May Bird Among the Stars (10 page)

She sauntered a few steps forward, then began to run.

I
think I'm allergic to something,” Bea said tightly, pulling a hanky from her pocket and dabbing at her eyes gently.

The group of travelers stood near the big straw basket of the giraffe-shaped hot air balloon, saying their good-byes. Pumpkin snuffled loudly every few seconds as tears ran out of his droopy eyes.

“I have made a poem for good-bye,” Fabbio said, standing up straight. Everyone braced themselves.

“Tortellini, pizza pie
I have something in my eye
Is a teardrop, big and blue
Because we saying toodle-loo”

On these last words, Fabbio's voice became choked and he touched his fingers to his lips, bowing his head and closing his eyes.

Zero grinned. “Listen, May Bird. Your escape from the hunters was truly spectacular.” He stuck his hands in the pockets of his long shorts. “And it's so cool that you're alive. What's more risky than that in the Afterlife?”

May blushed. To her amazement, when she and Kitty had returned to Risk Falls, she had been set upon by cheering spirits. No one had expressed a moment's concern about what had been revealed back at the Wild Hunt. In fact, like Zero, everyone had been quite thrilled to have a living girl in their midst. In the fray, May had not told anyone about the Eternal Restaurant or the stranger she had met there. Oddly enough, she felt it was an event that belonged only to her, like a deep dark secret.

Somber Kitty sat beside her on the ground, guarding the basket like a lion and staring southeast into the highlands. Occasionally, he let out a tiny growl and wove between May's legs impatiently. May scratched the backs of her knees, flattered and horribly embarrassed. “Zero, you heard what I said. About Bo Cleevil. Risk Falls could be next. You'll … do something, won't you?”

Zero eyed her seriously for a moment, then gave her a punch on the shoulder and a careless grin. “No worries, dude. Everything's cool here.”

May bit her lip and looked at Beatrice, who frowned with worry. Clearly, the inhabitants of this place, like so much of the Ever After, weren't as worried as they should be. May climbed into the basket, which was laden with sleeping bags, camping supplies, and other gifts from the spirits of Risk Falls.

“Queen Bea,” Zero said, taking Beatrice's hand gently in his. Bea looked up to the sky as if she saw something very interesting above. But when Zero lifted her hand to his lips and kissed
it, she stared at him, her eyes wide, a smile bursting out on her flushed face.

And then she swiped away a little tear as she followed the others into the balloon, trying to climb in as daintily as she could.

Only Somber Kitty remained on the grass. “C'mon, Kitty What are you waiting for?” May coaxed.

Kitty glanced at her over his shoulder, then stood up and looked into the distance again, his tail sticking straight up. “Meow.”

“Come, little Kitty,” Fabbio said, leaning over and lifting him by the armpits. Kitty dangled from his hands like an old shoelace, still staring southeast. He let out a sound like May had never heard before, something between a moan and a growl.

May took him from Fabbio and held him close, looking at him, concerned. “What is it?” She followed his gaze toward the horizon, beyond the moat.

There
was
something there. She couldn't tell whether it was far away or just really small.

“Well,” Zero said, “catch you later.” He untied one of the ropes holding down the balloon. With a
thwap!
and a
zwing!
the basket tilted far to the left.

“This no problem,” Fabbio said, taking hold of the burner that steered the balloon and thrusting it forward. The basket jarred even farther left, until it was almost sideways. Kitty went flying out of May's arms, landing on all fours on the grass and shaking himself off.

“Kitty!”

May managed to scoop the cat into her arms just as the balloon started floating backward.

Thwap!
Zero untied the other rope. The balloon teetered there for a moment, as if it needed to rev itself up in order to ascend. Its occupants looked around dazedly. By this time, whatever was approaching them had crossed the moat and was dashing across the vale.

“What is that?” Beatrice said, pointing. May could see now—it was small and actually not far away at all. It looked like …

“Well, I'll
be …,
” one Risk Falls spirit exclaimed.

The creature was zipping toward them, its tail flouncing out behind it.

May could feel Somber Kitty's heart beating against his ribs. His fur stood up all around. He let out the loudest, meanest growl May had ever heard escape his lips.

“Is that … a pink bow?” Pumpkin asked. They were still only inches above the ground, drifting slowly backward as Fabbio tried to steer.

The creature approached the balloon far faster than anyone could have imagined. One moment it was a hundred yards away, and the next, it was only a matter of feet.

Somber Kitty hissed and spat wildly, his whole body shaking.

“Now for turning up the burner,” Fabbio muttered to himself, casting an indifferent glance at the tiny creature racing toward them. The rest of the group watched in awe.

Then, inexplicably, when it was still several feet away, the creature leaped. It leaped higher and farther than any leap May had ever seen, seeming to
fly
at the balloon, one paw poised in the air, the claws extended and directed at the leg of the giraffe.

“Ah!” Fabbio pushed something, and the balloon accelerated
straight up. The creatures paw fell just short of the balloon, and it went plummeting toward the ground beneath them. A great howl of frustration issued from its throat as it landed on all fours, staring upward, its green eyes glinting.

The rest of the travelers peered over the edge of the basket, befuddled, as they rose into the air.

Fabbio, finally, looked over the edge with interest. “What a cute little kitty.”

Everyone but Somber Kitty agreed.

M
ay and Kitty went tumbling across the grass, rolling lopsidedly along until they ran up against a giant rock and came to a dead stop. May sat up, rubbing her head, trying to get her bearings. Somber Kitty let out a groan and tumbled out of his papoose. The hot air balloon lay deflated along the rocky ground, the basket turned sideways.

Pumpkin lay in a blubbering heap a few feet away Beatrice was helping Captain Fabbio stand up and brushing off her dress.

“This not my best landing,” Fabbio said, flapping his hands against his medals to dust them off. In fact, after hours of soaring above the empty highlands, the balloon had suddenly and without warning descended downward, dumping them out in an unseemly mess.

Recovering themselves, everyone looked in May's direction. Pumpkin let out a scream. Bea's hands flew over her mouth. May turned to see what they were looking at, then gulped.

It wasn't a rock she had plowed into—or at least not a rock in the traditional sense. It was, in fact, a giant skull, standing at least six feet high, its huge tooth-addled mouth gaping in terror. And what lay beyond it was even more chilling.

Somber Kitty leaped at May, his claws catching onto her shorts, and climbed back into his papoose.

From the sky, the flat plains beneath them had looked as if they might stretch on forever. But the view from the ground was something quite different. Up ahead, the stars disappeared, casting a long, eerie swath across the sky. The landscape—what they could see in the distance—was dark and dry, steeped in shadows and strange mounds. Beyond it, white snowy mountains rose, sending a cold mountain wind down upon the travelers and making them shiver.

The prairie—dead, dry, still, and cool—was littered with countless giant skeletons. They were lying, as if resting, and their forms were intact, though here and there a clavicle had tumbled out of place, or a spinal disk or a shoulder blade.

Sharing the landscape with the skeletons were a few enormous trees—some standing upright, some lying sideways, but all far from alive.

Beatrice drifted up to the nearest tree and tapped on it gently, then rubbed her fingers together to get off the dust and turned to look back at the others.

“Petrified,” she said.

“Me too,” Pumpkin moaned. “Let's turn around.”

Bea shook her head. “Not petrified as in
scared,
Pumpkin. Petrified means that it's turned into stone.”

May had read about places like this in one of her travel books. There was a petrified forest in the desert in Arizona. “But I thought nothing in the Ever After gets older?”

“These are older than old,” Fabbio said definitively, drifting in and out of one skull's gaping mouth. He didn't even have to duck.

“Oooh, don't do that,” Beatrice said, tugging his shoulder and pulling him back. “This whole place gives me a terrible feeling.”

“Meay,” Somber Kitty said ominously He jumped out of his papoose, landing gracefully, and took up a protective stance beside May, facing the mountains, as if whatever danger there was lay directly ahead of them.

“Which way do we go?” Beatrice asked. Everyone looked at May.

May scanned the landscape, rubbing her arms from the chill. “Forward, I guess.” Her eye lit on another stone—this one different than all the others. “Hey, look at that.” They all approached it slowly, and Bea read the inscription out loud:

“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.

In other words, NO TRESPASSING!!

—Signed, H. Kari Threadgoode Secretary to the Lady of North Farm”

May touched the letters of the signed name in wonder.
H. Kari Threadgoode.

“Sounds like their breath could be really bad,” Pumpkin said. “Maybe we better not trespass.”

May was already stepping past the tombstone. She turned back to look at the others. “You don't have to go.”

She turned to look toward the mountains again, and then she felt Bea's arm link through hers. “I adore skeleton-strewn prairies.”

May looked at her, then at Fabbio and Pumpkin as they floated up to join her. “Are you sure?”

Fabbio pulled his uniform straight and zipped ahead of her, thrusting one finger in the air. “Now we go.”

May looked at Pumpkin. He straightened himself like Fabbio had, thrust a finger in the air, said, “We go,” and zipped along behind him.

Somber Kitty watched the others float into the Petrified Pass. Then he looked over his shoulder uncertainly. “Meow,” he said softly. Which meant,
Doesn't anyone else realize we escaped certain doom back at Risk Falls? And that it will surely follow us?

But Pumpkin only turned around and started making kissy noises. “C'mon, Kitty Don't be scared. They're just
bones.
”

Somber Kitty gave him a look that was meant to be sobering, but it only made Pumpkin's face bunch up in a smile. “Awww. You are sooo cute. C'mon.”

Sighing, his nose wiggling for a scent in the air and his whiskers fluttering, Somber Kitty looked over his shoulder again. He supposed it was up to him alone. But what could he do?

Finally, he licked a paw and then dug it into the sand, right at the boundary of the pass. Carefully, he scraped the paw this way and that, working quickly It was only a few moments before he sat back and looked at his creation.

He had to admit, it wasn't bad, considering his limited resources.

Minutes later, May knelt to retie her shoe just as the entire sky flashed. An enormous face appeared across the length and breadth of the sky, its eyes obscured in a tangle of leaf-shaped clouds, its pupils trained on the one tiny spot of earth where May crouched.

Only Somber Kitty happened to be looking upward at the time, and he let out a howl. But by the time the others followed his gaze, there was nothing to be seen above—nothing except layers upon layers of clouds.

Cautiously, carefully, they moved forward.

For hours May and the others made their way across the plains on a slow, steady rise that climbed closer and closer to the mountains.

Pumpkin and Somber Kitty fought to be in front, but though Pumpkin had the advantage of floating, Somber Kitty always managed to take the lead—shooting out ahead just as Pumpkin caught up again.

They were near the dislocated kneecap of a giant when May finally looked behind her. She could see the miles they'd crossed stretching out behind them, scattered with the hollow remains of giants and trees. But there was still a long stretch ahead.

“Well, how about we rest here?”

Pumpkin crossed his arms and looked toward the giant's massive skull uncertainly.

“I guess there's nowhere that isn't spooky,” Beatrice said.

“This is good place,” Fabbio offered, pulling a pair of binoculars out of his pocket and surveying the landscape. It was noticeably colder than it had been when they'd started out, and May blew into her cupped hands and pulled poor Kitty tight.

“Do you think if the Lady chooses, she'll just … zap you home?” Pumpkin asked.

“I don't know.” But that was sort of what May had been thinking. Hoping. She couldn't imagine crossing the pass twice.

After they had set up camp, Bea started on a letter she planned to mail to
Coffin Confidential,
a talk show that specialized in making specters' dreams come true, sometimes uniting them with lost loved ones.

“My mom always said that when something is lost, you just have to rest your mind,” May said. “And then when you least expect it, it'll come back to you.”