May Bird, Warrior Princess

by Jodi Lynn Anderson

“Oh, I’m not that old. Come on, now.”

  May reached out one hand, and when the Lady’s dry, brittle hand touched hers, she knew it was real.

  “You look breakable,” she breathed.

  “I’m always breakable.” The Lady sighed. “Sometimes it’s just more obvious than others.”

  “Why didn’t you stop them?” May asked. It was the first thing that came into her head.

  The Lady looked at her like she’d asked the simplest question in the world. “Why, stopping them’s not up to me, my dear.”

  May’s thoughts circled around her head and tied themselves in knots, so that she couldn’t say anything in reply.

  The Lady seemed unfazed. “Personally, I just like to go with the flow,” she said.

  May opened and closed her mouth, but she was speechless.

  “Wanna see something?” Without waiting for an answer, the Lady reached out her hand and pulled May to the edge of the cliff. She nodded out beyond its edge. “Let’s go, then.”

  May stared at the great emptiness beyond the cliff’s edge. “You want me to walk out there?”

  The Lady blinked at her for a moment, and then her wrinkled face lit up with recognition. “Oh yes, you’re right.”

  She held out her hand, where a tiny white sticker had materialized. The sticker said HELLO, MY NAME IS and then MAY in glowing, sloppy letters. Above these words, it said GUEST, VIP TOUR OF THE GALAXY.

  “Having a proper pass is one of the rules of the universe. You’re absolutely right to want to stick to protocol.” The Lady smiled. “Well, better hurry up if you want to see. You haven’t got much time.”

  She waved May forward. May peered out over the ledge again, into the great star-filled abyss there. “See what?” she asked.

  “Why, everything,” the Lady said, looking short on patience, her eyes growing panther-sharp as she reached out her wrinkled hand.

  May swallowed. Half regretting it already, she reached out for the Lady’s hand. She took a step. And then she was floating on thin air, with nothing underneath her but stars. She felt as light and aimless as a balloon. She smiled a breathless smile.

  “Right, then,” the Lady said. Her roots trailing behind her like the train of a bridal gown, she too drifted out over the edge. And then they were floating, down into the gulf, down, down, down, and then out underneath it, into open space. May looked behind her. She could see the Ever After—a dim, round sphere of gas behind them.

  As they drifted away, it became smaller and smaller.

  “Now if you’ll look to your left …” The Lady behaved like the perfect tour guide, speaking mechanically, as if she had done it a thousand times. She pointed out supernovas, comets, planets, nebulae, alien truck stops, the best planets to go to for live music, some random bundles of space trash, a few satellites, and several black holes. “Which one’s the sun?” May asked, gazing about at all the stars.

  The Lady grinned a wooden smile at her. May pictured, for a moment, how odd they would look to someone watching from Earth—a tree and a girl floating through space. “Earth’s sun?”

  May nodded.

  The Lady pointed to a tiny pin dot. May wondered how she could possibly know.

  “And which one’s the Earth?”

  The Lady pointed to another pin dot. It didn’t look like anything May knew. It didn’t look big enough to hold all the people and animals and feelings that filled it up.

  “So tiny. And everyone gets so worked up about things,” the Lady said, tsk-tsking.

  May nodded. “But there’s love there.”

  “That’s true. Love is bigger than it looks.”

  May stared at the Earth. It was so impossibly far away. Her eyes began to well with tears.

  “Now.” The Lady frowned and shoved a crisp white hanky into her hand. “No use crying over spilled milk. If you waste your time crying over where you used to be, you’ll miss all the good things happening around you. Like for instance, a VIP tour of the galaxy. Plus, feeling sorry for yourself never helped anybody. You’ve done that a great deal too much recently, my dear.”

  May thought about her poor behavior back at the Colony of the Undead and was filled again with shame. She wondered if Pumpkin would ever forgive her.

  They floated past clouds of bright cosmic dust that filled May with wonder, and stars that burned so brightly she had to look away.

  They floated for several more minutes. And just when May thought they were millions of light-years from the Ever After, it was looming toward them, getting larger and larger. She could recognize it by the big billboard, proclaiming BO CLEEVIL IS NUMBER ONE, that hovered just in front of it, blinking with a neon glow. The rest of the star was wrapped in shade.

  “It’s so dark.”

  “It’s lost its heart. It’s empty. That’s all.”

  They landed gently, hovering just above the ground. May waited for the Lady to say something, hoping desperately that it wasn’t time for good-bye. She had so many questions. She had so much more to say.

  “I’m not very good at being a spirit,” May said. The Lady smiled. “But I’m not sure I was very good at being a girl, either.”

  “You were, May. The thing is, if one’s going to be alive, one’s got to commit to it a hundred percent. Be there all the way. Let it all hang out. All that kind of stuff. Otherwise, what fun is it?”

  May had no answer for that. Now that she was stuck in the world of ghosts, she wished she had lived a little more. Been braver. Found where she fit.

  “Oh, it’s charming, the Ever After. Or it was,” said the Lady, casting a glance into the gulf. “The Pit of Despair, and the colorful spirits and specters, the comfort of things being the same year after year, all that. But Earth …” She sighed. “Earth is special.”

  Suddenly, from somewhere behind May, there was a giant clap of thunder, and then a gleaming white light. “Oh, it’s arrived,” the Lady said, as May whirled around.

  A bridge stood before her, glowing and covered with fireflies, leading up into the sky. The edge of it disappeared into the darkness above.

  “Is that …”

  “Of course.”

  May walked up to its edge, her long hair tangling around her neck, reaching out gingerly to touch its railing, then looking at the Lady dubiously.

  “Why is it here?” She worried, suddenly, that one of them was going to be taken across.

  “I wanted you to see it.”

  “What’s beyond there?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody has ever come back.”

  The bridge seemed to stretch right into the dark sky above. And May realized, staring into that darkness, what had intrigued her most about the Bridge of Souls. She looked back over her shoulder at the Lady. “Do you think I would never be afraid there?”

  “Yes, yes I do. I think you would never be afraid there.”

  May looked toward the edge. She reached out her hand again to the railing.

  “Seems like a good chance to run away from it all, doesn’t it?”

  May looked at her. She lifted one foot and put it on the first step of the bridge. She thought for a long time. And then, with a feeling of sadness, she pulled her foot back.

  A few minutes later they stood in the dark on the edge of the Nothing Platte, talking quietly.

  “You won’t stay with us?”

  “It isn’t my fight. But I’ll be around. In my way.”

  “Do you think I can do it? Do you think I can do what the book said?”

  The Lady stared at her a long moment, then sighed. “May, I’m as old as time itself. I don’t think, I know.” She looked torn. “And I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings as much as the next person.” Her blue eyes grew wide, deep as pools. “May, you will fail.”

  May was so stunned, she floated backward.

  “How can you say that?”

  The Lady shrugged her limbs, looking sympathetic but not crushed. “It’s the truth.”

  “So you’re saying I should give u
p?”

  The Lady clucked her tongue and shook her leafy head. “Knowing you will lose is no reason to give up. Dear me. Now, I have a speaking engagement in the Black Eye galaxy and I need to get back to it. So if you’ll excuse me …”

  May wanted to beg the Lady for help. But she didn’t. She lifted her chin, trying to look courageous.

  The Lady bustled away a few feet, then happened to turn back and, seeing May’s expression, seemed to think better of it. She folded her leaves thoughtfully in front of her. “Don’t worry, May. There are still a few nice surprises in store for you.”

  She smiled, as if nothing in the world were wrong at all. And then she crumpled up like dirt and blew away.

  Galaxy Gulf was far behind her when the first silhouettes of the Scrap Mountains came into view.

  May could see right away that something wasn’t quite right. Every window—normally dark with camouflage—was alight with an unmistakable yellow glow. And up on the roof stood a gaggle of ominous-looking figures—not Live Ones, but glowing, ghostly, dead.

  She began to run.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  A Special Delivery

  May had her arrows strung and ready when she burst through the secret door into the main hall of the Colony of the Undead. Her first thought was how many dark spirits there were. Her second thought was that they didn’t quite look like dark spirits. Then she realized that they weren’t dark spirits at all.

  May lowered her arrows, bewildered.

  “Nice of you to drop in,” Pumpkin said, drifting past with his arm looped through the arm of a specter in a toga.

  May peered about. The cavern was full of spirits: a horde of luminous boys gathered in a circle getting instructions from Lucius, several spirits she recognized from Horrific Hamburgers at the Pit of Despair, some ancient Egyptians, ghosts of various shapes and sizes with bulging eyeballs, or horns, or gooey drippy tails, even a handful of North Farm spirits, brightly lit, their cometlike tails drifting behind them as they floated in circles.

  “What …”

  “May!” Beatrice appeared, beaming, and wrapped her in a hug. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  May stared at her, dumbfounded.

  “They’ve all come to help. Everyone wants to join the Free Spirits. They said they were inspired, since we’ve made Bo Cleevil look less fearsome. They’ve actually started to believe we can win.”

  May couldn’t believe it. A feeling of hope began to flood her soul. She clutched Bea’s hands.

  CRASH!

  At that moment the western wall of the hall came crashing in, junk flying everywhere. Several spirits in the hall screamed. Those who didn’t pulled back in shock.

  Whatever had come in with the rubble landed in a heap, and a moment later began to move. A gasp went around the room. Hubcaps went spinning across the floor as several figures emerged from the debris: a girl with alligator scars, several boys wearing war paint and feathers in their hair, and one boy in particular, in a pair of colorful tropical shorts, with sparkling eyes and zinc across his nose.

  He looked around, nodding, as if satisfied. A bright orange parachute was strapped to his back. He held a square white box, marked with a skull and crossbones and the word SKULLIONI’S, aloft in one hand. Hot, white, delicious-smelling steam poured out from its sides.

  “Dudes,” Zero said, ruffling his hair casually and shaking it out, “I heard we’re saving the world.” He nodded gamely. “Who wants pizza?”

  The spirits of Risk Falls had arrived.

  “When the time comes, we’ll reach the Platte of Despair this way,” Bertha said, her grimy hands holding a map of the Ever After pinned to the table in the main hall. A small group of spirits, including Lucius, Pumpkin, and Lawless Lexy, sat around, listening raptly. “If … once we get to the fortress—,” she went on.

  “We’ll need to wait until the dark spirits start leaving before we do anything,” May said, anticipating Bertha’s words. For two weeks they had been planning and replanning, thinking and rethinking, their approach to Bo Cleevil’s fortress. There were many unknowns. No one knew exactly what the castle was like, even though Beatrice had read everything she could find on the subject. No one knew how exactly they were going to get inside. What they did know was that when Bo Cleevil’s grip on the Ever After was complete, he would be sending a host of dark spirits all over the realm, to take up their malicious lives in the Cleevilvilles. And that meant that, while still impossibly strong, his defenses would be weaker than usual. It also meant that the best time to strike was also the time when the Earth would be in the most possible danger.

  May hated to wait that long. And as long as Kitty was still out there, her sense of urgency would be double. Being patient was as hard as anything she’d ever done. But she knew it was their only chance.

  As the weeks had passed, the numbers of Free Spirits hiding at the Colony had grown. Peering around the main hall, she could see Zero explaining to a group of New Egyptians, some ancient Greeks, and a group of belly dancers how to put a ghoul in a headlock. Fabbio was running a ragtag troop of ghosts through the Undead’s obstacle course. Beatrice was teaching a group of Risk Fallsers how to be discreet.

  May stood up. “I need to go think for a while,” she said, moving to leave.

  “I’ll come with you,” said Lucius.

  “I’ll come with you.” Pumpkin leaped from his chair and squeezed between Lucius and May, narrowing his eyes at Lucius. May flashed Lucius an apologetic smile, then floated down the hallway with Pumpkin. Once they got to May’s room, she flopped into the rickety easy chair by the window and stared out at the desert thoughtfully. Pumpkin flopped on her bed and started playing finger puppets, making one May and one Lucius.

  “I’m sooooo great,” he had the Lucius finger puppet say.

  “Oohhhh, Lucius, you’re so right,” the May finger puppet said. “You’re totally my hero.”

  “Pumpkin,” May asked, curious, “why are you so mean to Lucius?”

  Pumpkin yawned. “You and he seem to be awfully chummy these days,” he said, picking invisible lint out of his tuft of hair.

  May didn’t respond. She guessed they were sort of chummy.

  “So I guess now he’s your best friend all of a sudden,” Pumpkin went on. May turned to him, surprised.

  “Pumpkin, how can you say that?”

  Pumpkin frowned at her and dropped his finger puppets into regular hands. “Tell me the truth. Do you like him better than me?”

  May didn’t know how to explain. “No, of course not. I just like him … different.” She didn’t know how she liked Lucius.

  “Hmph,” Pumpkin said.

  May opened her mouth to say more when a noise from downstairs distracted them both. Giving each other a look, they shot up and hurried through the junk-lined tunnels to the main hall, where a group of specters were gathered in a circle, talking loudly and agitatedly.

  “What is it?” May asked, suddenly worried.

  Someone shoved a paper into her hands.

  “It came in the telep-a-booth,” said Lawless Lexy, giving her a grave look. May looked down at the headlines. A picture of a burning mansion flickered on the front page, beneath the headline LAST HAUNT IN THE EVER AFTER KICKS THE BUCKET.

  May looked up from the paper, bewildered. “But what does it mean?” she asked.

  “It’s true. I seen it from up yonder,” Bertha growled, stepping out of one of the tunnels and dusting off her boots. “Portotown has fallen.” Several spirits around the hall gasped, but Bertha looked only at one person—May. “The realm’s last free city is gone.”

  May drifted up to the doorway to the outdoors and opened it, peering outside as if she might see Portotown crumbling in the distance. There was only empty desert.

  Only the faintest glimmer remained in the sky above. The last of the stars above the Nothing Platte had vanished. There was no escaping it: The Ever After was flickering out.

  As she was looking, May sensed a mov
ement not too far off across the sand. She started. In a flash she had her arrows drawn, pointing into the darkness.

  For several seconds she stood there, straining her ears for the slightest sound. Behind her, the colony prepared itself, spirits racing to and fro for whatever was approaching outside.

  They pressed themselves against the walls, poised to fight, listening for the slightest sound that might give away who was outside. And then it came.

  “Meay.”

  May’s arrow went clattering to the ground.

  She could just make out now, a few feet away, the big ears silhouetted in the starlight. She was just about to leap forward when she froze again. Somber Kitty wasn’t the only figure there in the dusk. There were two mummies, their hands tied together by their own gauze, held like a leash that dangled from Somber Kitty’s mouth. And there was something else.

  It wasn’t one cat standing in the shadows, but two. The second was covered in fluff. She was gray, with a pretty, fluffy face and twinkling green eyes. May blinked, disbelieving. But she would have known the face anywhere, no matter how many years had passed.

  Dusty and covered in sand, Somber Kitty had found his way back to May.

  And so had Legume.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Pumpkin and May

  The days after the cats’ arrival back at the Colony, strangely, were some of the best May could remember having. She had never felt more capable, or more in her element. She asked some North Farm spirits to work shaping bows, and passed out as many silver arrows as she could spare. She asked the Risk Falls spirits to make slingshots and sacks full of mini spiky deathballs for everyone who didn’t have a bow. She set the house ghosts to sewing capes for everyone, at Beatrice’s instruction. Everywhere May turned, someone had a question for her about the upcoming battle, and she had almost all the answers.

  • Goblins are especially susceptible to show tunes.

  • The best way to shoot a silver arrow is to believe in what you are fighting for.

  • Zombies are ruthless but easy to confuse.

  The only answer she didn’t have was what really waited for them beyond the Platte of Despair, and how they, a jumbled group of about fifty spirits, would ever defeat it. The fear loomed, but something else hung above the last of the realm’s Free Spirits. It was courage.