May Bird Among the Stars (7 page)

“C'mon,” Zero said. “I'll show'er to you.”

May followed him around the side of the falls into a pretty glade overhung by rock. The balloon lay sprawled there, deflated, its big straw basket sitting upright on the grass. The balloon itself was not what she'd expected. It was shaped like a giraffe.

Zero noticed her surprise. “French dude moonlighted as a clown for a while,” he explained with a shrug. “It still floats. Thing is, most spirits are tired of it. It's pretty boring, just
floating
around up there. And it's a lot of work. We're not so into work.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and levitated, looking at the balloon.

“I'll make you a deal. Take a load off, relax for a couple days, and the balloon's all yours. We love company.”

May shook her head furiously. “Uh, no, we've really got to get going.”

As she said it, May looked back toward the vale and felt a pang of regret. It was so lovely here. Zero put his hand on her
shoulder and gave her a look so careless and carefree, it put her worried frown to shame.

“Just kick back a bit,” he urged. “Death is good.”

That evening May found Pumpkin sitting by the lagoon, singing to himself.

When he saw her, he cleared his throat. “Just watching Marco Polo.” He nodded toward the lagoon.

Several spirits were swimming around the lagoon calling, “Marco!”

Every once in a while a specter with a mustache and a three-pointed hat popped out of the water and yelled, “Polo! Thatsa me!”

May sat beside Pumpkin and dipped her feet in the water. Under the blue surface, the bottom of her shroud drifted off away from her feet, so that they appeared very alive. She wiggled her toes with pleasure.

She looked about her and sighed wistfully. It felt so safe here in Risk Falls.

Pumpkin noticed her thoughtfulness and moved closer beside her, dipping his own ghostly feet into the water next to hers.

“You look serious.”

May smiled at him. “Do you think we need a rest, Pumpkin?”

She expected a resounding
yes!
But instead, Pumpkin looked pensive.

“You need to get home,” he finally said.

May wiggled her toes some more, staring at them.

“You're right. I feel like we should leave as soon as possible.”

This made Pumpkin waver. “But things are good here. Even Beatrice looks well, not so sad….” Pumpkin motioned to where Bea sat on the opposite side of the pond, mending clothes for some of the Risk Fallers. She wasn't quite smiling, but as she worked, she wasn't quite wearing her thoughtful frown, either.

“We could stay for just a day or two,” May offered.

Fabbio, who'd apparently been eavesdropping from where he lay on the grass, thrust one finger up into the air and, without moving his head or even opening his eyes, said, “We stay.”

May looked at Pumpkin. “What do you think?”

Pumpkin nibbled a finger. “Well, we have such a big thing to do,” he said. “North Farm and all of that. And it's so dangerous.” He paused for a moment. “You know, I miss Arista. I miss my grave. And the beehive house.”

May thought back to Arista and his cozy little house in Belle Morte, where Pumpkin had been a servant before setting out to accompany May on her journey. It had seemed so strange and unfamiliar when Pumpkin had brought her there. But if she had known then what lay ahead of her, she might have nestled into Arista's snug guest room forever. It was a far cry from the dangerous heights of the Eternal Edifice or the wilds of the Far North.

“I know the sooner we get going, the sooner I'll be home again, but …” He looked at May, his big black eyes thoughtful. “I'm tired of being afraid.”

May reached over and gave Pumpkin's hand a squeeze. He had already faced so many fears for her. Then something else occurred to her: Kitty. They couldn't leave him hidden and alone for days….

“Dudes!”

Everyone in the vale turned to see a blond pigtailed girl in scuba gear standing on the edge of the lagoon, her arms wrapped around a squirming Somber Kitty. “I found a
living cat”
She nodded toward the bundle in her arms, then beamed at everyone.

May's heart stood still.

“Can we keep it?”

The Risk Fallers swept toward Kitty. May leaped up to come to his aid.

“Awesome!” somebody yelled. Somber Kitty let out a low meow and gave May a pitiful glance.

May breathed a sigh of relief. Nobody seemed to mind that he was a fugitive. She turned to look at Pumpkin, Fabbio, and Bea, who'd come over to investigate. “Okay. We can stay a
few
days. Three. If you want.” She looked at Beatrice for approval Pumpkin deserved a break. They all did.

Bea looked unsure. She gazed at the faces of the other two looking like she wanted to protest. But then she softened. “Well if the others want to, I suppose we could….”

Pumpkin and Fabbio let out hoots. Across the grass Somber Kitty let out another meow, but nobody heard. Instinctively, May thought back to her telep-a-gram:
Never forget that the way back is forward.
But she chose to ignore that for now, just for the moment.

“Three days,” she repeated. “Tops.”

What could happen in three days?

F
or several minutes a cloud of dust had been growing just south of Cleevilville #135, announcing the approach of a group of riders. The cloud grew and grew, until the riders came to a halt just outside the town gates.

When the cloud settled, six figures, clad in tattered red riding jackets and puffs of yellowed lace at their throats, emerged from the dust. Each sat astride a heaving, snarling gargoyle and held a riding crop in one hand and a pair of braided reins in the other.

The riders circled the abandoned railroad tracks, studying the ground leading in and out of the town. It wasn't long before one gestured to a single pair of footprints in the dirt. Only Live Ones leave footprints.

Without delay, the Wild Hunters whipped their mounts into motion, following the tracks north.

The group settled into the paradisiacal vale as snugly as peas in rice. Captain Fabbio introduced an Italian game called Who's Got the Spumoni? which he won most of the time because he kept changing the rules. Beatrice, unable to get her hands on any new books or even one newspaper—as these things seemed to be absent from Risk Falls entirely—mended every piece of clothing in the vale, then started in on other projects: polishing the surfboards, dusting the tiki torches, scrubbing the ledge that led behind the water. Pumpkin and Somber Kitty starting going on walks together, which surprised everyone. Somber Kitty would pass by May's doorway, turning occasionally to flick his tail at Pumpkin, hurrying him up. Pumpkin would drift along behind and give a quick wave to May as he floated past.

May watched these comings and goings with a secret smile. From what she could gather, Pumpkin had finally recognized Somber Kitty's willingness to listen to everything he had to say, and Somber Kitty had begun to appreciate Pumpkin's optimism. From time to time, Somber Kitty would prance back up to the room in a huff and leap onto May's lap, after some unknown quarrel. And Pumpkin would scowl at him all through that evening's activities—the slippery rock relay, the ball of acid toss, the tightrope race across the ravine—and accuse May of taking his side. But inevitably, they would traipse off together the next morning as if nothing had happened at all.

Fabbio set up a cleaning detail to clear the vale of ghost weeds. Everyone who agreed to help, which meant Beatrice and May, met him at five every morning.

Each day most of the Risk Falls inhabitants, no matter how many limbs they were missing, took to the lake and floated on their backs. Only Somber Kitty sat on the edge, growling at the ripples, letting out a woeful chorus of “Mew. Meow. Meay”
Having lost his owner to a water demon, he had more reason than most cats to be suspicious of water.

May marveled at the bravery of the spirits of Risk Falls. They weren't scared of anything: not falling off cliffs or catching on fire or getting shot through with arrows (they shot one another quite frequently). They seemed to enjoy being dead with reckless abandon. Taken with the idea, May designed a barrel with rudders for the spirits to steer over the falls. She also forged a shortcut to the top of the cliffs that the others had never noticed, invented a quick and easy way to reattach missing parts with paper clips, and showed everyone how to teach a cat to dance. (Even though it would never come in handy, her students were delighted.) But the thing the specters of Risk Falls liked most of all about May Bird was that she told the best stories.

She had told them only to Pumpkin at first—stories about her mom, about Somber Kitty the warrior cat, about Briery Swamp and the people she imagined had once lived there. She spun stories about White Moss Manor and its previous owners, including a woman named Bertha Brettwaller, rumored to have had horrible breath and to have walked out of the house one morning looking for wild garlic, never to return. Adding details like this here and there, he listened raptly to May's histories, Somber Kitty snoozing at her side.

Presently, they were joined by a couple of spirits who happened to overhear, and the number kept growing until the entire population of Risk Falls was gathered in the vale every night to hear May recall the Eternal Edifice, the New Egyptians, the Bogey, and a psychic beekeeper named Arista. They were
good stories already, but May added flourishes and embellishments, colorful descriptions, and passionate hand gestures, until every listener was under her spell, every ear trained on her every syllable. May found that when she was telling these stories, she forgot to be shy at all.

Beatrice, meanwhile, woke each morning to find bouquets littered outside her door from various admirers. Also, piles of laundry. Both made her flush with pleasure.

Oddly, on the fourth day not one of the travelers remembered that today was the day they'd planned to leave. Somber Kitty alone paced impatiently at the edge of the trees, trying to catch May's eye. Whenever he did, he tried to wave her into the woods with his tail. But May, dripping in the invisible shroud that covered her sparkly bathing suit, which was slowly starting to lose its sparkle, would only smile at him in a lazy, relaxed way and go for another jump into the lagoon.

May learned to shoot an arrow. To swing on a rope. To do a back handspring.

If anyone had noticed that she didn't float like everyone else or that she was more colorful than the average ghost, they didn't say anything. And May began to think of herself not as a Live One, but as just another spirit of Risk Falls.

Bea found herself needed and adored. Fabbio had found good-natured spirits, including Marco Polo himself, always willing to play by his rules. And Pumpkin had found a place to frolic.

“May,” Bea said one morning when they were floating in the lagoon, “it's odd, but sometimes I don't even remember why we're here.”

May crossed her arms beneath her head on her inner tube. “I know. Do you think that's bad?”

Bea shrugged, then yawned. The two floated along in silence for some time.

The day drifted away.

Their reason for being there, and their memories of the world beyond Risk Falls, became hazier and hazier. And North Farm, with its ambiguous promise of home, grew farther and farther away.

Outside Necromancy Nancy's Snack Shoppe, a figure in a red coat climbed down from his mount. With oily slickness, he held up one arm to indicate that the others should take care. With a tiny tilt of his head, he nodded to the front door.

As the six crept toward the shack, a screech issued from inside, followed by a hurtling teakettle. It flew through the window and whistled in the direction of the first hunter, who caught it with one white-gloved hand. He lunged toward the doorway and disappeared inside, dragging his attacker out into the open, pinning it to the ground under one black boot.

The poltergeist squirmed and howled but could not pry itself loose.

A deep whisper issued from the hunter's black lips. “Mecka-lecka hiney ho?”

That was poltergeist for “Where are they?”

M
ay stared at the invitation lying on the hammock with breathless anticipation:
Come to a dress-up shindig Tonight!

May and Somber Kitty had had a few small affairs in May's room back home. And May had shared in cupcake parties at school (though usually the cupcakes ran out, and May only got to scrape the icing off the box). But she had never been to a shindig.

That afternoon she had created a warrior costume out of silver beads, a black sheet she had borrowed from Zero, the flowers from the plant in her room, and, of course, her death shroud. Now she was letting Bea paint her face in blue and green streaks with ink squeezed from the ghost weeds. Bea had already pulled her hair back in a tight braided ponytail and stuck some feathers into the hair band.

“Just one more,” Bea said, grinning. “There.” She turned May toward the mirror so she could see herself.

The braid made her look like she had hardly any hair. The lines of the war paint were crooked and made her look bluish and quite dead, and the feathers tilted at weird, floppy angles.

“Do you like it?” Bea asked, clasping her hands together unsurely.

“Oh, yes.” May's heart sank, though. Bea had made her look like a boy.

Bea beamed. Her own blond hair was fashioned into a tender flounce that complemented the blue of her eyes and the pink of her gentle cheeks. May had been hoping for something more like that.

“How do I look?” Bea asked.

May grinned. Bea always looked beautiful. “I think
Zero
will think you look
very
pretty”

Beatrice turned pink, sniffed, then gave her hair a messy toss. “I certainly don't care.” But as they walked out of the room, May noticed she patted her curls again to make them neat.