Free Ghoulish Song (9781442427310) by William Alexander Page B

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 figure’s 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 song—the 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.
    â€œWe should run,” Kaile whispered, though she didn’t actually move. “We should be running. Right now. Very fast.”
    Nowhere to go, Shade whispered back. Just a little strip of shore. And it’s dark, too dark. I can’t leave the fire. I’ll disappear. I’ll vanish in the dark.
    The figure drew slowly closer. The fire between them tossed sparks in the air.
    â€œI wish I could just disappear,” Kaile told her shadow.
    No you don’t, said Shade. You really don’t.
    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.
    â€œThe same song,” Kaile said softly to herself. “The same song. The one stuck in this flute, stuck in all of these bones.It binds itself together with that song.” She had the spark-bright beginning of an idea. “You can’t have more than one tune stuck in your head at once. There’s only room for one.” She turned to Shade. “Think of another song. Something catchy and annoying and impossible to get rid of.”
    Nowhere to go, Shade whispered, her voice very faint. The shadow backed away from the ghoul and the fire—but 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 “The Counting Song.”
    She had come up with the lyrics years ago, with some slight contributions from the Snotfish. He could barely talk at the time—and also couldn’t 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 tune—a 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 “The Counting Song” for weeks and months afterward. It was the single most annoying piece of music Kaile knew.
    She sang it as loud as she could.
    â€œOne for the buns now overdone,
    Two for the glue poured in your shoe,
    Three for the pennies, haven’t got any,
    Four for the door in the hole in the floor . . .”
    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.
    â€œFive 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