William Alexander - Ghoulish Song

“Did she have to come with us?” Kaile asked. “Does it have to be her?”

“Yes,” said Luce. “It does. This is her way of apologizing to you, and to me. If you don’t let her apologize, then her disgruntlement will grow and she’ll hate you forever. She might hate you forever anyway, of course, and for no reason in particular—but she is also our very best singer. You’ll want to have our best singer for this, to make sure that it sticks.”

“I suppose,” said Kaile.

This is going to work, Shade whispered in her ear. This is going to stick.

Kaile wasn’t nearly so sure. Her hand touched her shadow’s hand where it rested on the bench.

She looked around to see several familiar places: Miss Mullusk’s house, and Doctor Boggs’s office clinic on Borrow Street, and the little lump of ground that everyone still called Watchtower Hill—even though it wasn’t much of a hill, and no towers had actually stood on it for longer than anyone remembered. She watched the winding, dusty roadways of Southside as the wheelbarrows drew closer to Broken Wall.

Luce and Bombasta intended to perform a nameday song—the sort of song that tells newborn infants their names, and also tells the world.

“Do we have to do this tonight?” Kaile asked.

Luce looked down at her with a rough sort of sympathy. “It doesn’t have to be tonight,” the sailor said. “We could wait until tomorrow. We could wait until your old nameday, so the new one would match.”

Kaile shook her head. “My old nameday is months from now. I don’t want to wait that long. I should just insist on getting presents both days—the old one and the new one.”

The sailor grinned. “That’s a fine plan, that is.”

Kaile tried to smile. She almost managed. Then she gave up.

“I don’t really think this is going to work,” she admitted. “My family sang my funeral. The funeral’s already over and sung. There’s no taking that back—so they won’t ever take me back.”

“Wrong,” said the sailor. “One ceremony trumps another. A divorce trumps a misguided wedding. A second bottle of fizzy wine smashed against the prow of a barge can rename it if the old name proved to be unlucky. We could even give you a new name tonight, if you like.”

“No,” said Kaile. “I like my name. And I’m not a barge.”

“True enough,” said Luce. “You aren’t a barge. But you are getting a new nameday.”

The wheelbarrow went over a bump in the road. The sailor cursed. Kaile just tried to hold on.

She still didn’t know what had happened to the Baker’s Cage. Maybe it had remained suspended above the rising waters. The flood had subsided quickly, and it hadn’t climbed nearly so high as everyone had feared. Maybe Mother had been fine inside the cage. Or maybe it had toppled over and sunk to the very bottom of the River, drowning Mother inside it. Kaile still didn’t know. Her thoughts burned with not knowing. But she was also afraid to finally find out.

The wheelbarrows stopped beside the alehouse.

Kaile didn’t move. She didn’t want to go in. If she went inside, then she might interrupt Mother’s own funeral song.

Luce jumped down and hoisted her lute case. Shells woven into her braids clinked together. “Come on, girl,” she said. “We have a gig to play.”

This will work, Shade whispered again.

Kaile took a breath, and then another one. She climbed down from the wheelbarrow, her movements matched by her shadow.

The public room was full of patrons. Dozens of faces turned to look at them as they stood in the doorway.

Kaile noticed only one.

Mother’s hair was still a mess. Her eyes looked shadowed and swollen, and she had ash stains rubbed over her cheekbones to show that she was in mourning—but she stood tall behind the counter, commanding the room. This place was a barge, and she the skipper of it, competent above all other things.

Mother wasn’t drowned. She wasn’t dead.

“I had to stay in the cage for hours longer than I was supposed to, dangling over the washed-out docks,” she told the customers up at the counter. “I don’t suppose I’ll have to go back tomorrow, though, and that’s a small blessing.”

Then she saw Kaile in the doorway. Her swollen eyes grew wide. She looked away. She looked down at the counter. She would not look at her daughter. Kaile’s heart sank and drifted downstream.

Voices began whispering.

“Don’t look.”

“Don’t catch her attention.”

“Don’t encourage her haunting.”

“This is what comes of feeding a dead girl. They come back inside when they shouldn’t ever, and they don’t fade away when they should.”

“Why don’t they put louder charms over the threshold?”

“Don’t look.”

“Don’t anybody look at her.”

Kaile became the center of an empty space, a hole in the room that everyone ignored—everyone except the Snotfish, who stared at her from underneath a table.

He waved. Kaile waved back.

“She’s got a shadow,” the Snotfish pointed out. “She’s got her shadow back.”

People began to steal sideways looks at Kaile, and the floor at her feet.

Luce opened her lute case and tuned up her instrument.

Bombasta cleared her throat with a scornful sound.

“This is Kaile’s nameday,” the singer announced, and made it true by saying it aloud.

She sang. Luce played. The music had much the same shape and movement as a funerary song, but used here to say hello rather than good-bye.

Other voices started to pick up the song. Other patrons joined in. The four domini players sang with reedy voices. The Snotfish sang, loud and out of tune. Father stood in the kitchen doorway and sang.

Mother looked up from behind the counter. She looked at Kaile. She looked directly at Kaile with guarded hope. She let her own voice join the music—even though she almost never sang anything.

Everyone in the room gave voice to a song of hello and of welcoming home.

Kaile stood with her shadow and listened.

Thanks to my childhood music teachers, for their patience (I wasn’t much of a musician). Thanks to Ivan, Nathan, Melon, and Jon, for their great love of song and karaoke. Thanks to my writing group, Symbolical Head, for their surgical workshopping skills; to Joe and Barry, for all their advice; and to Karen and Emily, for their editorial wisdom. Thanks to Zoe Keating, for the music I used as my writing soundtrack.

William Alexander is the author of Goblin Secrets , which Kirkus Reviews called “both gripping and tantalizing” in a starred review. He studied theater and folklore at Oberlin College and English at the University of Vermont, and currently lives, writes, and teaches in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His short stories have been published in many magazines and anthologies, including Weird Tales , Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet , Interfictions 2 , and Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition . Visit him at willalex.net.