A Festival of Ghosts by William Alexander

Author:William Alexander
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

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.

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