Ghoulish Song

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 agreed. “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.

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.