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hunched up their shoulders as if flapping wings that they didn’t have.
    The loft smelled like hay and guzzard. Kaile cleared loose straw from a patch of floor and set the lantern down. She sat beside it, turned the flint crank, and lit the wick. A warm glow filled the small space.
    Kaile glanced at the wall behind her, where her shadow should have been. The lantern light passed right through her and left no sign that she was even there.
    â€œWhere did you go?” she asked.
    Here, a voice whispered back.
    Kaile jumped up to standing, and almost knocked the lantern over.
    Be careful, the whisper said. Don’t put out the light.
    Kaile turned up the wick. “Who’s there?”
    She caught a glimpse of a wispy and indistinct shape near the ladder. Then she lost that glimpse, and had to squint to see it again.
    Your shadow , of course, the shape whispered. Kaile thought she glimpsed a face and features as it spoke. It looked a little bit like Kaile’s own reflection in window glass—but only a little bit. There was no shared movement and no spark of recognition, no sense that This is me.
    â€œTell me why you left,” Kaile said. “Tell me why you aren’t attached to my feet anymore.”
    I heard music, the shadow said. It was beautiful and wrenching. It unmoored me. It cut me away from you. I huddled in our room while so many other people came in. Then they all left, and you left with the lantern. You left me almost in the dark. I followed. The only thing I know how to do is follow you. I don’t want to. You never noticed me when you dragged me across the ground while walking. You never noticed when someone else stepped on my face. I don’t want to be anywhere near you. But near you is the only place I know.
    Kaile wasn’t sure what to say to all that. “I’m sorry if I splashed through too many puddles,” she said. She wasn’t sure she was actually sorry, though she tried to be. She felt as though she probably should be, but no one had ever told her to be careful where her shadow fell—and no one else ever seemed to care about their own. “I’m sorry, but I still wish you hadn’t left. Now everyone thinks I’m dead. Or at least Doctor Boggs does. He thinks I’m a dead thing that won’t stop walking around. A ghoul. He’s probably trying to convince Mother and Father to hold my funeral already.”
    Sounds as though he managed it, the shadow whispered. I can hear a funeral.
    Kaile listened. She held her breath to listen. She heard only guzzards. Then her ears caught the faint sound of a funeral song.
    She scrambled for the ladder, leaving the flute and lantern and shadow behind.

    The public room was packed. Kaile saw all sorts of neighbors and relations in the dim light, all of them softly singing. She hadn’t seen the place so full since Grandfather’s funeral.
    Nice of you all to come so quickly, she thought, but there really isn’t any need.
    Grandfather’s coffin had rested on the floor in the very center of the room, surrounded by candles. Kaile pushed her way through the crowd to stand in the center, where a small and empty coffin rested. It almost looked like a cradle, like the Snotfish’s cradle when they had gathered around him to sing his nameday song. (Not that the name Cob had actually stuck.)
    Kaile noticed in that moment that a nameday song and a funerary song had much the same shape and movement. That made a certain kind of sense to her. You wave to say both hello and good-bye, she thought. The same motion means opposite things.
    Doctor Boggs stood at the head of the coffin, conducting the funeral. He took the lead with his terrible voice. The hair of his sideburns stuck out wide around his face, which turned ruddy colors when he noticed Kaile standing there. But he did not stop singing, and neither did anyone else. Heads turned halfway, startled, but no one looked at her directly—no one