Ghoulish Song

Third Verse

KAILE TOOK HER MIDDAY break outside, by the road, sitting on a broken piece of wall. She munched a pastry and watched people go by. She knew most of them, and most of them knew her. There was Old Jibb, who lost a leg to a dropped stone and had it replaced with one long, coiled spring. There was Brunip, who always walked with weights strapped to his left arm to balance out the mighty weight of his right arm, which was iron and bulky. Brunip took care of his arm, and scrubbed each individual piece every morning to keep the rust out. It glinted, shiny, when he lifted it to wave. Kaile waved back.

Rock-moving was dangerous. Many movers had replaced lost parts of themselves with gearworked fingers and toes. Their new bits were always makeshift and strangely shaped, pieced together out of salvage from old clocks or the rail station yard. Only the Guard Captain’s hands looked like the hands he used to have. Only the Guard used gearworked legs that would actually fit into boots.

Snotfish was several sorts of idiot for wanting to join the Guard, and get his feet replaced when they didn’t need to be.

The Guard Captain—whose gearwork eyes always ticked in a cold, constant circle—was not here yet. The Inspection hadn’t happened yet. It should have, by now. Goblins were coming to put on a show in the public room, and how had that ever seemed like a good idea?

Kaile frowned as she finished her pastry. It had too much redseed spice in it, which overwhelmed all the other tastes that should have been there.

She looked up and down the street for the Guard, or the goblin. She saw neither. The street was empty now, almost empty, which was a strange thing for this time of day.

Father opened the door and called for Kaile. Inside she went, nervous about goblins, nervous about Mother, and very nervous about the Captain of the Guard.

Hungry patrons stood thick around the counter when the goblins returned, so Kaile didn’t notice them at first. Five goblins came carrying boxes and crates filled with instruments, costumes, and masks. They made a makeshift stage at the far end of the room without checking in with Kaile, without giving her a chance to say, Wait just a moment, the Inspection hasn’t happened yet, so this whole business is no longer a good idea, if it ever was a good idea. Then the juggling began, and it was too late to put a stop to it all.

The Snotfish crept out from underneath the counter. He had clearly been crying. His face looked like it was full of the stuff of his nickname.

“Those are goblins,” he said, amazed. “The bald one’s juggling.”

“That’s right,” said Kaile. “Now please go away.”

“Goblins steal you,” said the Snotfish, with reverence and awe. “They steal you and turn you into a ghoul, with icky gray skin and no hair and no shadow, so then they’ll have a whole army of ghouls and one day the Guard and the goblin ghoul army will fight and the Guard will have slings and crossbows built into one arm and swords built into the other arm that stick out like this when they move their hand like this”—he took an experimental swing; Kaile moved quickly, and rescued a pitcher of ale from her brother’s sword-arm—“and they’ll cut off seven ghoul-heads all at once, like this, and you’ll get your head cut off because you’ll be a ghoul, because they’ll get you, because you let them in here!”

“Go away now, Snotfish.”

He swung his imagined sword at her. “Ha!” he said, and ran under a table. That was fine. It was an empty table.

The juggler tossed green scarves in the air. He juggled the scarves in a swirling pattern that made him look like a tree in a windstorm. Then he started swapping out the green leaves for yellow and red ones to make autumn leaves. Then all of the scarves vanished, and he started to juggle metal bugs. The bugs flew buzzing in different directions, and they seemed reluctant to be juggled—one in particular kept trying to fly away from his grasp.

Patrons cheered—some for the juggler, and some for the bug—but Kaile couldn’t pay too much attention. Too many people around her wanted ale and bread and meat pastries and sweet pastries. She brought them what they asked for. She glanced at the juggler every now and then to make sure he didn’t knock over a lamp. She glanced at the front door, looking for the Guard Captain. She glanced at the kitchen door, looking for Mother. The afternoon was quickly passing by, and the Inspection had not happened yet.

A new sound startled her. The old goblin with the big black hat had begun to play a bandore. Kaile paused. She listened. She couldn’t help it.

At first the notes sounded like laughter, like a quick series of rippling jokes. But under and around all that joke and tease was a slower, stronger current of music so overwhelmingly sad that Kaile almost left the room to get away from that bottomless feeling. It reminded her of Grandfather.

Kaile remembered how Grandfather would always play a tune in the morning before taking his bandore to his customary spot on the Fiddleway Bridge—a great big thing that spanned the ravine between the northern and southern halves of Zombay. Many houses and shops stood on that bridge, and the Clock Tower of Zombay stood over all the rest.

I’m off to hold the bridge together, he would say when he left. It’ll tumble down into the River without me.

Kaile had believed him when he said that. She still believed him, a little, even though he had died several months ago. Even though his bandore had been buried with him. Even though the bridge was still standing without him. She supposed that there were other musicians and singers still on the Fiddleway, binding it together in Grandfather’s absence. But she couldn’t imagine that they managed it near so well as he had.

The music shifted, and a dancer stepped onstage. Kaile tried to watch the dance, but she was at the back of the crowd and behind the bakery counter, so she only caught glimpses of it. Each time her view cleared, another dancer seemed to have taken the stage, with a new gown, a new festival mask, and a new style of moving.

Some other goblin began to chant the story of The Seven Dancers, but Kaile didn’t listen to the chant, only to the song, and she caught every note. The laughing and somber strains of music continued to weave around each other, but now the wildly skipping notes faded into the background. They must be getting to the sad part of the story. The Seven Dancers was one of the sad ones.

Whenever Grandfather came home from the bridge, he would sing songs that told stories about the bridge, and sometimes they would be sad stories—but even if they were, he would still sing them in a way that made Kaile and the Snotfish laugh. He sang about ghouls who haunted the Clock Tower, and about pirates who lived on the piers, and about the heartbroken girl who fell down from the Fiddleway and turned into a swan.

Sometimes Kaile accompanied Grandfather’s playing with her own tin whistle, the one he had given her as a nameday present and taught her how to play. It was the one she had given to the Snotfish after Grandfather died, because she didn’t want to play it anymore—the one that now sat at the bottom of a bucket as a ruined lump of slag.

Music ties knots, and unties them, he had told Kaile. Think about a lullaby, one that ties up the world to make it a safe place for sleeping. It doesn’t just convince the child—it convinces the world. Think about a funeral song. It can untie the string we use to hold our grief and let it all spill out. The same song, the very same song, can tie us back together again after we’ve spilled out.

Kaile had listened. Later, at Grandfather’s own funeral, she learned that this was perfectly true. But at the time she had laughed when Snotfish went on about the Guard fighting off armies of ghouls, and how ghoul-guts would spill everywhere. Grandfather had responded by strumming up a lively, ghoul-gut-spilling sort of song.

Kaile shook her head to shake all those memories out of her thoughts and out of her ears. She glanced around the public room to see who needed their cups filled or their plates taken away. No one did. Everyone was listening. Everyone watched the dancing on the makeshift stage. Everyone clapped when it was over, and some threw coins. The juggler came out again, and he managed to catch the coins while still juggling other things.

Kaile clapped longer than anyone else, but she stopped when Mother came in through the kitchen door.

Mother stared at the stage for one long moment without blinking. Her mouth pressed together until it almost disappeared.

“Kaile,” she said, “please join me in the kitchen.”

Kaile joined Mother in the kitchen. It still smelled a little like tin. Father was there, holding water buckets.

“There are goblins on my table,” Mother said.

“Yes,” said Kaile. “I was—”

“There are singing, dancing goblins on top of my table.”

Kaile tried again. “They asked if—”

“On Inspection Day,” Mother went on. “There are goblins singing and dancing on my table, on Inspection Day.”

“Yes,” Kaile said again, trying to sound reasonable. “We don’t have to pay them anything. Except for some supper. They just take tips from the crowd.”

Mother turned to Father. “Throw them out, please,” she said.

“No!” Kaile felt the skin of her face burning. This wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.

Mother looked at her. Father looked at her and shook his head, warning Kaile not to face the floodwaters of her mother’s will. Kaile knew this already. She knew better than to argue head-on with Mother. But she didn’t have time, and she had made a promise, and the goblin with the big hat played bandore like Grandfather used to play.

She stood directly in front of the flood. “They aren’t doing any harm.”

Mother’s voice became calmer, and quieter. “The Guard Captain is coming,” she said. “My oven gets broken whenever performers and the Guard are both in my alehouse at the same time.”

“The goblins promised they wouldn’t hurt the—” Kaile started to say.

“And these actors are Changed,” her mother said, as though Kaile had not said anything. “They might take you away. They might take your brother away.”

Kaile, her mother, and her father all paused to think about whether or not losing the Snotfish would be a bad thing—but none of them joked about it.

“Please don’t throw them out,” Kaile said. Grandfather’s music is here now, even if he isn’t. “Please.”

“Throw them out,” Mother said. “They must be gone before the Guard Captain comes.” She said it to Father, but she said it while looking down at Kaile.

Kaile tried desperately to think of something more to say, something that could change Mother’s mind. She couldn’t think of anything at all.