May Bird, Warrior Princess

  Lucius!

  A ghoul standing on the starboard side thrust out an arm toward them, pointing. Two more appeared at the edge and gazed at them, jumping up and down. May pulled her bow back another inch to fire, just as one of the ghouls grabbed Lucius by the scruff of the neck. At that exact moment, May’s first arrow flew.

  The shot was true. It landed square on the ghoul’s chest, and he turned immediately to stone. He tumbled over backward, Lucius disappearing with him.

  After that, there was no time to think. In another moment they were upon the ship. They had just enough time to reach out and grab for the ropes hanging off the lower deck before the raft crashed into the boat’s massive flank. They scrambled upward, pulling with all their might. And then they were onboard, falling over the rails onto the main deck. Two ghouls saw them and clamored forward. Pumpkin let out a scream. Somber Kitty leaped out of his sack and danced tauntingly, moving like a rubber band. May pointed her arrow at the closest ghoul, which, with a swift shot, she froze to stone immediately. The second got just close enough to reach for her when Kitty jumped on his head, sending him circling and growling and giving May just enough time to string another arrow and shoot. Turning to stone, the ghoul went tumbling off the side of the boat just as Kitty leaped gracefully onto the railing.

  A young girl, all in white, emerged from the stairs just behind him, looking baffled, and then her hands flew to her mouth.

  “Beatrice, look out!” May dispatched a ghoul behind her.

  A tall man with a mustache appeared behind Beatrice. “Mama mia!” he yelled. As they watched in amazement, May turned three more ghouls into stone. Even she was amazed—the arrows went true each time.

  Pumpkin was running back and forth on the deck screaming and slapping out blindly with his big, floppy hands. Two ghouls were closing in around him. Threading two arrows into her bow quick as a whip, and tilting them with her fingers in opposite directions, May took them both out at the same time.

  Without a word, Bea and Fabbio ran across the decks looking for something to use as weapons, and May sped toward where she had seen Lucius. She found the stone ghoul she had hit first, knocked over sideways, and one pale, luminous arm waving at her from the floor underneath him.

  “Lucius!”

  The arm waggled and waved. May could see now that the stone ghoul still had him tightly by the scruff of the neck. “Mm mmmant mooove!” Lucius yelled.

  May pushed hard against the statue, but it didn’t budge.

  “Gblblblblb!”

  May turned, placing one foot protectively on the stone ghoul as three ghouls advanced toward her.

  She drew her bow and hit the first just as he stepped forward. The other two came to a halt, looked at her, then looked at each other and jumped over the side of the ship, howling as they went. May stood where she was, poised for the next attack, waiting.

  For a moment things were quiet. Bea and Fabbio appeared by her side, holding long planks of wood in their arms like bats, looking around, unsure.

  May shot fierce, searching looks in all directions, brushing back her dark hair, which had wildly tumbled out of its knot. Somber Kitty appeared in the crow’s nest above them and meowed, as if to say, All clear.

  “Pumpkin?” May called nervously.

  “Present!” Pumpkin emerged from inside a barrel that stood right beside her.

  “Is there anyone else back there?” she asked Fabbio. He disappeared down the stairs, then reappeared a moment later, shaking his head.

  Beatrice stood gaping at May. She looked the same as the day May had left—long white dress, blue sash, pale and spectral and Victorian. She drifted toward her unsurely. “Is it … really you? You’ve … you’re so tall….”

  May nodded. “It’s me.”

  Bea’s tapered white hands flew to her mouth, and tears of joy welled up in her eyes. In another moment she had wrapped her arms around May and was holding her tight. Suddenly they were both tackled from the side and wrapped up in Fabbio’s arms. He hugged them like a daddy longlegs.

  “It’sa May a come to save us! I knewa you would come!” He reached out his gangly arms and pulled Pumpkin into the hug too.

  May felt relief wash through her. Here she was, finally. Among friends. Among the people who believed her journey to the Ever After was real. Believed in her. Understood her best. All her years back in Briery Swamp, May had forgotten how this felt.

  “But May,” Beatrice pulled back, “you’re so cold.”

  “Urggghhh.”

  They all looked down at Lucius. He was stuck on his side, looking in the direction of the sea, his cheek flush against the floor. May knelt beside him and for a moment studied the stone hand that gripped him. “I don’t know how to get you out of this,” she said.

  “Karate chop the stone,” Pumpkin suggested.

  “Mew,” Kitty agreed, appearing beside her, only to be immediately scooped up in Fabbio’s passionate embrace.

  “That might break his neck,” said Beatrice.

  “Broken neck is no big deal,” Fabbio offered helpfully. “He wear a nice tie, look handsome.” Lucius let out a groan. His face had gone bright red; he was clearly frustrated.

  “Gggurrrgle!”

  May bit her lip, thinking. She crossed the deck, swooped up a bucket, and then found a rope. While everyone looked on, bewildered, she lowered the bucket into the Dead Sea, ever so carefully, and raised it again once it was full. Biting her tongue, she lowered it onto the deck as if it were a bomb. “Watch out,” she whispered, grabbing a rag from the deck and dipping it gingerly into the water, so that her fingers remained far from the side that was wet.

  She then carried the dripping cloth toward Lucius, the others clearing to either side to let her pass.

  “Urrrgggh,” Lucius protested.

  May carefully dangled the cloth over the ghoul’s stone arm, so that one tiny droplet of water tumbled onto its surface. She whipped the cloth away with a magician-like flourish, at the same moment the stone ghoul disappeared entirely—no doubt reappearing immediately in South Place, miles below them. Lucius lay curled in a ball now, utterly free.

  He rolled onto his back, rubbing his neck. Then he looked up at her, his blue eyes wide. Lucius, like everyone else, was the same age he’d been when she’d left—thirteen. His usually pinkish cheeks were red from exertion, but he was still as filled with soft white light as ever. He wore his old-fashioned school uniform—gray jacket and pants and a maroon tie. “You’re …”

  “Dead,” May said softly, laying the cloth on top of a nearby barrel.

  Beatrice gasped, her hands flying to her heart. Fabbio cleared his throat, uncomfortable.

  Lucius was the only one not distressed by the news. He shook his head, standing up and rubbing the arm he’d been lying on. “I was going to say older.” He cleared his throat, as if he was embarrassed.

  “Yeah.” May swallowed. She reached out a hand and he looked at it, then grasped it to shake. She didn’t know why she didn’t hug him. “Nice to see you again, Lucius,” she said.

  “Likewise.” Lucius bowed, as if remembering some long-lost manners that didn’t fit him anymore. “Of course”—he cleared his throat and let her hand drop—“I was planning our escape from this ship.” He grabbed a spear from the deck and cut a dashing figure.

  “It didn’t look like it,” Bea said. Lucius scowled at her, his glow turning a brownish angry color.

  “Nonsense,” he said matter-of-factly, holding up the spear so he could expertly examine the sharpness of its tip with his fingers. “Girls are just too foolish to know when they’re about to be saved.”

  “And I suppose it makes no difference that a girl just saved you,” Beatrice retorted, drifting to May’s side and looping her arm through hers companionably.

  Lucius looked at May, squinted, and blushed, then went back to examining his spear.

  “May, what happened? How did you die?” Beatrice asked, overjoyed and overwrought at the same time.


  “Um, guys …,” Pumpkin said.

  “She’s even prettier than before, isn’t she, Captain?” added Bea.

  Lucius rolled his eyes and did a few more fearsome poses with the spear. Captain Fabbio nodded enthusiastically, twirling his mustache.

  “Guys.” Pumpkin tapped May on the shoulder.

  “Beauty like the moon over Sicily in September!” Fabbio exclaimed. “I gotta poem that goes—”

  “ROCK!” They both turned to look at Pumpkin, who’d screamed at the top of his lungs.

  Sure enough, they were being pulled straight toward a giant, craggy rock slicing out of the water’s surface. A beautiful nude woman lay sunbathing on the rock’s surface, waving at them. May had a moment to glance over the side of the boat, where the lorelei backstroked, grinning at her, her rope tied to the bow of the ship.

  Lucius lunged for the wheel. May grabbed her arrows and shot one right through the rope that the lorelei was using to pull them. Then she fell on the wheel next to Lucius.

  As they worked furiously to turn the ship, May could hear Pumpkin up ahead, calling to the beautiful woman on the rocks. “Hey, there! Do you know who I am? Did you see Drifty Dancing Two? The guy in the band at the cabana scene?”

  Fabbio perched at the very prow of the boat, standing tall and pointing left, like a sea captain or a hunting dog, as if pointing was very important. “Left!” he kept shouting.

  The ship came about slowly. They watched breathlessly as its prow glided just left of the rocks and then passed smoothly out of harm’s way.

  There was a collective exhalation of relief along the deck.

  Everyone but Lucius, who was still steering, leaned to peer over the side at the disaster they had just averted. The rock, and its beautiful sunbather, got smaller and smaller behind them.

  “Wow, how would you like to be shipwrecked on a rock?” May said, gazing at its numerous spiky, deadly outcroppings, and the vast and empty sea that surrounded it.

  “That wasn’t a rock,” Bea replied softly. “That was the Isle of the Water Demons.”

  Pumpkin traipsed back along the deck as the isle drifted away, dazzled. “They looked friendly enough,” he said wistfully.

  The bikini-clad lorelei lit up and, as if in reply, hundreds of lights came on just under the surface of the water around her. May’s stomach turned sickly as she realized that they were all demons too, and she thought of the fate they had just avoided. Her heart skipped a beat.

  Well, it would have, if it had still been beating.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Choices

  I hear it’s full of spies,” Beatrice said.

  They were sitting in a circle at the front of the boat. It was completely dark. Bea had explained that they were nearing the Ever After’s northern pole, which was the only place in the entire realm where one got a view of the single moon that floated above. They had caught each other up, in bursts of laughter and moments of tears, on the things that had happened while they’d been apart. When Beatrice talked of her mother, she spent the time carefully arranging the folds of her tattered white dress, trying to keep her composure. “I’m sure she’s all right,” she kept saying. “I’m sure the Colony must be all right.”

  When May recounted how she died, the others looked on sympathetically, knowing—with the exception of Pumpkin, who had never been alive at all—what it was like to lose a gift as precious as life. Beatrice reached for her hand several times and insisted she didn’t need to say any more. But it felt good to get it out.

  They discussed Bo Cleevil in whispers, as if he might be drifting in the shadows above, watching them. Everyone had heard in some shape or form about his plans for the Cleevilvilles and invading the Earth. May thought of everything she knew on Earth, everything precious and safe, her mom, her beloved woods full of shadows and birds and insects. She had tried to picture those same woods filled with ghouls, and zombies, and goblins—ghouls invading the house where her mom slept—and the image struck dread into her, right down to the tips of her toes.

  Now Fabbio stood at the wheel, looking at the moon and singing softly to himself in Italian. May wondered what he was singing about—he looked so forlorn. But then, in a way, they all did. Forlorn … and relieved to finally have one another.

  By the map that Beatrice had dug from the galley, they knew they were in the remotest part of the Dead Sea. Portotown was at the northeastern edge, many leagues ahead of them. Beyond it the Platte of Despair was clearly marked, but beyond that, the map ended.

  “So the decision really is,” May said, “what do we do now? Do we want to go somewhere and hide, or …”

  Everyone knew what she was thinking. It was clear by the solemn looks on their faces, but she had to say it.

  “Or do we continue to head north, to Portotown … toward Bo Cleevil … and try to do something.”

  “There are only five of us,” Bea said.

  “Mew,” protested Kitty.

  “I mean six,” she corrected herself.

  “But there’s the Lady,” May said. “She’ll find us. And then we’ll have a chance.” She tugged thoughtfully at the fabric of her bathing suit. “I don’t know. I don’t know what the right thing to do is. I just know I don’t want to go back to hiding. I don’t want to go back to doing nothing.”

  “I’m not scared,” Lucius declared, puffing out his chest a little.

  “I hear the slimer ghosts from that movie Ghostbusters live in Portotown,” Pumpkin offered. “I wouldn’t mind getting their autographs. They’ve probably heard of me.”

  “Those ghosts weren’t real, Pumpkin,” May offered.

  But Pumpkin gave her a patronizing look. “I saw them with my own two eyes. On TV. Hello.”

  May and Bea grinned at each other. Bea had never seen a TV, because she had died of typhoid in 1911, long before they’d been invented. But they had spent many nights sleeping side by side next to campfires and walking endless hours in the desert, and May had told her lots of things about the modern world.

  “I think Casper lives there too,” Pumpkin muttered thoughtfully.

  “We have a few more hours to decide,” Bea finally said, “before we need to tack left or right. Maybe we should think about it till then.”

  They all agreed. As they talked about other things, catching up on the last few years, their hearts all weighed heavy with their decision. And though nobody mentioned it, none of them saw any hope until the Lady had found them.

  That night May, Pumpkin, and Somber Kitty sat on the ship’s deck, keeping watch. Fabbio, Bea, and Lucius had gone to sleep down below. The sky was dark as midnight, but a glow penetrated the dark from somewhere unseen. A cold northern breeze blew across the boat.

  “Have you heard of the Bridge of Souls?” May asked, petting Kitty, who slept on her lap.

  Pumpkin nodded.

  “Will you tell me about it?”

  Pumpkin was quiet for a while. “A lot of spirits say it doesn’t exist. Other spirits, the crunchy granola ones, say that you can’t find it, it has to find you.” He rolled his eyes. “They also eat a lot of tofu. Talk about feng shui and all that.”

  “What is it?”

  Pumpkin stuck his long white fingers into his mouth thoughtfully, then pulled them out. “It’s the bridge to whatever’s after … the Ever After. Once you cross it you can never ever come back.”

  May swallowed. Finally she said, “Do you think it exists?”

  Pumpkin shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to find out. Nobody knows where it leads. Spirits say you become something else when you cross.”

  “Maybe you become something … amazing.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Maybe things aren’t so scary on the other side,” May said hopefully.

  Pumpkin smoothed his yellow tuft of hair. “Pssh. The other side. Sounds pretty scary to me.”

  They sat quietly for a few minutes. May thought of her mom, imagining May on the other side.

  “Sometimes I
think …,” Pumpkin said, then stopped.

  “What?”

  “It’s stupid.”

  May leaned forward and took his hand. “You can tell me.”

  “Sometimes I get this bad feeling. Like this is our last trip together.”

  May squeezed his fingers. “I’m sure you’re just nervous.”

  Pumpkin smoothed out his tuft with his free hand. “Maybe.”

  An hour or so later, Lucius appeared behind them, glowing warmly like a firefly. He was followed by Beatrice and Fabbio.

  “Well, we thought it’s probably time,” Lucius said. “If we’re heading to Portotown, we’ll need to tack soon. And, well …”

  May and Pumpkin stood up. They all hovered in a sort of messy circle, silently shifting on their feet.

  Lucius stuck his hands in his trouser pockets. But for his ghostly translucence, he looked the very picture of a boy who should be off playing a game of cricket, or studying for an exam. “What have we got to lose but the rest of our afterlives?” he said.

  By the way everyone nodded and murmured, May knew they were all in agreement.

  “We should call ourselves something,” Pumpkin suggested, but for the moment, no one could think of what.

  Lucius smiled slightly at May. She smiled back. They turned and faced across the watery path ahead of them. Fabbio drifted to the captain’s wheel. The moon, an amazing sight in the Ever After, had just risen over the horizon, casting a swath of white light across the black water, as if it were guiding them.

  They all watched it, enchanted, as they steered a course for Portotown.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Portotown

  Ding, ding, ding.

  The passengers of the Hesperus jumped to hear the hollow, haunting sound of a buoy being tossed about on the sea. They leaped from where they’d been lying, or sitting, for the past few hours and looked over the front of the boat.