John shrugged. “I told them all I knew, and they let me go, on condition I wouldn’t say a word to me mates. When me mates asked me what had happened, saying they’d heard I was caught, I told them they’d heard wrong. That evening, knowing the royal guard would be coming at nightfall, I left them and went to the pub, had a nice mutton dinner, and didn’t think more about it except that I’d have to find me a new gang. Only, I get the news that me mates were too wily for the law. How I got the news was that me mates showed up at the pub, grabbed me, and threw me in a sack. They took me to a cave and put me in a barrel and hung me from the ceiling. I was in there seven days before I finally died.”
May sat stunned.
“Terrible, ain’t it?”
“Yes,” May breathed.
“Can you believe me own mates treated me that way?”
“But. . . you betrayed them.”
“That’s true. But two wrongs don’t make a right,” John insisted, crossing his emaciated arms.
“No. I guess not.”
John’s cracked, dry lips turned downward. “You’re taking their side.”
“No, I’m not. It’s just, don’t you feel bad for betraying them?”
“Sure I do, lassie. But I’m a changed man now. All I can do now is be the best knave I can be.”
May stared. “But . . . spirits don’t change. . . .”
John cleared his throat. “I guess that’s what they say.” He shrunk from May defensively. “Ain’t you ever done a betrayal to one of yer friends?”
May thought, then picked at her fingernails, not meeting his eyes. “I don’t really have any friends.”
“Well, that’s a shame.”
“I have a cat.”
“A cat’s not a person.”
“Yeah, but he’s my friend.” May thought of the night at the lake and crumpled a little inside. She thought of how she had never realized just how much of a friend Somber Kitty had been. He had been her best and only friend. “And I guess I did betray him.”
“See?” John smiled with satisfaction. “But still, I say a cat ain’t really a friend. I hate cats meself. Except in stew. I liked a good cat stew when I was livin’. I used to make up a mean batch for me mates.”
May winced, feeling depressed. Even a man with cockroaches crawling out of his mouth had more friends than she did.
“Pumpkin’s sort of . . . my friend,” she offered hopefully.
John laughed. “Ha! A cat and a house ghost. That’s rich. You won’t find a house ghost that’s worth much in the way of smarts or courage. When the chips are down, he’ll run the other way, mark me words. And as fer cats—well, ye won’t find one in the whole o’ the Ever After.”
May pondered what John had said about Pumpkin. It did seem like the truth. “Why do you think the animals were banished, Mr. Jibber?”
John shrugged. “Who can explain anything Evil Bo Cleevil does? A bunch of ghouls that worked for him rounded up the cats first. The ghouls ain’t very bright, and I think they had a hard time telling cats apart from the other animals. I don’t know that he didn’t just decide to get rid of all the animals altogether, to make it simpler. It was right around the time we started hearing reports of the Bogey. Lord knows why he didn’t send the Bogey’s dogs to do the job. I reckon they could tear a cat apart in less than a second flat. Curious, that.”
May sidled a little closer to John, thinking about the Bogey’s dogs. She hugged her arms around herself.
“Look over there,” John said, pointing across the sand in another direction. There was just the tiniest hint of movement. “That’s the Interrealm Soarway. It goes all the way from the Southwest Portal up around the city, where it intersects a set of train tracks that run all the way to the Far North. Quite a marvel, it is, the train. It stops outside Ether, and that’s it. Doesn’t stop again till the tip-top of the realm. Though nobody rides it anymore, if they can help it.
“I believe it goes all the way to North Farm, where yer blanket is from.” May’s throat tightened. “That’s one place you wouldn’t find me goin’, even fer treasure. There’s nothing but strange spirits up that way. Powerful types, like what made yer blanket. How’d you say you got that, anyway?”
May’s heart sped up. “We just . . . found it.” She wished he hadn’t said anything about the train. Knowing it even existed filled her with shame.
John nodded, seeming suspicious. “Anyway, no need to worry about the North—Ether is our concern. Ye see”—he pointed—“the city is surrounded by a high wall, with a gate at each corner. Each gate is guarded by a sniffing phantom.”
He leaned toward her and looked her in the eye for emphasis as he said this, sending a waft of horrible stench over her face. “Ye know what that is?”
May shook her head. She’d heard it before—even from John—and it didn’t sound very scary.
“The thieves used to dress up to get into the city, once Evil Bo Cleevil’s spirits started taking over. But Cleevil caught on to that.
So he brought up the sniffing phantoms from the Stench Swamps down in South Place. Highly developed noses. Now you have to get checked for scents before you can get through the gates.”
“What kind of scents?”
“Oh, the scent of thievery, for one”—John sniffed his armpit, and then poked her in the side—“and the stench of life. But we’ll fix that.”
May’s mind darted to Lucius. She didn’t want to think about it.
“And if we’re caught?”
“They throw ye in a gadget called an incarnerator. Ye come out a bug or a worm or else a rock, and that gets sent in the mail to yer nearest relative. Me cousin Iago got turned into a twig that I kept in me pocket fer a while, till it got washed out in the laundry.” May’s face must have shown the worry she felt, because he winked and added, “Don’t worry. Ye stick with me, and I’ll get ye through.”
May wondered what she and Pumpkin would do without him. They’d be lost. Suddenly she felt guilty for doubting him. “Mr. Jibber?”
“Yes, dearie?” He leaned an ear close to her. “Speak up.” “Thank you for taking us.”
John grinned, his deep-set eyes getting a little moist. “Why, it’s good fer me to be challenged. Eternity gets real stale, I’ll tell ye. Sometimes I don’t think it’d be half bad to disappear into nothingness after all.” His limbs shook for a moment, and then settled.
“What is it?” May asked, touching his arm. She was getting less and less sensitive to the cold zaps of the spirits.
John forced a small, nervous laugh. “Just a goose walking across my grave.”
With that, he turned and drifted back down the hill.
Far across the realm, Somber Kitty paced a large, stone-walled room, occasionally gazing toward a large open window, like a caged tiger.
On the first day of his captivity his net had been substituted with a triangular room at the top of the tallest pyramid in the Egyptian settlement. It had a sumptuous carpet, a gorgeous linen scratching post, and gilded catnip balls. There was also a breathtaking view of a city far in the distance. But looking at the vista made Somber Kitty meow darkly.
He placed his paws on the sill of the window, sticking his head out into the dry desert air and looking toward the ground longingly. As he did so a large group of people, who were milling about at the base of the pyramid, fell on their knees and bowed their heads to the sand.
They did this every time Somber Kitty showed his face. At first it had made him curious, but now he barely noticed. He had no way of knowing that the Egyptian spirits had adopted him as a god. And if he had, it wouldn’t have made him any less melancholy.
With his paws still on the sill he looked around the room once again for a way to escape, and then turned to the window with a mew. He peered at the people below thoughtfully as if they might be able to answer the one question that really mattered.
“Meay?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The City of Ether
May
woke to wet drops landing on her face. She blinked her eyes. Large green drops were falling from the sky, and John the Jibber was sitting beside her. He had her knapsack in his hands.
“Er, time to go, lass.”
May sat up, her eyes darting to her bag.
“What’s happening?”
John laughed. “Just a little ectoplasm shower. Get yer house ghost up and let’s go.” He handed her the sack as if that’s what he’d been meaning to do. May looked at it for a moment, uneasy.
She shook Pumpkin awake. He grunted and sat up, rubbing his eyes and looking around. He grinned pleasantly at May, let out a long, leisurely yawn, then he stuck out his purple tongue to collect a few ectoplasm drops. “Can’t I sleep a little longer?”
May groaned and pulled him up. They climbed the hill together behind John.
“Look lively, Pumpkin. There’ll be no time fer yer laziness today,” John chided.
Pumpkin stuck out his tongue at John’s back, but sucked it in again when he saw May frowning at him. As they reached the ridge, and Pumpkin got a view of the city, he thrust his fingers into his mouth and dropped his mischievous mood altogether.
John had knelt down and was digging in the dirt, and now he pulled out a handful of worms and centipedes, then dropped them into May’s hair and down into her bathing suit.
“Ah!” May jumped up and down, trying to brush them off.
“Stand still, girl!” John said, grabbing her wrist to stop her from jumping. “Do ye want to make it past the sniffing phantoms or not?”
May considered. Then she let her arms drop to her sides.
“Now, I gathered up some mold this morning, and I’ve got this stuff on the bottom of my shoe that’s been here for about fifty years. . . .” John reached beneath his shoe and pulled out a decayed mass of brown goo. Then he rubbed it over both hands and smeared it on May’s arms and legs. May thought she might vomit. She retched a few times and held her nose.
“There, that gets rid of the living scent nicely. Now for me.”
John reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny bottle of clear liquid, then squirted himself several times. May read the label: Crook-Be-Gone.
“Mr. Jibber, shouldn’t this wait till we’re closer to the city?”
“What do you mean, lass?”
“Well, won’t it wear off before we get there?”
“My dear, it’ll take us ten minutes to get to the city. Perhaps fifteen.”
May blinked at him several times, then looked across the long wide plain separating them from the tiny city in the distance. It had to be hundreds of miles away. “Really?”
“It’s right there.” John pointed in the same direction she was already looking.
“But it’ll take days to get there.” She looked at Pumpkin, as if to verify she wasn’t crazy.
Pumpkin, though he didn’t need to cover up his normal ghost scent, had dug up a handful of worms anyway and was dropping them into his ragged shirt one by one. “The City of Ether’s in a wormhole,” he said absently, dangling a long slimy worm next to his neck, “everybody knows that.”
John started walking across the field, with Pumpkin traipsing along behind him with his worms, leaving May with no choice but to follow. She trailed behind, only noticing after several steps that something strange was happening to the view as they walked. The farther John and Pumpkin got from May, the bigger they seemed to get, compared to the city. Or was it that the city was getting smaller? Yes, the more they walked, the less and less the city looked like something huge in the distance and more like something tiny on the ground. May hurried to keep up with them, catching up breathlessly when they came to a halt. All three of them stared down at their feet. There was the city, the size of an anthill. It reached to May’s shins and was surrounded by thousands of tiny curved pebbles stuck in the ground. A spiral pattern was furrowed in the dirt encircling the city scene.
“Wow,” May said, kneeling down. To her astonishment she could just make out tiny figures drifting up and down the tiny streets. “I can’t believe it.” She reached out a hand to touch the top of the tallest building, a white structure that towered over the rest of the city, but as she did, a powerful zap traveled up and down her spine, knocking her backward. She landed on the ground with a thud.
“My, yer daft, lass. It’s protected, of course. Wouldn’t do at all if it weren’t,” John said.
“Thanks for warning me,” May muttered, standing up, embarrassed. John and Pumpkin looked at each other, then at her, and burst into laughter.
“What?” May went to pat her hair, and noticed it was sticking straight up. “Oh, ha ha.” A tiny smile snuck onto her lips. She stuck her hands in the dirt and grabbed two fistfuls, rubbing them into her hair.
“Don’t ye know about wormholes, dearie?” John asked when she was finished, swiping a jolly tear from his eye.
May shook her head.
“There are lots of them all over the realm, but this is the biggest one. Wormholes make space all distorted. So a giant city can fit into a tiny area.”
May stared at it. “But, how do we get in there?”
“Why, right there.”
John nodded to his left. Beaten through the dirt a few feet away was a smooth path that seemed to lead forward, away from the city. A sign beside it announced it to be PAIN IN THE FOOT TRAIL.
“Well, come on, then,” John said, walking ahead. Pumpkin and May trailed behind him. The train trickled to a stop.
Though the trail had looked like it would go straight, it actually curved hard to the left a few paces in, and curved and curved, making a wide circle around the city.
“What are we doing?” May asked.
“Ay, lass, it’s a wonder you ever made it to the grotto in the first place with that feeble mind of yers. We’re going to the city, remember?”
May scowled, feeling foolish. “But we’re walking in circles.” “We’re walking in a spiral,” John answered, shaking his head in exasperation.
“Yes, a spiral,” Pumpkin added in a superior tone, also shaking his head.
May fought back a sigh of frustration. She didn’t know how that was much different, but she kept her mouth shut. And after a few seconds she realized, where the city had gotten smaller before, it was now bigger, closer. With every few steps it got much larger in front of them, the spikes that surrounded it taking on a more distinct shape.
By the time the path finally came to an end, May had gone speechless. They were at the edge of an enormous, desolate cemetery, filled with tens of thousands of gravestones. Across it gaped the enormous City of Ether.
“Ohhh,” Pumpkin moaned. May moaned in her heart too. It looked to be a hundred times the size of New York, which—in the Saint Agatha’s brochures—had looked gigantic. It glowed brightly, with an enormous, slate gray rock wall surrounding it and impossible rooftops reaching toward the stars. And these were all dwarfed by the tallest building, the soaring spire of which disappeared into the dusky starry sky, so that the point of it was invisible.
“There”—John pointed a bony, dirt-caked finger toward the place where the spire disappeared into the sky—“is where the Book lies.”
Pumpkin let out another groan.
“Oh,” May whispered, feeling very small in all sorts of ways. “Up there?” It was so high. Way, way too high. May thanked her lucky stars that John the Jibber was with them. Maybe he would go up to the top and bring the Book down. Without him she would have turned around right then and there and given up.
Beneath the shadow of the city, and outside the wall, a huge shape was moving back and forth, with what looked like arms stretching out and making long scooping motions toward the ground.
“Is that. . .” May brushed her soggy hair aside.
“The south gate sniffing phantom,” John finished for her. “Sure is. And this,”—John pointed to the field full of millions of headstones and gaping grave holes—“is where the city ghosts come for haunting.”
Ma
y’s eyes met Pumpkin’s.
“Well, we best get moving, you two. We want to miss rush hour, that’s certain.”
May tightened her death shroud around her and started walking.
They picked their way across the graves, which May realized were what had appeared as pebbles from above. She and Pumpkin zigzagged back and forth behind John the Jibber, careful not to get too close to any of the holes for fear of falling in. John was a faster zigger and zagger, however, and he was soon several feet ahead of them.
“Now, no need to be squeamish, you two. Now’s not the time for lollygagging. When the bells on that yonder church ring midnight, the spirits’ll come out for work, and if we’re out here then, we’ll have our work cut out for us.”
May tried to pick up her pace, stepping faster around the stones and taking longer strides.
“That’s it, c’mon.” John turned his gaunt, curved back toward them and picked up his pace.
Up ahead May could see a bridge rising from the ground to the top of the gate and a line of spirits straggling its way along it. The sniffing phantom stood beside the bridge like a tall white pillar. He glowed with faint white light and had the face of an old man covered in snow, with droopy wrinkled eyelids over pale gray eyes, each the size of a small house. His nose was his most striking and exceptional feature—it was large and hooked and had enormous flaring nostrils to which he lifted one spirit after another with his massive palms. Each time he did, he made a deafening sniffing sound, and the spirit in his hands was sucked right up into one of his nostrils. He had to blow hard to get it out, using his hands as a hankie to catch the spirit before laying it down on the bridge again and nudging it toward a small archway through which it disappeared. Pumpkin reached for May’s hand, his frigid white fingers finding their way into hers.
On the walls of the city huge stone gargoyles perched, looking ready to pounce and wearing Holo-Pix cameras strapped around their necks. Behind them rose a giant clock tower, announcing the time to be eleven minutes before midnight.