Everfound s-3

by Neal Shusterman

  As Jix looked at these villainous, barbaric skinjackers, he found himself more and more curious about them, and oddly attracted to their way of life. Little was known about Mary the Eastern Witch-but here was an opportunity to learn more. What he ultimately did with that information would be entirely up to him.

  He looked down at the sleeping girl in his arms, and made a decision. “I want to be there when she wakes up. I want to be the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes. Then I’ll ask her for forgiveness.”

  The wild-haired girl rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  Jix gently lifted the spirit of the sleeping girl onto his shoulder. “Take me to the Eastern Witch.”

  The five of them made their way back to the train, everyone but Squirrel carrying a sleeping spirit.

  “It’s not my fault,” complained Squirrel. “I couldn’t hold on, my hands were greasy.”

  “Your hands are always greasy,” Moose pointed out.

  “Right-and it’s not my fault!”

  Jix spoke very little on the journey, but even so, he was still the center of attention. They all stared at him, some being more obvious about it than others. Jackin’ Jill didn’t even try to hide the fact that she was staring.

  “I’ve seen a lot of freaky Afterlights, but I’ve never seen one like you,” she finally said.

  Jix was not bothered. He prided himself on his ongoing transformation. He hoped that in time his form would match that of his animal spirit. These eastern Afterlights knew nothing of animal spirits. They were like the living, disconnected from the universe, seeing themselves as solitary. So self-centered. Yet Milos had asked him if he wanted to be part of something larger than himself, which pointed to some higher purpose. These eastern Afterlights certainly warranted closer observation.

  “There is art to what you have done to yourself,” Milos said to Jix, and Jix nodded his acceptance of the compliment.

  “So, are there any others in your litter?” said Jill. He didn’t have to see her face to sense the sneer in her voice.

  “Only me,” Jix said, offering her as little as possible.

  “You are the first Afterlight we have seen west of the Mississippi River,” Milos told him.

  “So, you’re all on your own?” Jill pressed. “No leader? No friends?”

  Jix considered how he’d answer the question before he spoke. “Cats are solitary animals.”

  They arrived at the train just after dawn, still carrying their sleeping souls. The kids who Jix had seen playing the day before were all in the train cars, but now that the sun was up, they would soon be out, and playing their games again. Jix had seen the train only at a distance, so as he drew closer with the skinjackers, he took note of everything.

  First, and most obvious, was the little church, curiously blocking the train’s progress. He had seen instances of jamnation before, although he had no such fancy word for it. This predicament made him smile. Such a little, unassuming building standing in the way of a mighty ghost train. It reminded him of a picture he had seen in a library book during his living days. A man standing in front of a giant tank in someplace Chinese. He suspected there was more to this church, however, than met the eye.

  The demon was still tied to the front of the train, and now he could tell that it was a she-demon, perhaps La Llorrona -the crying woman-although she didn’t appear to be crying. Not that Jix had actually ever met a she-demon, or knew for sure that such things existed, but he’d heard stories.

  The next thing he noticed was a caboose at the other end of the train, decorated with Christmas lights and shiny baubles that reflected the rising sun. He made a note to ask about it when he felt sure he’d get a truthful answer.

  And then there was the fourth passenger car. All of the other passenger cars seemed crowded with children, but the fourth car was crowded in a very different way. In the windows, Jix saw faces pressed up against the glass. It was quite literally crammed with Afterlights-there had to be a thousand souls stuck in that cramped space. Jix recalled one time when His Excellency had commanded a group of Afterlights to squeeze themselves into a large ceramic vase that had crossed into Everlost. In the living world it had been big enough to hold no more than two or three-but Afterlights, who are pure spirit, and have no true physical substance, can fit just about anywhere. They kept climbing in, and his Excellency got bored when the count reached fifty. There was no telling how many souls were shoved into this train car.

  “Wild, huh?” said Moose, looking at the crammed car. “Like clownsh in a car.” The faces in the window didn’t seem in distress, and Jix figured they had been in there quite a long time because they had gotten used to it. At most, it looked awkward and inconvenient, but they were still having conversations with one another as if this was just another normal day for them.

  “Why are they in there?” Jix asked. “For someone’s amusement?” That made Squirrel laugh, which was not a pleasant sound.

  “They were an enemy army,” Milos told him. “We defeated them a few months ago, and now we hold them in there for safekeeping.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Squirrel. “Prisoners of war.”

  “Bet you’ve never sheen sho many Afterlightsh,” said Moose.

  For a moment Jix wanted to brag about the great City of Souls, but decided to keep that to himself.

  The skinjackers brought their four slumbering spirits to an Afterlight who waited by a sleeping car.

  “Leave them with me,” the kid said, but Jix was reluctant.

  “It is all right,” said Milos. “Sandman will tag them, and mark them with the date they will awake.”

  Jix refused to give his sleeping girl to Sandman; instead he carried her into the sleeping car himself.

  “Hey,” said Sandman, “you can’t go in there.” Jix turned to him, bared his teeth and growled. Although his growl still sounded more like a boy than a wild cat, Sandman was intimidated enough to leave him alone.

  The sleeping car was already crowded. Each upper and lower berth had two, sometimes three sleeping kids, their chests rising and falling with the memory of breathing, but none of them snored or made the slightest sound. Jix found a comfortable place and left his sleeping girl there, making sure she looked comfortable, then kissed her forehead, because he knew she no longer had parents to do so, and because he knew no one was watching. Then he left the sleeping car and went straight to Milos.

  “I will meet Mary, the Eastern Witch, now.”

  “You will meet her,” said Milos, “when she is ready to be met.”

  “And when will that be?”

  Milos took a long look at him, perhaps trying to read something in his expression, but stealth also required a cool, unreadable face. Jix never gave anything away that he didn’t intend to.

  “Not today,” was all Milos said.

  “In the meantime,” suggested Jackin’ Jill, “why don’t you go lick yourself clean like a good kitty?”

  Jix suspected that he and Jill were never going to be friends.

  CHAPTER 4

  Green Goddess

  M ilos had not forgotten what Allie had told him, and although he hated the thought that she knew something he didn’t, he had to find out what she had seen from her perch at the front of the train. About a mile back, she had said. Figure it out for yourself. Once the newly harvested souls were safely in the sleeping car, Milos decided to set off alone to do exactly that.

  He left Jill in charge of Jix, which she resented. “I don’t trust him,” Jill said. “No normal person skinjacks animals.”

  “Would you rather Moose and Squirrel watch him?” suggested Milos. She just grunted in disgust. They both knew Moose and Squirrel had attention spans too short to effectively guard anyone. “Perhaps you could charm him into telling you more about where he comes from,” Milos said, with a grin. “After all, you’re a bit like a cat yourself.”

  She raised her hand like a claw. “In that case, why don’t I just scratch that grin right off your face?”
Still, Milos smiled. He had once been in love with Jill, as he had once been in love with Allie-but both times the love was bleached away by betrayal, leaving him with a wounded, if not broken, heart.

  But then there was Mary.

  All else in his life, and afterlife, had been mere preparation for her. She was his salvation-and in a very real way, he was hers as well.

  Milos left the train in the afternoon, and followed the track, every couple of minutes looking around, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary, but nothing caught his eye. Looking back at the train proved to be a surreal sight: the locomotive, standing against the little white church right in the middle of its path. The way its steeple poked up at the sky made it appear as if the church was giving the train the middle finger.

  Milos found nothing a mile back. Just a dead track, and the living world on either side of it. Whatever it was Allie saw, it was not revealing itself to Milos. He returned to the train, his afterglow faintly red with slow-boiling frustration.

  When he arrived, all seemed the way it always did. Kids playing games, shuffling their feet to keep from sinking into the living world.

  Speedo came running to him when he saw that Milos had returned. “What was there?” Speedo asked. “What did you see?”

  “Nothing,” Milos told him. “I saw nothing at all.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “I will figure something out!” Milos shouted at him. “Don’t ask me again!” When he looked around, he saw that his outburst had gotten the attention of some of the kids playing around them. When Mary’s kids saw him, they used to look away, too shy and respectful to make eye contact. But now when they looked at him, they stared coolly, and their gazes were an accusation. What are you doing for us? those gazes said. What good are you at all? Now it was Milos who looked away when they stared.

  He considered going up to the front car, and bargaining with Allie to tell him what she saw, or perhaps threatening her-but he would not give her the satisfaction of knowing she had the upper hand. Instead, he turned, and strode toward the caboose.

  “Wait, where are you going?” whined Speedo.

  And Milos said, “I need to talk to Mary.”

  When Mary’s army had acquired the train from the Chocolate Ogre, it did not have a caboose. It had been a simple steam engine with nine passenger cars, each from a different time period. The caboose was added at Milos’s insistence before they left Little Rock, Arkansas. He was adamant that they travel no further west until a final car-a special car-was found. No one argued. It was, in fact, the only order he gave that met with no resistance from anyone.

  They finally found the caboose sitting on a slight stretch of dead track, hidden by a living-world apartment complex. Once found, attaching it to the train had been relatively easy. So was decorating it-because Christmas ornaments were both beloved and fragile, and so were naturally abundant in Everlost. The strings of brightly colored lights even stayed lit in Everlost without needing to be plugged in.

  The caboose was decorated by Mary’s loving children, and the entrance was locked to everyone but Milos, the only one who knew the lock’s combination.

  Now, as he spun the lock, and turned it to the combination, he took in a deep breath, for even though he no longer needed to breathe, the mere act of doing so helped him steel himself for the moment. Then, once he was sure he was ready, he stepped inside.

  It was late afternoon now. Light poured into the windows of the caboose and onto an object that lay in the center. It was the only thing in the caboose.

  The object was a coffin.

  It wasn’t made of wood as one might expect, or even of stone, as had been done in ancient days. This coffin was made entirely of glass-bits and pieces of it, meticulously glued together with bubble gum and anything else sticky enough to do the job. There were pieces of crystal taken from chandeliers that had crossed into Everlost. There were bottles, and window panes and sunglass lenses, artfully arranged, and little stained-glass window hangings that added color. The casket was strange and piecemeal, yet perfect in its own way.

  Within the glass coffin lay a figure in a shimmering green satin gown, ever silent, ever still. A girl once lost to this world, but now ever found.

  “Hello, Mary…”

  Milos knelt beside the coffin, gently moving his hand across the rough edges of joined glass. Tears filled his eyes, but not tears of sorrow. Far from it. It was joy that filled him when he looked at her. This is where Mary belonged-in Everlost-a world she was determined to tame, and dominate. The Chocolate Ogre had found a way to make her live again, sending her back into the world of the living, turning her spirit into flesh. Her untimely life was a shock to everyone, most of all to Milos-yet even in that dark time, Mary had orchestrated her own return to Everlost.

  Bring me home, my love.

  Those were the last words Mary said to him, before he took her life. She looked into his eyes, and steadied his hand as he thrust the blade through her heart. It was that singular act, as horrible as it was, that bound them together forever.

  My love, she had called him-and in that moment Milos knew he had finally replaced Nick, that hideous chocolate-challenged spirit, in her heart.

  In the living world Mary’s heart had lain mortally wounded, leaking its last ounce of life in an alley-but as her body died, a portal opened before her spirit, and Milos was there to catch her. Just as he’d promised, he was there to grab her and hold her tight in his embrace, denying the gravity of the light and preventing her from being sucked down the tunnel to some mysterious afterlife.

  Perhaps the light wanted her. Perhaps God had already set a table for her in eternity… but Milos wanted her more. With every ounce of his will, he held her back until the light retreated, the tunnel vanished, and Mary’s spirit collapsed into his arms.

  “I love you, Mary,” he had said to her, but she didn’t answer, and the moment after the light disappeared, her arms, which had held him so tightly, went limp and she fell into the deepest of sleeps, as they both knew she would. Nine months of dreamless slumber-for just as one is born to the world of the living, one must be born into Everlost. Not even the great Mary Hightower could escape that simple law of nature.

  Even so, Mary had now accomplished something no one else ever had.

  … Never before had the same person lived and died twice. It changed everything.

  Bring me home, my love.

  And Milos did. On the day Mary re-died, he had carried her in his arms all the way back to the train. He walked with her through the crowd of Mary’s children so that they could all see. She had left in mystery-for Milos had never told the others what had befallen her-and now she was back. Not just back, but transformed. They were all too awed to do anything but whisper and reach out to touch her, feeling the smooth fabric of her green satin gown. When she was forced back into the living world, her tight Victorian velvet dress had quickly been ruined by a mere week of living on the street. She had shed it, replacing it with this gown of emerald satin. Now she looked less like a governess, and more like a goddess-a fallen goddess, waiting for her moment to rise.

  That moment would come, but Milos feared it wouldn’t come soon enough.

  Things had not gone well in the two months since he had brought Mary home. Just ten miles out of Little Rock, Arkansas, the ghost tracks had come to an end, and they had to backtrack, finding another set of rails that could carry them, and then another, then another-a constant series of false starts and dead ends. It was like navigating a maze, and finding alternate routes would take days. Even when they had forward momentum, they always moved at a snail’s pace, for fear that the tracks would unexpectedly end.

  And then the desertions began.

  Those who were loyal to Mary were loyal to the end-but others who feared the prospect of a dying/rising goddess, or simply distrusted Milos, were quick to run off. At last count they were losing a half dozen kids a day. Mary’s kids numbered close to a thousand when they started. He
had no idea how many there were now. He was afraid to take a census.

  “You’ll be lucky if you have any left at all by the time Mary wakes up,” Jill was quick to tell him. Milos did not want to face the prospect of explaining to Mary why he could not hold on to her children, and “protect them from themselves,” as she would put it.

  This is why Milos allowed the reaping expeditions. If there were a good number of sleeping souls, it might make up for all the ones they had lost. And sleeping souls can’t run away.

  “Everyone wants to know where we’re going,” Speedo had told him. “Did Mary tell you where she was leading us before you… uh… ‘made her cross’?”

  “Of course she told me!”

  “Well, it might make us all feel a little bit better if you told us.”

  “That,” said Milos, “is between Mary and me.”

  With all the starts and stops, backtracking and zigzagging, their journey was taking months. During that time, Mary’s kids all fell into new routines… yet even in their routines there was a sense of impatience-as if they were all reluctantly passing the time until something happened-until Milos actually DID something that brought them closer to their unknown destination. More and more he felt like a leader in name only.

  Now, as he knelt alone in the caboose, he looked through the glass to Mary’s closed eyelids, trying to remember what her eyes looked like. Soft and inviting, while at the same time keen and calculating. It was an intoxicating combination.

  “I have tried, Mary,” he said, in barely more than a whisper. “I have tried to lead your children and to bring even more into Everlost, just as you had asked… but there is only so much that I can do.” He found that he had forced his hands together, clasping his knuckles in something resembling prayer. “We face so many obstacles. And now this church…” He looked to the date she would awaken, written on the largest pane of glass. It was still more than six months away.