“When do you think we should go?” Beatrice asked. She and Fabbio both looked at May expectantly, as if she might have the answer. But May did have the feeling in her gut that they should go as soon as possible. The longer they waited in Ether, the more dangerous it was.
“I think tonight?” she said with a slight nod of her chin. To her surprise Beatrice and Fabbio didn’t question her.
“We take the sewers last time,” Fabbio said. “There is secret way, but we get lost, eh?” Fabbio rubbed his nose and thrust his chin in the air. “Well, we try that twice, and both times entrance is . . . not where it is supposed to be.”
Beatrice gave May a glance, and May began to think she might have an inkling of why the captain and his men had gotten lost in the Apennines.
“I have a map,” Beatrice said. “I got it at the E. P. L., from an ancient map of the underground of the city.” She pulled a folded piece of paper from a pocket in her dress and laid it out on her lap.
“E. P. L.?”
“Ether Public Library,” Beatrice said nonchalantly. “I did a few days of research.” She pointed to the map, which showed the sewers that crisscrossed the city in motion, a few specks wandering around the page. “It’s funny. Nobody goes into the library. The door is very hard to find and very small, and the shelves are a dusty mess. It’s as if nobody bothers.” Beatrice wrinkled her nose as she said this. Clearly she thought it was very wrong not to bother.
“Beatrice and I use this way last time.” Fabbio tugged his mustache. “We come up right under the Eternal Edifice.” He thrust his finger at a tiny square on the map. “This is old door that spirits use thousands of years ago. Only a few still know it. It is our only way in.”
“What are those?” May pointed to the moving specks.
“Ghouls.” Beatrice’s lashes fluttered. “Unfortunately they love to bathe in the sewers.”
May gulped. “Do you have any maps for once we get inside the entrance?”
Beatrice shook her head, her eyebrows descending deeply. “Those pages had been ripped out. But believe me it’s bad enough just getting there. The sewers are endless and go all over the city.” She added, “And if you get lost, you may end up outside the city gates—or worse, you may never find your way up again.”
“Fortunately I memorize map. I have much experience in these things,” Fabbio said. “It is no good to use light in sewers. Ghouls will see. It must be all up here.” He tapped his forehead.
The dangers gathered in May’s head, like a murder of crows, flocking to a tree. The bravery she had felt a few minutes ago had slunk into a corner of her mind, replaced by fear and the crushing feeling that the three of them were just too small for such a great task. She wished they had John. She wished that she could be back in Briery Swamp, safe and protected in her tiny, comfy life. But wishing was not enough.
“We should leave at rush hour,” May said finally.
“Midnight,” Beatrice and Fabbio agreed.
Huddling close together in the gazebo, they waited for dusk to turn into night.
The basket containing Somber Kitty was carried to the city by one of the many streams that came together to form one giant river.
This river was made completely of ectoplasmic sewage, and flowed directly under the city wall into Sewerside.
When Somber Kitty saw that his vessel was fast approaching a dark drainage pipe beside the west gate of the city, he leaped out, gingerly bouncing along the wet sand until he was on solid, dry ground. Here he licked himself in disgust, shaking the wet drops from his tongue and peering up at the gigantic creature standing about a hundred yards away at the city wall.
Startled he hissed, then scurried into the shadow of the wall itself, far from where the giant creature stood.
His instinctual fear of the city had increased as he’d gotten closer to it, and now he stood very uneasy in the dark, wondering what to do. He sniffed at the air.
Since he was standing upwind of the river, he no longer breathed the scent of sewage. And since spirits have no smell, he failed to scent the three boatfuls of Egyptian souls who had tracked his progress downstream and were now sending for backup.
But since he was standing downwind of the city, he did get one particular scent that was familiar. Somber Kitty’s tail jolted up. His ears did their satellite turn.
All at once he turned to the wall, placed his paws upon it, sank down, gazed at the giant figure by the gate, then at the pipe on his opposite side. He meowed; he growled; his slitty eyes rolled; his whiskers waggled with wild abandon. Deciding he had no other choice, he began to dig.
After thousands of miles of searching, Somber Kitty had finally scented May.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Eternal Edifice
Just after midnight, when the spirits of the City of Ether had poured through the gates into the great cemetery to begin their night of haunting, three strangers crouched by a sewer grate, staring glumly into the oozing, smelling ectoplasm that flowed past them.
“The ghouls always swim in pairs,” Beatrice advised, “and you may have noticed they love to chatter, so we’ll hear them if they’re
“You stay behind me,” Fabbio added, thumping his chest once with his fist. “And do not fear.” May and Beatrice looked at each other.
“Bravely we go.” Fabbio slid into the water, and May and Beatrice slid in behind him, the coolness and sliminess of the ectoplasm making them suck in their breath.
They moved along the short stretch of canal with the current, which wasn’t too strong here, and then got to the place where the road overhung the water, where they would go into darkness. Carefully they continued to move forward, till the last of the stars snuffed out of sight. They twisted and turned in the dark, Fabbio leading the way.
“I’m actually getting used to the smell,” May whispered.
Beatrice squeezed her hand.
“Yes,” Fabbio answered. “Any smell, if you are around it long enough, will become invisible to your nose. For instance—”
“Shhhhhh,” Beatrice hissed, coming to a stop so hard that May slammed into her. They all stood with ears perked for a moment, and then May heard it.
Hbbbblellllleeehhhk Gbbbleh heh bleh hek
Down the tunnel ahead of them, the water splashed.
Beatrice’s hand clutched May’s. There was nowhere to hide.
Hbbbbllllbubbblllllllblek.
A sound like laughter came out of the darkness, getting closer and closer.
Glubbebbbbbwb. The voices grew steadily louder. May held her breath.
And then the voices began to get lower. It was hard to tell at first, but then it was clear—they were moving away.
The three waited several minutes, listening carefully to hear if the ghouls would come back. They didn’t.
“We go,” Fabbio whispered, moving again. After that, they all kept their mouths shut.
They wound through the sewers for what seemed like hours. May had stopped feeling the coldness of the water.
“I not sure, but I think we a little bit lost,” Fabbio finally whispered.
“Oh, my,” Beatrice said.
“I think this map, it is wrong. But it’s okay, I fix.”
They took several more turns. Fabbio went slower and slower, which made May feel more and more doubtful. Soon they heard a sound up ahead—a series of loud splashes.
They pushed up against the walls of the sewer, the splashing getting louder and louder, moving toward them. This time it kept coming until it was suddenly upon them. Whatever it was it seemed to see them, because it came to a dead stop inches away. May could hear breathing and began to make out two shapes.
“Die!” In the darkness Captain Fabbio leaped forward, tackling one of the creatures and dragging it under the water.
The other creature let out a high-pitched scream. But it wasn’t the scream of a ghoul. It was the scream of . . .
“Pumpkin?!” May gasped.
“May?”
&n
bsp; There was a giant splash, and Fabbio and the other shape emerged from the water.
“Let go of me, ye idiot! Let go.”
This voice was familiar too. May, forgetting for a moment the danger, pulled her starlight out of her sack, and suddenly the tunnel was cast in the bright white glow. Standing before her, looking like drowned dogs, were Pumpkin, Fabbio, and—his neck hooked inside Fabbio’s elbow—John the Jibber.
“John!” May leaped forward and threw her arms around his neck, knocking him backward.
John caught himself and straightened up. He laughed. “Well, eh, ahem. Hi there, lassie.”
“But . . . but . . .” May was speechless. She didn’t know what to say first. “You went into the incarnerator! How did you get away? We saw you!”
John didn’t answer for a second or two. He tugged at his collar awkwardly. “Eh, the Jibber’s always got a few tricks up his sleeves. Didn’t I tell ye I was the wiliest knave there was?”
“You did.” May hugged him again. “How? How is it possible? How’d you two find each other?”
“Why, at the Final Rest, of course,” John said, skipping over the first question. “I waited in room nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine, but ye never showed. And then I found Pumpkin wandering up and down the hall, cryin’ ’is eyes out, looking fer ye. We’ve looked fer ye everywhere.” John swiped a ragged sleeve along his brow. “I was sure in trouble if I’d lost ye.”
“In trouble?” May squinted, confused.
John tugged at his collar again. “Well, I woulda felt terrible for the rest of Eternity, of course. That’s trouble, ain’t it?” John’s eyes darted away from hers. “Ahem.”
May turned to see Pumpkin, standing with his arms crossed over his chest and his droopy eyes slitted angrily.
“Pumpkin, I—”
“You left me.”
“I thought it’d be safer for you if . . .”
Pumpkin turned and showed her his back.
“I thought it would be safer for you.”
No response. May reached to touch his back, but he stepped farther away.
“And what do we have here?” John asked, eyeing Beatrice and Fabbio darkly.
“Oh.” May grinned. “They’re coming to the Edifice with me. With us. Oh, but I knew we’d be lost without you!”
John waved his cracked, callused hands sharply. “Ah, now hold on just a moment. Nobody extra’s coming to the Edifice. It’s hard enough having blasted Pumpkin along.”
Behind him Pumpkin lifted his shoulders dramatically and huffed.
May glanced at Beatrice and Fabbio. Fabbio was staring at John indignantly. “But I told them they could come.”
“M’girl, I won’t have it.”
May gazed down at the water, making patterns in it with her fingers. She stared around the group for a few moments. Then she crossed her arms over herself decisively. “I’m not going without them, Mr. Jibber.” Then she added, less surely, “And if that means you won’t take us, that’s, um, fine.” The truth was it wasn’t fine. May held her breath, waiting for John to explode at her.
He looked shocked. He gazed back and forth among the three helplessly, then growled.
“Er, have it your way. Let’s go in.”
May’s body went slack. Thank goodness. “Are we close?” she asked, once she’d recovered.
John laughed. “Close?” He took the starlight from her hand and held it up toward the wall. “It’s right here.”
May let out a small scream. Before them, carved into the gray rock of the tunnel wall, was an old woman’s face, surrounded by leaves. It was covered in cobwebs and flecks of ectoplasm.
“I knew we are close,” Fabbio asserted.
May, her eyes huge, hunched her shoulders and reached out to touch the face ever so gently. The Lady . . .
“Ahh!”
The mouth flew open wide and snatched for her hand. May leaped back, yanking her arm away.
The mouth immediately recoiled. May had time to glimpse a tiny hole in the back of its stone throat before it closed.
Pumpkin had already started flailing a path down the sewer. He stopped a few feet away, watching fearfully.
“Ah, ye wouldn’t get far without me, ye see? Ye’ve got to be careful with these doors. They’re ancient and tricky, meant to protect the Edifice from more than the likes of us. Here, hold this.” John dug into a hidden pocket in his pants and thrust a white key into May’s hand. May took it, confused.
“It’s me skeleton key, made out of the bone of a master locksmith. I stole it off Harry Houdini last year on the Sea of Tranquillity while he was tubin’.” John winked, but his smile stayed hard. “When this mouth opens again, I want you to stick the key in the hole, all right?”
“I’ll lose my arm!”
“Trust me.” John smiled again, without the smile reaching his eyes. May nodded. “Okay.”
With his left hand John reached out and pinched the lady’s nose. Nothing happened for several seconds. And then the face’s eyes began to bulge. Its mouth began to twitch. I’m sorry, May thought, grimacing.
A few more seconds and the mouth flew open, panting hard. John thrust his hands against the top and bottom lips, prying them farther apart. “Now!”
May hesitated, holding up the key, her eyes locked on the powerful stone teeth.
“Do it, lass!”
“It’s going to eat you!” Pumpkin moaned in the background. But May set her jaw and thrust the key back into the throat, fumbling it against the hole, until it slid in with a click. Nothing happened for a moment, and John gave a grunt. And then the mouth opened wider and wider, all the way up to the ceiling, until finally it split right down the middle. Both sides slid apart like an elevator door. A skinny stone stairway waited on the other side.
“C’mon,” John whispered, rescuing the key from the rubble.
He floated up the stone stairs first. May followed, then Beatrice and Fabbio, who had to stand sideways and jam himself through the door.
“Captain, why don’t you leave your parachute here.”
“I do nothing of that sort,” Fabbio snapped, jamming himself in harder. “A soldier, always prepared.”
“Captain, really. . .”
Beatrice looked at May for support, and Fabbio followed her eyes, both of them looking to May to resolve the conflict. She nibbled on her pinkie. Poor Fabbio, she thought. Specters didn’t change.
“Well, I suppose if it’s really important to you . . .” Together she and Beatrice helped yank the pack so that both Fabbio and the parachute came through. John the Jibber stood a few stairs above them, shaking his head in disgust.
Pumpkin reluctantly brought up the rear, and the doors slammed closed behind him, making them all jump.
At the top of the stairs was an impossibly long hallway, so long that the end was nowhere in sight. It was paved all around with tiny mirrors.
“Don’t touch anything, ye hear me?” John whispered. As he did, Pumpkin reached his arm to the side.
“But it’s so shiny!” He thrust a hand forward. As soon as his long fingers connected with glass, a great sucking sound was heard, and Pumpkin’s hand disappeared through the wall. “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”
“Pumpkin!”
May leaped forward and wrapped her arms around Pumpkin’s waist just as Beatrice wrapped him in her arms from the other side. Pumpkin’s body sucked up tight against the wall, and everywhere he touched seemed to dissolve and go black, sucking harder and harder.
May felt someone else’s arms around her from behind, and then she was toppling backward, down the stairs. Pumpkin and Beatrice came tumbling down on top of her, and May felt herself land on something soft that groaned, “Ay, Dio mio!”
After a few moments of confusion Fabbio pushed May off him, and they all stood up, making sure they were in one piece, and looking at one another wide-eyed.
John stood at the top of the stairs, “Ye idiot!” he hissed at Pumpkin, then looked over his shoulder. “We’ll b
e lucky if we’re not caught by the time we reach the ground floor!”
Up at the landing, the blackness that had spread on the mirror began to turn opaque again, until it was back to its previous shiny surface, appearing as harmless as before.
John fished in his sack and brought out a bolt of silk, muttering out of the side of his lips. “The mirrors will trap your soul unless they’re covered up.” Morosely he flung the bolt into the air, and it went rolling down the hall, like a red carpet, disappearing into the darkness.
“Stay on the silk path, ye got it?” he threw back over his shoulder, shoving May out in front of him and not waiting for the others to reply.
Meanwhile, he counted.
“Seventeen paces, eighteen paces, nineteen paces . . .”
This went on for a good hour. Every once in a while they came to the end of the silk bolt, and John pulled another one out of his sack, throwing it out in front of them, where it spread itself out evenly. Fabbio let out a deep sigh, making it clear that he was getting impatient.
“Goodness, does this hall ever end?” Beatrice asked, rubbing Fabbio’s shoulder soothingly.
“Nope,” John said, bewildering all of them, then went back to muttering. “One thousand, three hundred eleven paces . . .”
They were at one thousand, seven hundred ten when he came to a stop. “It should be here.” He took a long stick out of his bag and poked it forward. To May’s amazement it didn’t disappear into the mirror. “Ah.”
John stepped forward too, right into the wall. And he didn’t disappear. He took several steps, and then turned to face the others. “C’mon, then.” He looked to his left, then walked in that direction, disappearing completely behind a ledge that blended in so well with the rest of the mirrored wall that it was practically invisible. May and Fabbio gasped.
“Ay!” Fabbio breathed.
A moment later John’s head reappeared. “Soft spot. C’mon. I ain’t got all night.”
To May’s surprise Pumpkin was the first to follow, smiling in wonder. Everyone else trailed after him, holding their palms for ward and grinning in awe when they didn’t bump into anything.