May Bird and the Ever After (26 page)

“It's too late, most likely. Ghouls move fast when they want to. But the knaves know how to take care of themselves. Nobody can get in who we don't want in.”

“But
we
got in.”

John winked at May. “You don't think we let you, dearie? You and that house ghost of yers?”

“How do you know Pumpkin is a house ghost, just by looking?”

John nodded.

May looked at Pumpkin, who looked suddenly humble and unsure, and back at John. “How?”

“Look at him. House servants are dimmer than the rest. And anyhow, ghosts just ain't as important as specters.”

May looked at Pumpkin, who was looking down at his feet, his shoulders hunched. “He's important.”

John laughed. “Right, lass.”

“I don't think
you're
so important, cockroach lips,” Pumpkin muttered to his feet.

“Why, you . . .” John thrust his oars to either side of him, moving forward—

“But about those ghouls,” May interrupted, sliding between the two. “Shouldn't we at least warn—”

John sat back as he interrupted her in return. “Each knave has to look out for himself.”

It was the end of the topic, clearly.

After several minutes Pumpkin lay down and began to snore
again. May lay back beside him protectively and watched the sky, occasionally sneaking a look at John the Jibber. They needed him. And he seemed to want the same thing they did. Still, May wondered if it wouldn't be wiser to take their chances on their own.

When they finally docked, she was in such a daze she hadn't even noticed they'd turned toward shore. And then she heard and felt the crunching of sand underneath the boat.

They were sheltered by an overhanging of rock, and it was cool. John stretched, his bony ribs poking out against his ragged shirt. “We should build a fire.”

After May ate, the three sat around the fire John had made from Stardust kept in a pouch in his coats. They sat with crossed legs, staring at the flames. “Ye know,” John said, “it's a quick walk to the top of the hill, and from there you can just see Ether. Do ye want to go?”

“You mean, we're that close to the city?”

“Ay.”

“I'd love to!”

May jumped up and brushed herself off and followed John, who led her out from the overhang and up a narrow, rocky path. She thought to herself how amazing it was that she was here, walking at dusk with an old pirate—
her
, May! If only Somber Kitty could have seen her. Maybe he
would
see her, soon. The thought lifted her spirits.

John reached out his hand to help her up the last few steps. May stepped up beside him and followed his gaze.

“There she is. Most beautiful city in this world or the other one, though I admit I haven't seen the other one in quite a while.”

They were at the end of a long, dry plain, and there, across it, glowing and spiking above the horizon, was the City of Ether.

“Gosh, it's farther than I hoped,” May lamented.

“Not as far as ye'd think.” John sighed. “Sometimes I wish I could give up the life.” He sighed again. “I'd love to live like normal spirits do. With their nice graves outside the city and their Earth houses to haunt, and going to the Pit of Despair for holidays. But alas, I am what I am.”

He turned to May. “Yer lucky. If I were still livin', like ye, ah, the things I'd do. . . . I'd change, I swear, be the person I want to be. I'd give up the knave's life! Get married. If I hadn't died—”

“Urn, how
did
you die?” May ventured shyly. She'd been dying to ask.

John studied her, the usual twinkle in his eye gone. “If you want, we can sit awhile and I'll tell ye.”

They both sat on the rock overlooking the city.

“Back in England I was running with a band of thieves, doing the usual. Stealing, holding up ships, things like that. I was out working on me own one afternoon, slipping into the local rectory to steal the communion cup, when the law nabbed me. The royal guard heard our gang was around, you see. And they were looking.

“Well, they hadn't been able to find the others, because we had a nice tucked-away spot that we used to hide in. It drove the guards crazy, and they told me if I told them where me mates were they'd let me go.”

John shrugged. “I told them all I knew, and they let me go, on condition I wouldn't say a word to me mates. When me mates asked me what had happened, saying they'd heard I was caught, I
told them they'd heard wrong. That evening, knowing the royal guard would be coming at nightfall, I left them and went to the pub, had a nice mutton dinner, and didn't think more about it except that I'd have to find me a new gang. Only, I get the news that me mates were too wily for the law. How I got the news was that me mates showed up at the pub, grabbed me, and threw me in a sack. They took me to a cave and put me in a barrel and hung me from the ceiling. I was in there seven days before I finally died.”

May sat stunned.

“Terrible, ain't it?”

“Yes,” May breathed.

“Can you believe me own mates treated me that way?”

“But. . . you betrayed them.”

“That's true. But two wrongs don't make a right,” John insisted, crossing his emaciated arms.

“No. I guess not.”

John's cracked, dry lips turned downward. “You're taking their side.”

“No, I'm not. It's just, don't you feel bad for betraying them?”

“Sure I do, lassie. But I'm a changed man now. All I can do now is be the best knave I can be.”

May stared. “But . . . spirits don't change. . . .”

John cleared his throat. “I guess that's what they say.” He shrunk from May defensively. “Ain't you ever done a betrayal to one of yer friends?”

May thought, then picked at her fingernails, not meeting his eyes. “I don't really have any friends.”

“Well, that's a shame.”

“I have a cat.”

“A cat's not a person.”

“Yeah, but he's my friend.” May thought of the night at the lake and crumpled a little inside. She thought of how she had never realized just how much of a friend Somber Kitty had been. He had been her best and
only
friend. “And I guess I did betray him.”

“See?” John smiled with satisfaction. “But still, I say a cat ain't really a friend. I hate cats meself. Except in stew. I liked a good cat stew when I was livin'. I used to make up a mean batch for me mates.”

May winced, feeling depressed. Even a man with cockroaches crawling out of his mouth had more friends than she did.

“Pumpkin's sort of . . . my friend,” she offered hopefully.

John laughed. “Ha! A cat and a house ghost. That's rich. You won't find a house ghost that's worth much in the way of smarts
or
courage. When the chips are down, he'll run the other way, mark me words. And as fer cats—well, ye won't find one in the whole o' the Ever After.”

May pondered what John had said about Pumpkin. It
did
seem like the truth. “Why do you think the animals were banished, Mr. Jibber?”

John shrugged. “Who can explain anything Evil Bo Cleevil does? A bunch of ghouls that worked for him rounded up the cats first. The ghouls ain't very bright, and I think they had a hard time telling cats apart from the other animals. I don't know that he didn't just decide to get rid of all the animals altogether, to make it simpler. It was right around the time we started hearing reports of the Bogey. Lord knows why he didn't send the Bogey's dogs to do the job. I reckon they could tear a cat apart in less than a second flat. Curious, that.”

May sidled a little closer to John, thinking about the Bogey's dogs. She hugged her arms around herself.

“Look over there,” John said, pointing across the sand in another direction. There was just the tiniest hint of movement. “That's the Interrealm Soarway. It goes all the way from the Southwest Portal up around the city, where it intersects a set of train tracks that run all the way to the Far North. Quite a marvel, it is, the train. It stops outside Ether, and that's it. Doesn't stop again till the tip-top of the realm. Though nobody rides it anymore, if they can help it.

“I believe it goes all the way to North Farm, where yer blanket is from.” May's throat tightened. “That's one place you wouldn't find me goin', even fer treasure. There's nothing but strange spirits up that way. Powerful types, like what made yer blanket. How'd you say you got that, anyway?”

May's heart sped up. “We just . . . found it.” She wished he hadn't said anything about the train. Knowing it even existed filled her with shame.

John nodded, seeming suspicious. “Anyway, no need to worry about the North—Ether is our concern. Ye see”—he pointed—“the city is surrounded by a high wall, with a gate at each corner. Each gate is guarded by a sniffing phantom.”

He leaned toward her and looked her in the eye for emphasis as he said this, sending a waft of horrible stench over her face. “Ye know what that is?”

May shook her head. She'd heard it before—even from John—and it didn't sound very scary.

“The thieves used to dress up to get into the city, once Evil Bo Cleevil's spirits started taking over. But Cleevil caught on to that.

So he brought up the sniffing phantoms from the Stench Swamps down in South Place. Highly developed noses. Now you have to get checked for scents before you can get through the gates.”

“What kind of scents?”

“Oh, the scent of thievery, for one”—John sniffed his armpit, and then poked her in the side—“and the stench of life. But we'll fix that.”

May's mind darted to Lucius. She didn't want to think about it.

“And if we're caught?”

“They throw ye in a gadget called an incarnerator. Ye come out a bug or a worm or else a rock, and that gets sent in the mail to yer nearest relative. Me cousin Iago got turned into a twig that I kept in me pocket fer a while, till it got washed out in the laundry.” May's face must have shown the worry she felt, because he winked and added, “Don't worry. Ye stick with me, and I'll get ye through.”

May wondered what she and Pumpkin would do without him. They'd be lost. Suddenly she felt guilty for doubting him. “Mr. Jibber?”

“Yes, dearie?” He leaned an ear close to her. “Speak up.” “Thank you for taking us.”

John grinned, his deep-set eyes getting a little moist. “Why, it's good fer me to be challenged. Eternity gets real stale, I'll tell ye. Sometimes I don't think it'd be half bad to disappear into nothingness after all.” His limbs shook for a moment, and then settled.

“What is it?” May asked, touching his arm. She was getting less and less sensitive to the cold zaps of the spirits.

John forced a small, nervous laugh. “Just a goose walking across my grave.”

With that, he turned and drifted back down the hill.

Far across the realm, Somber Kitty paced a large, stone-walled room, occasionally gazing toward a large open window, like a caged tiger.

On the first day of his captivity his net had been substituted with a triangular room at the top of the tallest pyramid in the Egyptian settlement. It had a sumptuous carpet, a gorgeous linen scratching post, and gilded catnip balls. There was also a breathtaking view of a city far in the distance. But looking at the vista made Somber Kitty meow darkly.

He placed his paws on the sill of the window, sticking his head out into the dry desert air and looking toward the ground longingly. As he did so a large group of people, who were milling about at the base of the pyramid, fell on their knees and bowed their heads to the sand.

They did this every time Somber Kitty showed his face. At first it had made him curious, but now he barely noticed. He had no way of knowing that the Egyptian spirits had adopted him as a god. And if he had, it wouldn't have made him any less melancholy.

With his paws still on the sill he looked around the room once again for a way to escape, and then turned to the window with a mew. He peered at the people below thoughtfully as if they might be able to answer the one question that really mattered.

“Meay?”

M
ay woke to wet drops landing on her face. She blinked her eyes. Large green drops were falling from the sky, and John the Jibber was sitting beside her. He had her knapsack in his hands.

“Er, time to go, lass.”

May sat up, her eyes darting to her bag.

“What's happening?”

John laughed. “Just a little ectoplasm shower. Get yer house ghost up and let's go.” He handed her the sack as if that's what he'd been meaning to do. May looked at it for a moment, uneasy.

She shook Pumpkin awake. He grunted and sat up, rubbing his eyes and looking around. He grinned pleasantly at May, let out a long, leisurely yawn, then he stuck out his purple tongue to collect a few ectoplasm drops. “Can't I sleep a little longer?”