May Bird, Warrior Princess

by Jodi Lynn Anderson

  “May Bird, May Bird, May Bird,” she heard them all mutter to one another. And then a cheer went up.

  “Shhhhhh!” she hissed.

  “We heard you were going to save us. But we didn’t believe it!”

  May gulped. “Are you okay?”

  “If you call being trapped for all eternity okay.” Laughter echoed up toward her. May didn’t think it was very funny. But she guessed they had to have some way to pass the time.

  “How many are you in here?”

  “Thousands, trapped all over the castle.”

  Thousands more! There was loud whispering below, and then the voice spoke up again.

  “Copernicus wants me to tell you we’ll spread the word you’re here!” the spirit shouted.

  May nibbled her bottom lip nervously, thinking of all those spirits, throughout the castle, who’d be ready and waiting to be rescued. “Listen, I need to find my way to Cleevil!” she shouted.

  “Choose the seventh hall to the right!” somebody yelled. May sat up and looked around. There was no hall but one. Below, the voices resumed singing.

  She floated on, this time into an enormous room, full of glinting gold and silver and jewels. There were golden statues, a gilded treasure chest marked PROPERTY OF BLUEBEARD, a gleaming sapphire the size of her head. Surrounding the room were several hallways. May, realizing what she was supposed to do, chose the seventh hall to the right, and soon found herself in a room full of carnival rides. She let out a surprised, saddened breath. It was the Carnival at the Edge of the World. Bo Cleevil had stolen it and locked it up in a room.

  There were countless more rooms like this, full of wonders May could have never guessed at, and some she had already seen. There was a room so immense it contained the zipping stars that Bo Cleevil had stolen from the sky. A sign above the door read THIS VIEW COPYRIGHTED BO CLEEVIL ENTERPRISES, L.L.L.C. Here, lights bounced off May’s face as if she were at a disco. Another room was full of the beautiful magnolia flowers of the Lady’s North Farm tree, wilted and brown.

  May stood, staring at their wilted beauty. She thought she had begun, finally, to understand Evil Bo Cleevil. It wasn’t enough for him to see beautiful things. He wanted to have them only for himself. What made a soul want to take so much from everyone else.

  Mooooooaaaaaaan.

  May started, and turned. The moaning that had accompanied her, faintly, since she’d entered the castle was now suddenly much louder. She peered down the dark, wooden tunnel from whence it seemed to come.

  “Hello?” she ventured, her voice wavering. “Are you hurt?”

  Mooooaaaaan.

  It seemed, at that moment, like the saddest sound in all the world.

  “Do you need help?” she whispered.

  She stepped forward. And suddenly the ground beneath her moved, and she was flung backward, and her bow and arrows went flying off into the darkness. She found herself trapped in a cart of some sort. The floor of the hall before her disappeared, revealing a set of tracks stretching ahead into the darkness.

  INTRUDERS FORBIDDEN!! A sign flashed brightly just above her head. HAVE A NICE DAY!

  May tried to scramble out, but it was too late. She was rolling slowly forward, and then the ground began to tilt downward, and the cart accelerated, ascending just slightly over a rise. May’s stomach dropped out as the cart slowly took an edge that seemed to drop off into nothing, and then it tilted forward, revealing the breathtaking scene below—a great room, hundreds of stories deep, walled with stained glass on all sides, like the inside of a church. For the moment that the cart tottered above it all, May could make out the scenes on the glass—all of a dark figure with glowing red eyes, reaching toward her. In another moment she was hurtling downward. She felt like her cheeks were blowing backward off her face.

  The cart flew, down, down, down, and just as May thought it would crash right into the ground it reversed direction, turning upward again, hurtling at top speed, zooming up, up, up, impossibly high, what seemed to be as high as the very top of the castle, zipping into a square opening gleaming with light and mirrors. Etched along the mirrors were the words I AM THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL. And then the words were gone, and May was hurtling toward a big black wall that gave way just as she was about to hit it.

  Booming laughter sounded all around her, shaking the cart and the tracks.

  “MAY BIRD!” a voice—his voice—boomed.

  And then the wall opened up in front of her.

  She had only a second to gasp. And then the cart stopped short and flung her right out of the opening. May was suspended in the air for a moment, miles above the ground below, with nothing to grab on to but empty space. She could see the tiny figures far beneath her, fighting on the ground. And then she was plummeting to the world below.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  The Meaning of Lost

  May didn’t just land on the ground. She landed in the ground. She lay there for a few moments, blinking up at the dark sky. Was she dead?

  She tried her arms and legs, found she could wiggle them, then reached up to pull herself out of the hole she’d made with her landing. She crawled out, stood up on wobbly legs, and began to float again, not an ache or pain in her entire body. Of course! She was dead! Nothing could hurt her!

  She turned around, gaping at the hole in the ground where she’d landed, the same size as her body. It looked like a snow angel. She smiled, full of giddy relief. She wanted to leap up and down with joy.

  But it took only a moment to snap back to reality. It started with a specter in a jumpsuit being flung across her line of vision. She looked around.

  The Free Spirits were being beaten badly.

  Everywhere, spirits that had risen up in revolt were stuffed into wire cages, their arms and legs dangling out helplessly. Zero and several other of the Risk Fallsers were bound together by a length of fiery rope, struggling to get free. The knaves had turned tail and were trying to climb up the great gates to escape, only to be plucked off one by one by a horde of goblins. It seemed that the number of dark spirits had multiplied by twenty, and they were quickly overcoming their enemies, like a tidal wave. May could see Lucius, far off in the crowd, surrounded by a group of zombies, his fists in front of him gamely, making a show of being unafraid, but clearly trapped.

  “No,” she whispered.

  And then a crackle overhead drew her eyes up into the air far above. A long, thin line of black mist had begun to coil there, like a snake, darkening the already dark sky.

  May reached for her arrows, her hand brushing against something slimy. In a moment the sliminess gripped her, and she swiveled just in time to see a ghoul before he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her into the air. May kicked and writhed. “No!”

  Beside her, she could see that another ghoul floating down from the castle had her bow and arrows and was breaking the arrows in two, one by one. He got to the bow last. May struggled helplessly as he gave her a toothy, drooly smile and snapped it in half.

  As she was carried toward the castle, May could see Lucius in between two goblins, being swung back and forth like a jump rope. Fabbio and Beatrice had been tied, back to back, and were being rolled along the ground. All around, their companions were meeting similar fates. As May squirmed to no avail, the Lady’s words echoed in her ears: You will fail.

  A great cheer began to bubble up from the dark spirits. May felt herself being swept in the direction of the castle.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  An Ancient Trick

  Hggglbblbl.”

  “Grrblblble.”

  May didn’t speak ghoul, but she was pretty sure the ghouls were discussing whether to eat her now or lock her up and eat her later. She barely registered the low rumbling that had begun to shake the ground beneath them until the ghoul that was carrying her lost his footing and stumbled forward.

  The ominous rumbling grew louder, and the ground shook more violently, until all the spirits—good and evil—were tumbling into one
another, landing in scattered knots. Screams and howls erupted everywhere. And then, suddenly and mysteriously, the shaking stopped. For a moment everyone was silent, staring at one another, bewildered. They all looked up at the sky, where the dark mist had begun to circle tighter and tighter.

  The dark spirits, collecting themselves, gabbled and laughed. “Hbblblgblbglbge,” they all shrieked to one another, which in English means, “Now they’re really in for it.”

  But another tremor drew their attention, not to the sky, but to the great black gates of the fortress. The skulls etched on its surface began to contort and howl.

  Whatever was making the earth shake was coming from out there. The dark spirits’ laughter evaporated.

  Suddenly there was a huge crash as something made an enormous, oddly shaped indentation in the metal gates. There was a moment of eerie silence, and then another crash. The gate gave way completely, caving in with a groan. The thing that was waiting behind it came smashing through.

  Everyone watched in awe as it reeled in toward them, fifty stories high at least, its enormous head rearing far above. And then it came to a halt. The ghouls scratched their heads. The goblins muttered amongst themselves. It was a moment of complete and utter shock.

  Only May and a handful of ancient Egyptians had an idea of what it might mean. Breathless, May gazed at the structure from the bottom up—past the wheels, the body—her eyes lighting on something very small moving way on top. She squinted. A moment later she was sure.

  A solitary figure perched majestically on the nose of the giant wooden mouse, gazing on the scene below like a conquering warrior.

  The tiniest sound issued from its mouth. “Meay.”

  And then the bottom of the wooden mouse burst out from its hinges. And out poured …

  … horses, ducks, monkeys, elephants, kangaroos, snakes, two-toed sloths, tigers, antelopes … every luminous animal spirit the Ever After contained. It was like the “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” of the dead.

  • • •

  The screams of the dark spirits could be heard for miles. Every ghoul, goblin, zombie, and vampire dropped what they were doing and ran, pouring around the castle, trying to find places to hide. The animals followed, full of righteous fury, stampeding every dark spirit in their path until they were all stuck deep into the dirt, their arms waving for help, perfectly flat.

  Everywhere, dark spirits ran crying for their mommies.

  Above them, the dark mist spread across the sky, circling wildly.

  At six p.m. on the planet Earth, just after dusk, a strange news bulletin appeared on channel seven. According to several eyewitnesses, the reporter said, a mummy had lurched right into the middle of Prickly Valley’s Pig Pickin’ Jamboree and made off with the pig.

  Everyone thought it was a joke.

  By seven p.m., similar reports had begun to come in from all over the world, and people weren’t so sure.

  In Tokyo a gaggle of goblins invaded a Bill Blass trunk sale and picked out several nice things before chasing the attendees into the streets. In northern California a troop of ghouls stumbled into a vegetarian potlatch and ate one of the participants. In Mexico City, Mexico, several vampires were seen bursting from the graves of a local cemetery and heading straight for the nearest taco stand, scooping up several unsuspecting tourists in their wake to use as toppings.

  Far above, the star known as the Ever After flickered and went out.

  By the time calls started pouring in from panicked shoppers in Fennhaven, New Jersey; Green Willow, Wisconsin; and Pleasantville, Florida, the world had begun to realize that the reports were all too real.

  Zombies had invaded the malls.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  A Bird at Last

  Reaching for her arrows, and remembering with a pang that they were gone, May watched the chaos erupt all around her. A loud whistling drew her attention upward. The black swirling mist in the sky had whipped itself into a violent frenzy that was beginning to take a familiar shape—stretching itself downward into a kind of funnel. May’s stomach flopped. She leaped out of the way as a rhinoceros stampeded past her, a babbling ghoul clinging to its horn for dear life. Up by the castle entrance, she spied a goblin trying to bribe a llama with a pair of Harry Winston earrings. Gorillas were untying the captives in droves. Somber Kitty was directing the animals from atop his perch. And about twenty feet away, a trembling yellow tuft poked out from behind a particularly out-of-the-way boulder.

  She surveyed the vast array of spirits on the ground, unaware of what was happening above them, then peered toward the castle doors again. There, the BO CLEEVIL IS NUMBER ONE balloons bobbed wildly in the swelling breeze. May took a deep breath, looking at the forbidding sky above once again.

  But there wasn’t time for anything else.

  • • •

  Minutes later she was ready.

  She had tied her shoe to one of the doorknobs, then tied the balloons to herself, one by one, until finally she was floating, her body straining hard against the shoelace that held her anchored.

  She looked up into the sky, taking a deep, ragged breath. And then she swooped down awkwardly and untied her shoe, sending it flying off. Or rather, it was she who went flying off—up, up, up into the air, the world getting smaller and smaller beneath her. She didn’t hear the tiny questioning “meay” that issued from Somber Kitty’s mouth as he watched her soar upward. And she didn’t see that one creature, with a crooked, squash-shaped head and a trembling yellow tuft, saw her from the ground and crept out from behind his boulder, running for the castle doors.

  Soaring upward, and utterly alone, May didn’t see that help was on the way. She was a bird at last.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  The Bridge of Souls

  May’s hands ran along the cold, rotten wood of Bo Cleevil’s castle, controlling her ascent with clutching fingers and keeping her eyes on the swirling sky above. Her heart was in her throat as she saw the red glow of Cleevil’s window approaching, and then she was upon it, and in a split second she was shoving her hands out to grip the windowsill, pulling with all her might to drag herself inside. And then she was scurrying to untie herself, peering into the red dimness for the slightest hint of movement.

  There was nothing. The room was empty.

  As the Eternal Edifice had been filled with colors and light, the walls of this room were obscured in dark, dense shadows. The room contained only an elaborately set table. At the end of the table sat a shiny red apple on a plate. And in the middle lay a thick book. May didn’t have to look closer to know what book it was.

  She drifted toward it, looking this way and that, wondering. She reached out her hand, and the book, all on its own, flew open, its pages flipping wildly.

  “You want to know if it still says what it did,” a voice said out of the darkness. May swiveled around, backing up against the table. “About you saving the world.”

  May stood perfectly still, peering about, unable to see anyone. There was a sound of air moving, a whisper of fabric. She swallowed, shrinking back farther against the table. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a dark, rotten doorway. She slid in that direction.

  “You might want to take a look out the window first.”

  May peered in that direction.

  “Why?” she asked.

  There was no answer. She gave the doorway one more longing look, then floated, ever so slowly, toward the window. And then she froze in horror.

  The dark mist filling the sky had swirled itself into a full-blown tornado, as tall as the castle itself. May rushed to the windowsill to peer down at the world below. The tornado’s tip was tearing along the valley, picking up spirits in its wake and swirling them into the sky.

  “No!” May choked. As she watched, the spirits on the ground, both good and bad, were swept up into the storm. The great wooden mouse, which looked toy-size from so far above, rattled on its foundations before it, too, disappeared into the swirling clouds. The t
ornado was slowly becoming a great circle of whirling, moaning spirits.

  “It’s been fun, watching you try so hard.”

  May swirled around. The voice had come from just behind her, but there was no one there. A whisper continued in her ear, blowing her hair back. “All that time you thought I wasn’t there. On the train through the Hideous Highlands, cabin one seventy-eight …” May’s stomach twisted. “Sitting on the back of the boat in the middle of the Dead Sea, catching up with your friends. At the Colony of the Undead. In the hotel in Hocus Pocus. Those long talks with that pitiful, useless house ghost of yours. I was there for all of it. Just over your shoulder. Watching. Laughing. It was all just so thoroughly enjoyable.”

  May was speechless. Chills crept up and down her body.

  “I was there in Briery Swamp, too. I heard the things you whispered to your cat when you thought no one was listening.”

  May shook her head.

  “Oh,” the voice rasped, making May’s ear tingle, a smile weaving its way through the words. “Poor thing. Don’t you understand? I am everywhere. When you hear something go bump in the night, that’s me. When you feel the hairs stand on the back of your neck, I’m there. I am the thing that lurks in the shadows. I am the starless night. Tell me, little speck, are you afraid of the dark?”

  May felt something move behind her and turned to see a shadow forming in the window. It solidified into a figure in a dark hat, standing on the windowsill and staring out at the world below. He turned to her, his red eyes glowing menacing from beneath the brim of his hat. Otherwise, his face was covered in shadow. He was slouched, almost forlornly.

  “Did you ever notice that you think something will make you feel different, but you end up feeling the same?” he asked.

  May didn’t answer. But she thought of Pumpkin, and how with all his realm-wide fame he still felt small. She thought of how, in Briery Swamp, she had wanted so badly for the other kids to really notice her. But when they had, it hadn’t felt very good at all. She thought of herself, a true warrior now, and still as scared as she’d ever been.