separate skeletons had gone into its making. Many bones had found new ways of fitting themselves together.
Several of the bones had been carved by Fidlam. Fishhook charms made up the curved nails of the figureâs fingertips. Sets of dice clustered together as wristbones and knucklebones. Domini tiles made strange, huge teeth and protruded from the mouth of an ornately decorated skull.
The figure cast a shadow across the beach and away from the bonfire. Kaile almost laughed at the sight of that shadow. Dead things do cast shadows, she thought. Doctor Boggs was so very wrong.
The mouth of domini tiles opened. Noise clawed its way out. It was a raw sound, shaped by no lips or tongue. But Kaile recognized notes within that discord of noise,and she heard those notes gather together into the melody of a songâthe same music that had severed Kaile from her shadow, the same song that her flute insisted on playing. But those very same notes sounded different now. The flute made them beautiful, wistful, and sad. The voice of this ghoulish thing made the song angry, vicious, and tormented. The ghoul screamed music. Kaile and Shade both cowered at the sound.
âWe should run,â Kaile whispered, though she didnât actually move. âWe should be running. Right now. Very fast.â
Nowhere to go, Shade whispered back. Just a little strip of shore. And itâs dark, too dark. I canât leave the fire. Iâll disappear. Iâll vanish in the dark.
The figure drew slowly closer. The fire between them tossed sparks in the air.
âI wish I could just disappear,â Kaile told her shadow.
No you donât, said Shade. You really donât.
The ghoulish thing sang instead of breathing, and its footsteps matched the beat of that song. The rags and scraps of riverweed it wore all knitted themselves together to the rhythm of its music. The bones fit more smoothly together to the patterns of its singing.
âThe same song,â Kaile said softly to herself. âThe same song. The one stuck in this flute, stuck in all of these bones.It binds itself together with that song.â She had the spark-bright beginning of an idea. âYou canât have more than one tune stuck in your head at once. Thereâs only room for one.â She turned to Shade. âThink of another song. Something catchy and annoying and impossible to get rid of.â
Nowhere to go, Shade whispered, her voice very faint. The shadow backed away from the ghoul and the fireâbut then she seemed to feel the darkness at her back, and stepped forward again. Nowhere to go.
Kaile made exasperated noises, and tried to think. Then she remembered âThe Counting Song.â
She had come up with the lyrics years ago, with some slight contributions from the Snotfish. He could barely talk at the timeâand also couldnât stop talking. The Snotfish had laughed at every single rhyming word, and shouted those rhyme-words over and over again.
Mother had sent Grandfather upstairs to find them and quiet them down. Instead he had helped them shape the rhyme into a tuneâa perfect, bouncing thing that lodged in the ears of anyone who heard it and refused to leave their heads for days and days. Patrons of the Broken Wall sang âThe Counting Songâ for weeks and months afterward. It was the single most annoying piece of music Kaile knew.
She sang it as loud as she could.
âOne for the buns now overdone,
Two for the glue poured in your shoe,
Three for the pennies, havenât got any,
Four for the door in the hole in the floor . . .â
The ghoulish thing faltered, and so did its song. Kaile saw, and heard, the way that music gave it shape and held it all together. She poured more effort into her own singing voice.
âFive for the falling fisherbird dive,
Six for kicks and tocks and ticks,
Seven for the flour and the water and the leaven,
Eight for the grapes that I ate off your