Ghoulish Song

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 head, 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.