May Bird, Warrior Princess Read online

  “I’m glad you died at thirteen, May. Now we’ll be the same age forever.”

  Pumpkin wagged his head back and forth and made kissy faces at May behind Lucius’s back. May gave him a pinch.

  “I’m not so sure I’m glad,” May said, shooting Lucius a significant look, but he appeared oblivious, smiling to himself.

  Beatrice squeezed May’s hand and smiled sympathetically. “I nearly swooned when I saw that goblin!” she breathed.

  “Race you to the abandoned hearse,” Lucius said, punching May’s arm and zipping past. She gave chase, feeling utterly free. She was the first to slam her hand on the hearse, and Lucius collapsed on the sand, grinning. Unlike the boys at Hog Wallow Middle, he looked happy that May had won.

  “Faster than a speeding bullet!” he said. Pumpkin drifted past them and on to the Colony, his nose up in the air. Bea drifted along behind him, no doubt off to do laundry.

  May rushed to catch up, eager to see if they’d received any message from the Lady.

  Any day now she would send for them.

  Any day, they’d know why it was taking her so long.

  Two cats—one fluffy and gray, one hairless and rather ugly—slowly made their way west across the Nothing Platte.

  Somber Kitty’s companion had introduced herself as Mew, which Somber Kitty interpreted as “Pretty Fluffy Face.” While he stalked along the sand seriously, she zipped in circles around him, tackling him by the neck, nibbling on his ears, and generally trying to remind him to lighten up.

  However, they both had the same reaction when they came upon a stone structure buried in the sand. Its crooked and sunken doorway was strung with cobwebs, concealing the darkness within. It seemed to shout that here lay certain danger. If either of them had been familiar with Egyptology, they would have recognized it for what it was—an ancient tomb.

  It looked so unquestionably forbidding that the cats, with one look at each other, padded up for a closer look. Tails stiff and ears swiveling like satellites, they traipsed down the stairs into the darkness, full of delight.

  Somewhere far below, in the belly of the tomb, there was a groan. They hurried forward to investigate.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Meatballs of Fire

  May sat with her chin in her hand, staring out the window at thousands of hot fiery balls zooming out of the sky and landing with great thwacks across the Nothing Platte, sending up clouds of sand and fire in the dark as far as the eye could see.

  For two weeks they’d been playing pranks all over the northern realm. But they’d been trapped inside for the past three days.

  “It’s meteor-showering cats and dogs,” Beatrice said with a sigh. They were all lounging in May’s room, a circular, cavelike affair tucked up in one of the high corners of the Scrap Mountains, with a breathtaking view of the Platte. Beatrice sat perched on the arm of May’s moldy, busted easy chair, braiding May’s long hair over and over. Lucius lay on the floor, his hands beneath his head, wiggling his heels restlessly. Fabbio sat on the edge of May’s bed, composing a poem he had announced was called “Meatballs of Fire.”

  “Yeah,” May murmured, thinking of Somber Kitty. She hadn’t known there were such things as meteor showers in the Ever After, but apparently there were, and apparently it was very dangerous to go out in them unless you had a really good umbrella. She hoped Kitty was somewhere safe.

  “Woo-hoo!”

  The sound had come from down the hall. A moment later Pumpkin appeared, carrying a newspaper in his hands. “Look what just came in the telep-a-booth! We’re famous!”

  “Let’s see it, Pumpkin.” Lucius reached out for the paper. But Pumpkin held it back and gave Lucius a sniffy look.

  “May and I would like to look at it first,” he said, looking Lucius up and down, then grabbing May by the shroud and pulling her aside so they could lean over the paper. “I wonder what I’ll get famous for next,” Pumpkin said.

  WAVE OF BANDITRY STRIKES NORTHEAST

  Ghouls, goblins, and zombies in the northeastern territories were disturbed by a rash of bizarre incidents this week. Sometime in the wee hours of Tuesday night, a giant billboard of Bo Cleevil, the realm’s ruler, was vandalized—as discovered the following morning by a group of goblins returning from the Glammy Guts Mall in Grief Glenn. The vandals had drawn a curly mustache on the obscured face of Bo Cleevil, along with boogers coming out of his nose.

  In Upper Transylvania on Wednesday, a twelve-pack of Slurpy Soda cans exploded when a pack of ghouls tried to drink them. Later that afternoon, the same ghouls found YOU SMELL painted across their windshield. Arguments have since broken out about exactly which ghoul the YOU SMELL was directed at, and what exactly they are alleged to smell like.

  And on Thursday, a horde of zombies was stopped dead in its tracks when a tall man in a curly mustache began dancing in front of them, singing “That’s Amore.” Some hobgoblins tried to give chase, only to find that their shoelaces had been tied together. They lay helpless for several hours while waiting for someone to arrive who knew how to untie shoes.

  On a more serious note, countless spears and arrows have been reported missing from the Grim Reaper Supply Shop outside the shattered remains of Hocus Pocus.

  Several specters we interviewed Friday outside Glammy Guts claimed to be “amused” by the pranks, and anonymous guillotined sources in Portotown, fearless of losing their heads because they already have, say that it’s about time somebody in the Ever After showed a little chutzpah.

  No matter who the pranksters are, or what their motivations might be, spirits all over the realm have begun to look to the northeast with anticipation, wondering what may happen next.

  “It’s brought a little light into our afterlives,” one anonymous spirit said, “knowing that someone is out there, bucking the system.”

  Someone, indeed. But who?

  Fabbio stood up and, seeming suddenly inspired, zipped off down the hallway.

  “I told you we were good,” Lucius said, folding his hands behind his head.

  May turned to look out the window again at the meteor shower. “I don’t know.”

  “What’s not to know?” Pumpkin said, flopping onto the arm of May’s chair and swinging his legs. “The truth is, I just can’t not be famous no matter how hard I try.”

  May couldn’t help feeling annoyed at Pumpkin. Seeing his glee, and Lucius’s self-congratulatory smile, she felt like she was the only one in the room who remembered why they were here in the first place. Only Beatrice seemed to be listening seriously.

  “Go on, May, what do you mean?” she asked, leaning forward.

  “Well, we’ve just pulled some pranks. That’s all. We haven’t saved anybody. We haven’t done anything important.”

  Beatrice nodded. “Yes, I suppose it sounds that way. But look, it says right here we’re making a difference. Here, the part about bringing light into their afterlifes …”

  “But that won’t save Somber Kitty,” May argued, frustrated. “Or save the realm, or—”

  She was interrupted by the curious sight of Fabbio rushing back through the doorway, his arms full of papers. He dumped them onto May’s lap.

  “I’m thinking now that we are famous it is time.”

  “Time for what?” May asked, gazing at the papers, confused.

  “Time to submit some of my work to be published. You see,” he said, shuffling through his papers, “poems, screenplays, novels. I do it all. I shall read you one of my poems now. It is called ‘I Am So Talented I Make Myself Cry.”

  “Ooh …,” Pumpkin cooed, picking up a screenplay titled, in glowing letters across the front, Stone Toe: An Autobiography. “Have you started casting for this yet?” A delighted smile came over his face.

  “You should cast me,” Lucius said, standing up and puffing out his chest. “Did you see me when those ghouls were chasing us? Quick as a flash. Tough as …” His blue eyes sparkled. “Something really tough.” He grinned proudly. Beatrice laughed a
nd clapped.

  May felt her impatience reach a fever pitch. She stood up, dumping Fabbio’s papers off her lap, and reached for her bow and quiver.

  Everyone stopped in the middle of what they were doing to look at her.

  “Where are you off to all of a sudden?” Lucius asked, the grin still playing on his lips.

  “We’re not gonna get anything done without the Lady,” May said, slinging the quiver over her back in a passion. “I’m going to get her.”

  “But May,” Beatrice insisted, “the Petrified Pass. Bertha said—”

  “Something could happen to you.” It was Pumpkin who’d spoken, his fingers in his mouth, suddenly as worried as he’d been delighted a moment before. But it was too late. May was too angry to stop being angry.

  “Why don’t you go back to reading Stone Toe,” May spat. “Since all you care about is being famous.”

  “Hey, that’s uncalled-for,” Lucius interrupted, but May ignored him. She was impossibly angry at Pumpkin, and she didn’t even know why. Maybe it was because he didn’t argue with her. He only looked shattered.

  “I’ll come with you,” he offered finally.

  His kindness filled her with shame, and that only made her angrier. “You’re the one who always gets us caught, Pumpkin. I’m safer without you.”

  As soon as the words were out, May wished for all the world she could take them back. Pumpkin looked down at his fingers, his white cheeks turning rosy red.

  The others stared, mouths agape. Fabbio cleared his throat. Bea tugged at her sash. Lucius glowered. But it couldn’t make May feel worse than she already did. She turned to leave.

  “May, please don’t go,” Beatrice said.

  “I’m dead anyway,” she shot back. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  Seconds later she was charging out into the storm.

  Somber Kitty and the cat known as Pretty Fluffy Face knew they’d made a mistake the minute they noticed that the groaning, which heretofore had been somewhere up ahead in the darkness, began to come from directly behind them and then, a moment later, all around them.

  They scanned the darkness of the tomb with their keen eyes, seeing nothing but walls. And then they saw the movement—figures that at first had seemed to be only paintings detaching themselves from the walls, their arms held aloft, reaching, grasping.

  The mummies lurched toward the cats, closing in on them from all sides.

  Somber Kitty leaped in front of Pretty Fluffy Face and let out a low growl, his tail standing warningly. As one mummy hand reached for him, he bit it as hard as he could, but the hand only reached around his middle and grasped him tight.

  Somber Kitty tried to leap away, pulling at the mummy’s gauze as he did. It came away in his teeth—a long thread unraveling from around the mummy’s thumb, leaving nothing behind. Where the thumb had been a moment before, there was only thin air.

  Somber Kitty looked down at Pretty Fluffy Face, who was watching raptly as two mummies crept up behind her. The circle of mummies grew tighter, closing in, until the cats lost sight of each other completely.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Back to North Farm

  That night, not long after she left, May—after having dodged her way across the Nothing Platte, nearly being squashed by several meteors—found a cave in which to take shelter. She curled up in the ratty blanket she’d brought and watched the meteors fall, the fires bathing her face in a warm glow. She seethed with shame. She kept thinking of Pumpkin’s face when she had said the things she had. She kept thinking of how worried they all must be about her, and how terrible she had probably made them feel.

  After a long while, May unfurled herself onto her back, staring at the darkness of the cave ceiling above. She remembered nights lying awake in her bed back home, studying the ceiling, the sound of the TV down the hall, the comforting knowledge that her mom was there, still awake.

  Did some souls really lose the place they belonged to? Had Bo Cleevil been right?

  May certainly felt lost in space.

  She hoped that, like the last time, the Lady could show her the way.

  • • •

  The following day May trekked across the rocky lowlands for seemingly endless hours. She found herself humming one of Pumpkin’s silly songs, then thinking of Fabbio’s poetry and wishing she could hear some of it, terrible as it was. She kept her eyes trained on the shadowy mountains ahead, which seemed like they’d never get any closer.

  But finally the land began to rise, and up ahead she could see the dim evening light glinting off the giant bones that littered the Petrified Pass. After another hour or so she approached the giant stone that marked the edge of the pass. It was broken in two, the engraved words on its surface sliced down the middle:

  HERE LIE THE FROST GIANTS

  AND HERE THEY STOOD

  THEY WERE BELIEVED INTO LIFE

  AND THEN FORGOTTEN.

  NOW ONLY THEIR LONELY BREATH

  DRIFTS UPON THE MOUNTAINS

  AND GUARDS THE WAY WITH FEAR.

  May looked up into the snowy mountains, crossing her arms over herself. And then she realized that she wasn’t cold at all. The frigid breath of the mountains that had so shrouded her and her friends the last time they had come no longer affected her. The bones of the giants, which had so terrified them, now looked pitiful and defeated where they lay strewn across the rocky hills, though May couldn’t exactly put her finger on why.

  Something wasn’t right. She looked back over her shoulder, stroking her long black ponytail thoughtfully, wondering if maybe it had been a mistake to come after all. But she couldn’t face going back to the Colony empty-handed. She set her chin and pushed onward.

  She spent that night camped in a nook about two hours’ distance from the top of the rise, watching for ghost lights dancing amongst the shadows but seeing nothing except the dark. She tried to ignore the unease that enveloped her. There was no sign of the tunnels they’d stumbled into before. The mountain was lifeless and still.

  Her fears were confirmed when she crested the rise late the next morning. What she saw on the other side made her ghostly heart stand still.

  In the valley below, where there had once been a primeval forest, its canopy dusted with snow but brimming with life underneath, lay a graveyard of chopped and decayed wood. Not a tree had been left standing. The tangled vines and fireflies and filmy animals and glowing North Farm spirits were gone. Now May drifted down into the valley slowly, as if in a dream.

  She drifted past the sign, now crooked and cracked, announcing WILD AND WOOLLY NORTH FARM, into what had been the heart of North Farm. All around her was evidence of its previous inhabitants—fine spinning looms, whetting stones, and forges, all the things the spirits had used to make the finest handcrafted products in the Ever After.

  And then she came to a great tangle of roots, ten stories high or more, and gasped. It was the Lady’s magnolia tree. May crawled over and around each limb, getting covered with mud, searching for something the Lady may have left, some sign that she might be somewhere, might still be all right. There was nothing—just the Lady’s old photos, a broken table where they had once sat together, a handful of red magnolia seeds, and a glowing sign, sticking up from the dirt.

  COMING SOON!

  CLEEVILRAMA MALL AND MULTIPLEX

  EIGHTEEN-SCREEN THEATER WITH SPECIAL GOBLIN SEATING!

  THREE HUNDRED STORES TO CHOOSE FROM,

  ALL SELLING MOSTLY THE SAME THINGS!

  TREE MUSEUM! POLTERGEIST AQUARIUM! FOOD COURT!

  May sank onto one of the limbs, her strength disappearing. A stray lightning bug flitted across her vision. She watched it buzz away.

  She didn’t know how long she sat there. But finally she stood up, ran her hands through her hair, then stuck her hands in her pockets. She wished there were something for her to bring back to the Colony of the Undead. But there was nothing left of the heart of the Ever After.

  In the desert, one
last groaning voice issued from deep within a buried tomb and then went silent. Sand blew across the tomb door, shaking the cobwebs. All went back to how it had been, as if nothing had happened there at all.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Galaxy Gulf

  May’s mind was full of many things, and she was hardly aware she was drifting at all.

  After hours of wandering, she found herself at the edge of what must be the Galaxy Gulf. It looked like the Grand Canyon, only instead of a bottom there was endless space.

  May stood at the edge, kicking some sand and watching it plummet down into the emptiness. Why did it have to be her, standing here with the weight of the world on her shoulders? Why couldn’t she be Claire Arneson, comfy in her bed? Why couldn’t she be just an average skulldog vendor in Stabby Eye? Why couldn’t she be the old May, who never knew there was so much danger in the world?

  She ran her hands through her hair, the fingers of her right hand happening to brush something stuck there. She pulled it out and sat down, swinging her legs over the edge of the canyon. It was a red magnolia seed. She dropped it beside her.

  Finally she stood up. She took one last woozy look down into the depths of the canyon, and then she turned back in the direction she’d come.

  A rattling behind her caught her by surprise, and she whipped around.

  The seed had sprouted, and before her eyes, in seconds, it grew into a small tree. But the tree swiveled as if to look at her, and May saw that it wasn’t a tree at all, but the Lady herself, lined like a piece of old wood.

  May stood transfixed, scared to believe what she was seeing. The Lady tree blew in the breeze. Her limbs gestured to May.

  “Hi,” she said. “Remember me?”

  She reached out toward May. She looked so delicate, as if she might break, that May was scared to touch her.