“Kitty!”
May pulled Kitty to her tight and rubbed her tears on his fuzz, which he didn’t like. She tucked him carefully into her seat belt. They both looked out the window at what they were leaving behind.
“It’s gonna be a wild ride,” Bertha said, grinning at them from her seat ahead. She laughed in May’s face, and May winced, only to be pleasantly surprised. Bertha’s breath was minty fresh.
The engines rumbled madly, and they blasted off. All of them shook as the shuttle ascended higher and higher into the air. It was another minute or so before May could gather herself enough to look out the window again.
The star got smaller and smaller beneath them. And then it was only a round, glowing dot. And then it was surrounded by a mass of countless other stars.
And then there was no looking back at all. Because the Ever After was only a speck, lost in space behind them.
Epilogue
Fame was a funny thing.
Amidst the world’s realization—thanks to NASA—that ghosts not only existed, but had their own world several light-years away, May Bird got lost in the shuffle. Only one reporter came to interview her, in the library of White Moss Manor with her mom, who wore a MAY BIRD WENT TO THE LAND OF THE DEAD AND ALL SHE BROUGHT ME WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT T-shirt, and he left looking sorely disappointed. There was too much about saving the world, and not enough about dead celebrities. The story never ran.
That was fine with May and her mom. They preferred it that way.
There were nights baking cookies, and nights curled up on the sofa watching movies, nights where they sat with Somber Kitty between them and talked for hours, May’s mom listening raptly to May’s stories of the Ever After, her eyes widening to hear of the Carnival at the Edge of the World, or twinkling at tales of Pumpkin’s goofy antics, or rolling as May tried to recite, from memory, one of Fabbio’s poems, or one of the knaves’ songs of thievery. At times like these, Kitty purred with contentment, and they knew that for the moment, he’d stopped thinking of Legume just for a little while, happy to be exactly where he was.
But nothing in the world stays still. They broke ground for a group of sparkling white condominiums in the spring following May’s return, and downtown Briery Swamp was suddenly aflutter with newness, all of it encroaching on the trees. And then it seemed like no time at all before May was in high school, and trading nights on the couch with her mom for nights under the stars with her friends, cold bleacher afternoons with classmates at football games, colorful costume parties with lots of new people to meet, cozy poetry readings at the Y’All Come In Café in Hog Wallow. Shyness still crept up on her sometimes when she least expected it, but then she only smiled at it, like an old reliable friend. She even found that when she showed parts of herself that seemed strange or wild, people usually smiled, and then shared crazy ideas of their own. It seemed, when all was said and done, that all souls were a little wild, in some way or another.
Outside White Moss Manor, the woods slowly receded, no longer waiting and whispering outside the house’s windows, full of secrets. The condos that took their place stretched all the way through what had once been a great brier patch, and slowly grew around a lake that had reappeared, a tiny black circle in a cloudless clearing.
When May went off to college, Mrs. Bird and Somber Kitty sat on the porch rocking many nights, wondering what she was doing at that moment and hoping she was happy. She was studying for her final exams the night that Somber Kitty passed away, in his sleep. He had been dreaming of pyramids. May rushed home the next day, and she and her mom buried him in the backyard, right next to Legume. May did not wear black. She did not need to wear something to touch the grieving in her heart.
That year, several inhabitants of the Briery Swamp condos went missing. Nobody blamed it on the lake. But several families began to move just the same. With a surreal quickness that no one could explain, the houses became vacant, and the development, bankrupt. And the buildings began to be eaten up by the woods again. In a few years’ time, they would be gone completely.
Only White Moss Manor would remain.
Briery Swamp had always belonged to the woods, anyway.
One dusky evening, far above, in the Ever After, a fuzzy, bald, big-eared spirit arrived in Belle Morte after a long journey. He was surprised to find Fabbio, Lucius, Bea, and Isabella already there. They had all, over the years, gravitated to Belle Morte, as if in anticipation of something they couldn’t yet name.
They made a merry group, playing hide-and-seek in the village, helping Arista with his bees, playing Scrabble around the cozy kitchen table, until Fabbio usually got caught cheating.
And still at night sometimes, Somber Kitty would sneak out to the edge of the yard, padding out under the sky full of zipping stars, and stare across the horizon, as if he could just make something out, coming across the desert. He sometimes sat all night, flapping his tail expectantly, waiting.
Waiting for May Bird to come home for good.
May Bird, Warrior Princess Page 19
