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except for the Snotfish, and Mother gently reached down and turned the Snotfish away. Everyone looked elsewhere, pretending hard that Kaile was not nearby.
    She almost laughed. She also felt panicked. What she really wanted was for everyone else to laugh. They alllooked so stricken and serious. Mother and Father were both such sensible people. Why would they even listen to old Boggs? Couldn’t they tell that she was still here and still breathing, still entirely alive?
    The Doctor hit an especially bad note. Kaile winced. How could any of the dead rest in peace with a voice like that singing them down? Two fiddlers from the bridge had come to play and sing for Grandfather, and they had done so perfectly. Everything Kaile had felt on that day had spilled out into the shape of that music, and then the same music had tied her back together again—just as Grandfather had promised her. Now, at her own funeral, the music might just make her throw up. She wanted to leave. Maybe this was how the Doctor thought he could prevent a haunting: sing so badly that the dead were forced to leave.
    Kaile was starting to think of herself as dead.
    Stop it, she told herself.
    â€œStop it!” she told everyone else. “I’m fine. I’m right here.” She needed to explain, but she wasn’t sure how to explain.
    The singing faltered and stumbled, but did not stop.
    â€œMy shadow’s in the hayloft!” she protested. “If you’ll all just wait a moment, I can try to coax her back inside. Just wait. Don’t finish the funeral. Don’t finish the song.”
    The singing grew louder to drown out her voice. Practicallyeveryone she knew in the world stood in that room, and they all ignored her.
    Kaile looked down at her feet. Without a shadow it seemed as though they didn’t really touch the ground. It looked as though she didn’t really touch the world.
    She looked up at Mother. Mother was singing, even though she almost never sang. She didn’t like the sound of her own voice. And Mother was grieving, actually grieving. This wasn’t a punishment, not for goblins or inspections, not for anything. This was mourning.
    They really did believe that Kaile was dead.
    â€œI’m not a ghoul,” Kaile insisted—but she said it quietly, because now she wasn’t entirely sure.
    Doctor Boggs gathered up a handful of greasy ashes from a bowl, took Kaile’s arm roughly with his other hand, and smeared the ash across her forehead. He sang loud and only inches from her face. Then he pushed her through the crowd and through the public door.
    No one else tried to stop him.
    Doctor Boggs shut the door behind her.
    Kaile heard the song and the funeral end on the other side of that door.

    She went slowly around the alehouse, across the yard, and up into the hayloft. There she sat with her legs over theedge and stared at nothing. Guzzards scratched in their sawdust below and dreamed the sorts of dreams known only to guzzards.
    It could have been worse, her shadow whispered nearby. It used to be worse. People used to bury suspected ghouls rather than just ignore them. They buried ghouls in three separate graves spaced far apart—one for your head, one for your heart, and a third for all the rest of you.
    â€œShut it,” said Kaile. She tried to wipe the ashes from her forehead. The ash stain was sticky. It smelled like they had mixed wood ashes from the oven with butter in order to make the stuff.
    The stain marked her as a dead thing. She kept trying to rub it off.
    â€œThe funeral’s over,” she said. Her voice sounded flat and lifeless in her own ears. “My funeral song is over and sung. That makes it true. That changes the shape of things.”
    You aren’t dead, her shadow told her. Your breathing is obvious and loud.
    â€œDoesn’t matter,” said Kaile. “Everybody in Broken Wall knows that I’m supposed to be dead. It won’t matter to