William Alexander - Ghoulish Song

Kaile laughed, nervous and annoyed at the odd attention. She was not as worried about this as everyone else seemed to be. Her head was still in the music, even as the tune drifted away downstream to wherever music goes once played. She put the flute down on the chest of drawers behind her as though it were nothing important, as though it were something that she had certainly not received from goblins. No one else paid any attention to the flute. No one else laughed, either.

“Did we pass Inspection?” she asked, because she wanted to know, and because she wanted to deflect attention onto something that was not herself or the bottoms of her feet. Then she thought about why they might not have passed Inspection, and regretted asking. The second-best bread should have been good enough, she thought.

The Snotfish started to answer her, but both Mother and Father shushed him, and he let himself be shushed. Kaile was a little bit astonished that the Snotfish let himself be shushed.

“Send for Doctor Boggs,” Mother said, “and for the witchworker.”

“Where does the witchworker keep her shack today?” Father asked, already moving and not waiting for the answer.

“South of the rail station,” Mother called after him, without facing him, without taking her eyes away from her daughter. Her voice was quiet, and quietly stumbled over itself. It cracked as she spoke. That never happened. It sounded like a crack in solid stone.

Mother wasn’t angry. Kaile didn’t know what Mother was, but angry wasn’t it. Mother looked down at her daughter like she didn’t quite know what Kaile was, either.

Kaile looked away. She kicked her feet against the side of the chair. Then she stopped, because she didn’t want to call attention to her feet and what was no longer underneath them, between them and the floor.

She wondered why Mother had sent for old Chicken Legs. They never had dealings with the witchworker. Mother didn’t like heavy charms, or heavy curses—but maybe it would take a heavy charm to find a missing shadow.

She wondered where her shadow had gone.

Doctor Boggs hadn’t paid a visit to Broken Wall since the Snotfish broke his leg—again—by doing exactly the same thing he had been doing the first time he had broken his leg. He fell from a crate stacked on top of another crate, which he had stacked on a table in the public room. He had been tying several lengths of twine to the rafters. Kaile didn’t know why the Snotfish had been tying twine to the rafters, and she had never asked. Either he wouldn’t answer, or else he would answer for hours and hours, and either way she would regret asking.

She heard Doctor Boggs arrive. He took a long time to huff his way up the stairs, and once in the room he paused to wipe sweat from his forehead. He must have run all the way from Borrow Street. Doctor Boggs was a wide man with big sideburns, and he wore spectacles in thin wire frames.

Mother moved out of his way. The Doctor knelt on the floor. He focused his attention on Kaile without seeming to actually notice that she was there. Kaile looked back, her eyes full of questions that weren’t asked or answered.

“She is not breathing,” the Doctor said.

Kaile gasped, just a little. Then she coughed. She realized that she had been holding her breath. That made her laugh, again—a nervous sort of laugh that jumped out of her mouth before she could think to hold it back.

Doctor Boggs squinted at her, suspicious, as though he suspected Kaile of pretending to breathe. He checked her wrist with slow care. Everyone seemed so very afraid that she might be breakable. Then he sang a little tune. Doctors usually used songs to find the rhythm of a heartbeat, or tease out the shape of a broken bone, but Doctor Boggs’s voice was painfully bad. Kaile wanted to cover her ears.

“Her heart is beating,” the Doctor finally announced, “and she is warm to the touch—though if this has only just happened, then of course she would still be warm to the touch. Her skin would not yet have had the time to cool. And she has no shadow. That much is certain. That is the most important thing. She has no shadow at all.” He looked under one of her feet, and then under the other, just as Mother had already done.

It was crowded in Kaile’s room, much too crowded, too full of people who had barged in to examine her without looking at her, and to speak of her as though she were not there and listening.

One more followed.

A girl walked into the middle of the room. She looked to be only a couple of years senior to Kaile, but she acted very much older. Her clothes were dirty and badly patched, but she had an imperial way of standing. Kaile didn’t like it. This is my room you’re standing in, she thought, but did not say—and no longer really believed, because there were too many other people in her room and none of them had knocked before coming in.

Doctor Boggs stood up with a harrumphing noise. “And who exactly are you, young lady?”

“I am exactly Vass,” said Vass. “You sent for a witchworker. Graba’s busy, and couldn’t be rushed, so I’m the witchworker you sent for.”

“I see,” said Doctor Boggs. “Someone with more experience might be a little more helpful.”

The girl Vass crossed her arms in front of her. “You don’t see,” she said. “Your glasses are broken, and cannot be mended.”

Nothing at all happened. Doctor Boggs smiled. Then his spectacles slid from his nose, fell to the ground, and broke.

He made a quiet harrumph and began to pick up the pieces. “That was unnecessary.”

Vass ignored him. She took a closer look at Kaile—and actually looked at her, looked very much too closely at her. Kaile felt like squirming. She stared right back.

“Has anyone bothered to ask her how she lost her shadow?” the young witchworker said to the room, though she watched Kaile while speaking.

Mother looked as though she might answer. Doctor Boggs answered instead. “The unquiet dead must not be spoken to. And one can always spot the dead by their lack of a shadow. Those who do not properly touch the world always lack shadows.”

Kaile turned her glare on Doctor Boggs. He was not actually a very good doctor. He had failed out of the medical school in Northside before setting up his practice south of the River, and he liked to sound right more than he liked to be right. But people in Broken Wall always listened to him, even if they made fun of him later. He was their doctor. He belonged to them, and he could set broken legs well enough, so they forgave him his bumbling and his stubborn, unfounded opinions.

“That right there is a load of impsense and grubbery,” the witchworker scoffed. “Her heart beats. She’s alive, whatever her shadow might be up to. That’s the thing to concern yourselves with: her shadow, and why it left her. That’s the thing to find out.”

“Don’t offer these good people false hope,” the Doctor snapped. “Once a shadow is gone, there is no calling it back again.”

The young witchworker’s eyes flicked over to the flute on the dresser, and then to Kaile. Don’t tell them, the look said, clear as anything. They’ll take the flute away if you tell them, and you will be needing it. Then she turned and left the room without another word to anyone. She had said what she had to say, and whether or not they listened was no further business of hers.

“What a rude child,” said Doctor Boggs. Then he yelped and stuck his finger in his mouth, bleeding from a sharp piece of spectacle lens. He stood up, put the rest of the pieces he had found in a handkerchief, and tucked the bundle into his pocket. “I am very sorry,” he said. “I know this is a sudden shock, and terrible, but you mustn’t waste time if you mean to prevent a more serious haunting. We should speak downstairs.”