’s alehouse. The Kneecap was quiet, empty, and in every way different from Broken Wall.

  “Can you hear me over there?” she asked her shadow. “Say something.”

  I can hear you, said Shade. I’ve always heard you. I’ve heard every cruel and selfish thing you have ever muttered under your breath. I heard you yesterday when you tried to tell yourself that nothing was your fault. Mother failed the Inspection. Little Cob Snotfish almost had goblin curses called down on his little head. But that wasn’t your fault. None of it was your fault. That’s what you tried to tell yourself, and me. I can always hear you, but I don’t usually believe you.

  Kaile sat stunned and perfectly still. Her face felt flushed and warm, so she turned it away from the fire and away from her shadow. She felt seething mixtures of anger, embarrassment, shame, and annoyance. Her fingers silently worked the stops of the flute. Then she brought it to her lips.

  The first and last time she played this instrument, she had lost her shadow and found herself cast out of her home as a dead thing. She wondered what she might lose if she played it again. Maybe her hair. Maybe her toes. Maybe the music would sever her shadow so completely that Kaile would never see Shade again. Whatever it might do, Kaile decided that she didn’t care.

  She tried to play something that would have made Grandfather laugh, stomp his feet, and shout, That’s it! That will hold together! She tried to play something that Mother might sing to, even though Mother almost never sang anything. Father had the better voice. It was Father who had sung lullabies at her bedside, or walked up and down the upstairs hall singing to the Snotfish when he was still tiny and hadn’t learned how to sleep yet. But Mother would sing if the music was strong enough. Kaile tried to play something that would be strong enough.

  The flute had its own will, and its own song to play. Every note took a step sideways. They shaped themselves into the very same tune from the day before, into the song that had rendered Kaile shadowless.

  Kaile felt a quick stab of panic at the sound—but it was beautiful, and she reminded herself that she didn’t much care what might happen. She played it through to the end. The notes went out over the River.

  “Are you still there?” she asked Shade, once the song was done. She didn’t look to check.

  I’m still here, said Shade from across the fire.

  Kaile was surprised to notice her own relief. She didn’t want to be entirely alone, not here, not on the Kneecap.

  Are you hungry? Shade asked.

  “Not really,” said Kaile, “but I’m guessing you are.” She dug out the last of the pastries from home. Shade came around the fire, claimed the shadow-pastry, and then returned to her spot.

  Kaile chewed a shadowless mouthful
of cold crust and spiced potato. She stared out over the River, out at the passing barges that did not stop to investigate strange music and firelight. Then a fog began to rise and roll downstream, making it very much harder to see.

  Rescuing sailors will surely find us now, said Shade.

  “Shut it,” said Kaile. She scooted closer to the fire as the air grew thick and dark around them.

  * * *

  The day cooled, grew stale, and ended. Clouds of fog and mist continued to hide both the far shore and the Fiddleway upstream. Kaile could still see the glow from the Clock Tower, acting as a lighthouse beacon for sailors on the River. It felt strange to be marooned so close to the city, close enough to see and hear Zombay but still be stranded and very much outside. She added more wood to the fire, and noticed that the fire was gobbling up driftwood very quickly. She hoped it would last the night, but she knew it might not. Night had only just begun.

  Something nearby made a knocking sound.

  Kaile and Shade looked at each other.

  “What was that?” Kaile asked.

  It came from the trees, Shade answered. It came from the base of the cliff. Night birds? Molekeys, maybe?

  The sound grew loud and pounding, like fists against a metal door.

  That’s the strongbox, Shade whispered. That’s Fidlam’s strongbox, with all his carved bones in it. He said they might make unquiet mischief in flood time. He said the River dead get restless when the River’s distracted by its own flooding. That’s what he said.

  “This isn’t a flood,” Kaile insisted. “The whole Kneecap would be underwater if it was. We aren’t in the midst of a flooding.”

  Words tumbled quickly through Shade’s whispering voice. A flood might still be coming. It might be soon. And the bones that wash up here are all people who drowned—people who jumped off the bridge, or were pushed off the bridge, or even just fell off the bridge by accident. Those who die before their time are the most likely sorts of dead to be unquiet afterward. This whole strip of shore might be haunted by them.

  Kaile glared at the foggy dark around them. “This place is haunted by us.”

  She said it to Shade, and to any other thing that might be listening. She tried to make it true as she said it. She tried to make this place hers, this circle of firelight her own, haunted by herself and her shadow and by no one and nothing else. She tried very hard to make that true.

  All around them, from every direction, came a faint scraping sound. She saw movement by firelight, down among the pebbles.

  The bones moved. They rolled and jumbled over the Kneecap, toward the trees, toward the base of the cliff where something pounded loud against the inside of Fidlam’s strongbox.

  Kaile noticed that she was standing, though she didn’t actually remember getting to her feet. She noticed that Shade stood directly beside her rather than across the bonfire. She noticed the speed of her breath and her heartbeat, both of which insisted that she was not dead, that she was not haunting anything, and that no part of this place belonged to her.

  Metal shrieked against metal as the strongbox burst open. The lid flew through the fog, over Kaile’s head, and skipped across the surface of the River like a flat stone.

  Shade screamed, a shadow scream unlike any sound Kaile had ever heard before.

  The scattered bones moved faster now. They gathered together into larger shapes that rushed and scuttled like crabs across the shore.

  Kaile stood with her eyes very wide open and her mouth pressed entirely shut.

  What should we do? Shade whispered, over and over again. What should we do?

  “Keep still,” said Kaile. “Keep close to the fire, and keep very still. Whatever this is, it might not have anything to do with us. They might not notice us. They aren’t moving in our direction, see?”

  They’re building on themselves, Shade whispered. They’re making larger things out of themselves. What should we do?

  Kaile tried to reach for her shadow’s hand, but she found nothing solid to hold on to. She held the flute with both hands instead, and felt it tremble. It did not tug. It did not struggle to free itself from her grip and join the other bones. If anything, it tried to press itself more firmly into her grip. Kaile rubbed the flute with her thumb in what she hoped was a soothing sort of way.

  A figure came walking toward them through the fog.

  Kaile and Shade both moved around to the far side of the bonfire.

  The figure was man shaped. It clattered and clacked as it stepped into the firelight. Its body was made entirely out of bones, and clothed in a tattered mess of riverweed and sailcloth scraps. It stood larger and wider than any living person. Many separate skeletons had gone into its making. Many bones had found new ways of fitting themselves together.

  Several of the bones had been carved by Fidlam. Fishhook charms made up the curved nails of the figure’s fingertips. Sets of dice clustered together as wristbones and knucklebones. Domini tiles made strange, huge teeth and protruded from the mouth of an ornately decorated skull.

  The figure cast a shadow across the beach and away from the bonfire. Kaile almost laughed at the sight of that shadow. Dead things do cast shadows, she thought. Doctor Boggs was so very wrong.

  The mouth of domini tiles opened. Noise clawed its way out. It was a raw sound, shaped by no lips or tongue. But Kaile recognized notes within that discord of noise, and she heard those notes gather together into the melody of a song—the same music that had severed Kaile from her shadow, the same song that her flute insisted on playing. But those very same notes sounded different now. The flute made them beautiful, wistful, and sad. The voice of this ghoulish thing made the song angry, vicious, and tormented. The ghoul screamed music. Kaile and Shade both cowered at the sound.

  “We should run,” Kaile whispered, though she didn’t actually move. “We should be running. Right now. Very fast.”

  Nowhere to go, Shade whispered back. Just a little strip of shore. And it’s dark, too dark. I can’t leave the fire. I’ll disappear. I’ll vanish in the dark.

  The figure drew slowly closer. The fire between them tossed sparks in the air.

  “I wish I could just disappear,” Kaile told her shadow.

  No you don’t, said Shade. You really don’t.

  The ghoulish thing sang instead of breathing, and its footsteps matched the beat of that song. The rags and scraps of riverweed it wore all knitted themselves together to the rhythm of its music. The bones fit more smoothly together to the patterns of its singing.

  “The same song,” Kaile said softly to herself. “The same song. The one stuck in this flute, stuck in all of these bones. It binds itself together with that song.” She had the spark-bright beginning of an idea. “You can’t have more than one tune stuck in your head at once. There’s only room for one.” She turned to Shade. “Think of another song. Something catchy and annoying and impossible to get rid of.”

  Nowhere to go, Shade whispered, her voice very faint. The shadow backed away from the ghoul and the fire—but then she seemed to feel the darkness at her back, and stepped forward again. Nowhere to go.

  Kaile made exasperated noises, and tried to think. Then she remembered “The Counting Song.”

  She had come up with the lyrics years ago, with some slight contributions from the Snotfish. He could barely talk at the time—and also couldn’t stop talking. The Snotfish had laughed at every single rhyming word, and shouted those rhyme-words over and over again.

  Mother had sent Grandfather upstairs to find them and quiet them down. Instead he had helped them shape the rhyme into a tune—a perfect, bouncing thing that lodged in the ears of anyone who heard it and refused to leave their heads for days and days. Patrons of the Broken Wall sang “The Counting Song” for weeks and months afterward. It was the single most annoying piece of music Kaile knew.

  She sang it as loud as she could.

  “One for the buns now overdone,

  Two for the glue poured in your shoe,

>   Three for the pennies, haven’t got any,

  Four for the door in the hole in the floor ...”

  The ghoulish thing faltered, and so did its song. Kaile saw, and heard, the way that music gave it shape and held it all together. She poured more effort into her own singing voice.

  “Five for the falling fisherbird dive,

  Six for kicks and tocks and ticks,

  Seven for the flour and the water and the leaven,

  Eight for the grapes that I ate off your plate ...”

  The rags began to unravel. The bones began to scrape together, ill fitting. The ghoulish thing screamed its own music against the relentless and mercilessly memorable “Counting Song.” Kaile shuddered and shrank back, but she also held her ground and her tune.

  “Nine for your fingers tied with twine,

  Ten for the guzzard hen shrieking, ‘Again!’ ”

  Kaile went back to one and the overdone buns, starting over.

  The ghoul withdrew. It wrapped its raw and livid music around itself and retreated to the trees above the shore, away from “The Counting Song.”

  Kaile kept singing. She repeated the whole ten-count twice more before she let herself stop.

  She could still hear the ghoulish song nearby, but it stayed where it was and came no closer.

  She stood ready to sing again, if necessary.

  She tried to convince her breathing to calm down.

  “Well,” said a voice behind her, announcing itself. “That was impressive.”

  Tenth Verse

  KAILE SPUN AROUND, SLIPPED on pebbles, and nearly stumbled into the bonfire. Adult-sized hands caught her before she fell.

  “Easy there,” said the strange voice. It was a woman’s voice, though also deep and rough around the edges. “Be easy.”

  Kaile pulled free and pushed away. She had just faced down a ghoulish mess of many drowned remains, her heartbeat raged and pounded in her chest, and she was not in any way inclined to trust strangers who appeared suddenly behind her in the dark.