A Festival of Ghosts

by William Alexander

  Handisher looked back. The living tortoise hunched under the stage, half-submerged in mud and munching on earthworms.

  “Found you.” Jasper yanked him out, which wasn’t easy. The tortoise was heavy.

  “Here, you take the shield,” Dad said. “I’ll take the tortoise.”

  They swapped. Handisher tucked his legs and scrunched his neck deep into his shell.

  “Now run,” Dad said. He used his ordinary voice to say it. Jasper half-expected his father to speak with the exalted tone and accent of Sir Morien. But his father wasn’t performing now. He just had a job to do. That job was to protect his son. And also a tortoise. With a sword.

  They ran, and almost made it freely through the gates.

  Sir Morien stood there and blocked their way out.

  The scarecrow knight thumped the flat of his sword against his own shield three times, as though beating a drum.

  Dad set the tortoise down. Handisher peeked out of his shell, didn’t like what he saw, and scrunched his head back in again.

  “That’s you,” Jasper tried to explain. “I think he’s upset. We both knocked a lot of other scarecrows down.”

  “I know exactly who and what that is,” said Sir Dad. “I’ll need my shield back. Now stay clear. Try to keep that tortoise from wandering off again.”

  “But—”

  “Stay clear I said.”

  Jasper nodded.

  Sir Dad and Sir Morien met at the festival gates.

  18

  SIR MORIEN WAS MADE OUT of wood, cloth, and memory. That was what he was, and all that he was. He had knit himself together from the echoes of every performance, from every time that Jasper’s father had played that character over the course of twenty-odd summers. The scarecrow was the distillation of Sir Dad’s knightly skills. His stance and his posture were absolutely perfect—whereas Dad seemed winded and spent after the battle on the jousting field.

  “He’s out of practice,” Jasper whispered to Handisher. “He might lose. Dad might actually lose a fight with his own shadow.”

  The two knights clashed. They soon broke their shields and dropped the useless, splintered wreckage as they circled each other. Master strikes flowed quickly between them, almost too fast for Jasper to see. The knights were not performing with wide, sweeping movements meant to be noticed by an audience. Sir Dad and Sir Morien fought only for each other.

  Swords met in a bind and remained locked together. The duel became a wrestling match, exchanging weight and pressure with a single inch of steel as the point of lasting contact.

  Dad stepped back, gave ground, and loosened the bind. Sir Morien pressed his advantage.

  Jasper rushed in closer, desperate to distract the scarecrow. Both knights ignored him. Sir Dad stepped aside and used Sir Morien’s momentum to bring his own blade swinging back. He struck at his opponent’s cloth-made face with a Zwerchhau. Morien countered with an identical strike.

  They got stuck in a whirligig. Zwerchhaus spun over their heads like helicopter blades. Then Dad broke the loop by crouching down and pummeling the scarecrow with the pommel of his sword.

  Sir Morien broke in a burst of green light.

  * * *

  Rosa tried to grab Isabelle’s hand, missed, and stumbled instead.

  She tried to speak. She couldn’t speak. No sounds took shape in her throat. No words took shape in her head, either. She couldn’t think straight. Even the silent voice of her own private thoughts was gone.

  Isabelle stood tall over Rosa, a swirling whirlwind of paper scraps and incandescent rage.

  “I remember the scaffold that they built there,” she said. “I remember the hole in the world that they made. It was a well, the very first well dug in Ingot. Cold, clean water flowed from it at first. But then it was made foul by the mine and the refinery. I died of drinking from it. So did most of the children who attended that school. We haunted my husband for that. We haunted the engineer who dug holes in the world for him. We cried ‘Poison!’ in their ears until they banished us and burned away the history of how we died, until our voices wore down to nubs of silence. But I do still remember the taste of that water, how cold and clean and clear it was at first, how vile it was after. I remember the well behind the schoolhouse. I have not forgotten it. I will not forget it.”

  The ghost reached down, took both of Rosa’s hands, and helped her stand up again.

  “Good,” Rosa said. She almost sobbed to hear her own voice settle back where it belonged. “We’ll make sure that the rest Ingot remembers, too. But if you ever, ever take my voice again I will drag all of your old belongings outside, burn them in the parking lot, and settle your haunting self into a dirty, ugly smear of memorial ashes on cracked pavement. Do you understand me?”

  Isabelle smiled, this time with paper teeth. “I do understand you.”

  “Good.” Rosa said again. She kept on repeating that word in her head, just because she could do that now. Good good good good good. “Help me out in return. Someone else is taking voices. In the school. Through the water fountain. Poisoned kids, I’m guessing?”

  “That seems likely to me,” Isabelle said. “I am glad to hear it.”

  “I’m not,” said Rosa. “The living need those voices back.”

  Lady Isabelle shook her head. It twisted a little too far each time, as though her paper neck could not remember precisely how necks were supposed to work. “Listen to them. They will be heard. They must be heard.”

  “Okay, sure. I’ll hear them out. But they haven’t told me anything so far. Just the name ‘Talcott.’ What does that mean to you?”

  “Talcott.” The ghost spat out the name. “That was my husband’s engineer. Franz Talcott. He built the mine and the refinery. He dug the poisoned well. He served as the first mayor of Ingot, and sired the family line of all the mayors that followed after. Those who died of the water he tainted have not forgotten his name.”

  “Aha,” Rosa said. “Now we’re getting warm. Do you know where I might track down Franz Talcott’s haunting self ?”

  The whirlwind that was Isabelle had ceased to pay attention to her. “We will not forgot,” she said again before she lost all cohesive form. Scraps of paper collapsed into a pile on the floor.

  Rosa sighed, swept them up, and put the paper scraps back on the table.

  * * *

  Father and son stumbled up their own driveway.

  Jasper kicked the stone steps of the front porch to say hello to household spirits, and also to knock some of the mud from his boots.

  Several more knocks answered him. The pumpkin lanterns had settled a whole host of small wanderers underneath the porch.

  Sir Dad took Handisher down from his shoulder and set him on the ground. The tortoise found earthworms to chew on, and chewed. Dad sat down hard on the top step.

  “Let me see the sword,” Jasper asked.

  His father handed it over. Jasper examined the blade, which was very badly notched after the fight. An hour or two with a whetstone would fix some of the damage, but not all. Nell would have to take a hammer and anvil to the rest.

  “How did I win?” Dad asked.

  “You won because of your unsurpassed excellence at fifteenth-century swordplay,” Jasper said. “There’s no one better. Not since the fifteenth century was still happening.”

  “Probably true,” Sir Dad admitted. “But that rag doll was just as good. He remembered every technique perfectly. And he didn’t seem to get tired. I’m exhausted. So how did I win?”

  Jasper leaned back, grateful for the chance to geek out about swords with his father. They hadn’t done this in a while. “Maybe he remembered too perfectly.”

  “Aha,” said Sir Dad, his voice both tired and pleased. “Meaning what?”

  “Hauntings can get stuck in loops,” Jasper said, thinking out loud. “The same thing happens on the same spot, over and over again. After the bind you got him stuck in a loop. Then you chose when and how to break it. And you broke him when
you did.”

  “With the pommel.” Dad tapped the heavy, copper-inlaid circle at the base of the hilt. “Not the sort of thing I’ve ever done in stage combat. Hurts too much, even in armor. Pommels are heavy. And it’s such a close move that an audience wouldn’t be able to see it clearly—not unless they were right up front. Theatrically unsatisfying.”

  Jasper understood. “So if you had never really done that before—not there, at the festival, as Sir Morien—then he wouldn’t remember it, or guard against it.”

  “Exactly.” Dad took the sword back and carefully sheathed it. Then he looked sadly out across the field. “Do you think he’s gone?”

  “Sir Morien?” Jasper asked.

  Dad nodded. “I played that knight for longer than you’ve been alive. Made him out of everything good that I know about chivalry. It’s not about holding doors open. It isn’t the genteel con of acting polite while taking other people’s things, because you’ve got a horse and a sword and they don’t. Or at least it shouldn’t be. Chivalry was supposed to be a way to carry yourself when you know that you’re stronger, and you refuse to use that strength viciously. It’s a good ethic. One that I wanted to teach you. Plus it’s been fun to strut bravely and swing swords around every summer. It’s been a lot of fun. But now it’s over. I won. We fought, I won, and it’s over.”

  Jasper felt suddenly cold, as though haunted by something new. “I don’t think he’s gone. Ghosts don’t just go away. He’ll pull himself together and come back.”

  “Why do you keep going back there?” Dad asked. “Please don’t. It’s much more dangerous now.”

  “I needed to find Handisher,” Jasper explained defensively.

  “Now you’ve found him,” Dad pointed out. “The tortoise is safe. So don’t go back.”

  “I also need to understand what’s happening there. I need to figure out how to fix it.”

  Dad laughed, but his laugh sounded small. “Understanding is the easy part. Reenactments never mix with the ghosts of real history. You should see the ugliness that goes down at Civil War sites whenever somebody tries to put on an old uniform. This right here is nothing in comparison. You can’t lie about history, not in a place like that. The ghosts rise up to voice their objections. And Ingot was a mining town back in the day, not a walled medieval city. Our own ghosts have come home. They’re searching for their home with lamps strapped to their foreheads. But this place isn’t familiar to them. Now it’s a fake medieval village occupied by a borrowed, warped, deliberately misremembered, and flat-out imaginary version of the past. And they don’t like being misremembered. Smaller festivals can get away with that sort of thing, sometimes, in mildly haunted places. But this fest was the best and the biggest. We can’t get away with it anymore.”

  Jasper didn’t want to argue about this. He wanted the whole conversation to end, cease, and disappear. He wanted it to have never happened in the first place. “We’ll fix it. We’ll find a way to fix it.”

  Dad waved his sword at the stable. “We need to keep this farm running. That’s difficult enough. Let those two sets of ghosts duke the matter out between them while we keep clear.”

  The screen door squeaked in protest when he opened it. It squeaked again as it shut.

  Jasper stayed on the porch with the tortoise. He could still hear the clash and clamor of battle ringing out across the field.

  NOVEMBER

  19

  ROSA KICKED THE FRONT STEPS of Jasper’s porch in the extremely early hours of the morning. She got one answering knock. It sounded surprised. The living weren’t usually up so early, even on a farm. Sir Dad no longer greeted the dawn with shows of swordsmanship.

  Jasper came out to meet her. He carried his quarterstaff and one small pebble, which he tossed. Then he made a quick tisking noise with the tip of his tongue.

  Stones gathered together on the spot where that one pebble fell. Some tore up from the ground. Others skittered over the gravel driveway.

  Jerónimo reassembled himself and stamped one hoof.

  “Hey there, Ronnie.” Jasper reached out to stroke the pebbles of his haunted horse’s face.

  “Should I do that, too?” Rosa asked. “Try to pat his . . . snout? Nose? Whatever horses call it. Just to say hi.”

  “Probably not,” Jasper advised. “Don’t reach for his face until you know that he likes you.”

  “How will I know that?”

  “You won’t. At first. But you will definitely be able to tell if he dislikes you.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  Jasper used the porch steps to mount up onto Ronnie’s back. He made sure the copper tips of his staff didn’t touch the horse. Rosa took three tries to climb up behind him, but she finally did it.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Why can’t we use a saddle?”

  “Because Ronnie won’t tolerate saddles anymore.”

  “Why can’t we ride a different horse, then?”

  “Because none of the living horses are willing to go where we’re going.”

  “We could walk. Can’t we walk? Maybe we should just walk.”

  “We’ll be late for school if we walk all the way up there and back.”

  “Maybe that’s okay,” Rosa said. “We could be late. We should just be late.”

  “This was your idea,” Jasper reminded her.

  “I know,” she said. “We’ve tried everything else, so we need to do this. But I still don’t wanna.”

  Jasper didn’t want to get where they were going either, but at least he felt fine with their method of travel. “Squeeze your knees together, but try not to tap Ronnie’s sides with your heels. He’ll go faster if you do that. Like this.” He tapped and tisked again.

  Ronnie took off trotting down to the end of the driveway. Rosa did not enjoy this. A trot was a bouncy and stuttering way to move.

  After some weight shifts and heel taps the horse turned toward the mountains and took up a smoother, speedier, cantering gait.

  Forest and fog thickened around them. Isabelle Road contracted to a mere dirt track. Leafless tree branches reached at the riders and brushed loud against the sleeves of their coats.

  Ronnie slowed as the way grew steep. Dawn light crept uncomfortably through the fog and teased out the shapes of looming things moving between trees. Some of the looming, moving things were trees.

  A bear with a boulder for a head watched eyelessly as they went by. It raised a paw in greeting.

  Something made out of seven coyotes fell apart, ran separately across the track, and then stacked itself back together on the other side.

  The riders reached a clearing, and a long gash in the ground.

  Barron had built his copper circle here. He had banished all the rest of Ingot’s dead to the other side of this line. But only Barron haunted the spot now. His scorched bones rested near the mouth of his old copper mine, underneath a pile of heavy stones that Nell and Rosa’s mother had stacked over him. Then they had set a memorial plaque at the base of the stones. It read:

  BARTHOLOMEW THEOSOPHRAS BARRON:

  FOUNDER, ENTREPRENEUR, AND LETHEAN.

  BE WELCOME HERE.

  FIND WELCOME NOWHERE ELSE.

  “What’s a Lethean?” Jasper asked.

  “Someone just as devoted to forgetting as librarians are to remembering,” Rosa told him.

  Jasper dismounted from the pile of stones that had stacked itself into his horse. Rosa tumbled down after him. Then the two specialists got to work. They lit candles, surrounded themselves with protective geometry, and called upon the town founder to come and chat.

  Barron’s bones climbed out from under the cairn, settled into place, and then took up handfuls of dust to shape into the semblance of flesh. Dead leaves crushed together became the strands of his long mustache.

  “Lady Díaz.” His voice was dry and gentlemanly. “Young Master Chevalier.”

  Rosa stepped up to the edge of their circle. She very much wanted her sword
, but Barron might not have agreed to speak with them if she’d brought the blade that had once cut off his hand. And she really didn’t know what to expect of this conversation, or what sort of grudge the town founder might hold against them for the next thousand years. Rosa and Jasper had personally shattered the work of his life, and the work of his death, when they brought all other hauntings home to Ingot.

  “Good morning, sir,” she said. “Thank you for speaking with us. It’s very gracious of you.” Barron enjoyed respectful flattery.

  “I do not often receive visitors,” he said. “Except lately. How is our fair town in the valley below?”

  “Well enough,” said Rosa.

  “Is it?” Barron snorted, which scattered his mustache. He made himself another. “Is it as comfortable a place as it appears from this far distance? Are all the citizens content? Or do I hear the grumblings of division?”

  “We’re getting used to the new state of things,” Jasper said.

  Barron ignored him. He spoke only to Rosa. “How does my own dear wife enjoy her accommodations?”

  “Better than her old ones,” Rosa said with a knife-twisting smile. “Lady Isabelle sends her fond greetings.”

  “Yes, I am certain that she does.” Barron stretched. His bones rediscovered their habits of fitting together. “Now then, to what do I owe the very great pleasure of your visit? Is it merely to deliver regards from my wife? If so, you may bring my own back with you. I hope that she enjoys watching the town we built tear itself apart. Ingot has begun to remember things best left forgotten.”

  Rosa parried and struck back. “I will tell her that you said so. I do suspect, however, that she finds more satisfaction in remembrance than amnesia.”

  Barron destroyed his mustache with another snort. He gathered leaves and made a third one. Then he drew shapes in the dirt with one bony fingertip.

  Rosa switched back to flattery. “Sir, we’ve come to ask for details from your own memory. As the founder of Ingot, you know more about this place than anyone, dead or living.”