William Alexander - Ghoulish Song

“I’m just sorry he tossed you out,” Kaile said, as cautiously polite as she knew how to be. “You should have some payment for the show, so I brought you some bread. It’s fresh. It doesn’t have maggots in it, not unless your curses work very fast.” She gave him the basket, and all of the bread intended for the Captain of the Guard.

The goblin nodded. “I withdraw my curses on your household.” He sang a tune to make it true. “I may yet carve a grotesque mask in your father’s likeness, but I withdraw each curse. May the flood pass your doorstep and leave dry your boots.”

“Thank you,” she said, relieved that she hadn’t brought any terrible curses down on the Snotfish. Then she paused, because she wanted to tell him about Grandfather and his music and how much it meant to her to hear echoes of his playing again. But she didn’t know how to say that, exactly, or where to begin, so all she said was this: “The dancers were all perfect. Please tell them.”

“I will,” said the goblin. “But to whom should I attribute this critique? I have not yet caught your name, young lady.”

It occurred to her that it might not be the best idea for a child to give her name to a strange goblin—there was no telling what he might do with it. But she decided that she didn’t much care, and gave him the name her mother had given to her. Now he might work her name into a charm or a curse, but she didn’t think that he would.

“I’m Kaile,” she said.

The goblin bowed with another flourish of his hat. “Thank you, Kaile, for the tribute of your compliments and the bounty of your family’s bakery.” He reached into the hat and pulled forth the carved flute. “This token is yours, I think.”

Kaile took the flute. It was a grayish yellow, and very light, and very smooth. She was about to say thank you , but then she heard shouting and hurried back inside.

Father stood in the kitchen doorway. He looked angry, and frightened, and even more angry because of how much he hated to be frightened.

“Your room,” he said. “Now. Before your mother sees you. Best stay up there and out of the way.”

Kaile went slowly up the stairs.

I’ve just given away the best bread in the house, she thought, and then she went more quickly up the stairs.

Kaile spent a long time thinking and pacing the length of her room. Outside her window the light began to fade. It was suppertime, but no one called her down to supper, and she stayed right where she was. Her stomach growled. She ignored it. She felt angry at her stomach for growling, and angry that she had helped make the day’s food but hadn’t eaten very much of it. And she was angry at Mother. She tried to think of all the reasons she could have for being angry at Mother, and she came up with so many that she made up a song to remember them all.

She stopped. “Flour” and “skipper” didn’t rhyme, not unless she twisted the word “flour” while she sang it. Kaile tried to think of other rhymes for “skipper.” Then she gave up and examined her new flute, the goblin’s gift. It had been carved simply and precisely from a single piece of bone. It was about the same size as the tin whistle that used to be hers, and used to be a whistle. The flute had no ornament, no swirly patterns worked into the side, no metal foil stamped on the surface. There was nothing fancy about the thing. It was just a bone with several holes—one for breath to go in, another for music to come out, and several for fingertips to shape the sound in between.

The Snotfish came into her room without knocking or asking her permission. Kaile hid the flute in a dresser drawer, but she didn’t ask him to leave. She still felt guilty about redirecting the goblin’s curses.

“What’s that?” the Snotfish asked. He stood in one place, in the middle of the floor, shifting his weight around weirdly as though he didn’t know how to stand in one place. Both his hair and his clothes looked embarrassed to be on him.

Kaile didn’t answer, and she made it clear that she wasn’t going to.

Little Cob Snotfish looked at the floor. He picked up one foot, held it with one hand, and put it down again. “Everyone’s mad,” he said.

Kaile nodded. She tried to smile in a reassuring sort of way. She didn’t quite manage the smile. I gave away the best bread in the house, she thought, and tried not to think.

“The Captain came,” the Snotfish said, suddenly excited again. “His hand folded back and he had the Mayor’s stamp inside his arm to stamp the counter with.” The Snotfish moved his own arm around to demonstrate. “Maybe he has a sword in his arm, too, right next to the stamp. Maybe it shoots out of his arm like this when he fights!”

“Did he do it?” Kaile asked, hoping to stall the inevitable pantomime of combat. “Did he stamp the counter?” Mother’s second-best bread should have been good enough to pass.

“His eyes went tick-tick-tick,” the Snotfish said, as though that answered her question.

“Yes,” Kaile agreed, trying very hard to be patient. “They do that. But did the Captain stamp the counter? Did we pass Inspection?”

“I got supper and you didn’t!” her brother announced, gleeful.

Kaile stood up. “Get out of my room, Snotfish.” He scampered out. She shut the door behind him, and then fetched the flute from its hiding place.

Kaile breathed into it. She played a single note. It was a sad note. It sounded like a breeze that would rather keep still, and never could.

She tried to play the tune she had just made up. Then she tried to play the music from The Seven Dancers , the one the old goblin had played on bandore.

The flute resisted both tunes. The notes all came out wrong. Kaile wrestled with it, trying to make the music in the room match the music in her head, but she couldn’t manage to combine the two.

She let the flute have its own way. It played a song that she had never heard before. The notes of that song resonated inside Kaile’s rib cage, making it difficult to breathe even as the music demanded more breath from her.

She played, and she kept on playing. The sound insisted that she hear it, that she understand everything it sang about. She didn’t, and she was not at all sure that she wanted to. Kaile felt a shudder pass from her fingers to the tips of her toes. She stopped playing, and opened her eyes.

Mother, Father, and the Snotfish all stood in her doorway. She hadn’t even heard the door open. Her family stared at her, and they stared at the wall behind her. All three of them looked stricken. Kaile began to suspect that they had not passed Inspection.

It turned out that they were worried about something else entirely.

“You don’t have a shadow,” the Snotfish said. “Only the dead don’t have shadows.”

MOTHER KNELT NEXT TO Kaile and checked to see if she was breathing.

“Of course I’m breathing,” Kaile said. “I wouldn’t be able to say anything if I wasn’t. I wouldn’t be able to play a flute, either.” Her mother ignored what Kaile said, and checked the warmth of her skin, and looked into each eye without actually looking at Kaile at all—only at her eyes. Mother looked underneath each foot, where the lamplight couldn’t reach, where the girl’s shadow should still be hiding. She lifted them carefully, as though they were made out of breakable stuff. No shadow hid under her feet.