Read Ghoulish Song (9781442427310) for Free Online Page B

them that I’m still moving and breathing and talking. They sang my funeral.” She noticed, as though from a distance, that she was crying. She wondered how to stop.
    You aren’t dead, her shadow said again, with more impatience than sympathy.
    â€œNo help from you,” said Kaile, as soon as she was able to say anything. “If you had stayed stuck to my feet, then this wouldn’t have happened. If you had just come back inside with me, then it probably wouldn’t have happened, either.”
    I don’t want to be tied to your feet.
    â€œThen why are you still here?” She heard another sob in her voice, and hated it.
    The shadow’s whisper faded, sounding embarrassed and barely audible. I’ve only ever stood near you. That’s all I know how to do. That’s the only place I know where to be. I’d rather not. But I don’t know where else to go. And it’s dark outside.
    â€œThat shouldn’t much matter,” said Kaile. “You’re a shadow. You’re made out of the dark. You shouldn’t be afraid of the dark.”
    I disappear in the dark, the shadow lashed out, voice rising almost above a whisper. It feels like drowning. I never know which part of me is me, or whether I’ll ever come back again. I might not come back, now that I’m not anchored to you. But shadows are darker and stronger in bright lights. If that lantern burns out, then I might disappear and be forever gone. Turn up the wick as high as it goes.
    â€œNo,” said Kaile. “If I turn up the lantern, then the oil will burn out before morning. It needs to burn low if youwant it to last until sunrise.” She turned down the lantern wick. Her shadow made angry noises, but did not make any further protests.
    Kaile wiped her nose, wound up the lantern base, and watched familiar animal silhouettes turn in a slow circle on the walls around them. Then she took another long look at her own shadow, which was easier to see now that Kaile had the knack of looking.
    â€œWhat’s your name?” she asked her shadow. “Do you have one?”
    No, the shadow said.
    â€œI have to call you something. I could call you Shade.”
    The shadow didn’t agree. She didn’t protest, either. She didn’t say anything.
    Kaile curled up in the hay, away from the edge of the loft, and tried to get comfortable. She wouldn’t return to her bedroom, not tonight, not if her family had made her unwelcome, not if they wanted to keep the household free of haunting. Hopefully they wouldn’t mind having a haunted hayloft.
    She closed her eyes. When she finally slept, she dreamed that she was building the Fiddleway Bridge out of bones and bread loaves.
    If Shade dreamed, they were the sorts of dreams known only to shadows.

Seventh Verse
    KAILE WOKE AFTER SUNRISE. Light came in through cracks in the walls. Guzzards went about their business below.
    She felt like she had overslept. The sun rarely rose in the morning before she did. But she was sore, stiff, and cold from a night spent on unfamiliar and uncomfortable bedding—or else she felt stiff because she was dead, and her body had finally noticed. Maybe she would lurch around from now on, her arms and legs barely bending, the way the Snotfish did whenever he pretended to be something ghoulish.
    She stood up, stretched, and paid attention to her own breathing for a while. Not dead, then—though her shadow was still separate from herself.
    Shade crouched beside the lantern, a girl-shaped patch of transparent darkness. Kaile’s eyes struggled to see the shadow, even though she was looking for her.
    The lantern is almost out, Shade whispered, her voice a rebuke. The oil barely lasted until morning.
    â€œThen it’s a good thing I turned it down last night,” said Kaile. “We keep a spare jar of lamp oil in the cellar. I’ll sneak in for some breakfast and more oil. It probably won’t take