Mom tried to soothe a novel badly haunted by early and unpublished versions of itself by reading the first page aloud. She savored the words as they were, and tried to quiet the haunting drafts of the words as they weren’t.
Rosa started a new pile for outdated nonfiction. One battered book with an orange cover was sulking because it insisted on disproven facts about dinosaurs. She tried to soothe its pride and wondered what it might be like to do appeasement work in a natural history museum. Then she set it down with another science book that still called Pluto a planet.
“Pass the glue,” Mom asked. Rosa passed her the glue. Mom repaired a book that remembered being a tree. It sprouted leaf buds every spring and shed them every fall. That took a toll on the binding.
“Is Dad haunting you?” Rosa asked suddenly.
Mom paused. Droplets of glue fell to the carpet. She didn’t notice. Rosa did notice, but didn’t do anything about it.
“No,” Mom said. “He isn’t, though I thought that he would. I expected him to follow me here, even though we did leave a proper memorial for him back in the city. I was braced for his haunting after Barron’s wall came down. But I haven’t seen or heard any sign of your father. The memorial must have worked.”
Rosa shook her head. “He might be haunting me.”
Her mother’s hand slipped. A very big glob of glue landed on the carpet. She noticed this time, and scrambled to clean it. “What do you mean?” she asked as she scrubbed. “Have you heard his voice at all? Has he said anything?”
“No,” Rosa said. “Nothing like that. I just see glimpses of him in the corner of my eye, or in other people’s faces. Mostly my history teacher. But it might not be a real haunting. I don’t think it is. I ought to be able to spot an actual ghost by now, so I really don’t think it’s him. But I’m not completely sure. I’m not even sure whether or not I want him to be there.”
Mom reached over and pulled Rosa onto her lap. It was awkward. Athena Díaz was not tall. The two of them were practically the same size.
“I think you just got some glue on my shirt,” Rosa said.
“Shush,” said her mother. “Let me pretend that you’re still tiny and snuggleable. And please, please tell me if you ever, ever hear your father’s voice.”
“Okay,” Rosa said.
“Please. We’ll make him another . . . memorial. If we have to.”
“Okay,” she said again.
Rosa very much wanted to feel comforted. But she didn’t, because Mom was afraid, and Rosa had never known her mother to be frightened of anything.
15
JASPER GOT HOME AND SEARCHED for his parents. Neither one of them seemed to be anywhere nearby. He suspected that both were out in the stables, and almost went looking for them there. Instead he took up his quarterstaff, put on a pair of sturdy boots, and went squelching across the fairgrounds to the festival gates.
He felt completely incapable of standing still. Things were happening in his hometown—large, important, and unmanageable things. Jasper didn’t know what he could do to affect any of them. But Handisher the tortoise was still missing, so at least he could go searching for Handisher.
Inside the gates it felt several degrees colder. Ice clung to the edges of mud puddles. Frost covered the fallen leaves that new festival ghosts used to remake themselves.
Several leaf people crunched and crackled as they moved from stall to shuttered stall in the marketplace. If Jasper came too close they flinched away suddenly, alarmed by the copper coins on his staff, so he tried not to get too close.
“I didn’t come to pick a fight.” Nothing and no one responded to him. Maybe they had forgotten the use of their voices. Maybe they remembered and chose to ignore him. Maybe they never had any voices to begin with. Jasper felt as if he were the one haunting this place rather than the other way around—like he lingered here, and maybe he shouldn’t.
Something made out of braided tree saplings went by, its roots moving together like centipede legs. Four young foxes sat in the upper branches. Jasper couldn’t tell if those fox kits were a part of the haunted thing’s new body, or if they were hitching a ride.
Dozens of ghosts in mining caps crouched together on the Tacky Tavern roof. There wasn’t enough room for all of them, so they climbed up onto each other’s shoulders to perch like awkward birds. Headlamp beams swept back and forth in slow unison like searchlights. Jasper kept clear of them.
He searched the muddy ground for tortoise tracks. This felt like a useless and futile thing to do. Handisher was obviously gone. Either the tortoise had wandered off into the woods to live a wild life, or else ghosts had taken him apart as building material to make new bodies for themselves. Whatever fate had befallen Handisher, he clearly wasn’t here.
Jasper kept looking anyway. That tortoise was a festival mascot, last seen draped in royal livery. He was no one and everyone’s pet. The urchins had looked after him together. As the child of festival directors, Jasper had always been first among urchins, so it was still his responsibility to find out what had happened to their tortoise.
* * *
Piles of loaned books continued to clench their covers together unhappily. Rosa needed to get away from them all. She also needed to put some distance between herself and the unfamiliar, unsettling awareness of her mother’s fears.
She went upstairs and into the library proper. She didn’t wear shoes, because her favorite pair was still wet. Mrs. Jillynip would probably berate her if she noticed Rosa shoeless in the library, so Rosa entertained herself by thinking up scathing responses that she might make if the older librarian disparaged her feet. But she didn’t see Jillynip, so she didn’t get to use any of them.
The coffeemaker in the back office started screaming. Rosa went behind the front desk to appease it. Then she went into Special Collections, signed the clipboard on the wall, and put on a pair of special white gloves.
“Maps, maps, maps,” she said. Rolls of old paper crinkled beneath her gloved fingertips. “Talk to me. Show me what’s buried under the Lump.”
She hunched over drawings of Ingot and measured out tiny, imaginary miles to find the spot where the Lump was now. But the maps refused to tell her what it used to be. They showed only a small and unlabeled spot next to the schoolhouse.
Mrs. Jillynip came down the spiral staircase with a tea tray. Bartholomew Theosophras Barron had once haunted the apartments at the top of those stairs, but with the lord of the house now absent the local librarian had switched her care over to Lady Isabelle.
“Food and drink aren’t allowed in Special Collections,” Rosa said. She couldn’t resist picking a fight.
Mrs. Jillynip raised one aggressive eyebrow but refused to take the bait. She glanced over Rosa’s shoulder. “What are you doing, barefoot child?”
Rosa rolled up one map and then unrolled another one. “I am not tearing up these priceless artifacts of our history in my frustration, and I am definitely not eating the torn pieces afterward.”
“Glad to hear it.” Jillynip said. “Tell me more about this frustration. You should ask a librarian whenever you have trouble finding something.”
“I am a librarian,” Rosa growled.
“Then you should know this already.” Jillynip was enjoying herself. Every day she depended on Rosa’s knowledge of ghosts and hauntings, but now she got to savor her own expertise instead. “Tell me what you are researching, please.”
Rosa did not want any help. She did need it, though. “I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong with the school. One of the water fountains is lashing out. And there’s a lump of a hill behind the playground with a tree on top. That spot is very unhappily haunted. I need to know more about it. But the maps aren’t helping.”
“I see,” said the older librarian. “Have you considered talking to someone who lived through the earliest days of our town history? Someone likely to remember what once stood on that very spot?”
“Maybe,” Rosa admitted. “Yes. But I’d
rather not.”
“Her ladyship does appear to be in a good mood this afternoon,” Jillynip said as she left with the tea tray. “I believe that she would enjoy more conversation.”
Rosa glared at the staircase. She did not want to climb it. She felt like the stairs led up to a diving board, one that towered high above a cold swimming pool. But she put away the maps, put away the gloves, and went up anyway.
16
JASPER’S SEARCH FOR THE TORTOISE brought him to the joust, just like it always did.
He stood in the midst of a large crowd of scarecrows. All of them moved with more confidence now. Knights and their steeds remembered themselves more clearly and remade themselves more skillfully. If Jasper squinted at them, or watched sideways, they almost looked like the living.
Beams of bright light scanned back and forth across the lists. The miners were watching. They had climbed down from the tavern roof. Now they spread out and grew in numbers to surround the joust.
Jasper felt a slow unease creep from the back of his neck to the tips of his fingers. They’ve always ignored each other, he thought. But the mining dead and the festival ghosts did not ignore each other now.
Sir Morien noticed the new spectators. He broke away from the jousting loop and raised his lance high. The gesture might have been a greeting, or a question, or a challenge. It might have been all three of those things put together.
The miners seemed to take it as a challenge. They came swaggering closer. Jasper squinted in the glare of their surrounding headlamps.
Scarecrow knights, horses, and spectators shifted their attention outward. It felt like a change in the direction of the wind.
This is going to get ugly. Jasper drew a circle in half-frozen mud with the tip of his staff. Once inside he set himself apart.
A fight between conflicting histories broke out, broke open, and broke everything.
* * *
Rosa climbed up and into the library’s upstairs apartment. These rooms were strangely shaped. Ceilings followed the irregular geometry of the roof right above them. Elegant furniture sat crammed into odd corners at uncomfortable angles. Stacks of paper covered a small dining room table. Diagrams, sketches, and the angular handwriting of Bartholomew Theosophras Barron covered the paper.
Many of those pages had been meticulously torn into shreds.
The apartment was still much cleaner than it used to be. Mom and Rosa had spent weeks making the lady of the house feel welcome here. But through all of that dusting and tidying the mess of paper always remained on the table.
Rosa offered a small curtsey to the paper pile.
“Lady Isabelle,” she said, “I’ve come to call on you, and to ask for the honor and privilege of your conversation.” Rosa almost choked on the next thing that she needed to say. “You may borrow my voice, if you wish.”
The ghost of Isabelle Barron no longer had any voice of her own. She would need to use Rosa’s. Once Isabelle had Rosa’s voice in her possession she might decide to keep it and never give it back.
Scraps of paper stirred on the tabletop. They spilled over the side, onto the floor, and then spun together in a spiral. The spiral stood as a flowing gown. The lady of the house took shape inside it. She considered her visitor through a face made out of paper.
Rosa held out her hand, even though most of her instincts said, Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope, let’s run away now please.
Isabelle took the offered hand with her own pale and papery fingers.
“Good afternoon, little librarian,” the ghost said to Rosa with Rosa’s own voice. “What would you care to discuss?”
“Good afternoon,” Rosa said, relieved to be able to say anything at all. “Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I have questions about the history of our town.”
“And is this our town now, newcomer?” the ghost asked with the voice that they shared. “Have you acclimated to this place? Are you well accepted here?”
So it’s like that, is it? Rosa thought.
“Well enough,” she said with an extra scoop of frosted politeness on top.
“I am so utterly glad to hear it,” said Isabelle. She smiled without showing teeth, which was fine with Rosa. She did not enjoy the sight of those individually sculpted paper teeth. “Is your mother likewise well?”
“Very well, thank you,” said Rosa. “She sends her fond greetings.”
With her voice, Rosa silently added. Which is hers. Not yours. You can’t take it, or keep it, not ever again. And you can’t keep mine, either. Please, please, please don’t take away mine. She tried not to tighten her grip too much on the lady’s paper hand.
“You may answer her with greetings of my own,” Isabelle said. “Now share your questions with me. I will answer them, provided that the answers are still held in my remembrance. Neither dead nor living memories are fixed and certain things.”
“I understand,” said Rosa. “Tell me, do you remember the part of town where the school is now? You can see it from here, through that window.”
Isabelle did not bother to look through the window. “I remember. It was always a school, for as long as Ingot has existed and has had children living in it. I founded that school, and I spent a great deal of my time there. The original building was very much smaller than the current one, but it stood in the very same place.”
“That’s good to know,” said Rosa. Maybe this conversation was a good idea after all. “Do you remember what was right behind the schoolhouse? There’s a lump of a hill on that spot now, with a single tree growing at the top.”
Isabelle pulled her hand away. Rosa felt her voice tear away with it. She tried to shout out protests, but she couldn’t say anything now.
“Yes, child,” Isabelle thundered with Rosa’s own voice. “I do remember.”
17
JASPER STOOD INSIDE A HASTILY drawn circle, deep inside a ghostly battle, right inside the center of the festival grounds. He watched, trapped and helpless, while dead miners and knightly scarecrows tried to destroy each other completely. This wasn’t just a brawl, or the half-playful tussle of a playground fight. This had none of the posture and bravado of horses feeling scrappy and trying to become the boss by biting at each other’s flanks. This was cold violence without rules. It aimed to obliterate.
At first the miners seemed to be winning. They broke scarecrows into pieces with pickaxes and heavily gloved fists. Then they broke those pieces.
Festival ghosts tore open the locked prop cabinets and fought back. Stage swords and jousting lances found wooden hands willing to swing them. The weapons were blunt, but still heavy. Several miners fell. Some of them exploded. Their lingering dust smelled like pulverized stone and spent fireworks.
None of the clashing figures spoke, or yelled, or taunted each other. None of them cried out in pain as they fell. None of them had any voices.
Jasper watched scarecrows remake themselves from their own wreckage. Miners coalesced from clouds of burnt powder. They kept coming back. They kept on fighting. And Jasper was still trapped in the middle of it all. He wondered how long his mud circle would last.
One voice rose above the horrible crunching and trampling noise of the battle to shout Jasper’s name.
Sir Dad had joined the fray. He wasn’t properly dressed for the occasion. He wore muddy jeans and a flannel shirt. But he had brought his new longsword with him. The copper-inlayed steel moved like Dad’s own personal whirlwind. Dozens of feuding ghosts on both sides broke apart in his wake.
Neither the miners nor the festival ghosts seemed to know what to do with Sir Dad. They had been focused exclusively on each other. But once aware of him they came at him with dagger, spear, sword, and pickax. Dad disappeared from view, surrounded.
Jasper charged out of his circle. He tried to fight his way to his father. Miners burst in burning dust when he swung through them with his copper-tipped quarterstaff. Scarecrows broke apart in front of him. But then both sides pressed closer. Jasper swi
tched to short, sharp jabs and quick parries. Several ghosts tried to grab at his staff. Green fire flared when they touched copper. The haunted figures flinched, but they did not retreat. Jasper had very little room to move, and no room at all to swing the staff. He couldn’t see his father, or hear him. He tried to call out, but choked on the scorched powder of the miners. Headlamps blinded him. Wooden limbs of enraged scarecrows pummeled him.
The pummeling suddenly stopped, because Sir Dad was there.
He had found a battered shield and used it now to ward off a pickax. Then he cleared room around Jasper with his sword. Four ghostly heads separated from their makeshift shoulders.
Jasper shifted his grip on the quarterstaff and made two precise jabs. The open space around them grew wider. The claustrophobic press of ghosts fell back.
Sir Dad and Jasper, the living knight and his squire, fought together now as though they had choreographed and rehearsed the whole battle. They had fenced in the backyard almost every single morning since Jasper was three years old and able to hold a wooden stick. They both knew every move that the other would make.
Miners and scarecrows fell away from them.
Father and son pushed through and broke free, untouchable.
Jasper laughed with a blood-singing joy. Then he slipped in a large mud puddle, dropped his staff, and went right down beside the Mousetrap Stage.
Panic galloped through him. He expected both haunted armies to dogpile right on top of him. Jasper scrambled for his quarterstaff and braced for that pile. But it didn’t happen. The battle between miners and scarecrows continued to rage nearby, on the jousting grounds, but that was where it stayed.
“Come on,” said Sir Dad. “They aren’t following. We still need to hurry on out of here.”
“Wait just a second. . . .” Jasper saw something move beneath the stage platform. He pulled away in case it was the sort of something that might reach out and grab him. Then he leaned closer to see what it was.
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