William Alexander - Ghoulish Song

“Both of you get out,” Mother said. “Please get very far away from this oven.”

Father and the Snotfish turned and left without further protest.

“Kaile,” Mother said, her voice still very calm. “Fetch me more water. I need to make dough. Then take everything out of the oven and throw it in a crate for the guzzards, and after that open the public room. The old men are waiting already for their domini table, I’m sure.”

“Yes, Mother,” Kaile said, and left the kitchen. She was relieved to get away from the hot tin smell, and away from Mother’s cold-burning calm.

BROKEN WALL WAS THE name of the bakery, and the alehouse, and the neighborhood all around. Everyone drank ale in Southside. Well water needed to be boiled before drinking, or else it made the drinker’s insides feel like a barrel full of angry fish, so it was very much safer to fill cups with fermented things. Light ale was practically water—only cleaner—and anyone could drink as much as they liked without getting fuzzy-headed over it. The darker, stronger ale was more dangerous. Only fully grown patrons could drink it, and they still needed Mother’s permission before they could have so much as a sip.

Once she had fetched the water, Kaile took every last loaf out of the oven. Then she went quickly through the very clean public room, around the tall tables, and over the rope-woven rugs to open the front door. The domini men stood on the doorstep, waiting. They were four old sailors who rarely spoke. They had no beards, and they had no teeth except for the single copper set they shared between them whenever they ordered food—which was rarely. Mostly they drank light ale and played domini. Their fingers were like tree roots reaching down from the riverbank. Their skin was hard clay. Their domini tiles were yellowed bone, and they would keep up the game from now until closing time, when Mother would kick them out.

None of them thanked Kaile when she let them in, and they did not thank her when she poured ale for each at their usual table. They did not seem to notice her. They only noticed domini tiles.

Kaile wound up the gearwork charms beside each doorway, and hummed along with the jangling music they made. The charms were meant to keep illness, death, and malicious gossip away from the household.

She opened window shutters, and then lit a few lamps. Polished copper sheets behind the lamps broke their light into pieces and scattered those pieces around the room. She set the fresh breakfast pastries on the countertop—the ones that had escaped smelling like tin smoke—and stood behind them to wait for the breakfast crowd.

Familiar faces from the neighborhood stopped by for a bite, and Kaile sold them pastries. They stopped in for a quiet sip of a cold drink, and she sold them light ale. They stood at tables, or sat on the rope-woven rugs. They wore knit sweaters and coats stuffed with guzzard down because it was a cold morning.

Most of the patrons were rock-movers. This was the most common occupation in Broken Wall. They hauled the huge stones of the old city wall with levers and pulleys and gearwork and sweat to wherever those stones might be needed to build something else.

A small group of coalmakers came in for a drink. Their aprons and fingers were stained, and everyone else in the public room kept their distance from them. Coal came from hearts, removed and set to burning. Kaile sold them ale and tried not to stare at the stains on their fingers and aprons.

A few barge sailors came in with their hair in long braids. Kaile sold them each something to eat, and something to drink. She conducted the ordinary business of the morning, relieved by the familiar routine of it all, content that the day might turn out to be an ordinary day—notwithstanding the Inspection, and the panic, and the ruined slag of that tin whistle.

The public door opened again, and then it ceased to be an ordinary day.

A goblin strode over the threshold. He wore a trim gray beard, walked with a cane, and carried himself like a gentleman, even though he was clearly one of the Changed. He had very large eyes. His ears stuck out sideways from his head. He looked to be shorter than Kaile, though Kaile couldn’t tell how tall the goblin really was underneath the enormity of his big black hat.

The old goblin looked around, nodded to the domini, men who were openly staring at him, and then recognized Kaile as someone who, for the moment at least, was in charge. He bowed to her with a flourish of his hat.

“Young lady,” he said. The way he said it made it mean “lady who is young in years,” and not “little girl.” Kaile was impressed. She had only ever heard “young lady” mean “little girl.”

“Welcome,” she told the goblin, even though she wasn’t sure that he would actually be welcome here, according to Mother or Father. But just at that moment, on that particular morning, it would be okay with her if goblins stole away the Snotfish and forced him into a hundred years of servitude, doing whatever goblins made stolen children do.

The goblin introduced himself. “I am the First Player of an acting troupe,” he said, “the finest in all of Zombay.” (Kaile couldn’t tell if he meant that the troupe was the finest in the city, or that he was.) “We would be honored to perform for the entertainment and delight of your patrons. All the payment we ask is a hot meal, and whatever donations we earn from the crowd. There will be music, and mummery, and even masks.”

Kaile imagined what her mother’s reaction to this might be, and then tried not to imagine it. “I’m sorry,” she told the goblin. “This isn’t really the best day for a show. And the last time we had actors performing in here, the Guard tried to arrest them all. They broke furniture, and our oven. We had to spend days carrying clay up from the riverbanks to patch the oven.”

The goblin made a sympathetic noise. “And what became of those unfortunate performers, do you know?”

“I don’t,” said Kaile. “One escaped through the kitchen. All the others were escorted out the front.”

“I see,” the goblin said. “I am merely curious about the fate of our predecessors. But I can assure you that my troupe has license to legally perform, without fear of harassment or arrest.” He paused. “Well, truthfully, without fear of arrest . We are sometimes harassed, but we have very little fear of arrest. Hardly so much as a tremor of fear.”

He smiled bravely, as if to show his courageous willingness to put on a show for the Broken Wall despite whatever dangers it might bring.

Kaile smiled back at him, but she also shook her head. Mother would bake her into a pie, and do it badly, and then throw the pie away as guzzard-feed. “We really couldn’t,” she told him. “Not today. Maybe another time.”

The goblin nodded. “I understand, of course,” he said, and swept off his hat to bow again.

Astonishing things fell out of the hat.

The first was a small mask with a pointy nose. The second was a gray flute carved out of bone. The third was a metal box. He quickly snatched up the mask and the flute, but the box he nudged with the tip of his boot, as though by accident. It snapped open. A copper flower, fashioned out of tiny filaments of gearwork, grew up from the box. The petals clicked against each other as it bloomed. Then it wilted. Each petal fell with a small clatter. The bare stem reached around the floor in an embarrassed sort of way, gathered up the petals, and closed the box lid over itself.

The goblin apologized, picked up the box, and hid it back inside his hat.

Kaile clapped. She couldn’t help it. The domini men also clapped, all four of them, and Kaile had never seen them react to anything that was not their own tower of tiles.