May Bird, Warrior Princess

  “The truth is, I’m an evil ruler success story,” Bo Cleevil said. “The dark spirits love me. I control the entire world of the dead. Earth”—he waved a hand in the air carelessly—“will be a piece of cake.” He sighed theatrically. “And still … I feel … empty.”

  The red glow of his eyes dampened just a little. May bit her lip, calculating what might happen if she made her move now. She could try to push him out the window. She could …

  He pointed a hand toward her, and May felt a viselike shadow wrap its way around her arms, squeezing her tight. She struggled but couldn’t move so much as an inch. It took her breath away, how easily he held her.

  “Please don’t think about interrupting again,” Bo Cleevil said. His eyes flamed red once more, and bored right into her. And then his body relaxed again. “Where was I? Oh yes, empty. But then I look at someone like you. So full of thoughts, and colorful ideas … unique.” His hot-coal eyes drifted to her short black hair, her skeletal disguise, her sparkling black bathing suit and pajama pants. “I find it quite amusing that you spent so much of your time in Briery Swamp trying to hide it. Trying to give away what makes you strongest.” He tilted his head thoughtfully.

  “Like I said, you and I are not so very different. We’re both singular sorts of spirits. We’re both alone. Together we could be something else entirely. You would never feel small again.”

  May was speechless. Her eyes flew to the tornado outside, to where her friends were being swept away. There was no Lady. No Somber Kitty. No anyone standing beside her. But strangely, she didn’t feel alone at all. She felt like everyone who’d loved her, and every brave thing she’d ever done, stood behind her, holding her up.

  And May realized that something had changed for her, something she hadn’t noticed before. She was scared. But she wasn’t scared of being scared anymore. “I’m not alone,” she said.

  She squirmed suddenly, sliding out of the shadowy grip, and instead of lunging toward the door, she lunged toward Bo Cleevil. The moment she did, the shadowy grip wrapped around her again and lifted her into the air.

  “Well, that’s very nice for you,” Bo Cleevil said, “because things are about to get very scary.” With a wave of his hand, he lifted her higher into the air, stepping down off the windowsill and moving toward her. A great flapping sounded behind her, and they both turned to see The Book of the Dead, its thousands of pages frantically flipping by themselves.

  Bo Cleevil stayed where he was and looked up at her. “So tell me, if you know so much, how do you think it ends?”

  At that moment something flashed through the room. Bo Cleevil stumbled backward in surprise as the shadows were broken by a blinding white light. A great wind swept through the window, blowing them sideways. Dangling, May lifted her arms in front of her eyes to shade them, squinting to see what it was.

  The Bridge of Souls sat in the middle of the room, gleaming brightly, leading up to where the ceiling had been. Only now, instead of a ceiling, there were countless stars in a dark sky. The wind howled and whistled hollowly.

  Still holding on to her, Bo Cleevil laughed. “I guess that settles it,” he said. He turned back to her and smiled. “It’s a shame, really. But I guess it’s your turn to cross.”

  He advanced upon the bridge. May had only a moment to think. She swung herself forward, tumbling toward him and landing on his shoulders, piggyback-style. Bo Cleevil plucked her off like lice and flung her onto the ground, then leaned toward her. As he reached for her, she grabbed his hat, pulling it off, and scrambled backward. But when she saw what was underneath it, she froze.

  Nothing. Nothing but a pair of coal red eyes, drifting in space. His face was emptiness itself.

  In another moment he had her by the arms, and she was lifted up again. He carried her to the very edge of the bridge, where she dangled, amazed and helpless. May bucked and wiggled wildly, her eyes drifting across the bridge, to the blackness beyond. “No!” she cried.

  “Good-bye, little speck.”

  He dangled her a moment longer, winding up to throw her. The wind sucked at her hair and her shroud like a vacuum cleaner. It howled through the room. The chairs around the table went flying across. The plates blew forward, smashing on the floor.

  And then there was a loud crash behind them, and Bo Cleevil swung back to look.

  The door had flown open, and all in a rush there was a figure hurtling through it, long limbs flopping every which way, white face pale as moonlight, yellow tuft flopping wildly. Pumpkin’s wide black eyes focused on the scene before him: Bo Cleevil, the bridge, and May dangling before it. He charged.

  And barreled right into Bo Cleevil.

  May went flying sideways. She rolled across the floor, righting herself just in time to see Pumpkin and Bo Cleevil, tangled together like strings, go barreling onto the bridge. The wind roared to a deafening pitch, sweeping them in a great gust all the way across.

  “Pumpkin!” May yelled.

  But as she lunged toward them, the room exploded in white light. Before May’s eyes, the two separate figures began to change, turning into balls of the brightest white she could imagine. And the lights exploded like fireworks and shot up, up, up, impossibly high, until they were only tiny pinpricks far above. They shot upward for a second more, and then the wind around May died completely, the room went quiet, and the two white lights came to rest far above, twinkling.

  May, her head craned back on her neck, watched in awe.

  Beside her, the bridge vanished as quickly as it had appeared, but the scene above did not. Bo Cleevil’s castle lay open to the sky. A sky that held two newborn stars.

  May stood for a moment, disbelieving, afraid, devastated, and amazed.

  And then she heard an odd sound coming from outside the window. She rushed to see the tornado twisting its way back from the mountains and slowly dissipating, losing its speed, its tight gray spiral become loose and misty.

  And from it, all sorts of objects had begun to fall.

  May squinted, trying to make it out. There was a man in a chef’s hat. A specter in a toga. A ghost with horns and a beard. May peered up into the air. Thousands of spirits were falling from the sky, squealing, shouting, cheering. There were loud yee-haws and woo-hoos as the ghosts and specters of the Ever After free-fell back to land.

  It was raining spirits. A smile crept onto May’s lips.

  And then a sound behind her pulled her attention to the table. Though every other thing that had been resting on the table had blown off, The Book of the Dead still remained where it had been. It lay open, its pages flapping in the soft breeze.

  May drifted to it slowly, glancing up from time to time at the sky above, full of too many feelings to understand. She stopped at the edge of the table, leaning toward the book just slightly, as if she were wary of what she would find there. When she saw it had opened to the Ps, a lump formed in her throat. Finally the pages stopped turning. Her eyes lit on the right-hand side. Halfway down the page was a name, buried between Poltergeist Polly and Puss and Eyeball Pie, that no one had ever bothered to look for: Pumpkin. Next to it was a single entry.

  Only slightly more responsible than

  May Ellen Bird for saving the world.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Love, Patience, Grace

  Knock, knock, knock.

  May was the first one up in the Colony of the Undead that morning. She padded down the tunnel, wondering who could be at the door so early.

  She was wary as she opened the door a crack and looked outside, bewildered at what she saw. Outside on the sand there levitated a troupe of elaborately dressed characters. They wore puffy velvet hats with feathers, brocade vests, and poofy pantaloons with tights underneath. One of them had a curly mustache and a pointy beard.

  “We are looking for a worthy house ghost by the name of Pumpkin,” said the one with the beard. “Wouldst thou help us to locate him? We are in dire need of his talent.”

  May studied the one with the be
ard. He looked familiar. School-textbook familiar. And then it hit her who he was. And her throat started to go lumpy. And she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. And instead of doing either, she invited them in for tea and explained to the Shakespeare Song & Dance Revue just why Pumpkin wasn’t there, and what had happened to him, and what he had done for the land of the dead.

  Three months had passed since the day the sky had rained spirits.

  Since then, the Ever After had not magically gone back to the way it had been. Nothing broken heals that quickly. It would take time, and patience, and hope—and slowly, over years, it would begin to grow back into what it had been. Maybe it would even be a little better. Already townsfolk had gone back to bustling about, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, moaning, sometimes complaining. All the things that made the land of the dead lively. Now animals roamed free over the Ever After. Some spirits had even learned what change was like. And they’d found out it really wasn’t so bad.

  Already, all over the realm, Cleevilvilles had begun to fall into disrepair, and colorful, messy, lopsided towns had begun to sprout around the decay. Nobody missed it when the occasional town mischief-maker stole one of the PARDON OUR DUST! signs for a souvenir to keep in their rooms, to remind them of the bad old days.

  A sapling that had sprouted in the wasteland of Bo Cleevil’s fortress was rumored to be growing into a beautiful magnolia tree. The Lady of North Farm was said to have returned to the snowy valley behind the Petrified Pass, and spirits had begun to try to recall whether she was good, or bad, or a mixture of both.

  The dark spirits, with no one to tell them what to do (because they were not the brightest bulbs in the cosmic basket) had returned from their one wild night out on Earth only to scratch their heads and look at one another blankly. By the following evening, they had all slunk back down to South Place—which they’d always preferred to Earth anyway. For years to come, they would tell stories about the one night they had terrorized the living, repeating themselves over and over, whenever there was a slimy ear to listen. Most of their grandghouls found it horribly boring.

  At the Colony of the Undead, there had been picnics under the zipping stars, and parties in the main hall, and slumber parties on the newly rebuilt roof. Bertha Brettwaller, Lawless Lexy, and the rest had been overjoyed when May, Beatrice and Isabella, Lucius, Fabbio, and the cats came to stay. There had been many long nights spent talking over their adventures. And many quiet hours together where they thought only of Pumpkin and didn’t say much at all. Weeks had turned into months. And now, here May stood, telling the Shakespeare Song & Dance Revue something that still hurt too much to say.

  When she was finished relating the news, the troupe fell silent and lifted off their caps, bowing low.

  “He had the sweetest voice I’ve ever heard,” the man with the beard, Will (as he asked May to call him), said. The troupe, which had been captured by Bo Cleevil on the same day they’d auditioned Pumpkin, all murmured agreement. And then, sadly, they trailed off into the desert again.

  It was that day that May decided. It was time to go.

  There were some things May was still not brave enough to do. When it was time for good-bye, Lucius stood there for a long time like they both wanted to say something, but neither of them did.

  Finally, Lucius spoke, “So we’ll see each other again,” he said unsurely. May nodded. She reached out as if to touch his hand, but at the last moment, she only pinched his shoulder and stuck out her tongue at him. He laughed, ducked forward as if to tackle her, but at the last minute turned to peck her on the cheek. In another moment, he’d zipped off in a brilliant ball of light.

  Fabbio refused to come say good-bye. Beatrice accompanied her to the edge of the Nothing Platte. She held her hand tightly and tried to look like she wouldn’t cry.

  “We’ll be down to visit soon,” she said. “We’ll take the train, once it’s up and running.” They smiled at each other, remembering an earlier train journey together. They hugged, and then they let each other go.

  In Belle Morte, May did chores and helped Arista tend to the bees. She felt closest to Pumpkin there. And she felt she owed it to Pumpkin to look after these things, though she found that she was always making holes in Arista’s bee suits, or setting all the bees free by accident. Often she’d stop her chores to watch Somber Kitty with an absent smile. He was now the proud father of six ghostly kittens, who traipsed about Beehive House and its gardens, ignorant that animals had ever been banished, or that there had ever been a spirit called Bo Cleevil. May watched him sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, proudly guarding his brood. Often she wondered if he ever thought of home like she did. There was never a moment when home, and her mom, were absent from her thoughts. But she held her chin up.

  Still, sometimes she stared at Pumpkin’s grave and thought about trying to use it to haunt the Earth, so she could have just a glimpse of her mother, even as a ghost. But she didn’t want to end up as a lost soul. She never wanted to be lost again.

  At night she and Arista sat by a cozy fire in the parlor, often in companionable silence, Kitty, Legume, and their kittens lounging all over their laps. Sometimes they talked about Pumpkin, and all the funny things he used to do. Sometimes when May stood in the backyard after Arista had gone to sleep, she was sure she could feel someone watching her, and she looked up at the zipping stars. She wondered which one he was. These days, she knew she had to be her own guiding star. But sometimes, she liked to imagine, Pumpkin helped.

  It was on just such a night that the first extraordinary thing in a long time happened to May Ellen Bird. She was staring up at the stars when she saw something strange crossing the sky. For a moment she gazed at it absently, merely curious. And then she realized it was getting closer and closer. It began to resemble a giant ball of fire headed straight for Belle Morte.

  “Get inside!” she yelled, scooping up a handful of kittens and ushering Somber Kitty and Legume indoors, where Arista was puttering about the kitchen.

  Outside, the ground began to shake. They all dove under the kitchen furniture. And then, as quickly as it had begun, the shaking stopped. They all looked at one another, scared witless, May’s mind leaping to a million possibilities. But none of her conjectures prepared her for what she saw when she finally crawled up to the window and peeped outside.

  There in the front yard sat a long white rocket, emblazoned on one side with the word NASA. No sooner had this begun to sink in than a round hatch opened with a hiss, and a familiar figure came tumbling out: Bertha “Bad Breath” Brettwaller. Seeing May in the window, she did a jolly little jig and motioned her to come outside. May zipped out into the yard, gaping in awe. But Bertha took it all in stride.

  “Well c’mon, girly, we ain’t got forever anymore. Hop in.”

  “Hop in?” May repeated hollowly.

  “You know. Pick it up, hit the road, git a move on! I had to beg ’em to stop for ya. They’re in a real hurry to get back to Earth and tell ’em about this here world of ghosts. Apparently it’s still a big deal down there to discover a star filled with the supernatural.”

  May felt a moment of elation, her heart soaring as high as the tip of the rocket. And then, in the same moment, it plummeted. “But Bertha …” She looked Bertha up and down, her shoulders drooping as she then looked at herself. “Somber Kitty and I … we’re dead.”

  Bertha let out an annoyed sigh. “Ya think I ain’t got that covered? Sheesh, I only been leading the Ever After’s living spirits for a hundred-odd years. Ya think I ain’t got secrets?” She pulled a little velvet pouch out of her overalls. The label on the front read REJUVENATING RE-LIFE POWDER, HANDCRAFTED BY THE SPIRITS OF NORTH FARM.

  “Honey,” Bertha said, leaning in conspiratorially, “I’ve died twenty-three times since I got to the Ever After. This stuff costs an arm and a leg, but whoooee, is it worth it. If ol’ Lawless saw me dead, I’d never live it down. Now get on in and you can sprinkle it on on the way.”

 
May turned to Arista, who’d watched the whole scene, and looked him a question.

  “Zzzz, my dear, I’d really rather you go. You’re a much better warrior queen than a house ghost.”

  May was packed within minutes. She packed her and Kitty’s death shrouds carefully away. How long had they been gone? A year? More?

  She hugged Arista good-bye, then Legume, and the kittens, one by one. Bertha was already in the rocket, waving at her through the window to get a move on. “C’mon, Kitty,” she said, drifting for the door.

  “Meay.”

  May turned.

  Somber Kitty stood by Legume’s side, looking at her plaintively.

  May put down her knapsack, walked back to him, and knelt down. Why hadn’t it even occurred to her? How could she not have thought of it? Her bottom lip began to tremble.

  “You want to stay?”

  Kitty looked at her, then at Legume. “Meay,” he said again.

  May looked back over her shoulder at the shuttle. Could she leave Somber Kitty behind? Was that even something she had in her? She swallowed the lump in her throat. She looked back at Kitty.

  She pulled him close to her and felt his soft warmth. She rubbed her cheeks against his dear fuzz. She whispered secrets to him that only the two of them had shared. She wanted to go on holding him forever. But finally she set him gently on the ground and stood up.

  “Tell the others I’ll see them again sometime,” May said to Arista, hugging him again. And then, feeling like she was ripping a piece of herself off and leaving it with Kitty, she followed Bertha through the hatch, not looking back. They buckled themselves in. The engines began to rumble. The hatch began to close.

  And then there was a loud screeching, and a dark blob came flying through the door, just before it shut.